Day 38 - The Bristle Worm and New Additions

Ew...

These things are gross, i really want to get it out of the tank, but apparently their good, in most cases anyone...

but for horrible reading:

Giant Worm

Giant Worm 2

I seriously hope mine doesn't end up like those, although the tank would have to get a lot bigger for that to happen...

Meanwhile, i bought some new snails today, as my tank was starting to get a little over run in some areas with green algae, im pretty sure i saw the clowns trying to host in it... or they have white spot and are itching...



New and Old Additions

Long Time Over Due - Day 36

My internet has been out for a few days, but a bit of an update on the tank...

Everything is nicely balanced, nitrates are very low, phosphates have not reared their head yet, although i have had a bit of an alge break out.

My Clown fish are doing fine along with the Yellow Goby, and my cleaner shrimp is fantastic, in fact i would have to say this the cleaner shrimp is my fav. when i put my hand in the tank he'll come and clean my hand!

Shrimp Surprise!

Ok, so little bit of a blond moment here... but legitimate i believe...

came home from the movies the night i got my cleaner shrimp, looked into the tank to see if everything was alright. see upsidedown floating shrimp being attacked by hermit crabs... fuck...

what a waste of money... try to make sure its not dead by trying to get my hand into the little cave, cant, then all of a sudden. Shrimp comes out of its hole! like bastard had shed his shell!

i knew they do this, but wasn't expecting it straight away!

Day 19

Couple of things happened today, I have been using the forums over at Marine Aquarium Societies of Australia who have been really helpful in giving me advice (and a slight scolding for putting fish in so quick... whoops... but you live and learn, hopefully in this case my fish will live!

anyway one of the members was kind enough to give me a lot of info and offered me some matrix to help seed my tank with good bacteria and 'pods'. Matrix is like a very light rock that little animals live in... they eat bad stuff :P

So I went around and got a bit and set up a mini refugium for it, and also placed some in my canister filter... nothing has died or gone off the charts in the hours since i have added it.

the other development, which im probably going to have someone go 'AHHHHHHH' at me about is, my cleaner shrimp arrived today, I've spent the better part of the last hour and a half aclimatising him to the water and giving him a little bit of food (just a pelet - which he ate some of) and about to release him into the water...

The torch coral has really come out today also! it looks really pretty

Todays Parameters

Ammonia - 0

Nitrite - 0

Nitrate - 10

Phosphate - 0

Calcium - 440

DKH - 11

Ph - Again really hard to ready but im going to say 7.8

Day 18

All parameters looking good - Same as last post, bar Nitrates that have risen to 10ppm

When I got home tonight I found my temp up around 29C which is kinda scary high. Must looking into better ventilation when new lighting arrives if problem persists.

I've decided to up my water changes in order to lessen the blow of the bio-load in my tank, I've been told quite a bit that i was very hasty in adding my fish so quickly, so to help with this I've taken to changing about 2L of water a day. Also apparently the PolyFilter I have in my filter will be helping heaps in keeping things under control (thank god!)

I'll try and take daily readings over the next two weeks in order to document the process

Todays Parameter

Ph - 7.8 or 8.2 - I can't tell with the API tests as they are the same colour!

DKH - 10

Calcium - 440ppm

Phosphates - 0

Ammonia - 0

Nitrite - 0

Nitrate - 5

Salinity - 1.024 kinda high

Pumps Arrive!

Well a big shout out to Age of Aquariums (see link over in the links)

Cheap delivery, cheap prices and SPEEDY delivery!

My Hydor Koralia Nano's arrived today, ordered last friday and they managed to deliver by wednesday even through a natural disaster (the QLD floods)

omg these things are tiny! yay i didn't want a pump making my tank ugly

I've rearranged the tank a bit so things look a little nice and there are better spots of corals to grow when i get around to adding more... I've added one torch coral (bottom right corner) to see how it goes.

Hermit Crabs Switching shells - video

I came home today to find two of my hermit crabs 'discussing' something, im pretty sure they were arguing over a shell, needless to say the one who was occupying the desired shell lost and was evicted, then (this is where the video starts) the evicted crab tried to take the empty shell...

