Adalius's Biocube 29

[adalius]

So, figured I'd start this here since I have am giddy with excitement right now. We just had a power outage due to some heavy storms. It was out for roughly an hour, as soon as it comes back on I walk in the living room to check the tank and adjust the timers. What do I find? One of the clownfish being hosted by my BTA for the first time that I've seen. Hopefully (s)he'll [not a big enough size difference for me to tell yet] teach the other one and this will become a common occurrence.

That said, I'll post pictures as soon as I find out where my wife hid her camera and her cord.

[ReeferRob]

Awesome, that's always the best when it the first! What kinda clown are they?

[adalius]

Awesome, that's always the best when it the first! What kinda clown are they?

Ocellaris. Bought two tiny ones with one being just a weeee bit bigger hoping to pair them up.

[Sir Patrick]

Looking forward to the pics!!

[cg5071]

it is exciting to see your fish move in :) it took mine a good 4 months to decide it like the nem' as a home. occy here too.

[adalius]

It didn't go in it too much more last night but it at least figured out that it's not going to sting it, which is a plus. We'll see how it does this weekend so I can actually tell if it's hanging out in it more.

[adalius]

So I took some very quick pics tonight, some are less than unblurry.

Here's the left/front/right sides of the tank. I went for a very cave-centric rock piling.
http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=133&pictureid=673
http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=133&pictureid=666
http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=133&pictureid=672

This is my BTA and one of the Occellaris Clowns. The BTA just finally settled 5-6 days ago after moving around for almost 2 weeks. 2nd Picture also has some of the whopping 3 corals I have right now in it.
http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=133&pictureid=668
http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=133&pictureid=667

Here's my button polyps.
http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=133&pictureid=669

And my tiny mushrooms. The rock also has 3 pin-head size polyps of something starting to grow. They look almost like candy cane coral but they're way too small to tell. Also prominently displayed is my lettuce sea slug.
http://www.captivereefs.com/forum/picture.php?albumid=133&pictureid=670

And finally, the pi

[Chelle's Ocean]

Lettuce sea slug for.......................? What? You don't look like you have that much gha.
Was it bad in other pics? I only see a spot coming off the flow.
Has it done a good job eating the gha-- and can you post a pic of it before hand?
I am contemplating buying one, but I am worried my tangs will nip at it.
Any likes/dislikes having one?

[adalius]

I had a mat of GHA and RHA on all my rocks when it started, it has mown it down considerably. I'm actually worried that it's eating it faster than it can reproduce at this point. I didn't have any before pics however, we didn't find my wife's camera charger until last week from when we moved here, but it was allllll over. It hasn't touched anything it shouldn't, or even knocked anything over that it shouldn't. Heck, sometimes the flow from my rotating output even knocks it off things and then it drifts until it lands on the substrate.

Really the only concern I have with it, like I said, is that it's going to starve eventually. But it hasn't gotten any smaller yet either, so I don't know how long that will be, or if it even will.

Right now I'm busy fighting a diatom outbreak and letting the snails take care of the RHA.

[Chelle's Ocean]

Wish we lived closer...I would "borrow" him or rent him from you to 1 help my gha problem, and 2 give him something to eat ;)
I am still kindof on the fence. I know my tangs, if the poor little guy caught a current and was drifting in mid ocean, lol, they would charge and suck him up and spit him out.... like they do with the brine. I am just worried since I read that the lettuce slug can kill the fish if they eat/bite it.
How true this is I am not sure...but not willing to try it.
I may try to catch the tangs again, relocate them to another tank, THEN put the itty bitty guy in to go to town....:shifty: hmmm....that might work....... ok, gotta plan on catching the fish again!

[adalius]

So I added a smaller blue/pink watchman goby. Probably the last fish I'll be putting in there as it's a small tank. I also got a single thick stalk of xenia with the intent of it growing. Made more sense than spending a buttload for a full rock of the stuff when I can get the same with a little patience.

Unfortunately, I think I may be losing one of my occy clowns. He's been chilling at the top of the tank all day for a couple days now, he looks skinny and isn't eating. I've tried two types of sinking pellets, frozen spirulina/brine shrimp/etc, that new Instant Ocean gel food (cyclops), and flakes. He doesn't seem to want to eat anything.

I'm going to try a water change tomorrow. All my tests are indicating that the water is in good shape but I keep reading that they might not eat if there's water problems, so it can't hurt.

[adalius]

And as predicted, my wife just called and said the one clown is dead. I keep thinking it had to be something with him specifically because I can't find any indication of it being diseased or a water quality problem.

[Sir Patrick]

Sorry to hear about your clown....

I noticed a bit of a film on your water surface. You might want to break that up with some flow/water movement. Disolved oxygen levels could have lead to stress for the clown- but just a thought.

