Journey From The Darkside (bit Of A Journal Type Thing)

[CageUK]

Blue legs can be supper grumpy, but I keep a mix and find they only ever pick on their own species. I also have orange claw and redlegs too. The beauty of blue legs is their apetite, they are the best thing out there for cleaning rock work of algae of most types where other CUC wont touch. If you want good clean up with a easy going tempremant you want orange claw hermits. These also look pretty cool too, dont scrap, but nosh for england!!.. red legs look pretty, but are useless for anything else..lol as they have to be laziest creature in my tank All in all tough a marine tank without hermits its just unthinkable IMO

I must say I agree. I've just spent 20 minutes or so videoing one of my hermits selecting and cleaning a new shell, move home, decide he didn't like it and move back to his old one again.
I'll post the video once I've edited it down to the interesting bits

 

[newbie1981]

Well done Cage - i too discovered the 'dots with legs' and was wondering what they were, I've seen mine swimming around and they do have the distinct movement of jellyfish!

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Good to see someone else with an Orca tank

Loads of interesting hitch hikers as well! (I didnt seem to get any with my rock, other then fish eating crabs).

Before you put the new skimmer in you might want to take the heater out and put some marine putty over the holes the heater clips into. This should help solve the micro bubble problem (which is mainly due to the poor design of the skimmer and no bubble traps in the back compartments).

Your right that a sump/fuge with reverse light period and macro algae will help to stablise the PH overnight. You would need a fairly big sump (in relation to tank volume) to make a big difference though and unless you are keeping really sensitive livestock I really dont think it is as much of an issue as people think it is (salt water is so well buffered it takes a lot to change the PH by any really amount).

Hermit crabs are so funny when they are changing shells I have a little orange legged hermit who sometimes tries on 4 or 5 shells in a row (and always goes back to his original one). He picked one once which was so big for him he couldnt do anything more then walk round in circles (he still kept trying for about an hour though!).

When I feed the tank in the morning I normally only see the clown fish out and about. As soon as the food goes in the water though I have 4 shrimp and a firefish that spring out from nowhere. Its amazing how sensitive they are to food.

 

[steelhealr]

A refugium is a wonderful thing. My nitrates have been at zero for more than a year. You need a good volume of chaeto to do it but not as much as you'd think. It's truly one of the best methods of nitrate reduction that you can have on a nano tank. As for microbubbles, it's really only a visible nuisance vs an actual problem. Microbubbles don't hurt anything except for, perhaps, sponges that can have their pores blocked by air.



SH

 

[steelhealr]

PS...I looked at the pic of your stand and aquarium...you should get your surge protector off the ground and make drip loops out of your wiring to prevent electric shock, etc. SH

 

[CageUK]

PS...I looked at the pic of your stand and aquarium...you should get your surge protector off the ground and make drip loops out of your wiring to prevent electric shock, etc. SH

Hi SH

Yes I have a 6 way and a 4 way adaptor and it looks a real state. I plan to find a way to 'box' them all into to something that would look a lot neater as the stand for the orca does not feature a cuboard. We have a residual circuit breaker on the main consumer unit but strangely enough when I had one of these water problems whilst setting up a f/w biorb it didn't trip the switch. Water had run down the cable into the plug and I heard a fizzing sound and the plug got warm. I switched off straight away so caught it in plenty of time but the circuit didn't trip!

This is 'round tuit' job and I really must resolve this as a matter of urgency. I would welcome tips from anyone as to how to organise this spagetti junction!

I'm hoping that my new skimmer will resolve the bubbles issue, but I also have some poly wool and some activated charcoal that I will use once I have the new skimmer working.

A sump is definately the way to go with a larger tank I think. I have absolutely nowhere to put one with the Orca.

Barney, with putty on the inside of the heater compartment, did you just use suckers to hold the heater in place? I've read that bubbles come out of the holes but most of mine are hidden by the live rock and with the number of bubbles in the tanks it's difficult to see if I have any coming from mine. I get a lot coming from the outlet which is driven by an extra powerhead and I'm guessing that it is pulling the bubbles through to it before they get a chance to come out of the heater bracket holes.
It's good to confirm that they won't do any harm SH.

re: the hermit, yes I think the shell mine tried was a little too big for him. He tried to muscle it around for a couple of minutes but then decided enough was enough and went back to his old one. I'll have to look around for some slightly smaller shells for them I think.

On a more general note, I found the missing nerite. It had crawled out of the water onto the inside rim of the tank. I guess it must be ok out of water for a little while! I put it back in anyway and it has moved since.

