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Snap son I'm still not sure. I don't think they were either. They kind of disappeared and I haven't really seem them again on subsequent sand vacuuming.  I'm still having cyano problems though. I'll change the water, vacuum the sand lightly and within a few days its not fully back but I can see patches coming in. I think it might have to do with flow. A few weeks ago the hose on my return pipe started leaking where it connected to the plastic outlet thing. I replaced the house with one of a much smaller diameter because thats all I had laying around at the time and it worked. This reduced the overflow in the tank and I'm thinking its allowing cyano to grow on parts of the sand bed. I'm hoping replacing the hose with a slightly large one will fix the issue. Not sure what the hell else it could be, I've reduced lights and way cut back on feeding.
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Jul 8, 2014 21:51
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I think my fish has ich or something. He's got this white spot on him and it's loving up the scales by his fin. Another one has it on his mouth. Can anyone confirm/deny? I can get more pictures no problem, but sorry for the crap cell pics:   Yeah I don't know what the gently caress's going on with these wacked out colors here, it doesn't look quite like that in real life. All my fish are mollies, and they've been fat and happy in this saltwater for like a month or two. So it's my understanding that to get rid of ich you basically have to treat the whole tank, otherwise it'll come back from cysts in the substrate. I heard that there are two forms of ich, salt and fresh, and that one will be killed by the other, so salt will kill the freshwater parasite and vice versa. I was thinking of setting up a freshwater hospital tank, moving all the fish there, and then waiting for the salt ich to totally die off when they hatch and can't find a fish to latch on to. Is this a good idea? These are some cheapo fish that were raised fresh, but they really easily acclimated and I think they can go back and forth without any problems. If I move them to fresh, it should kill off all the parasites and they'll be fine, right? There is a complication though. Two of the females just crapped out litters. One of my goals with this tank was to only put things in that could complete their life cycles. And some features of the adults are really cool and I'd like to try and breed them (mostly focusing on iridescent/metallic scales). But there is no loving way I'd be able to catch every single fry, there's just too many and they're too good at hiding. Plus I'm afraid the babies wouldn't be able to adapt to the massive salinity difference, even with careful acclimation. There are a few that seem like they'll be really good candidates to breed up. Obviously if I don't pull them all then the ich will survive. I don't want to just dump medication in the tank because I have some inverts in there I'm afraid could get killed. Also I don't have a freshwater tank cycled right now so I'd have to get that running asap I guess. any advice?
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Jul 20, 2014 00:33
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For people that have done fishless cycling with ammonia, how long did it take? What size tank? I've got a 75 gallon with aragonite special grade reef sand, 50 lbs. of dry rock and about 5 pounds of live rock. I might add more live rock, but holy crap did this project add up fast moneywise. E: This morning my ammonia was back down to 0.5 and nitrite was maxed. Progress! Bulky Bartokomous fucked around with this message at 03:00 on Jul 21, 2014 |
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Jul 20, 2014 15:27
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I would say just keep an eye on it for now. It might just clear up. Mollies are ditch fish and pretty hardy, at least mine were. In fact, only the mollies and my Dragon Goby survived the outbreak of ich that I had. If you just have mollies you can just reduce the salinity of your entire tank to around brackish, or even full fresh. They really won't care too much. My mollies started off fresh, went to brackish, then salt, and then I just put them back in a fresh tank when I got one set up after drip acclimating them. They are tough little bastards, and fun to breed. Anyway, I came on here to talk about jellyfish. So a few weeks back we suddenly had a bunch of little white polyps appear all over my FOWLR tank. We had no idea what they were and at first thought they were aptasia. Then we thought they were hydroids. That lasted until we saw several discs pulsing on the glass and we realized that they were baby moon jellyfish that had somehow grown in our tank despite us not getting any live rock for a month and a half before hand. It was definitely cool. Sadly they can't survive in our tank but we might have found someone to take some of them. They look really cool blooping around the tank. Has anyone else had something similar happen to their tank? Also, we have started a 10 gallon nano reef. We have it set up real nice and the two little colony frags that we have placed in are doing great so far, as is the feather duster worm. This, unfortunately, brings up why we refer to the tank as the Bates Motel. We made the mistake of thinking that the tank was safe and added fish. We were wrong. They just disappeared. No trace what so ever. As a test we threw a black and gold chromis after pulling out the 3 hermit crabs we had in as clean up crew. It didn't survive the night, and when I pulled all of the liverock out of the tank, there was nothing. Not even a skeleton. The only thing that survived was the emerald crab(not the culprit because fish disappeared before we got him) the nassarius snails, and the feather duster worm. I inspected all of the live rock and found nothing, even with a flashlight so whatever it is, it is in deep. I also combed the sand and found nothing. There is some sort of monster in our tank, but we aren't sure what. So we have decided that it won't have fish, just inverts and coral and I can finally own an arrow crab. Edit: also, what do you guys suggest for getting rid of brown diatomes?
