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Archive for October 2006

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Tank Leak (October-December)

Posted on Tuesday, 24 October, 2006 at 7:01 PM by miskairal

On the morning of Saturday the 21st I went down to feed the fish as I always do to discover the curtain on the front of the stand below the tank was sodden. Took me a while to realise it was water from the tank. On further investigation I discovered what I thought at the time was a worm hole burrowing between the front panel of glass and the bottom pane.
Tank hole
Shit. At the current drip rate I reckoned the tank would be empty within 24 hours. Obviously I couldn't leave it like that and I could see no way to repair it because the opening was on the bottom side against the stand. I spent all day emptying the tank. I divided the fish up putting the 2 clowns in the sump with the shrimp and the other 4 fish in the Q tank with Gollum. The rock and coral were spread out between both those tanks and bins. Luckily I have lots of small power heads that came with the tank which I put in the bins which I left in front of a window so they got a fair amount of light including monring sun.
I got the tank clean and dry and Tony managed to get some silicone pushed down into the hole with a lot spread round. Then the waiting game while it cured. The recommended time was 7 days but I refilled the tank on the 27th with natural sea water. I left it sit overnight and by next morning there were no signs of leaking so I started adding the rock back in along with the clowns and shrimp. I had decided to go dsb this time as previously I'd had a shallow coral sand bed but nitrates were climbing. I think that this time when I setup the rockwork and coral I had it great. It all came together and looked much nicer than it had previously.
With so many fish being thrown in the rather small Q tank so quickly I then developed ammonia issues which caused some problems with the fins of one PJ cardinal and the mouth of the other. Frequent water changes and melafix fixed that. I found it very hard to watch the growing tang being stuck in such a small tank and all the fish became quite timid. Gollum thought it was wonderful as there was rock and coral to play around and a lot more food going in.
From memory I think I moved the fish from the Q tank over to the repaired 6 footer on the 1st December. We had been away for a week's holiday from about the 20th-27th November and a friend had taken care of all our animals for us. The only animal I lost was a gonipora.
Edited on: Wednesday, 02 May, 2007 3:59 PM

Posted in Tank in general (RSS)

August-October 2006

Posted on Thursday, 19 October, 2006 at 3:26 PM by miskairal

Goatfish The 22nd of August saw my purchase of a goatfish. I should have known not to get involved with something with goat in it's name but some of us just never learn. I put this fish in the Peregian tank with the Mandarin as I figured it was a form of quarantine and Mandarins aren't supposed to get white spot (more reading tells me otherwise). I don't want to go into a lot of detail here but the goatfish died on the 23rd September and and Angelina died on the 24th, both from white spot. Angelina was a very outgoing little girl although I never saw her eat any food I placed in the tank. She had the hots for my husband I suspect because she used to do little dance things for him which I managed to capture on video but have never had the heart to look at.

Bleached Kingaroy anemone On the 12th of October I rescued some stock for a guy in Kingaroy who's lights had failed and he couldn't replace them. I arrived to find a very white anemone blowing around the floor of the tank, a gonipora that was looking good, a sinularia that was ok and two other leather corals that had an unhealthy colour to them. The two leathers died, the gonipora thrived until my last tank break and the anemone has fully recovered and grown and been taken over by my clowns. The finger leather appeared to thrive for a couple of months then all of a sudden the base turned white and it kind of fell over and shrivelled up. I moved it over to the Peregian tank and it is now looking good again.

Decorated Goby called Gollum I setup an old 4 foot freshwater tank as a proper quarantine tank in October 2006 complete with PVC pipe for hidey holes and moved te Eheim canister filter over to it. On the 19th of October I bought a decorated goby (called Gollum) and put him in quarantine. Nice fish and easy to care for he is a sand sifting goby who eats just about anything that goes in the tank. He is unable to swim to any degree and instead lives on the bottom only occasionally getting as high as 10 cm in pusuit of food. He even eats flakes but they come back out through his gills usually. So Gollum briefly had the Q tank all to himself. I will be forever greatful that he didn't carry any disease because of what happened next.

Edited on: Thursday, 03 May, 2007 1:23 PM

Posted in Corals (RSS), Fish (RSS), Other Critters (RSS), Tank in general (RSS)

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