Archive for the Tank in general category
Bad to worse
Posted on Monday, 22 October, 2007 at 8:17 AM by miskairal
Hmm, no good news. Virtually all my coral are dead as well as all 4 Trochus snails. I have left my fish, my leather coral, an anemone, a couple of mushies a few snails, some micro hermits and the urchin. Oh and whatever it is that makes the loud clicking/cracking sound. I managed to save my Scolymia, the orange one, by putting it into the 4 foot tank where things seem to be doing a bit better.
It's all so weird and inexplicable. I even setup my ex freshwater 45litre tank one day with lovely clean water and a few pieces of rock, a heater, a good powerhead and a single 150MH light and put the corals that were still alive at that point in there, namely the acans, the duncan, symphillia, cynarina and fungia but they all died dammit! I tested that tank all the time too and the KH was a bit low but everything else was perfect and the caluerpa is still growing (I am going to use the tank as a Q tank for my next fish so it's still running).
I have the nitrates and phosphates under control and I'm running a filter containing carbon in all water used for topups and water changes. I changed the lighting in the refugium and now have caluerpa growing a bit better. Unless I win lotto I won't be replacing the coral so I'm thinking of going FOWLR and getting some more fish. Haven't decided what yet and need to do some research but perhaps a yellow tang and a clown goby.
Posted in Tank in general (RSS)
Water Quality Problems
Posted on Tuesday, 24 July, 2007 at 3:51 PM by miskairal
Well things haven't been going so good. I ended up with high nitrates (60) and phosphates (1.0) which seems to have killed off a few coral and most of the corallimorphs aren't looking too crash hot. They're not dead but are more closed up and not multiplying. The coral I've lost are both galaxeas and both favias that all came as hitch hikers on my original live rock. I've also lost the Gonipora that was the rescue from Kingaroy and my beautiful green cynarina has bleached as have two corallimorphs that were also hitch hikers. My Pavona I got from Alf_D has also been a casualty. I also have 3 hermit crabs missing in action along with the peppermint shrimp.
I'm not sure of the exact cause of the elevated nutrients but it has also caused a mild outbreak of cyanobacteria on the sand and another brownish algae on the rockwork. The other contributing factor was changing the MH bulbs and adding in another MH light making 3 x 150w MH and one actinic fluoro. I mostly did that because I have 2 braces on the tank and didn't want the MH lights sitting right over the braces.
On a good note I have managed to get the nitrates and phosphates under control using purigen and rowaphos. Nitrates are now undetectable and phosphates are 0.25. I am using it in my canister filter that I have attached to my sump again. I have also done some large water changes managing to get through 1000 of water in just 10 weeks. I did 125 litre water changes once a fortnight for most of that time with a larger 175 litre change last time. I've decreased that to 40 litres weekly now though as it's too much stress on ME doing such large changes. It is difficult to get the water warm enough and some of the coral are left high and dry during the process and do not appear to like that at all.
Water testing a few days ago showed Calcium 430 and KH of only 6. Don't know why the KH is so low without the Ca dropping so I've added some Seachem Reef builder I already had here.
I am also sick of the constant disturbance of the sand both by the tunze pumps and the fish so on Pete's advice (100%ReefSafe) I have started overlaying with calgrit, a calcium carbonate product. It may well mix into the beach sand but so far so good. The funny part of this is that the calgrit is made by unimin and there is a lime quarry here on our farm and guess what the address on the bag is? Yep, our road in lil' ol' Murgon. I'm pretty sure they don't actually make it here though as I've not seen it. So over the last 2 days I've been slowly adding this calgrit down a piece of poly pipe directed where I want it. Despite rinsing heaps the tank still gets cloudy for a few hours so I wait until it clears and start again. I noticed that the coral seemed to like the cloudiness so I have just retested the KH and it's up to 8. Yippee!
I attended the MASQ meeting at Turbo's in Noosa on the 21st of July, 3 days ago, so took the opportunity to buy some more goodies off Pete and Sue who were coming up from Brisbane. Oh what a blast to get home with all this stuff. I got 6 micro hermits, 4 enormous Trochus snails, 1 urchin which I think is of the burrowing variety, 1 lobophyllia, 1 yellow fungia, 1 medium acanthastrea lordhowensis and some lovely zoanthids (orange centre, green outside), and I won a little green mushy.
