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

[CageUK]

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

Cheers Andy

Had a few probs as Sue has already written but all seems quiet on the watery front for the moment and the tank is settling down nicely.
Re: the nano tank and brineshrimp eggs...I've not got into them yet but they are my next purchase. Do brine shrimp eggs come naturally without shell or do they have to be de'shelled. If so how is this done?

Sounds intreguing.

Cheers

Mark

 

[andy_j]

They have to be de-shelled Mark....think they have a group of people sitting round in a big circle taking the shells off

Seriously don't know how its done. Waterlife do bottles of shell less which come in a liquid....that's what i used.

Rgds

Andy

 

[BigC]

Better buying your eggs in bulk (1lb tins) works out much cheaper.

Seriously don't know how its done. Waterlife do bottles of shell less which come in a liquid....that's what i used.

http/www.killies.com/Decapsulating.htm
Regards
BigC

 

[CageUK]

A quick update.

We have since added some occupants to keep the clowns company. A yellow polyps, a red star fish, a cleaner shrimp and a feather duster. The cleaner shrimp is the most fascinating. He goes mad at feeding time and dashes around the tank, upsetting all and sundry. It's amazing watching him jump and most often successfully catching bits of food as they float by. He also does a neat trick where he runs upside down at the surface of the water, something I've never seen before. He'll also jump onto my hand if I have to reach into the tank for any reason, which can be a little disconserting at times!

He has already shed his skin once as have a couple of the hermits so they must be settling in nicely. The critter crab has also shed his skin again but I still can't find where he hides out and haven't seen him for ages. The feather is superb to look at as is the polyps. The star fish doesn't do any spectacular tricks but looks rather neat.

Andy, I have taken up your suggestion and have started adding a drop of the shell-less brine shrimp eggs and am sitting back to see what happens.

I have also added some chaeto to a couple of the rear chambers along with an led light on a reverse cycle as an experiment to try to iron out the overnight PH drop and will report back on the verdict. As the light is not very powerful and there is not a huge amount of chaeto there, I expect the results to be minimal so may even change to a 24hr cycle.

Here are some photos of the new critters if anyone is interested.

This is Freddie (Star) and Luke (shrimp) Skywalker.

This is our Yellow Polyps (don't know it's posh name)

Gary ('numan' tubeworm army) feather duster

and a closer shots of the guys

All looks stable so far, weekly 10-15% changes and maybe one top up during the week but it doesn't seem to lose a lot of water and the sg does not vary noticeably with the little loss that is there. PH is between just under 8.2 and 8.3 (taking into account the overnight drop).

The clowns are as happy as anything and swim frantically at the front of the tank whenever I approach and will feed from my fingers if I have mysis shrimp or similar.

The new skimmer has been in and running for a while and it immediately solved the micro bubble problem. Although I have some Rowaphos I haven't bothered putting it in yet as the phosphate reading is negligable.

I've still yet to get a replacement for the stock pump. I'm not sure how the UV would attach to a new pump that's not been designed for the purpose so any hints there would be appreciated. I'm probably looking to use a maxi jet 600.

Cheers

 

[Musho3210]

all that needs to be said at this stage is... get rid of that starfish

 

[SkiFletch]

Unfortunately, I have to agree. Starfish (except brittlestarfish) have no place in a nano tank. It will starve to death eventually, and that's just not fair to the animal

 

[CageUK]

Cheers Skifletch.

We will be devastated to lose our Freddie as we have grown very attached to him. Sense must prevail though I guess.
Since seeing this post I have done loads of extra research and found the inevitable conflicting info. I can't however find the forum post which initially prompted me to look at a star as a possibility. This particular poster had one of these Red Stars in his nano and had no problems with him. He might have been the same poster who got his live rock from his local beach (he lives in Hawaii or somewhere) but I can't be sure.

In the 3 weeks we have had him he has been great. For something that appears so motionless he certainly gets about. He almost seems to teleport around the tank!

I have had a word with the LFS that supplied him though and they are happy to trade him for something more suitable.

They have a couple of fish I am looking at and want to get opinions as to suitability.

Since my last post we have now got a watchman goby (Gobywon kinobi). The reason he is called a watchman is that you are forever watching the tank trying to spot him! He's been out a few times for short periods and I'm hoping he will be more accomodating once he's settled in.

Bearing this in mind, this brings me back to my choice of fish for the starfish trade, I have been looking at a firefish (although he is more expensive) and a Pyjama Cardinal. We have been told on numerous occasions that PJ's are fine for a nano tank, but we have spotted the occasional one that has grown quite large. The PJ would be a straight swap for the Star.

This would be the last fish to go into the tank so I want to get it right.

I shall post updated pics when I've uploaded them.

Thanks again for the input.

 

[SkiFletch]

Either the firefish or the PJ cardinal would be well suited

 

[CageUK]

Well it was Au Revoir to Freddie today and hello to PJ.

