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

[xxBarneyxx]

Looking good!

I solved the problem of the UV and skimmer pump by completely removing them The UV pump fitting breaks really easierly and unless you are going to take the UV light apart regularly to clean it then its not worth the hassle (keep it on hand though, if you ever get a whitespot outbreak or any other waterbourne problem it can help).

I really like the way you covered the cables up (and Idea I'm going to have to steal as I have 10 plugs sat right inbetween two fish tanks so not overly safe).

One problem though, we need more photos

Edit: My clown always attacked me too. You would think it has more sense then to try and bite something that is 10 times bigger then it. It does always manage to do it when I'm least expecting it though which always makes me jump.

 

[CageUK]

Well I thought I'd better update as it's been a little while now. We have made a few purchases over the last few weeks and the Orca is coming along nicely. I am aware that I have moved a little quickly but now is the time to settle the tank for a little while and see what develops.

Sorry for the long post and if you get bored easily I suggest hitting the page down button

The tank has been very stable to date with the possible exception of the PH. It varies between 8.3 top and 8.06 bottom through the daily cycle. I buffer about once every 10 days. I find that if I am doing a lot of work on the tank and have the lid up for a lenght of time, the PH takes much longer to creep up, almost as if the lack of direct light stalls the process then it has to start from the beginning again. On days like this I only get the PH to about 8.2 or just over.

I'm keeping a very careful eye on things but I have to say all of the tank occupants seem to be taking it all in their stride.

Here's a before and after to show progress to date.

This was the tank just after the clowns were added about a week after cycling.

And this is how it is at the moment.

I have installed the upgraded pump in the first filter chamber and I also got a new powerhead for the last filter chamber as I had intermittent problems with microbubbles from the old one. There is a control on the old one that started to occasionally leech air into the tank.
All in all the flow was very fast but I suspected that it was a little too much for the shrooms so I've re-fitted the Hydor flow diverter which I originally took off to aid better PH. As the PH is much better now I want to try the diverter to give a more diverse range of water flow. It seems to be working but early days yet.

A quick run down of how we have been stocking the tank.

Firstly the Grape coral (frogspawn)
This was something we had always intended stocking with but we got a bargain from our LFS at £10 so just couldn't resist.
We spaced him away from other inhabitants and he has been as good as gold

One of our Shrooms. The rock it was on is a little on the large side so out came hammer and chisel again.

This is the blue sponge hitchhiker that came on our Xenia rock. You can see the little Aiptasia under it's right hand edge. I will try getting rid of that tonight.

These are the Green Hairy Shrooms. We lost one of these. It looked a bit sick when we got it home and it never opened, then later it spat out it's intestines and melted. A precautionary water change and all the others seem to be fine.

Another bargain from Maidenhead. Pink and blue Zoas

This is our yellow leather. We also got a small one on the same rock so ended up with a 'free' frag! They both shedded their mucus shortly after introduction to the tank but seem to be settling in fine now. You can also see part of our GSP. Again a hammer and chisel job but I have placed both pieces close to each other for the time being. It took a couple of days to fully extend but is now blossoming.

This is our little Anthelia. A hitchhiker on the shroom rock. It is growing visibly. We know it can be prolific so will have to keep a wary eye on it, particularly with the shrooms on the same rock.

This is our little Zoa frag and in the background you can see the leather frag.

and our Orange Pussy Coral Frag, another irresistable LFS bargain at a fiver! We are now trying him out in the cave area. Problem is that little Gary (tubeworm) was in there and I couldn't move him so they are having to share at the moment and we can no longer see Gary.

We have had very little in the way of losses so far. We spotted a hermit shell caught upside down in the live rock that looked empty. We think it was there a little while. I tried to fish it out but only succeeded in dislodging it and the shell fell into the cavity behind the live rock. We have only ever spotted 4 hermits now and suspect we have lost him.

Also recently I have only seen one sand shifting snail and think I may have placed a rock onto the other one I bed the rocks down quite firmly so he would have had no chance to get out again

Everyone else seems to be ok so touchwood. Every day passed is another day closer to a disaster...not that I am pessimistic or anything

Seriously though, I am not counting my chickens, I'm just pleased to reach this stage with relatively little mishap.

We are still undecided what to do as an upgrade. The possibilities are:

Our ex-freshwater Juwel vision 180, modified and installed with a sump.

A second hand Red Sea Max

A second hand Betta lifespace 680

I'm sure that although I have a tank already, by the time I've paid out for the customising I will spend a fortune. It would be nice to find a complete setup on ebay as you can sometimes get one for the price of live rock alone!