A couple more things....my bicolour blenny is now in the display and has doubled in size since I got him. The two mandarins are doing great, Angelina looks like a little sausage and Whoopi no longer has any bones showing. Both are taking frozen mysis and brine shrimp and Angelina also eats Formula 1 and 2 pellets.
Edited on: Tuesday, 24 July, 2007 4:59 PMPosted in Tank in general (RSS)
Early 2007
Posted on Wednesday, 28 February, 2007 at 2:34 PM by miskairal
Not much happening as I"m trying to let everything settle back in after all the dramas. Calcium levels started dropping for the first time ever so I started using kalk which I dripped in over night. I discovered when I bought a new Salifert test kit in mid March that my Ca was back up to 600 where it used to be so I have stopped using that for now. I have continued to do monthly 25% water changes with nsw and top up is with rain water. Phosphates are up to 1.0 and I'm waiting on some Rowaphos which I have used before with great success. Nitrates are also elevated at around 20 and I have Purigen coming to help with that. I hope not to have to continue using these products all the time once my sand bed gets a go on but after all my tank has been through I think it needs a little help to get there.
Edited on: Tuesday, 01 May, 2007 6:40 PMPosted in Tank in general (RSS)
Decision Time
Posted on Monday, 11 December, 2006 at 2:27 PM by miskairal
Hmm, do I want to keep going with reefkeeping or do I want to cut down? Can I go through this again? Do I want to sell my sailfin tang as he will outgrow my 4 footer?
I didn't know. I took ages to make a decision, well ages considering how everything was stuffed into all sorts of places now and something had to be done soon. I decided that I didn't want such a big tank but I also didn't want to sell Tangy so I went with a 5x2x2. Tangy would just have to put up with it but at the same time I could reach the bottom. I bought both the tank and a new stand which Tone drove all the way to Brisbane and back to get for me.
I have never been sorry for downsizing to the 5 footer. It is more my size, more reachable and manageable but also able to hold all my rock and corals. It was to be the 29th of December before I had the fish in their new home. That was only a 3 week quarantine period but I was fairly confident that if they were going to develop white spot they would have done so with the stress they'd been through. My clowns had fallen in love with the Kingaroy bleached anemone too.
I set the new tank up on the 16th December using 450litres of my precious nsw, almost all my rock and all the sand I had left that hadn't been swept out the door. That gave me a 10cm deep bed in my 5 footer so there was one foot of sand missing as it had been 10cm in my 6 footer too. I never got the rockwork and coral setup as good as last time despite spending several days on it. That has annoyed me ever since and I know that one day I will get in a give it another go.
Edited on: Wednesday, 02 May, 2007 4:00 PMPosted in Tank in general (RSS)
Tank Break 7th December
Posted on Sunday, 10 December, 2006 at 1:57 PM by miskairal
Well what can I say. I was gobsmacked and devastated. I woke on the morning of the 7th to the sound of water that was not normal. I went downstairs to discover the floor totally covered in water. I can't remember the exact sequence of events next but I know I headed around the water to get to the power point and as I reached to turn off the power I heard water start to cascade. I knew instantly what that sound meant. All the water was pouring ut of my tank. I can remember screaming NO, not my fish!
I grabbed a net and started fishing. Tony came down and helped having been alerted by my yells. The 4 foot Peregian tank was only a couple of feet away. I managed to net both clowns and get them dumped in the Peregian (P) tank. I was shaking like shit, hand and legs like jelly. I couldn't stop shaking and couldn't work out where to start. I could not let my fish die. Tangy was round the back in just enough water that he was covered so was easy to catch and over he was thrown into P tank. At some point I saw Gollum and one of us managed to catch him as well as Ziggy the shrimp.
At this point remember it is very early in the morning and dark as the power is all off. It is eerily quiet as all the pumps and stuff are off. We are working in the dark in a lot of water and sand in front of a tank with a 6x2 pane of glass that could fall out at any minute and I was still shaking. Shaking to the point I would have been flat out lifting a cup of water without spilling the lot. I couldn't even remember how many fish I had, what I'd found and what was still missing. My guess is that within 10 minutes all the water was gone from the tank. We both had to stand on ladders to reach to the bottom of the tank.