Sad to see Freddie go but wouldn't want to jeopardise him or the tank.

As soon as PJ was acclimatised, he busied himself hiding behind the live rock and I thought that we may have ended up with another gobywon (always hiding in the back) but by early evening he started to come out and now he seems to be settling in nicely.

I've taken a few photos to keep you up to date with recent additions. We bought a polyp frag and a pulsing xenia. The rock that the xenia came on was a bit big so I set to it with a hammer and chisel and cut it into more manageable pieces. I'm not intending keeping both pieces in there but have not yet decided what to do with what we have. One of the pieces contains a fragment of a sponge that was growing on an adjacent rock in the host tank and I'm hoping it will survive being torn from the main body. It does seem to be growing (ever so slowly). Our local Maidenhead Aquatics let us have a frag of polyps as a freebie.

This is a full tank shot showing the pulsing xenias and PJ along with some of the old fave's.

Left side

Right side

A freebie Polyp frag from our LFS

Another frag but we paid for this one

This is a pic of a sponge that we got on the live rock housing the Xenias

One of the blue knuckle hermits thinks he's king of the hill. If you look carefully you can see the lower hermit semi nude!

Another shot of one of the xenia rocks along with the sponge and another hermit...this one has it's own hitchhiker (a small feather duster attached to his shell)

Things have settled down nicely although since my last water change using Tropic Marine Pro Reef salt the PH has crept up ever so slightly and peaked at 8.34 yesterday. Not enough to worry about but I'll keep an eye on it. In fact I'm sure I read somewhere recently that Pro Reef was set to a PH of 8.4! sounds a tad high to me though.

I've recently put some Chaeto into the 1st and 4th chambers along with an white led light in each to help a little with the PH swings. With an led into only one chamber, the effect was minimal on a reverse cycle so I reverted to a 24hr cycle. I have today put in a second led so may well try the reverse again.

I also spent some time today doing something about the spagetti junction of cables that the tank has generated. I am using NINE seperate mains supplies along with cables for the LEDs and the PH meter etc. Things were getting pretty desperate and as was pointed out earlier in the thread was dangerous as well as the cables were susceptible to water ingress which was proved a couple of weeks ago when spillage from the tanks got into a couple of plugs and blew the consumer unit fuse.

I'll detail what I did to rectify this problem in a following post.

 

[CageUK]

As per my previous post, I have taken steps to try to sort the big mess of cabling from the Orca. The stand offers nowhere to hide or attach cabling or plug sockets to keep them tidy and safe.

With a bit of inspiration from SH earlier in this thread I worked out a way of achieving both of these objectives.

The tank originally looked like this

and this was before I'd added the new skimmer and the LEDs and the airpump with all the associated cables etc. (three more plugs plus low voltage cables plus airline) so you can imagine the mess it was in.

Unfortunately I forgot to photograph it all before I started the job and I'm certainly not going to pull it all apart again!

This is what I did.


I got some external ply on offer at Wickes for £7.99 for a piece 1220mm x 605mm x 12mm

I then cut it to the appropriate size. I cut the back board to 400mm wide (just smaller that the width of the stand). The height between the bottom and the top of the stand is 649mm. I first cut it to be a snug fit, but this made it very difficult to get in and out of position so I planed a mm or so off of the height. The distance between the back of the pedestal and the back of the stand is about 80mm so I cut the side pieces to 68mm which takes into account the thickness of the board.

I then drilled four holes on each of the long sides of the back board along with pilot holes in the edge of the side returns. I then screwed the sides onto the back.

I fixed a couple of offcut pieces to the inside of the back on which to fit the trailer sockets to.

Then fixed the sockets on. The casings come with keyhole slots but I also secured them with an additional screw on the top...they aren't going anywhere!

I then secured the air pump with three screws

Then simply plugged everything else in. Some of the cables from the tank are very short and those ones I plugged into the top socket. It made it a little awkward to organise as I had to stand the 'box' up by the tank to finish it off but it all went in.

I then fitted the unit into position. It is free standing and I am quite happy with that but it can be fixed if needed.

Only tonight, it was brought to my attention that when the lid is slid down the back of the tank it is still possible for water to drip directly onto the larger plugs (mainly the timer ones) and also, drips from the cable loops on the upper bank of plugs could possibly drip onto the lower bank so for both cases I will probably use some thick polythene membrane to prevent this. I then intend to paint the unit using a dark grey undercoat or similar to try to blend it to the stand colour.

YEEHAA...I now have only ONE cable running from the tank to the mains socket in the wall instead of nine!

Comments/further suggestions appreciated.

Cheers

 

[CageUK]

Bit of a critter id here please!