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Jul 23, 2014 00:27
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Ok so I can't take better pictures (or any pictures now) because there's been a huge green algae bloom that makes everything impossible to see. I also got high as gently caress and bought some blue damsels and live rock and dumped them all in there. Not a real solid decision making day, but they seem pretty healthy, they're actively eating and kind of hovering around different spots. The first night they were hiding in the cave but they come out all the time now. They're a little blue fish with yellow tail. I keep looking up conflicting info saying that the females will have a blue tail, or no both sexes have the yellow tail, all crap like that. The live rock has some cool algae on it that's got new growth tips. It also came with this huge trailing thing of brown strands. It looks like the end of the strand is a polyp or tuft of some kind. There's a really big orange worm that comes out and I think it might be eating the heads, pisses me right the gently caress off. One thing that was interesting -- I was cleaning red slime algae off one of the old shaving brushes I put in when I started, and there was some kind of huge colonial organism hiding in there! I have no idea what it is, it's white and is basically a 1/8" deep plate of vertically oriented tubes. All the tubes have sort of a little frill around the top, and the center tube has what looks like a visible polyp or mouth. The whole structure is solid to the touch, not slimy at all, and maybe three times a minute random contractions will go across the colony and what looks like a tiny grain of compressed planktonic algae is ejected out. Neat. I'm going to leave it there for a while, I don't want to try and transplant it to the live rock and have it die or something. I'm gonna start measuring out how much food goes into the tank. All the parameters are zeros but I think one of my co workers is secretly overfeeding them "tiny" amounts of food before I get in every day. You can't see poo poo in there and there's a constant battle vs slime it's loving gross. How much do you guys feed? I alternate between a couple different kinds of foods and maybe put in 1/2 level teaspoon or less for 5 mollies, 3 of the little damsels, and whatever 10 million fry are lurking all over the place. Does that sound about right? jadebullet posted:I would say just keep an eye on it for now. It might just clear up. Mollies are ditch fish and pretty hardy, at least mine were. In fact, only the mollies and my Dragon Goby survived the outbreak of ich that I had. If you just have mollies you can just reduce the salinity of your entire tank to around brackish, or even full fresh. They really won't care too much. My mollies started off fresh, went to brackish, then salt, and then I just put them back in a fresh tank when I got one set up after drip acclimating them. Yeah, I dipped my black one in freshwater for 10 minutes and he looks great now, everything is healing up nicely and he didn't give even one poo poo about it. I'll do the dalmation next because every time I see him my lip sympathetically hurts. I still think there's going to be a day of reckoning in the future though. I really feel like I'm just putting off some inevitable catastrophe, especially because I added more stuff without quarantining like a dumbass. quote:Anyway, I came on here to talk about jellyfish. So a few weeks back we suddenly had a bunch of little white polyps appear all over my FOWLR tank. We had no idea what they were and at first thought they were aptasia. Then we thought they were hydroids. That lasted until we saw several discs pulsing on the glass and we realized that they were baby moon jellyfish that had somehow grown in our tank despite us not getting any live rock for a month and a half before hand. It was definitely cool. Sadly they can't survive in our tank but we might have found someone to take some of them. They look really cool blooping around the tank. Has anyone else had something similar happen to their tank? This happened to me twice. The first time was after I put in the first batch of macroalgae, pretty much the same story as yours. I don't know what kind of jellyfish it was, it was pretty much a ring of orange, uh, tentacles. Hair thin, really small. It was wider than it was tall. The next one was a round little jellyfish that was even smaller and it's bell margin was a complete ring of orange. This one was very globose I guess you could say. Both I only saw the one time. It'd be cool to set up some kind of tank system that would be basically a normal reef/live rock/macroalgae/whatever tank, and then maybe use a geyser pump or something to connect it to a kreisel tank and have it come back in. Some way to run the system that would keep all your pelagic critters from dying, but not have to be dedicated to only pelagic livestock. I keep thinking there has to be some way to do it. I've seen some really ingenious plumbing for non-aquarium systems that do some crazy poo poo like simulate tides and waves without any moving parts. I kind of wish there was a book on "fluidics" or some technique where I could plan out different kinds of flows and stuff, but I've only been able to find references to microfluidics online, like analog fluid computers and microinjectors and stuff that I have no interest in. Does anyone have some link or something about raising plankton in an aquarium setting? Is the reason plankton is relatively rare in normal aquariums because they get chopped up by pumps and power heads or is that all a myth?