I dont think the crab who stole the shell wanted to give up either one, or just make sure that he was making the right choice.

Issues with Ich

Maybe, I was a little hasty in moving my clowns in... things seem ok now, but the day before yesterday i noticed that the smallest of the clowns had what i think to be ich...

Marine Ich is a pretty serious parasite that causes a lot of loss in the aquarium trade. there are thousands of articles out there about it so im not going to write about it extensively. But basically it effects your fish when they are stressed or run down, its comparable to the common cold for humans (in terms of how common and easy to get it is)

many people will say that ich is present in all aquariums, its not until stress levels rise that it will rear its head. Anyway, i noticed about 3 white specs on one of my clowns which i hadn't been feeding because my LFS told me to only feed them twice this week and my nitrates had flared up to 20ppm.

I decided to do extra water changes and feed twice daily to help strengthen the immune system of the fish, so far I've done 3 water changes in the last 3 days of about 20% each. My nitrates are barely detectable now and the clowns have stop displaying symptoms of ich, hopefully it wont come back, as its a parasite I read that it will attach to the host then drop off and become free swimming until it attaches again blah blah blah.

I read that feeding with garlic helps to stimulate the immune system, other people say this is indirectly because it stimulates the appetite of the fish (which then stimulates the immune system - or at least provides nutrients to fuel it, either way the immune system is up and running) either way the food im feeding is New Life Spectrum Thera +A Large Fish Formula which is enhanced with Garlic. I also feed this to my fresh water fish. This food is amazing - in my freshwater tank all my fish (however dull their known to be) display the most vibrant colours, i have silver dollars whose anal fins are entirely red and their bodies shimmer with subtle yellows and greens (kind of like looking into a light prism) i have a green terror with golden edging on its fins that has gone from being hardly visible when i first got him to neon now amongst other fish!

Anyway, it seems to be, the food combined with the water changes has cleared up the ich. fingers crossed it wont come back.

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Ich

Purchased!

Well I finally ordered some pumps to go in my tank so I can start thinking about corals down the track, overall I was a little put off by the prices of pumps - and also the range! my god the range is huge and just when you think you've found the right one it say, not compatible with a controller.

for all those going 'controller?' well a controller increases and decreases flow creating currents and waves like in the ocean, corals require more flow to bring nutrients and remove waste as they rely on the current to do this for them.

So what did i pick? the Hydor Koralia Nano 900 I got two and will look into finding a controller for it - which it is controller compatible (or so they say!)

Week 2 Day 6

Nothing new to report,

My turbo snail has resurfaced, it kind of disappeared into the rock work and stayed motionless yesterday, I was a little worried that cow might not have enough food or something... But when I woke up this morning I could see that he'd plowed a path right through some long green alge.

The Clownfish are doing fine.

I'm very tempted to go to the fish shop to go get new fish and things, but i know that I need to be patient... I'm not very good at that game... I hate waiting for things, like my protein skimmer pump and my new lights...

anyway its water change time for my large freshwater tank, so that should keep me occupied for a while...

water parameters:

Specific Gravity: 30 or 1.022

ammonia: less than 0.25

nitrite: 0

Nitrate: 0.20 (kind of high, ill retest this afternoon to see if it stays, if so ill do a water change)

phosphate: less than 0.5

Carbonate Hardness: 10dkh

Ph: its really hard to tell with my ph kit wether its 7.8 or 8.2 im going to go with 7.2 though

Calcium: 400ppm

Week 2 Day 4

Well its a great day!

I got two little Clownfish yesterday, they're quite small but very active, they've laster over 24hours now, which from my freshwater experience tends to be the most scary part, if they're going to die in your tank its usually within the first 24 hours!

thank god! i dont think i could handle going back to the fish shop to buy more fish with the amount these guys cost!

For all those reading that are doing so to get an idea about where to start, let me just say this hobby is not cheap, not cheap at all, if your going to do it, start saving!

Anyway enough of a rant about that, because these guys are so fast its really hard to take a decent photo of them, especially with just an iphone, so here is some video! yay... sorry its a bit shaky one of them really likes being on camera and the other not...