Any suggestions are very welcome

Cheers

 

[CageUK]

Yes an update woohoo!

I've been really busy and only just managed to get back on the forums a few days ago so I thought it's about time I brought my journal thingy up to date a bit.

Basically everything has developed nicely but not without a few losses.

A clown and PJ disappeared. Not together but they just vanished off of the face of the aquarium. Luke departed this earth as well.
The yellow polyps are a lot more sparse than they were as are the rics. In fact I thought we would lose them all but they are hanging on and in the case of the rics they seem to be recovering. The yellow polyps are not any worse but they are not spreading like I was hoping.

We have added a Pink scooter blenny as Gobywon Kinobi just hides in the rocks permanently and we can never see him. One day I'll re-arrange the rocks to fill in the void behind but for the moment we'll leave him be.

The scooter is just what we wanted Gobywon to be. Active and full of character.

The blue sponge is growing nicely and trying to do an impersonation of a plating coral!

The tank is maturing nicely and now has lots of coralline.

The yellow sulphur seems really droopy but he's been that way since we got him. In fact he seems to be kind of growing DOWN the rock unless it's just his way of moving. He blossoms during the day with small polyps but never really stands up. I'm not sure if he's not happy or he just wants to move. The small frag though seems bright and chirpy though it hasn't grown much.


Here's a few pics.

Just off to get something to eat... is that the time!!

Cheers

 

[SkiFletch]

Awesome lookin Nano Cage!

 

[CageUK]

Thanks ski appreciate it

We still have a couple of gaps to fill but with our attention being diverted to other projects (new business, new kitchen etc) was put on the back burner. I'm now looking to carry on from where we left off.

More updates:

Having problems with the darned skimmer. It just won't stay where it's put and drops down/falls over. I might remove it entirely if I don't find a workable solution.

I've got a couple of new pc bulbs on order which I will change one at a time over a few days to see if that will perk up the Yellow polyps and sulphur leather. If that doesn't work I'll get an Iodine test kit and dose for that if needed. I've read/heard that Iodine can work wonders with corals and can bring the colours out significantly.

Also a quick question for those hard coral buffs out there. How do hammer corals spread/grow? I have a branch which has two heads. They are doing great and really puff out when the lights come on. I'm not sure if it's my imagination but when the lights are out each head looks like it maybe growing/dividing into two heads. It may have always been like this and I've not noticed before but it would be great if it is starting to grow.

I'm also at a stage where I'm ready to sell my D&D so I'll get a listing sorted out for ebay. Which reminds me. Google Weird Al Yankovitz's 'Ebay Song' it's hilarious.
I would have liked to have kept the larger tank but we actually prefer the Orca plus it's mature and we just haven't got the time to look after two marine and a freshwater tropical tank (we were running 6 F/W tanks not so long ago!). We are keeping our freshwater.

A few quick pics of the D&D... I really haven't done much with this and have constantly battled with cyno and then hair algae. I cleaned it out the other day and re-scaped it.
Tommy the tomato LOVES his new cave and really seems at home. We've not gone out of our way to stock it but we have put some frags from the Orca in there just to put a bit of life in it.
We've lost a chromis and an emerald crab from this tank and as far as the chromis is concerned I suspect foul play from Tommy. He was a bit nippy when we first introduced the chromis and we had to section Tommy for a while to let chromis settle in. A few days later chromis disappeared.

Just where do these fish go when they die? I normally find tropical fish when they die (with a couple of exceptions) but marine ones just seem to vanish. I don't want to give the impression we are always losing fish cos we don't! Our tropical tank is super stable. I do a water change every 4 weeks or so and the nitrates are lower than my marine (it is heavily planted). The occupants are peaceful to the greater part and seem to be happy. But I digress. I haven't noticed any ammonia spikes when experiencing the losses in the Orca or the D&D so can only assume that the bodies become fodder for the cuc!
We do hear clicking every now and again which we attribute to hermit shells on glass BUT on a couple of occasions after hearing it, I've dashed over to the tank and there were no hermits anywhere near the glass. I know that I have two crabs in the tank but never see them and they were only small when I did last spot one. I REEEEEALLY don't want to pull the tank apart to get them so may resort to a trap if I have enough room to put one but can't see that these little guys were responsible for my fish demise.


Cheers

 

[SkiFletch]

MOST Hammer corals grow almost like trees or better yet, broccoli. The heads will split and grow away as two seperate ones from the split point, extending skeleton away from there. Growth rates tend to be very variable. Some hammer corals (notably those from the waters of australia and the coral sea) just grow outward in an extending fashion, no branching. Sounds to me like you have the first variety.

