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