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Jul 23, 2014 02:19
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SniperWoreConverse posted:Does anyone have some link or something about raising plankton in an aquarium setting? Is the reason plankton is relatively rare in normal aquariums because they get chopped up by pumps and power heads or is that all a myth? Florida Aqua Farms They have everything you need to culture Nanochloropsus, Rotifers (fresh or salt), and Brine shrimp. 10 Step Phytoplankton Culture Guide The biggest problem most people report is having their culture contaminated. You pretty much want to approach this like canning or beer-brewing. Keep your hands clean and sterilize your containers ahead of time. 6 Steps to Sterilize Canning Jars ~Simplifying Cleaning and Sanitizing for home brewers My feeling is that more of the plankton are lost to the protein skimmer than to the impeller/pump but both are causing some losses. The bigger problem with raising plankton in your main aquarium is predation. All of your fish, corals and other inverts love to eat plankton and they're really good at it.
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Jul 23, 2014 04:24
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I've been lurking in this thread on and off for ages, and I wanted to pop in and thank whoever it was that recommended Reef Chili a while ago. I've started feeding that and a mix of cyclopeeze to my corals and things have really started to take off. 
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Jul 23, 2014 06:35
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Cyclopeeze owns, I buy the big tins of the freeze-dried whole stuff, little jars of the flakes, AND bars of the frozen stuff.
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Jul 23, 2014 14:38
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I don't know if it's the reef chili or the freeze dried cylopeeze or the combination of both, since I mix them together. Either way, my corals are a hell of a lot happier than they used to be. I bought into the "just feed your fish and have strong lights and corals will do fine" nonsense for the longest time, and always wondered why nothing really thrived despite perfect water parameters. Now I know!
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Jul 23, 2014 16:07
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It's true if your bioload balance is good and you have a full nutrient cycle. (Hard to achieve in a barebottom nano) VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 16:32 on Jul 23, 2014 |
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Jul 23, 2014 16:29
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Did my tank move two weeks ago and not only did everything survive but my zoas just exploded in population. I think the moving stress kicked reproduction into high gear. Rockwork is pretty horrible now since to keep everything alive I basically had to place all the rocks into tank water with no visibility. Just a bunch of stacked up rocks! My maroon clownfish seems to really like the rocks being moved around, though. I don't know how you can tell that a fish likes something but I'm projecting it at least  . I think that fish will always be happy as long as it can hang out with the toadstool.
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Jul 23, 2014 17:27
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Seeing the nitrogen cycle in action with ammonia and frequent testing really is pretty cool. Dumping half a bathroom cup full of ammonia into the tank and seeing it gone by the next morning is pretty amazing. Nitrite is slowly dropping and last night I had 20ppm of nitrates.  Anyone here ever kept a pink faced wrasse?
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Jul 23, 2014 18:10
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api call girl posted:It's true if your bioload balance is good and you have a full nutrient cycle. I'm not sure I buy that. This tank has gone through a lot of iterations, including as an 80 gallon for a few years. It's not like fish poo poo is the main coral food source on natural reefs.