[adalius]

The film comes and goes, the pump has a hydor flo rotator on it so when it points up the surface is almost like a fountain shooting up out of the water, luckily not high enough to hit my splash guard. But there's also a trickle filter in the back of these units so I'd like to think that's going to offset the issue and pump a bit of oxygen in to the water.

I'm thinking of springing for a O2 test kit to see if that might be the issue as I'm at a loss otherwise. Nothing else seems to be distressed at all.

[MizTanks]

I'm thinking it was just the fish. Wouldn't do anything to your tank if everything tests out good. Iv got the 8g biocube with hydro flow and never had an issue with o2.

[adalius]

So, it's been awhile since I posted in this thread. Just to keep my thread up to date, I've since added a 4.36W light upgrade from nanotuners.com, a media basket & fuge basket from mediabaskets.com / InTank. Started running chaeto with a 10W submersible halogen light in the fuge basket. Started running purigen and phoslock in the media chambers. Setup a new RO/DI unit in the basement with a storage setup with a heater/airstone/powerhead for mixing my salt.

After losing one clown I bought another, did the usual dips and whatnot. Lost that one after 3 weeks as well. I think the other clown had gotten big enough that it was bullying it at night, but they acted like married couple during the day so I'm not really sure.

I've been pulling my hair out doing 50% water changes to try and get all the silicates out of the tank as I was fighting diatoms, they're finally now going away slowly and being replaced by dinos. I threw an emerald crab in today to start mowing the GHA and started a tank blackout to hopefully starve all the dinos out. The only light in the tank anywhere is in the fuge for the chaeto for the next 3 days. I'll continue the blackout for longer if need be.

So yea, there's your monthly update!

[cg5071]

I didnt think about the other clown. I have had the same thing happen to me and decided that had to be it. One (a second) occy wasnt in terrific shape but was dead within a few days of getting it. The replacement one for that was really healthy and was interacting with the other and everything. Between 3pm when I fed it lunch and 5pm when I happened to check the tank again, It was dead. I felt so bad,lol for putting the last one in there afterwords.

Now that she is bigger, I am looking for a tiny bf for her and hope for the best.

[ReeferRob]

So, it's been awhile since I posted in this thread.


No kidding, what's up with that? Let's see some tank!

[adalius]

*wipes dust off things* I'll try and post some pics this weekend if things settle down. Goby & clownfish are doing really well, hair algae is still present but not growing at an alarming rate, chaeto is growing like a weed, zoas & palys are spreading like wildfire, unidentified coral that was too small to ID is now a good 3" round clump and getting big, the other kenya tree looking corals are getting big but not spreading anywhere, trumpet coral almost died, it shrunk down to two pinhead sized pieces but now is one pinhead sized and one quarter sized piece.

Also, the diatom/dinos are completely gone after doing the blackout period several months ago. They haven't returned once.

So, yea that's about the gist of it. Like I said, pics to follow.

[Sir Patrick]

Looking forward to pics!

[cg5071]

You should make an effort to feed your trumpets if you are not. They can shrink pretty quickly if they are not getting food. Even in a friends 220 tank w/ lots of halide, his shrunk and eventually died. I just rescued a nice big frag too from what I think was starvation because after only a week of feeding it seems the heads doubled in size.

[adalius]

Wow, it's been a year and a half since I posted? Shame on me. Since then, life's changed. Been in the middle of a divorce for over a year now, went through a rough patch where I didn't take care of myself or my tank, lost a lot of stuff and just kept getting frustrated. Things are looking up though.

I still have the one clown and the pink spotted watchman goby. I also have a variant of Kenya Tree that was almost invisible to the naked eye about a year ago, growing on original liverock from when I started the tank 2 years ago, never noticed it, but in the last year it went from microscopic to huge trunks, it even self-split into about 20 small frags that floated around. I gathered a bunch up and 'planted' them on frag plugs to try and stop them from getting too out of hand. Most of my green button polyps died in the 'bad period', but about 12 survived.

The 4.36W light upgrade was a failure. Even with 2 bigger fans running they kept overheating and blasting bulbs. So I have since removed my entire hood and mounted a AI Nano with controller and the light that thing throws off is insane. It doesn't "look" as bright as the original hood, because of the harder shadows from point lighting, but I can't even run it full blast without starting to cause bleaching so I had to back it way down to around 75%. The lighting seems to have a massive effect on the 12 remaining green button polyps as they're certainly growing now.