Could anyone confirm if these little guys are Aptasia please? They have been in the tank for about 3 or 4 weeks, started off as one stalk and now there are three. They are very small and the largest is only around 10mm high.
I was convinced that they were aptasia but when I saw some in an LFS and it looked totally different. They were a sort of translucent colour and not the brown that you see here. It does, however, dissappear if you touch it.
My net research so far has not thrown up an Aptasia that looks like this so I'm now hoping it is a goodie and not a baddie.

If it is Aptasia, because it is so small and I would think too small to inject anything into it (the stalk is only about the width of a needle) would I have to wait for it to grow before getting rid of it or use the milliput option? I don't really want bits of milliput all over the tank though!
I really don't want to have to take the rock out of the tank though as it is one of the bottom bits and would mean I would have to dismantle the whole tank!

On another note, my shrimp has moulted again (twice in one month). I must be feeding him too much.

And I've got my first tiny spot of coraline on the back of the tank yeeeehaaa. There are some small white spots as well that look a little calciferous so I'm hoping these will turn pink.

 

[Crazy fishes]

Congratulations with your coralline algae Hoo ray . I am still awaiting the appearance; that is one thing that I do want but unfortunately you can't buy coralline for the back wall it has to appear in its own time. Oh well time will tell

Regards

 

[CageUK]

Just a quick update on our latest purchases.

At the weekend we got some Green Star Polyps and some shrooms...well more like a bit of live rock with a couple of shrooms on it in fact, although we got it for a fair price so can't complain.

When I got the shroom rock home I got out the hammer and chisel again and split it. Firstly it was quite a bit bit and secondly the shrooms (about 5 of them) were scattered around the rock. I did the same with the Green Stars as the rock was quite large.

That's one of the things I never appreciated when starting the nano. We got about as much live rock as we could fit in there (about 7.5k) but every coral we get sits on it's own rock. we must have 9k + of rock in there now and will still need to put more in. If (when) I start a larger tank I will place a minimal amount of live rock and stock it slowly to allow for this I think.

The other option is to go totally for frags and just wait for them to develop.

Because though we have 2 rocks of Xenias, Green stars and shrooms (the result of splitting) I will probably get rid of one of each or use it to stock our larger tank as and when.

Here is the Green Star Polyps

and the Shrooms

After all that happened with our starfish, would you believe that the live rock that came with the shrooms is festooned with mini brittlestars. They apparently rarely, if ever leave their rock though and will just be visible as threads hanging from the rock. You can see them in the first picture.

We also got something else on the shroom rock (shown just above and to the left of the shroom in the second picture). It kind of looks like a xenia but not quite and I've yet to id it.

I just had to get a couple of quick shots of Luke (the shrimp) skywalker. Every time I put my hand in the tank he uses it as his own personal plaything. In this case I was just readjusting one of the shroom rocks and BAM he was straight there. On top of that the clown had his usual dig at my arm.
It strikes me that these creatures must get incredibly bored if my appendages provide so much fascination for them!

Sorry about the flash on this one

We should start a thread on marine occupants interactions with their carers...should be quite an interesting read I would think!

Crazyfishes, I shouldn't get too excited about my coraline as you can see it in the first shroom pic above and slightly left of the rock...it is miniscule

Still, from little acorns... they say.

Anyway, talking about upgrading tanks, we have a spare Juwel Vision 180 bow front tank (180ltr 40Gall UK) that I'm considering adapting to marine. I would have to completely modify it for lighting, protein skimmer etc and would have to tear the base apart to fit a sump in there. I'm still undecided as to whether it's cheaper to do this or to simply splash out on a second hand RSM or similar. The one thing that does appeal about the Vision 180 is that because it is a 3' tank I could get a reasonably sized sump in the base.
Opinions/options welcomed.

We would like this to be a reef tank but with a slightly better mix of fish. I know the tank will be hopelessly small for my other halfs favourite fish the picasso triggers, and tangs and such, it would be nice though to see a couple of larger specimens in there, so suggestions there would be welcome as well. This is another case for the 180 over the RSM I suppose...more swimming room.

Cheers

 

[CageUK]

Ok I've now painted the backbox using a dark grey undercoat. Unfortunately it wasn't as dark as I was hoping so I'll have to look for something a bit closer in colour or add some black to this and try to match the original.

Here's a pic as it stands though, still a lot better than the mass of wires IMO.

I have also got my replacement pump for the filter box. I ordered a Maxi-Jet 600, so I may put that in tomorrow.

 

[CageUK]

Well the upgraded pump is in now.

I had a bit of hassle getting it to fit properly though. It goes in the chamber ok (well with a bit of fiddling past the bunch of cables that pass across the top, but the UV unit does not fit the inlet spout for the pump. I had some large diameter syphon tube which I cut and wrapped around the spout which did the job but it did crack the UV casing slightly as it was then a little big. It won't be a issue but just a tad annoying.

How did everyone else get around this problem?