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Jul 23, 2014 18:18
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Cyclopeeze is indeed pretty awesome, its hilarious how nuts all the fish go for it. On the Reef Chili front, anyone know how long that stuff lasts? I just found a nearly full bottle of the stuff that has got to be 2 years old at this point and I'm wondering if its still any good. Also, its pretty crazy how your fish will ultimately kind of figure out when its feeding time. Like they won't flip out if I just walk by the tank but they certainly know when its feeding time and will congregate and start getting real active, nipping at the surface. I dunno if its when I stand in a certain corner, or if its when I hold the container or what. For such tiny little brains they can be pretty clever.
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Jul 23, 2014 20:32
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I think I found the cause of my GHA that won't gtfo. Perhaps I should look at the DI resin more often to make sure it's not brown as gently caress :\
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Jul 24, 2014 22:12
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I should probably look into replacing those carbon blocks coco shell whoosits etc.
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Jul 24, 2014 22:16
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api call girl posted:I should probably look into replacing those carbon blocks coco shell whoosits etc. Did your nem split yet? Mine is refusing to split currently, but is about 9" wide. It's getting sort of ridiculous.
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Jul 24, 2014 22:18
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I've never used air pumps and air stones because I thought they were too unnatural looking but I have one in my tank now because it supposedly helps speed up the cycle and I kind of like it. Anyone here run them in their tanks?
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Jul 25, 2014 05:05
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Dantu posted:I've never used air pumps and air stones because I thought they were too unnatural looking but I have one in my tank now because it supposedly helps speed up the cycle and I kind of like it. Anyone here run them in their tanks? Stick it in your sump if you dont like the look.
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Jul 25, 2014 05:21
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I figured that a skimmer serves the same function of oxygenating the water. Bubbles can look nice though.
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Jul 25, 2014 14:08
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SaNChEzZ posted:Did your nem split yet? Mine is refusing to split currently, but is about 9" wide. It's getting sort of ridiculous. 7"-ish, maybe 8" fully stretched. I haven't been target feeding it.
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Jul 25, 2014 23:18
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I bought an Emerald Crab, and he was like a machine with the algae in my tank. I can't believe how he stripped all the rocks. The worrying thing now, is that I hope he is happy with being fed, because there is no algae in the tank at all and I can see this turning in to an issue like my previous hermit crab, but much harder to catch. A couple days ago he molted and I thought he was dead the molt was such an amazing replica of what he looks like.
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Jul 27, 2014 01:47
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I caught my emerald crab literally eating my corals alive in the middle of the night when I had gotten out of bed to get some water.
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Jul 27, 2014 06:59
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So Sunday morning my nitrite read zero. I had been dosing ammonia up to 2.0 ppm everyday and within 12 hours it was going to zero. Just to be sure I brought ammonia back up to 4.0, might have gone higher by accident. Ammonia dropped to near zero in 24 hours but nitrite is still sky high. Guess my nitrite fixers are still lagging in population size. Oh well back to waiting.
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Jul 29, 2014 14:47
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Incredulous Dylan posted:I caught my emerald crab literally eating my corals alive in the middle of the night when I had gotten out of bed to get some water. I know emerald crabs can harass fish, but how frequent/likely is this? I had one for a while but freaked out and took him back because I was worried he would kill my small clownfish.
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Jul 30, 2014 13:20
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Dantu posted:I know emerald crabs can harass fish, but how frequent/likely is this? I had one for a while but freaked out and took him back because I was worried he would kill my small clownfish. I've had two emeralds. They both had a taste for zoanthids and SPS polyps. The second one would literally sit in my birds nest and eat it, like a hambeast sitting IN the buffet. 
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Jul 30, 2014 15:55
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MrYenko posted:I've had two emeralds. They both had a taste for zoanthids and SPS polyps. The second one would literally sit in my birds nest and eat it, like a hambeast sitting IN the buffet. Whereas, I had a perfect emerald crab that never touched my corals and ate bubble algae and detritus all day long. Part of the the problem is that the individual crabs seem to have preferences for some foods and you can never be sure what those are before you put them in your tank. But take heart, that's true of everything you put in the aquarium.
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Jul 30, 2014 16:15
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So far my emerald is like a surgeon. he cleans around all the coral (which I don't have much of yet), walks over it, and never does any harm. I found out he likes algae and brine shrimp pellets and can catch them as they float down as long as I aim well so I am trying to keep him full with those.