A marine environment with LR is full of scavengers, most notably crabs and bristleworms. When a fish dies (usually at night) it is quickly consumed by these scavengers, especially if you have hermit crabs. Also as for the noises, it could be hermit crabs fighting each other. They'll grab their buddie's shell and smash into each other. Wierd looking process but they do it

 

[CageUK]

Cheers Ski

I was hoping I wasn't imagining things with the hammer

 

[CageUK]

Ok I've been playing around with my lighting and thought I'd post some pics

The lighting in the actual tanks appears slightly darker than the pictures suggest (ie NOT like a 1970s disco... well not much anyway).

I started off with my red night light. Notice the colony of zoas in the middle closed up for the night

I left the red lights on but switched the blue moonlight on as well. When I went back a while later, the zoas had woken up (not yet open in this pic)!

Finally the blue lights, the zoas remain open.

Just to test again I turned the blue off and the red on. The zoas went bye byes again and when the blue came on again the zoas opened.

Other occupants reactions

Red light
Hammer, shrooms, leathers, rics (apart from one) closed up for the night

The Yellow polyps, the hermits, Shrimpster and the clowns all seemed to behave/swim as normal (apart from the yellow polyps which don't swim of course).
I forgot to look for the scooter blenny so don't know what he got up to.

Blue light was the same result as the red light

The xenias continued to pulse (for the most part anyway) throughout the experiment.

It didn't start off as an experiment so I must have been reeeeally bored

Cheers

 

[CageUK]

One of my hammer heads has been withdrawn for a couple of days and I was keeping an eye on it. This morning I found it's got the dreaded Brown Jelly Disease

I have syphoned off all of the dead flesh/slime and run the syphon over the adjacent head trying not to stress it any further.

There are two reasons I can think of that may have caused this.

First, one of my blue knuckle hermits may have damaged it. I had an extra large one in there that had grown from small (his latest shell was the size of a ping pong ball) and he is a bull in a china shop when it comes to running over the corals. As coincidence has it, I let him and the next size down go with a tank that I sold yesterday as they were a more appropriate size for that tank.

Secondly I recently renewed my bulbs. They are PC 50/50 18w bulbs. I changed one on one day then left it a day or so before changing the other to minimise shock/stress to the tank but as the hammer is so high in the tank it may be more sensitive.

Playing the waiting game now to see if I can rescue the rest of it.

Fingers crossed!

 

[seffieuk]

It the info coming I really am enjoying your thread and the tank looks awsome

Seffie x

 

[CageUK]

Thanks Seffie

I got some video of some bristleworms about a week ago which I keep meaning to upload (when I get around to it) I've counted 5 at one time so I dread to think how many I have actually got in there.

 

[shibby]

my torch had the same thing happen to it i think it was because i placed it too close to my toadstall ....

though ive also read once it happens thats not alot you can do, maybe a persitant problem with euphyllia's

 

[ben1987]

wow great thread. stunning looking nano

 

[CageUK]

Cheers Ben

I've sold a rock of mushrooms so I've got a space for another coral. I'm gonna have a look around to see what I fancy.

 

[CageUK]

So, today I found myself in the lfs and looking at nems and starfish and all the stuff I'm not supposed to be putting in my tank. I relented and committed the cardinal sin and I bought something which is generally frowned upon. A Flame Scallop

My 'Marine Invertebrates' book and my 'Nano Reef handbook' both mention them as being ok in a nano tank, comments around the net suggest longevity issues and feeding difficulties.

My thoughts were... They are in the lfs... somebody will buy them... they probably won't have a clue how to look after them... I may as well give it my best shot.

I already have phytoplankton and I intend getting some marine snow so I have a fighting chance. I know they don't live very long anyway plus the guy I bought must be pretty much full size so if he lasts 6 months then I will be happy.

I've established from my reading that they are unlikely to nuke the tank if they die (as long as they are removed or scavenged) so I thought I'd take the chance.

They are undoubtedly a gorgeous species but I wouldn't condone anyone else trying to look after one, particularly in a new tank. I first looked at these when I was setting up my Orca but didn't get one specifically for this reason.

I have probably made the biggest blunder so far, time will tell.

Meanwhile a couple of pics

I first of all placed him on the sand in the cave but after 15 mins or so he started jetting around the cave (creating a crater the size of the grand canyon in the process) and has now settled in this position between some rock on his side (I hope the blood doesn't rush to his head).

The white bits you seen in the middle of the mantle are the 'electric' flashes that this species emits. Absolutely fascinating.