Still missing the Coral Beauty and the PJ cardinals. I started moving rock but remember it is darkish and all the corals have closed and I can't even tell where the coral all are anymore so I'm trying not to totally destroy them as well. Within a minute or two I found the coral beauty under some rockwork laying on it's side in the sand. I grabbed him in my hand and as I lifted him over the top of the tank he jumped and landed on the concrete floor. I'm not a fish in hand sort of person. I don't like handling things like that and am even worse when they jump (like frogs do) but I knew if I didn't pick this darn thing up again it would die so I got down off the ladder and scrambled around in the wet and got the fish and dropped it in P where he swam off and hid behind a rock. Can't say I blamed him.
2 PJ cardinals still missing. We found one over Tony's side of the tank but it took him ages to actually grab it out of the sand. Chucked it in P where it didn't look too good but swam. Then I found the last fish under more rock. It appeared dead which was not surprising because it would have been another 7-10 minutes since all the water was gone. I grabbed it anyway and held it in the Q tank and pushed it back and forward and after a minute it's gills started moving and it kind of swam upside down.
The mess! You would't believe the mess. One sixth of the dsb was on the floor along with probably 500+litres of saltwater. Thank god I don't have carpet down there. One coral was wedged out through the gap in the front of the tank, the rest were all dark and deflated and tumbled around. I rang a friend and asked her if she could help me clean up and they brought out 3 big tubs as well that gave me somewhere to keep the coral under lights. (Thankyou Anne and Rod!). Where do you start to clean up after that? All the junk I'd been storing under the tank was wet as well and scariest of all was that my Tunze multicontroller was wet. I discovered later it was fine though. We stripped the tank down with some of the coral going into the Q tank and the P tank and the rest going in the tubs with the power heads again. I setup some NO fluoros over the tubs later that day.
Turns out I found every single coral and morph and after it all the only coral I lost was my Alveopora which died over the next fortnight. I think also that a few other corals have not flourished like they should have in particular my original galaxeas, my Candy cane and my green brain. Rod and Tony worked on getting the sand bed, what was left of it, out. It stank so bad. There was no way I was going to be able to store the sand bed in a healthy state so it all got dumped into eskies as there weren't a lot of containers left by this time.
Next morning the PJ cardinal in the P tank was dead and the other died around midday. All other fish appeared ok although the coral beauty had a patch of purple missing. All were eating. No sign of white spot. Yet! Yep, that's right. That tank had only 11 weeks before had fish die of white spot. Eek.
Edited on: Wednesday, 02 May, 2007 4:00 PMPosted in Tank in general (RSS)
Tank Leak (October-December)
Posted on Tuesday, 24 October, 2006 at 7:01 PM by miskairal
Posted in Tank in general (RSS)
August-October 2006
Posted on Thursday, 19 October, 2006 at 3:26 PM by miskairal
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.
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.
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.
Posted in Corals (RSS), Fish (RSS), Other Critters (RSS), Tank in general (RSS)
April 2006
Posted on Sunday, 30 April, 2006 at 1:57 PM by miskairal
Some friends of mine had a saltwater tank (FOWLR) but had lost just about everything when a power outage went unoticed by a house sitter. In April 2006 I bought a lot of rock off them, much of it being that man made stuff. The man made stuff has taken a long time to show much life and only in the last month has it shown some coralline growth along with some spaghetti worms and mojano and tube worms. I gained a cowrie with this rock as well. I am guessing that the total live rock volume I now have in my main tank is around 80kg. I also aquired a cowrie with that live rock and it is happily living in the Peregian tank.
At the end of April I discovered a shop in Maryborough sells marine and
brought home what I think is a Scolymia Australis, sold to me as a
Cushion coral for a whole $8. Bargain.
Posted in Corals (RSS), Other Critters (RSS), Tank in general (RSS)
March 2006
Posted on Wednesday, 29 March, 2006 at 1:48 PM by miskairal
Well not a lot to tell about the tank for the first 4 months. I managed to get 5 smallish hermit crabs in February 2006.
In March 2006 I bought yet another 2nd hand tank, I call it the Peregian tank or the 4 footer. This one is 120x35x40cm drilled in the bottom and has a small sump so that total water volume is nearing 200 litres. The tank had lots come with it but had been left to get too warm the previous summer and much was in trouble.
