Miss Wiggle And Big Ian's First Marine Tank!

[SkiFletch]

Well, I've been running 2 tablespoons in my 45g for 3 months now... No phosphates or algae since. Rowaphos or other ferric oxide filters will not leech back into the water column, its a chemical impossibility.

Did you have anything die in your tank recently?

 

[BigIan]

Done a phosphate test and they`re 0 as alice said the TDS meter is knackerd so can`t test for that and very strongly doubt it.
also we have cyno AND ditoms growing in the tank aswell as some green fuzzy algae that looks like some kind of very basic plant,

 

[tmreynolds]

Done a phosphate test and they`re 0 as alice said the TDS meter is knackerd so can`t test for that and very strongly doubt it.
also we have cyno AND ditoms growing in the tank aswell as some green fuzzy algae that looks like some kind of very basic plant,

How are your nitrates, and do you hoover/syphon your gravel?

 

[BigIan]

Nitrates are generally some where between 15 and 20 ppm, And we do siphon the gravel unfortunately the substrate is a fine sand so if i get too close with the siphon it gets sucked up...

but i generaly try to get rid of asmuch algae as i can

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Did you have anything die in your tank recently?

nope, all present and accounted for.

we've amazingly not managed to kill anything yet!

as Ian said, nitrates do fluctuate slightly depending on if we're due water changes etc. however nowadays they don't get about 25ppm. We're keeping well on top of top off and water changes so they don't rise too much. and we're saving for the fuge!!

yeah the substrate we have is a complete PITA to siphon, but we do have a crack at it

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well we reckon part of the problem is too many fish for our CUC, so have started building it back up, will try and get another member of CUC each week.

today we got a decorator crab, dead cute and just being drip acclimatised now.

comes with free polyps too

 

[Ter]

I got that darn red stuff also someone told me it might be my live rock leeching stuff...
Ter

 

[BigIan]

Well i hope we`re well on the way to sorting out the diatoms...

to spruce up the tank last weekend we brough the decoratorcrab in to clean it up and today an army of turbo snails went in 5 new shin turbo snails to devour the brown menace

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well we've had a fair bit of progress this last week or so.

got 5 new turbo snails and a decorator crab to help with clean up.

we also got a spinny thing to go on the powerhead, it rotates so the flow goes round the tank, it looks lovely as it goes past the corals and the firefish absolutely loves it. he hangs around the cup coral waiting for it then dashes into the flow and back out again! looks like fun!

and we swapped a spare 4 foot tank that was sitting in our basement gathering dust for a little 10ish g tank that sits perfectly underneath our marine tank. woooo sump.

now were still not decided exactly what were going to do but our initial thoughts are to still set up the HOB as a fuge and to then house the skimmer in the sump and either do a miracle mud sump or a DSB.

Need to do some research into how we do it all and what would be best.

Any help appreciated!!

edit - keep forgetting more stuff that's goen on, busy weekend!!

we also finally managed to get some cyclops and some invert food for the pink bush. was a bit mad at the lfs who sold me it cos they know we haven't got a fuge set up yet and they really need one. so started target feeding it sat and stuck a bit of cyclops just generally into the tank on sunday, bush looks tonnes better. was opening up lovely which it rarely did in the daytime. so chuffed it seems to be comign round really easily and we'll just keep sticking cyclops in for the couple of weeks until we get the sump and fuge up and running.

 

[SkiFletch]

Sounds great, you guys have done a bunch . Your other corals prolly appreciate the cyclops too, did you see any let loose feeder tentacles?

 

[Miss Wiggle]

Sounds great, you guys have done a bunch . Your other corals prolly appreciate the cyclops too, did you see any let loose feeder tentacles?

yeah we were target feeding everyone, see who wanted them! the candy cane got it's tentacles out which it doesn't normally do in the day time.

the bush is looking a million miles better now, i'm so pleased!

 

[Miss Wiggle]

well at long last we got round to setting up out fuge this weekend.

we've converted the HOB filter, bashed out all the dividers and blocked off part of it so there's just 1 flow into the tank. there's a pump coming from the tank trough a spray bar sat at the bottom of the fuge so hopefully it should avoid getting any dead spots. got loads of little bits of LR and stuck them all in there. It's only about half full of LR though we need to get some more in a week or so, LFS just got a new shipment in and it's still curing. Got some out of they're coral display tank though which is absolutely teaming with life so hopefully we should have loads of critters in there.

we'd forgotten how much water it adds to the tank, must be another 5g at least if not 10. Next mission is setting up the sump.

 

[SkiFletch]

Yey for fuges

 

[BigIan]

Theres trouble in our tank....

Will update soon....

 

[atmmachine816]

O snap what is it