I also refreshed my hermit/snail population but I'm completely flabbergasted at what's happened in the last month or so. I had about 5 medium cerinths, 2 existing and 3 that came with the refresher pack. 4 of the 5 have died in the last month, but it doesn't appear to be natural causes. Everytime one dies, there's a web, almost like a mucus web like you'd see with vermentids. Then one time, there was a neon green 'tentacle', maybe 2-3 inches long, about half as big as a pencil, sticking out from under the rock by the webbing and the empty snail shell. I went to look at it straight down from the top and when I jostled the lid (which was still on at this point) it zipped back under the rock and I didn't want to tear down my rockscape to find it. I've been researching and not turning up any idea of what it could be. It seems to leave all the smaller snails alone, and the fish have been fine for 2 years. There's been no liverock additions for it to hitchhike on in almost a year and a half. I'm puzzled.

Annnnyway, my next plans are to make a better top for the tank, I have plexiglass cut to fit right now but it's too thin (it's as thick as they had at the store that day) so it warps and I have to flip it over, then it warps the other way over 4-5 days, and to try and fit a sump under the stand and plumb it in so I can start running a skimmer and a better fuge.

I'll try and get some pictures, but the wife took the camera when she left so all I have is my cruddy cell phone camera. Oh well.

[Sir Patrick]

Looking forward to the pics and welcome back!

[adalius]

So, in an attempt to bring the tank back to life I stopped at a fish store that I haven't been to in the past but it's been on my list for some time. It's called Best Fish in downtown Milwaukee. A coworker is friends with the owners. I guess they sold it a couple years back and were renting the space to the new owner, he just crapped the place up, so they kicked him out and started their store up again. It's tiny, cramped, but the prices are insane and the quality of what he has is awesome. It was a dead give away to me that it must be good because one of the guys from the other LFS I go to was there buying stuff for his tank (which says a lot about that LFS to me).

So I left with a small frag of hammer coral, 3 branches of trumpet on a plug, a small plug of xenia, and a small rock with a nice looking red velvet mushroom on it.

I think, after I put these in my tank this afternoon, that I might want to re-scape the tank. I've never been one for piling rock against the back wall, but with the size of it and the hard shadows from the new LED lights, I might have to consider something more that direction. Maybe a rear wall pile with a peninsula overhang for the goby to dig under...

[adalius]

So here's some pictures of the frags I picked up Sunday. Don't mind the quality, all I have is a cell phone camera right now. You can also see compared to my earlier pics how much light that AI Nano throws down. I also forgot to clean the glass before I took these so ignore the small lines on the glass. :stupidme:

Whole tank as the 'day' cycle is at peak.
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o32/adalius/Fishtank/2012-04-25_21-07-19_412_Waukesha.jpg
Kenya tree that is splitting like it's going out of style.
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o32/adalius/Fishtank/2012-04-22_20-59-03_604_Waukesha.jpg
New xenia frag and red velvet mushroom.
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o32/adalius/Fishtank/2012-04-22_20-58-49_747_Waukesha.jpg
Small hammer frag.
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o32/adalius/Fishtank/2012-04-22_20-58-42_16_Waukesha.jpg
Nice fat trumpet coral frag. One's a little deflated since they were put in an hour before the shot, they're both at full extension now and there's a smaller polyp on the back side.
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o32/adalius/Fishtank/2012-04-22_20-58-29_604_Waukesha.jpg

[adalius]

Something has been killing off my nerite snails at an amazing pace. One day I saw what I thought was a green tentacle (see 4-19-12 post above) eating one. Well today I caught the dang thing on camera. It's a worm. Check out what I saw when I walked downstairs...
http://i116.photobucket.com/albums/o32/adalius/Fishtank/worm_snail.jpg

Thing must think it's a bungee jumper when it eats. Suffice to say that rock is now in a bucket of fresh water to see if it comes out. When I pulled it out it scampered so I'm hoping it didn't make it to another rock before I got the bucket.

[MizTanks]

Wow thats waaaaay creepy!! Lol-glad ya got ahold of it!


There's nothing like being a Reefer!

[adalius]

I don't think I got it :( Soaked the rock for a couple hours in freshwater and nothing crawled out of it. Boo. :(

[MizTanks]

Well let us research on the type of worm it may be and then find a way to remove it :)


There's nothing like being a Reefer!

[adalius]

It looks like a typical bristle to me, the segment shapes are sort of diamond when it stretches out with small hairs coming out the points of the diamond, it was similar color to a normal bristle too, just big. Maybe a small DIY trap would work.

[MizTanks]

If that's the case then your snails are dying from something else.


There's nothing like being a Reefer!

[adalius]

Well, looks like a bristle, acts like a bristle, doesn't mean is a bristle. The one big defining thing is it makes a mucus web, but it's mobile since I've seen it doing this twice on different rocks now, so it's not a vermitid snail.

[adalius]

Maybe a fulgida worm? Might try making a DIY trap I just saw on another forum.