I can't find very much on the Mollusc though. The odd reports I have read ID these things generically as muscles or bi-valves. They are generally said to be reef safe but hard to keep alive. Some are reported to burrow into live rock but are not overly harmful and are ok guys to have as hikers. I did read one report that said that some of them can release toxins into the water when damaged which was prompted by a guy that lost a fish after his muscle got damaged by a powerhead.

Cheers

 

[steelhealr]

Does the Orca have a back filtration system similar to the JBJ Nano Cube? As for the wires, you could get a piece of plywood to match the width of the stand and hand them behind it, no? If your Orca has a series of inner chambers, you could make one into a refugium. SH

 

[CageUK]

Does the Orca have a back filtration system similar to the JBJ Nano Cube? As for the wires, you could get a piece of plywood to match the width of the stand and hand them behind it, no? If your Orca has a series of inner chambers, you could make one into a refugium. SH

Thants not actually a bad idea re the stand SH. I could maybe paint it in a matching colour and put two small side returns making a back to front box so the the wires would not be seen from the side. I'll have to get pen to paper and work something out.

Yes the Orca has 4 chambers. From right to left, inlet chamber which houses the pump and UV, the next is the protein skimmer, then next is a heater chamber and the last is the outlet chamber which currently houses the additional powerhead. Each one has a distinct function and I think the only way I could turn one into a refugium would be to remove the powerhead, have an in-tank powerhead instead then put a small light in the last chamber. It's worth thinking about.

Cheers

 

[steelhealr]

If you ever have time to flip thru my main thread, it is VERY easy to create a GREAT refugium.....IF..the ORCA has a laminate covering on the back. You can cut it off and shine light from the outside into one of the chambers. It's a very easy refugium to create. SH

 

[xxBarneyxx]

You cant do that on the orca as the back of the tank is solid plastic (I did try it on mine after getting the idea from your thread ). You could fit a small light into the hood above the back chambers though.

With regards to covering the holes for the heater holder. I actually too the lazy mans route and covered the holes from the display side (not pretty but it got the job done). If you use a small amount of marine putty you could cover over the holes from the compartment side and then push the heater holders back into the holes through the putty. This would then just seal around the edges of it.

Cant remeber if you have done it or not yet but if you have an extra powerhead in the left hand return chamber you might want to block the hold next to the spray bar. Otherwise the water tends to get sucked in through this hold rather than through the back chambers.

 

[CageUK]

You cant do that on the orca as the back of the tank is solid plastic (I did try it on mine after getting the idea from your thread ). You could fit a small light into the hood above the back chambers though.

With regards to covering the holes for the heater holder. I actually too the lazy mans route and covered the holes from the display side (not pretty but it got the job done). If you use a small amount of marine putty you could cover over the holes from the compartment side and then push the heater holders back into the holes through the putty. This would then just seal around the edges of it.

Cant remeber if you have done it or not yet but if you have an extra powerhead in the left hand return chamber you might want to block the hold next to the spray bar. Otherwise the water tends to get sucked in through this hold rather than through the back chambers.

I'm hoping that the new skimmer (when it eventually arrives) will get over my bubble problem if not I'll do just that I think Barney.

Yes I know what you mean about the second outlet hole. Mine does exactly that. Unfortunately if I block the hole, the pump brings down the level in the chamber too far. I'm looking to upgrade the standard pump to something with a little more muscle to get around this problem. I've partially blocked it so I get a sort of halfway house.

Cheers

 

[xxBarneyxx]

lol cant believe I wrote hold instead of hole, twice...

If you put a more powerful put in that chamber it will probably lower the water level more rather then less. Do you have all of the inlet grids fully open on the right?

 

[CageUK]

lol cant believe I wrote hold instead of hole, twice...

If you put a more powerful put in that chamber it will probably lower the water level more rather then less. Do you have all of the inlet grids fully open on the right?

He he, I'll let you off of 'put' as well!

I have the top three grids open but the bottom one is on the sand line so I keep that one closed. At the moment I only have poly wool as a filter medium, once I put the Rowaphos in etc with the new skimmer the problem is likely to get worse so I wanted an upgraded pump into the first (right hand) chamber to try to promote a better flow through the filter.

 

[andy_j]

Hi Mark....really nice to meet you and your good lady wife today. One thing i used to do with my nano was to add one drop of shell less brineshrimp eggs to the tank every day....the critter population just boomed a week or two after doing this.

Andy

 

[BigC]

One thing i used to do with my nano was to add one drop of shell less brineshrimp eggs to the tank every day

Just given me an idea Andy, I'll mabe try decapsulating some of my BS egg stock and give that a go sometime in the future.
Regards
BigC