As you may have noticed mine are not fully orange like nemo, rather mine are a black clownfish, they will darken over time, and I though these might be a little more interesting then the standard clownfish that everyone seems to have... My local fish shop guy also told me because these guys are black that they should be ok with the traditional coloured clownfish (bright orange) so maybe ill consider putting that on the list down the track! and hey if it doesn't work that means I can start work on making a cute little 20L tank or something. (lol I've already started the planning on that one, and i dont think its going to be as much work as my current tank as i can use the current tank to seed the new one thus cutting out a lot of work)

a bit of info about clownfish:

When clownfish are in a group the largest will always be the female the rest will be male but only one will be able to mate with the female. When the female dies all the males go crazy and start fighting for the top job, and then once his dominance has been asserted he will change into the female!

Despite what people think Clownfish do not need an Anemone to survive

There are two types of clown fish, true and false clownfish, true come from the ocean and false are tank breed. there is very little difference between the two. How to tell the difference

Week 2 Day 2

All my Ammonia and Nitrites have fallen to 0, hurray, although oddly my nitrites have been at 0 for the last couple of days whilst my ammonia was 0.5 to 0.25 mg/L for the last 4 days. Clearly the Live Rock and Sand did it's job in reducing cycling time.

How ever my Nitrates have been fluctuating all over the place, between 10 to 20 mg/L up and down, I guess this might have something to do with the alge growth etc.

So with this news I have decided that ill be adding my first lot of fishes tomorrow, we'll see what the fish shop says first but I'm thinking either:

2x clown fish

OR

1x banggai cardinal

OR

1x pajama cardinal

OR

1x royal gramma

Hard to decide, I'm thinking the Clown Fish might be my best bet, but I dont want to over stock my tank to quickly, looking over the forums at Nano Reef, I think I might hold off on the cardinals until after my first set of fish have settled in... but in the end i would like to have all these fish... I would also LOVE to have a firefish, but they are jumpers and my tank set up will probably end up being open top once my new lighting arrives so I think i will avoid!

The other thing that I have to look into is getting some more circulation into the tank, it seems that the water might not have enough circulation... and based on all the reading i have been doing circulation is the key to a happy and healthy tank (esp. when introducing corals)...

The Tank Springs to Life! Day 7

Well today has the first day that i have noticed little creatures coming out of the rock work, a few snails and some feather dusters appeared which is a good sign I hope...

all my water parameters seem to be in check for my position in the cycle - i found a website today that explains in a fairly good way about all the different parameters and what not, check my links section for it.

All my hermit crabs and 'cow' the turbo snail is still alive (hurray!)

pics:

Tiny Snail that came out of the rocks - probably about 3mm long

Weird translucent tubes???

Feather duster Worm

Aptasia - now gone! (for now)

Cow the Turbo Snail

Aptasia killing time

well i had an aptasia that was growing rather quickly so i decided to try and get rid of it... my solution, seeing as there was only one and wanted to give it a try without resorting to chemicals and all kinds of things, pull the bastard off...

firstly i had noticed that it had moved onto a fairly flat area so decided to strike! i got a syringe (without a needle) and just pulled back as quickly as possible, then ejected into a bucket again and again... then whilst i had the majority of it out i had some lemon juice and just squirted the area with about 30ml of juice. id read of people injecting the aptasia with lemon juice so i figured, hey its wounded and if theres any left its bound to end up ingesting this...

ill keep you posted on the aptasia situation as it progresses...

on the plus side some of my hermit crabs went crazy trying to get little bits of lemon floating around... nom nom nom....

Day 6!

Ok so ive been monitoring my cycling process and have noticed that my ammonia levels are really starting to drop quickly, that means that the tank is becoming less and less toxic

if you read the article at nano-reef than you will know that we need to wait for our Ammonia and Nitrite to go down before we can start thinking about adding animals.

some animals are hardier than others when it comes to these things, and Red Alge is starting to building up, so as a first addition to my tank i have decided to add some of my clean up crew! first off the bat a turbo snail, small and efficient at cleaning the rocks and glass, hopefully this guy will do the job at removing some of the left over alge from the fresh water tank that i couldn't get off the glass, the second thing i added was 5 very small hermit crabs. the hermit crabs are great for keeping your substrate clean, if you watch them they pick up individual pieces and just eat stuff off them, quite amusing!