- 1 anemone bleached totally white
- Approx 8 fluffly mushrooms totally white (quite pretty actually)
- 1 small leather coral
- 1 juvenile sailfin tang that was quite skinny
- 1 large red crab
- 1 very large hermit crab
- I broken little piece of heliofungia
- 1 duncanopsammia
- Pods! I had no pods that I ever found with my first 6 footer but now I finally had heaps
- 3 zoanthids which have not multiplied
- Mojano which has multiplied
- An unknown growth which I finally have a decent picture of and am trying to ID
The fluffy mushrooms coloured up quickly and have multiplied to more than double their number. The anemone has slowly divided into 6 that I know of and just recently 3 of those show signs of colouring (more than a year after bleaching). They have received mostly prawn and whiting in that time. The tang has grown heaps and has pretty much got his adult colouring from what I can read and see. He's got a beer belly and eats out of my hand. He/she doesn't like a T-shirt I was given that is black with orange and white south park figures on it. He also doesn't like a singlet top I have that is orange and green horizontal stripes. If I wear either of those items when I go to feed the fish the tang goes into a spack attack and shakes in a corner of the tank and "runs" from me.
The leather coral thrived and grew well for about 2 months when it suddenly got a yellow spot in the centre and within days was dead. That was a bit of a shock.
The duncan has thrived to the point I can no longer count it's polyps and the helio has mostly thrived although it seems to have "off" days particularly after feeding. Both have been fed much the same as the anemone - pieces of prawn and whiting that were blended in the blender and frozen. The pods I'm happy to say have multiplied very well especially during the many times the tank has had no fish in it. There seems to be both amphipods and copepods.
Edited on: Tuesday, 01 May, 2007 4:07 PMPosted in Corals (RSS), Fish (RSS), Other Critters (RSS), Tank in general (RSS)
Tank Beginnings
Posted on Saturday, 31 December, 2005 at 1:29 PM by miskairal
I live near Murgon, a small town about 3 hour's drive from Brisbane airport and 2 hours from the sunshine coast. There are no shops within a 2 hour drive that sell any type of marine animal so obtaining stock for my tank has always been a challenge. Hence my 6 foot tank looked very bare for some time.
I bought my tank 2nd hand, a 6x2x2.5, in May 2005, from a guy in Brisbane and started reading all I could. Until I set it up though I didn't understand a lot of what I read. The tank came with a broken protein skimmer of some description, 2 x 150W Metal Halide lights, also home put together and a sump that was designed to hold bio balls and spray bars etc. It was drilled high up on one short side and had a metal and timber stand that was also home made and built to hold a TV as well. Luckily Tony, my husband, is pretty handy and cut down and rewelded the stand.
On the 13th October 2005 I started with a shallow coral sand bed and 21 kg of good live rock, no sump or refugium and a Tunze skimmer designed to go in the tank. I also had 1 Turbelle stream 6000 with a single controller. I barely saw a cycle with so small an amount of rock in such a large tank. I made the salt water up using my new R/O unit and corallife salt which gave me a Ca reading of 600 for the next year until I switched to seawater for changes. Oh and I also had a canister filter which only gets used on my Q tank these days.
My live rock provided me with
- 2 Favia type coral
- 2 Glaxeas
- 1 Cucumber (which came out and died mid 2006)
- 2 corallimorphs
- sponges
- halimeda
- several other smaller corals that have never been identified
My Fish
- 2 Ocellaris clowns (captive bred, bought on the 8th November 2005 still very young)
- 1 Coral Beauty bought 6th December 2005
- 2 Pyjama Cardinals bought 6th December 2005
I also bought a Leather coral and a Coral Banded Shrimp on the 6th December 2005 but the shrimp was dead when I returned from the MASQ AGM in Feb 2007. The Pyjama Cardinals perished on the 9th December 2006 as a result of my tank breaking which you will read about later. The leather coral looked great for a week then sulked for the next 6 weeks or so. It is thriving today despite two tank leaks/breaks and I have a sneaking suspicion it kills other leathers I put in the tank. I have no proof of that, just that they do great for 1 to 2 months then go downhill all of a sudden while it keeps going.
Posted in Corals (RSS), Fish (RSS), Other Critters (RSS), Tank in general (RSS)