Nat's 125 Litre Juwel Rio Marine!

[natwood]

Looks like they're both going to be fine. The lights are still out at the moment, but this morning the one that was poorly-looking last night is swimming around all the rocks and looking happy. The one that was fine all the time is right up at the top of the water swimming along the edge. Looks like it's just playing some weird game with the current. Haha. I can tell these guys are going to be entertaining to watch already ^-^

Emerald crab has moved to the rock with the bubble algae but hasn't yet eaten it. Hopefully it will soon!

I'll take some pictures of everything later when the lights are on.

 

[ben1987]

yeah lol, sounds good. if they dont feed today...try and get some live brine

one of mine is swimming really hard to get near the powerhead and then riding the current to the other side of the tank at the min nutters

 

[natwood]

I've got my skimmer running now.I think I'm going to cut the tubes a bit shorter as there doesn't seem to be any need for them to be sticking out that far into the tank.

I'm pretty sure one of my turbo snails is dead though unfortunately. It hasn't moved in 2 days, I've got it out and poked it a fair amount and there is absolutely no movement from it. It has a slight smell to it, but nothing shockingly bad like I've read. I don't want to have it in my tank if it's going to be polluting the water. Is it a goner?

My Ocean Nutrician food finally came today. I've just put a small amount in the tank and both clowns had a little nibble at it! Yay! Here's a picture of each of my clowns. The first one is slightly larger and a much brighter colour. The second one is a little bit of a lighter orange and is the one that struggled a bit when I put him in yesterday. They're both fine now though!

 

[natwood]

I decided to keep my striped shrimp in the end, all the LFS round here sell them so I didn't want to go around telling them that they weren't suitable for marine tanks (or so I've heard). Today I've spotted it with a big dark patch on the side of it's head though. It keeps itching itself too. Is this some kind of infection or will it just come off when it next sheds? I feel like I'm not having much luck at the moment!

 

[ben1987]

nice clowns nat. they look pretty young so you should get to see them grow up and one make the change


as for the shrimp i think its something to do with fluctuations in salinity that gives them those black marks. Im not 100% though

 

[natwood]

nice clowns nat. they look pretty young so you should get to see them grow up and one make the change


as for the shrimp i think its something to do with fluctuations in salinity that gives them those black marks. Im not 100% though

Yeah they're both only about 1-inch long, can't wait to see them get bigger. Haha.

That would make sense. My salinity dropped to about 1.021 at one point so I've gradually raised it up to 1.024. One of my cleaner shrimp did have a few black spots but they came off when it shed. Maybe the next time it shed it'll be all clear.

 

[natwood]

Clownfish are doing well. Both seem to be fairly well settled in and love frozen brine shrimp. My orange lip conch caused a bit of a landslide last night with my rocks, so I've have to rearrange a couple at the end that fell over. The conch really powers it's way through all the sand. It's so good for turning over my sand.

I've got loads of algae on my glass at the moment and only 2 snails that seem to prefer the rocks. Can I just scrub the glass with a sponge? I don't want to kill any copepods..my glass is covered in them!

Here's today's results:

SG: 1.025

pH: 8.1
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10

 

[Harry1996]

if you dont feed your clowns as much they will eat most of the copepods. i would get some macro algae so then the nitrate will go down a bit. thats what im going to do. it will save money on ro water. i know i will still need to do water changes but not as big ones to get the nitrate down.

 

[natwood]

if you dont feed your clowns as much they will eat most of the copepods. i would get some macro algae so then the nitrate will go down a bit. thats what im going to do. it will save money on ro water. i know i will still need to do water changes but not as big ones to get the nitrate down.

Thanks for that Harry. I've been having a read about Mangrove plants too.. sounds like they do a similar job.

 

[ben1987]

HI nat, glad the clowns are doing well...

nitrates of 10 are nothing to worry about at all...if there was another 0 on the end then maybe. But seen as you have no corals yet dont worry.

 

[natwood]

Ah right that's good. What kind of number should I aim to keep my nitrates at?

 

[ben1987]

Lower the better, but 10 is nothing to get worried about. Id put money mine being atleast that and i got a tank full of SPS
Fish are fine to like 100...id try keep them below 20

 

[natwood]

Ok, thanks for that.

I've noticed a few times now..at night when the lights are out in the tank and just the lamp in my room is on..the corner of the tank nearest the lamp is swarming with little round bugs. They're not the white copepods that are on the glass 24/7..they're like small 2mm balls with little black eyes that bounce around on the sand where the light is.

Right now my orange lipped conch is being swarmed by them and looks a bit freaked out. Are these just different types of pods? Are they normal?

 

[ben1987]

dont worry about it...crazy what you see in your tank at night when you should be asleep

 

[natwood]

This last week I decided to skip the water change to see what effect it had on my tank, as whenever I've done a water change, it hasn't seemed to affect my water. I've just done a test and here are the results..no change!

sg: 1.026
pH: 8.1
Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 10

I'm going to do a 10% water change now anyway just to make sure my water stays in good condition. Maybe my clownfish don't make too much impact on my tank just yet. They are pretty small afterall.

I'm thinking of getting a Phosphate test kit. I'm assuming my Phosphates are too high as I've never added any kind of Phosphate remover and the Coraline algae that came on my rocks has nearly gone now. My emerald crab seems to favour it over the bubble algae. There's a fair amount of algae on the glass that won't come off no matter how hard I scrub with a soft sponge, so I'm going to get myself an algae scraper. I've got a load of other weird algae growing which I don't have a clue what it is, it looks like orange/red leaves. Is it good or bad?

I also discovered that my cleaner shrimp who I named Pierre, is actually a Pierretta! She has loads of eggs inside her! I know that they're hermaphrodites..so does this mean that Pierre has been selected out of the 2 to be the female? You can't see in the picture that well but when she's nearer to the light they pretty much glow bright green.

At the moment my clownfish are only eating frozen brine shrimp which I don't want them to do all the time. I bought some King British marine food but they don't like that. My cleaner shrimp do so at least it wasn't a total waste. I was thinking of getting some other kind of flake food for them. Maybe the Nutrafin Max Marine Flakes.

Annoyingly my clownfish have decided to host my powerhead, which means they hang out around the back of my tank the majority of the time. Typical when I went to the effort of making loads of nice caves for them!