before i go any further here are my water parameters for the last few days:

5/1/2011
Ammonia - 1mg/L
Nitrite - 0.5mg/L
Nitrate - 10mg/L

6/1/2011
Ammonia - 1 to 0.5 mg/L
Nitrite - 0.25mg/L
Nitrate - 20mg/L

7/1/2011
Ammonia - 0.5mg/L
Nitrite - 0.25mg/L
Nitrate - 10mg/L

It seems that my ammonia and Nitrite are falling pretty quickly. and Alge blooms indicate that there is adequate Bio-Filter to handle some new found friends. The reason for only adding small hermit crabs and a small(ish) snail is that:

1. they are cheap - if they happen to die because i rushed then its not as big a loss as say a pair of clown fish
2. these guys are hardy they will live through most things
3. they will start cleaning up the alge blooms and stop my tank from looking like crap!
4. at least i feel like there is something to look at!

The other thing ive noticed growing quickly is some Aptasia, this is generally a pest, but i think ill let it grow for the moment because its kind of interesting to look at. i had it in my last tank and it didnt spread, if it does here though there are plenty of ways to get rid of it...

Photos!

Turbo Snail - about 3cm wide

3 of the 5 hermit crabs

Aptasia thats a bit hard to spot... sorry hard to get a good photo

So general Reaction so far, 2 1/2 hours after adding them, everyone is still alive, the turbo snail is only just starting to move, 2 of the hermit crabs are very shy and pretty much havent moved but are starting to come around, 3 of the hermits are chomping away on the substrate and having a great time... all good so far! holding my breath as I'd like not to have to go back to the fish shop and tell them i killed hermit crabs and snails, im sure id get some death stares...

until next time!

First Post!

Welcome to my blog about my new aquarium an 80L fish tank that was originally full of guppies but i have decided to change into a salt water reef aquarium...

The purpose of this blog is to document my progress through the development from cycling to adding everything up to the last bit of coral... i expect this will take some time...

The reason behind my thinking is, that i have noticed durring my research that you always see the end product, never the bad points or the boring points, hopefully this will illustrate to people how long it takes to get a reef aquarium up and running - and also learn from my mistakes.

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the story so far!

A long time ago, my mother got bored of looking at the gold fish in a smaller tank and said "lets get a little salt water tank running" i was totally excited to do this, i had been keep fish most of my life, but mainly gold fish, guppies and the occasional cichlid. One month later and $100's of dollars down the tube my mother cracked the shits. she decided not to bother any more, we went through: a goby, a clown fish, a puffer fish, an anemone, various pieces of coral, a big lump of live rock and live sand, two packs of salt and new globes for our tank... not a cheap experience in failure... basically everything died because we went TO QUICK...

This time around im armed with knowledge experience and penitence (and not listing to my mother about adding 3 fish into a tank in one hit)

The new tank!

So heres what i've got driving this tank at the moment:

its roughly an 80L tank 60cm long, 30cm wide and 40cm deep.

I have attached an Aqua One Aquis 750 filter which capable of doing around 600 - 750 L of water per hour. I had great success with these filters (and its 1250 big brother) on my freshwater tanks. although, for the filter media i have in some parts substituted some of the foam or packed in more where possible with 'Polyfilter', this stuff is amazing it removes so much from the water (including tannin in my freshwater tanks with logs in it). Its a little expensive but TOTALLY worth it.

I've also put in a small air stone to help with circulation - note that with all reef aquariums need a fair amount of circulation, later on I plan on adding a power head with a product called SCWD to create some alternating currents and surges - but not until we go down the coral track (probably a couple of months)

10kg of live rock is being used to seed the filter and also because it looks nice

5kg of live sand is also on the bottom, this came sealed and is supposed to dramatically reduce the cycling time of the tank.

Cycling the tank?

if your new to this than cycling is the most important part of getting your tank set up!

cycling is the process of removing toxic chemicals from the water which are excreted by living organisms, mainly Ammonia.

There are tonnes of great articles out there on Cycling

Nano Reef Cycling

Nano Reef have a tonne of information available in their articles section it is totally worth reading everything you can there, its nice and easy to follow as well.