Eeeee! New Tank

[lljdma06]

My pistol doesn't attack any of my invertebrates. You got a meanie!

Mine clicks and makes a mess, but all of my original CUC is still present. Emerald crab, asteria, trochus snails, Electric blue hermits. They are all fine. Could be that maybe my CUC are bigger animals. You feeding Mr. Shrimples and Fugly?

 

[MBOU]

Sure! Long feeding tongs and they will eat whatever! The gobie comes out to sift a bit now as well and comes out to eat brineshrimp etc.... For that matter... Shrimp eats the brine shrimp too.

He doesn't mind the hermits but they are generally up top, it's the Mithras and snails he hates!!! I have one Massasoit that's super fast that he can't catch tho lol

 

[lljdma06]

Wow, mine is a sweet pea compared to yours. His name is Tigger. The watchman is Eeyore.

L

 

[Donya]

Wow - vertical! Did you glue/tie the rocks? If so, what did you use?

 

[lljdma06]

Yeah, very vertical.

Mine is like that too in my Biocube, but it's farther from the glass and it's more like a pyramid.

L

 

[MBOU]

Hah... nope... you are looking at my superiour stacking skills!

I would be using Milliput/Reefers Putty (Epoxy Putty) to stick rocks together but i couldnt face it.

I love marine tanks but god i hate the mess that comes with it! Its why i can keep changing the layout. Might take me months or years to be fully happy. Im annoyed as im not working with liverock i've chosen, was poor quality and aparently heaving with hitchhikers like asterinas, aiptasia and blasted whelks.

I spend ages getting the rock stable and its resting on egg crate... but if i grib a rock and give it a wobble or shove and it moves... it doesnt stay... i have (nearly battered) stopped someones child bear hugging and shaking that tank and it didnt come down!

But as much as i love these tanks and maybe im being a bit too fussy about it.... but the ammount if just.... dirt that builds up!! I gravel clean with water change every week and take out biomedia (bioballs and ceramic etc) which do the job well considering how many water changes it gets... and shake them in the water i took out and then siphon crud out from under them maybe every 3rd week.

I dont know.. it just gets so filthy... i'd be tempted to take out all but 3-4 bits of liverock... but the fish love being able to get away from peoples horrible sprogs and i dont blame them, dont have the heart to take that away!

My boss told me that if we do ever have to break down that tank (to be honest, the upkeep of the marine system is costing us more than we are making but we are competing with a huge pets at home 10 minutes away who have more tanks and bigger budget and yet we are undercutting them but cant provide the choice.. though we are slowly stealing their custom as we have better customer care but its reality kicking in, so many problems and inverts are a complete to acclimatise. Whole order of shrimps n crabs and everything was ice cold from Miami yesterday, glad im not in today tbh... i didnt even recognise the peppermints as they were white! But yeah... the tank is mine FOC if it does have to go

And i have about £200 worth of variations of GSP (white center, green, metallic etc) that just wont open and hasnt in a week now and im fast running out of time. (its not just me, lots of shops have the problems, the price paid for importing corals. you win some you lose some but nearly my whole order was GSP and i cant cover that...).

I feel sorry for other shops trying to run marines now, never appreciated how difficult it would be! I have a sailfin tang (sub adult) who is going to get a hefty dose of clove if he doesnt pack it in, i never ordered him and he is wrecking corals left right and center, eaten all the chaeto i bought personally and now ripped the pipe for my fluidized sand bed and emptied all the sand in the coral tank

That aside...



I caught that huge snail/whelk thing at last! The one i saw when i was setting up the tank and thought was cute!

Id not blamed the pistol for being a murderous wretch whilst i knew id seen that snail thing kill a turbo... but things are still being murdered and oddly enough... their shells and carcasses are being used to decorate a certain someones tunnel!

EDIT: I just looked at the photo again and it really doesnt look that secure LOL I assure you it is! And its tipping backwards and resting towards the back panel. Tried low level liverock but it looked odd, its such a tall tank with a tiny footprint so there are 3 base rocks taking the weight but room for the goby and shrimp to move freely between them.

 

[MBOU]

Argh my god Im such an idiot!

We ran out of salt and been waiting for it to arrive and i desperately needed to do a waterchange and clean the algae... (what? wait? algae this bad again!? with new Rowaphos? why!?)...

So i scrubbbed and algae wiped and cleaned the sand and picked out shed pistol shrimp bits that he scattered everywhere for me and shells of his massacred victims....

Though aparently the bright pink Cerith snail is all as he doesnt feel the need to kill it! My pistol likes pink!? hmmmmmmm.....