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Jul 31, 2014 04:46
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My yellow tang is eating like a champ. He won't eat from the surface or eat food off the substrate, and he's still a little scared of me so I have to time it just right. Last night he ate flake food and it only took him a day to start eating nori off his clip. How much nori should he be eating? He's about 2 inches and he ate a 2x3 inch piece overnight.
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Aug 5, 2014 13:33
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Well one last offer before I craigslist the stuff this weekend. I have a pair of 50g Plexi tanks with lighting and other stuff including a chiller I no longer want to store. If anyone lives in the Bay Area, CA near Fremont you can have it for whatever you want to pay as long as you haul it all off. The tanks are clean and still hold water fine and the light fixtures worked last I checked about 6 months ago. PM if you need more info.
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Aug 5, 2014 20:28
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So I've had my Zoo Med Aquasun HO LED fixture for 3 weeks. Last night after work I turned it on and ..... nothing. There's also a rattling sound coming from the plug. Obviously that is pretty lovely but I do have to say within 30 seconds of calling Zoo Med I was talking to a live person that told me they were sending me a replacement power converter. No cost for part or shipping, nor did they make me send any documentation. While I'm not happy that the part failed within 30 days I have to say their customer service is awesome.
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Aug 6, 2014 14:29
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Is there anything in the saltwater world that is comparable to duckweed? Floating plants I mean.
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Aug 8, 2014 20:02
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SniperWoreConverse posted:Is there anything in the saltwater world that is comparable to duckweed? Floating plants I mean. Nothing that's going to choke out the surface, which to be frank you need to keep disturbed for maximum air exchange. There are various free-floating algae that will grow at the surface, though not literally on, and you would generally keep them in your lighted refugium. VAGENDA OF MANOCIDE fucked around with this message at 23:00 on Aug 8, 2014 |
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Aug 8, 2014 22:58
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Let the restocking commence. I have the best luck with zoos so why the gently caress not just fill the tank with them.  Oh and a new BTA for the clowns
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Aug 9, 2014 03:33
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So 3 days after calling zoo med and 3 days earlier than promised my new power driver was in my mailbox. Zoo med rocks.
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Aug 9, 2014 15:34
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Henchman 21 posted:Let the restocking commence. I have the best luck with zoos so why the gently caress not just fill the tank with them. How much did this set you back if you don't mind me asking? Have you ordered online before? I'm curious to here how the order turns out.
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Aug 10, 2014 21:12
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visuvius posted:How much did this set you back if you don't mind me asking? Have you ordered online before? I'm curious to here how the order turns out. Everything ended up around $255, shipping was free. Supposed to get sent out tonight and receive it tomorrow so I'll update tomorrow night probably. I've never ordered from this particular site before but the majority of my tank has been from online vendors. No real issues and only one or two DOA items Let's talk anemones for a second. What is everyone feeding them? I've tried just silver sides soaked in selcon in the past but don't seem to be getting the growth results I'd like. I've heard raw shrimp or scallops are a good choice but any input would be great. Henchman 21 fucked around with this message at 06:23 on Aug 12, 2014 |
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Aug 11, 2014 21:26
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Marine carnivore feeder pellets--any stuff that falls apart without having to decay. Soak-then feed. Other good stuff: Rod's predator mix--a decent mixture of squid, shrimp, etc.
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Aug 12, 2014 13:19
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I don't like feeding whole fish like silversides because it seems like the anemone takes off the top few layers of flesh, then spits the rest of it back out, then it rots and is taken apart by scavengers and detritivores (and then the resulting pod bloom gets eaten by the anemone, so the other scavengers overpopulate and then die and rot and).
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Aug 12, 2014 16:05
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| # ? May 25, 2024 18:50 |
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Henchman 21 posted:Let's talk anemones for a second. What is everyone feeding them? I've tried just silver sides soaked in selcon in the past but don't seem to be getting the growth results I'd like. I've heard raw shrimp or scallops are a good choice but any input would be great. I feed my RBTA huge rear end mysis. I forget who the manufacturer is but they make these sheets of basically large frozen shrimp. You get two sheets and they last for a while. I thaw, filter out the water then shoot them at the RBTA. My duncan colony and torches love them as well.
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Aug 12, 2014 17:44
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