Nano Tank Diary

[maryjason]

Beautiful! Tank is looking excellent Flumpus ! That likkle clown fish is absolutely stunning.

 

[Flumpus]

We went to the LFS tonight looking for a neon goby, but my wife found something she liked much better...

We also decided to go ahead with a coral, so she picked out this Xenia frag...

I know how fast the Xenia will spread, so we'll definitely keep an eye on it.

One other nice little side note to this story is our true percula's behavior after the firefish was added. I posted a thread in the saltwater fish forum asking about swimming habits, as he was staying in the top corners, sometimes swimming sideways, and even upside down. After some research I found that this isn't that uncommon, so I wasn't really worried. After adding the firefish though, the clown was immediately curious and is now swimming all over the place. He still won't get down as close to the rock as the firefish, but is definitely out of the corners more now.

As far as stocking goes, we'll add corals slowly, and probably keep these two fish in it for the next few weeks. If all goes well, our plan is to add a yellowhead jawfish as our last fish. We'd like to build up the front corner of the tank with sand for the jawfish, to give him a good place to dig his home. Any thoughts on that plan? Is it too much for a 10g?

 

[Clownfish11790]

Do you use DO water? Also I wouldn't add anything else unless you have had an algae bloom, or else it will come later and you w
ill after to fight it while trying to keep your coral alive. The red cyano is the worst, it will cover your corals if the current is not strong enough. This jawfish idea sounds fine.

 

[steelhealr]

I wouldn't add any more fish. You'll really be pushing the limits and may risk a crash. I think xenia is one of the more interesting corals to look at...but...in other people's tanks. I won't put it in my tank because it can grow like a weed and can be difficult to control. GSP and yellow colony polyps are similar. SH

 

[Flumpus]

Thanks for the reply steelheair. With the xenia, can you just frag it often, or is it more difficult than that?

Also, if we were to replace the firefish or percula with something smaller (neon goby), would a jawfish be ok, or would it require replacing one of the two fish in there now with the jawfish and sticking to only two fish? Thanks!

 

[Flumpus]

A couple updates... One, my wife is too attached to the firefish and clown fish to replace either one, so they'll be our fish (she'd already named both).

Second, coral frags at the LFS are a good deal! We got two frags today for $15. Here are a couple pictures.

 

[Flumpus]

Well, I thought I'd update everyone on the tragic state of my tank at the moment (people in Chat already know).

Everything was great! We were fully stocked (one clown, one firefish, one yellow clown goby), the corals were doing great, nitrates were staying low, and then my wife decided to clean her filter media. I'm not exactly sure what media it is, but she followed the the instructions, which included soaking it in bleach for 24 hours, then dechlorinator for 8 hours, then rinsing. My guess is she didn't rinse well enough, because when we got home from work, most everything was dead.

We got all the dead fish out, took out the dead snail (only one died), took the media out, did a 100% water change (then another smaller one later), and left it for a while to see if any of the corals would come back (they all looked awful). Over the next couple days the xenia completely died off, so was removed, but the polyps, star polyps, mushroom, and hammer all came back. The mushroom and hammer don't look quite as good as they did before, but are getting there. We're going to run it without any fish for a while, to make sure everything is ok. Hopefully it will be, and we can get some fish in there in a few weeks.

 

[steelhealr]

Sorry to hear that...it's just another reason why most of us run on natural filtration and no filter per se. Outside of pump maintenance and changing ones media, filtration is NATURAL...live rock...no wet/drys, canister, ceramics, sponges, bioballs or sponges.....totally natural filtration.

Sorry for your loss again. Agree....continue water changes, 10%, even up to every other day if needed. You could even run activated carbon for a week or two to be sure. SH

 

[Flumpus]

Well, I guess that brings up a question for me then. It's only a 10g, so I don't want to skim. It's got a powerhead and an aquaclear HOB filter with a sponge in it right now. Would I be ok running the filter for water flow only, and just using live rock as filtration? Or maybe get some LR rubble to put in the filter?

 

[Siamese Fighter05]

Just use a PowerHead.

They take up less room and you get more flow to the buck
So sorry to hear the bad news

Dan

 

[Flumpus]

Well, we've got the powerhead in there already, I just like the little extra flow from the filter, and if there's any extra filtering capacity I can add that won't screw anything up, I'd like to do that since I've already got it.

 

[DanDanUK]

Here's a new shot of the tank, with more live rock. Up to 16lbs now. What do you think? More? Good where it is? I personally think it looks pretty good with this much, but I'm the newbie

Oh, and the fish that my wife likes is the yellowhead jawfish. I looked it up on liveaquaria, and it's there, but it says it needs lots of sand, so probably wouldn't be good.

What's the filtration you have set up ? name, model what size tank it for ?

 

[Flumpus]

It's an Aquaclear filter, not sure the exact model, but I believe it's the one for 20g tanks . So we've got that and the powerhead for water flow.

 

[TracyRene]

so sorry to hear about your tank! Your pics were beautiful and I am sure you'll be up and running in no time! Good Luck!

 

[akilles-13]

Looks nice, I myself like to have a higher stacked live rock setting, like a pyramid. I think you have enough rocks in there. Try not to get to close to the glass, that way you can clean the algae when it starts to grow.