Anyhoo, after my massive tank messing up 2 weeks ago, loads of sediment has settled on the LR so did a 30% waterchange... cleaned the biomedia bags out to make sure to crud was building up as i hadnt checked it and cleaned the sponge block too.

Refilled the tank most of the way and thought id put my arm down the back of the filter (incredibly hard to do when you are short!) as i changed my mind about where i wanted the Rowaphos so had to fish it back out again and it went right to the bottom... as i grabbed it i felt something else material and was like.. whaaa? i swear it wasnt there last time!

Got a step up so i could reach it lol. If id been reall smart id have used my feeding tongs lol.

And dragged up the mankiest filthiest dirt collecting disintigrating rotten lump of a bag of carbon

I kept dreaming there was a bag of carbon in the tank but then i think i must have dreamed that i checked to try and find it! Because i vividly remember checking and not being able to find it... and yet it was there! And festering... and has been for months now!

But because of where it was right next to the inlet slats for the filter (and filter turned off), when i lived up the bag of carbon (which whiffed of rotten eggs!) it dumped a HUGE ammount of slime and detritus and powdered carbon back into the tank just behind all my liverock where i couldnt get to it!

I then had to gravel clean and siphon out all the crud from behind the rock and the sailfin blenny kept trying to kill the pipe and so ended up on a fun waterslide into the bucket and i had to drain the tank down again.

Really hacked off as tank ended up having to have a 50-60% water change after all the black carbon and nastiness went everywhere and covered everything but mostly on piles in the sand.

Eh... it looked all clean and sparkly afterwards! Hope there isnt any problems after this *sigh*

The blenny wasnt very grateful at being put back, he tried to bite me

And i swear i dont remember putting the carbon in the filter, im not sure why i would!?

 

[lljdma06]

Wow, MBOU, that is a story. I've had FW stuff go like that before. Yucky, icky, sicky! I don't use Carbon in my Marine systems though. I use a refugium which thank goodness, is a HOB filter for my picos so much easier to keep things clean.

He tried to bit you! Mean blenny!!

 

[SaltNoob]

Do you have a pic of this Pink Cerith? I lost my last cerith a couple days ago. He has been in the tank for a few months, not sure why I lost him.

My oh My you have been busy.

-Tyler

 

[MBOU]

Argh... I swear this tank is like something out of an episode of Eastenders or something!

I had two days off over my birthday and tank had that good water change at the beginning of the week, monday i think...

And I come back in today and the tank was solid green, cloudy scummy surface to the tank, one of my rhodactis colonies has died right back lost 3 of the biggest shrooms

Everything looked miserable, yellow polyps stretching right up but not open...

Turns out the pump being fairly powerful had pushed out the pipe for the top powerhead from the filter.

I CANT believe no one bloody well thought to check why there was no flow and why my corals were dying and why the tank went disgustingly green

Aaahhh well... all sorted now *sigh*

 

[SaltNoob]

BAH! So sorry to hear that. I feel your pain. People don't quite know to look for those things I guess. Glad to hear you got it all sorted out!

-Tyler

 

[Desdemona]

Ohh, congrats! I thought about seeing if I could get a knifefish since I teach a Core Electronics class, but I didn't think it would fly. Especially since those guys can get big, so it's not like I'd be asking for a 20 gal. I'd also have to get them to fork out the money for the equipment to read the fish's electrical "current."

We are moving buildings.. so maybe after we move and if they do the, "we have money we need to spend!" message.

 

[MBOU]

^ random?!

Looks like my tank will be gone by august :'( we are shutting down marines as customers want everything for nothing, waste of our time

 

[lljdma06]

^ random?!

Looks like my tank will be gone by august :'( we are shutting down marines as customers want everything for nothing, waste of our time

Well, can you buy it off them and keep one at home? Awwww, that's a shame though. I'll miss this tank. But I can see why that would be a decision they'd have to make. In Miami, they cut down by getting rid of the planted tank section first. Marine makes quite a bit of money in my neck of the woods.

L

 

[MBOU]

I have been offered the tank... as it is, though would have to forkover a bit for some livestock but a bit of it i bought myself *sigh*... but i cant have it... cant take it home to my parents, they hate me living here as it is... they dont like my chameleon and they sure as anything hate my hamster. Buta fish tank takes loads of space and electricity and a massive no, they wouldnt let me have a 7.6L Fluval Spec at home lol.

Now i know its going, im not sure i want to keep putting loads of effort into it, meh im just not in a good mood today and maybe thats effecting my thoughts but just feeling completely disheartened with fish and marines especially.

Aparently i cant frag corals as i fragged 3 leathers that were going to rot from the base (the others all had and these were starting though not bad..) and now its all mush and in the bin. I followed instructions in videos from YouTube to the point and its failed.

Bahhhh