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

[CageUK]

I went to the lfs last night to get some live food for the tank, mainly to give scoots a treat. I bought a 2 bags of brine shrimp and a bag of glass worms aka mosquito larvae. The glass worms I may just give to my freshwater tank.

The scooter went crazy when I put some shrimp in and I've never seen him eat so much. On the back of this I started a culture of baby brine shrimp although I don't know whether these will be big enough for him to eat! It's got to be worth a go, I already had the hatchery kit, just never got around to setting it up. I'm now thinking of setting up a 'pod culture with the spare tank I'd intended to leave for quarantining (but not used it yet).

Although he is eating frozen food, I have never seen him eat with this much enthusiasm.

While we were at the lfs, a coral caught the eye of my better half. She also saw a nice zoo garden which had only just come in so wasn't yet ready for sale but we both decided that is was a bit too big for the tank.
The one we bought though was sold to us as a blue Xenia, although I had doubts that was the correct description for it. Further research has led me to think it is almost certainly blue clove polyps. What ever it is, it is lovely. It's nice to see this sort of colour in the tank.
From what I can find out they are not that common so that's a bit of a bonus.

The flame scallop has settled himself in the cave between two rocks but up off of the sand bed. This is a good position because he is out of the way from all but the most determined hermits but the width of the crevice means he can't open his shell all the way. I did try to settle him in a slightly more open place but after 10 minute he swam back to this same place again... filling the tank with cloudy water from his jets in the process). He seems to like it there so I will leave him.

The downside with this position is that it is directly above little Gary the red tubeworm and Gary is not coming out anymore. I tried to move Gary along a little bit out of the flame's way but he has dug himself in under the live rock and feels pretty solid and I'm reticent to apply pressure for fear of damaging him.

Gary was one of the first occupants of the tank so we don't want him to suffer. I understand that feathers can relocate themselves if needed and in fact Gary did this very thing when we first put him in the tank so I'm hoping he will do so again.

Anyway, a couple of pics of my blue cloves:

This is a closer shot but slightly fuzzier focus

 

[seffieuk]

They are really lovely blue clove polyps - was looking at getting some of those for my tank as well Trod bought some blue xenia but unfortunatly it didn't last long think there is a photo on our thread

Seffiex

 

[SkiFletch]

I too am partial to blue clove polyps, got a little bit in my own tank

 

[kj23502]

They are very beautiful

 

[shibby]

awesome, for some reason i call them star polyps i prefer the name blue clove though!

 

[CageUK]

Thanks for the kind words guys and gals. My better half has a good eye for what she likes.

I've been feeding with the BBS. The fish seem to like the chase and scoot around like crazy finding them. It can't really fill them up very much though as they are sooo small.
I think I have decided to try to start a pod culture to keep the scooter blenny well fed and as a bit of a change of diet for the others. I've ordered some more phyto as my other bottle is nearly gone.

Gonna feed them the glass worms tonight!

Looking to get my tank back into tip top condition now. I sold my other tank a few days ago so now I can concentrate on the one I have left.

 

[GShorty1981]

Gawjus tank Cage,gonna use this as a reference along with my research while building my Nano!

What kind of pricers were your corals as my LFS doesent seem to have anything bigger than a 3 inch piece for crazy prices,cheapest i have seen is £35 for a feather duster!!!

 

[CageUK]

Cheers Glen

We seldom spend more than £20 on our corals, the exception being the recent addition of the Blue Clove Polyps which was £24

The GSP, and the rics were around £19 each can't remember the leather. The Feather was about £12 I think but slightly smaller ones are about £8

Come to think of it I think we paid a bit more for the hammer as I remember the colour draining from my face when my better half said...Oooh I like that one!

The Xenias were £15 or so from a local guy through ebay. The original piece was about twice the size that is currently in the tank but I split it. With the same piece of rock I got the blue sponge. It was a small piece that was attached to the rock but has grown beautifully since. The pink zoas were a bargain £7. Most of the others were frags either for nothing or for a few quid.

It's taken me about 10 months to get to this stage and still learning stuff all the time.

 

[CageUK]

Just a quickie update.

I'm tackling a recent drop in PH at the moment and dosing to get the calcium and magnesium up to required levels.

My leathers still are not looking great and the only thing I can think of are the high nitrates still (around 20ppm). The Polyfilter I bought to reduce this has had no effect at all so I won't be getting that again.
Back to the drawing board there. If I could find a discreet way of making a turf scrubber I would even consider that! My better half would throttle me then stamp on the remains if I even mentioned that I was thinking about considering about the possibility of putting a bucket in the front room.

My scallop is still there so he hasn't keeled over yet. Still very early days and I'm keeping my fingers firmly crossed. Gary the tubeworm has started to come out again. I think he must have got used to the scallop invading his territory. He doesn't come out as fully as he used to but I'm making sure that he gets a good waft of Marine snow along with the scallop.

I have lost the complete top head of the hammer but touchwood, the lower head seems to be ok so far! Fingers and everything crossed.

I am maybe considering getting rid of some or all of the hermits because I'm getting ticked off at them running riot over all the corals and freaking them out. I'm sure that's what gave my hammer it's problem. Love the little guys but they are a pain!

 

[BigC]

How are you set up Cage, do you have a sump or provision for a sump or fuge beneath the tank.. I found I got a much more stable tank when I employed the sump.
Rowaphos and Skimming coupled with weekly waterchanges has really helped.

 

[CageUK]

No, this is one of my problems BigC.

The tank has only got a pedestal stand so nowhere to hide a sump or 'fuge. I will try some Rowaphos for the phosphates which are at about .25 and some nitrate remover as long as I can squeeze them both into the filter chambers. It is quite tight in there at the mo with the skimmer/UV/extra powerhead etc.

 

[BigC]

Any scope for a hang on fuge.

 

[CageUK]

Unfortunately not. My other half goes crazy at the few remaining cables as it is (PH monitor, thermometer) and wouldn't want anything else that would 'spoil the lines of the tank'. I'm going to be forced to use mechanical means to get around my problems. Now when I get that big tank...

 

[kj23502]

How about a FTS?



Kj

 

[CageUK]

I'll see what I can do KJ but it's not really changed since the last one so I didn't want to repeat myself.

On a more general note, I've been moving the leathers around to try to buck them up but to no avail. It MUST be the nitrates/phosphates, it's all I can think of.

I have dropped a big clanger!

Friday night I fed the fish shortly before leaving to spend Friday night/Saturday with my mum in Essex. I turned the powerheads/filter off as usual. You guessed it, I left without turning them back on again leaving the tank for around 39 hours without any circulation at all

I got home at 1.45am this morning (Sunday) but due to the lateness of the hour and the fact that all the lights were off didn't check it until this morning. All looks ok at the moment. I'm going to do a round of basic tests in a minute to see if I have an ammonia/nitrite problem and have prepared a batch of salt mix for a largish water change later on.

I know you can get a countdown timer to turn something off (I have one on my hot water immersion heater) but just wondering if anyone has ever seen something that does the reverse i.e. turns something on after a predetermined period of time. I could try using a conventional timer but implementation of that to do what I want would be clumsy.

Fingers crossed that I haven't done any damage!