Orca Tl450 - Newbie Startup Step By Step Quest

[plutosmate]

Finally managed to pin Mork and Mindy to the same patch of water.
So here they are......


I'm struggling to locate a Watchman Goby, nearly every LFS in my area have only Ghost Goby's and wont obtain on for me.
SO.......I'm just gunna have to wait till one arrives.....

Mindy (female) is the larger of the two, the boss of the tank, Mork has a smaller fins

 

[BigC]

Nice shot of them together, bet you had to wait a good length of time before you got that shot. Mine are a little bit smaller than yours but one is starting to get a little bit boisterious with the other so I expect that one will turn out to be the female. What are you feeding yours on.
Regards
BigC

 

[plutosmate]

BigC

All I am feeding them is Frozen Brine Shrimp cubes.
I stop all the appliances except for the light, cut the cube into 1/3, thaw it in RO water and feed them. Within about 10 mins most of the food has been eaten, so then the flow, thermometer etc get switched back on.
Then the funny bit, as the flow is now back in the tank, they scramble like mad to get the food whizzing around the tank.

Got a slight disaster this morning, took a reading of the levels and the PH level is 7.2, so going to do a water change when I get home, hope they are ok for now......hopefully it will be ok.

 

[plutosmate]

Panic over..........ignore my PH reading, I had just fed the clowns and the readings were back to normal by the time I got home.

Lesson 28 - take proper readings and take your time

Still on the lookout for a watchman goby, saw one on ebay....but there is no way I'll buy live from the web......way too risky.
I think I was very lucky with the Green star polyp

 

[plutosmate]

Quick update and a question.

Mork and Mindy (Ocellaris Clownfish) are fine, Mindy (larger, more yellow one) is deffo the boss of the tank.
She has to finish eating before Mork can start.

I lost my small Left Handed crab last week, I noticed the shell was empty and now I have a brown circular patch on my sand......so I guess the other hermit crabs must have got hungry.

Now for my question, I am running a modified skimmer (as detailed in my earlier posts) but the top of the tank is has a covering of brown oily skim.
I dont know what it is, it looks ugly. One thing I am not doing is breaking the top of the water with the flow. It is pointing into the middle of the tank and the top is not rotating.......could this be the problem ?

 

[Anguilla82]

it would certainly help to break up the film and improve the oxygenation of the water.

 

[plutosmate]

Should I add another Flow or use the standard stock one and just rotate it up and ditrupt the surface ?
My only concern is the Green Star Polpy, at the moment it is just catching the flow.......move the flow will it hurt it ?

 

[plutosmate]

Just as a quick update really.....I have rotated the standard stock flow 45 degree.
Now the water is broken by the outbound flow from the 4th chamber.

The clowns seem ok with it now, the first time the freaked out, zipping around all over the place.

The brown film on the top of the water has disappeared......time to get the Joe's juice out again (lol)

 

[jflowers]

Nice thread

I use the Tropic Marin salt too, but i use the 'reef' version...
Tropic Marin Pro Reef, When mixed to 1.025 it has very good Magnesium and Calcium Lvls, 1380/430, much better than others i have tried.

Oh and love the 'Star' polyp too, heres mine



They grow nicely with a good flow over em.

Jon

 

[john.o]

Hello plutosmate

First of all let me just say nice journal I have just spent the past 1hr reading over it there’s some really good stuff in there.

I see you to are having problems with oily scum on the water surface as well . Have you considered fitting a hydor flo deflector?

Your tank has been set up for about the same sort of time as mine + or - a day I was to having problems with oily scum on the surface and like your self had my concerns about moving the water flow off my coral to disrupt the surface water so I added a hydor flo rotating water deflector to my filters outlet {there’s 5 adaptors in the kit so should fit most filters pumps ect} it rotates 360 creating a wave effect and breaking the water surface and moves the 1 coral which I have nicely giving me the best of both worlds. It means spending more money I no but it was only a £10 including delivery off a well known auction site and IMO it works really well {some thing for you to think about}

 

[plutosmate]

John,O

What i've done for the moment is spin the flow outlet (5 holes in a 4" tube) 45 dgree upwards.
The water is currently creating an arc out of the water. This is dramically changed the whole tank, the nemo's now only swim at the rear of the tank, the levels have stayed the same BUT the sand and LR has done through another cycle of colour. Brown pockets on the sand and green bubble alge again.

Where the flow went straight into the centre for the tank, now the water hits the right hand and spins around both front and back. Also loads of micro bubles, which I think are bad but not too sure.

 

[john.o]

Plutosmate

I had a similar thing happen to me when I added the koralia nano and the hydor flo deflector, I had micro bubbles coming out of my LR for days and it seemed to go through a small cycle, I think it was just because there was no flow as such around some of the live rock before. How the small cycle is complete my water parameters are much better 0ppm nitrate. As for the micro bubbles well I think I can remember reading that they are not harmful to most aquatic life, but some sensitive corals will not tolerate excessive bubbles in the water.
Hope this helps
Ps just a thought watch you haven’t got the spray bar pointing up to much you could get problems with salt creep

 

[plutosmate]

It's been a while since my last update, so here goes.

Mork and Mindy (Ocellaris Clownfish) still going strong, Mindy (female-i think) is the bigger boss of the tank, she has stayed the same colour whilst Mork has gone slightly darker and waits for Mindy to finish eating before he starts.
I'm down to only one snail, this has been down to Ernie the base jumper (red legged crab), he kinda like to take them out for lunch, but forgets to tell them they are lunch, I've lost 5 now. He has also taken out 1 other blue legged crab....I thought they were getting jiggey with it....but two days later he was no more (I was going to say stiff as a post....but thought better of it). He still base jumps every couple of days....mad to watch. (i'll try and chuck a vid on youtube)

Tank wise......I cant get ride of Aiptasia, I use good old Joe's jiuce just before I do a water change and suck up the remains of the critters......but give it 5 days and the blitters are back and they have friends.......so if there is any fish which like to eats them....please shout out. Grass is another problem, I've got several patchs of grass which keep on growing.......so a water proof lawn mower is next on the shopping list.

The Green Star Polyp......this is so cool to watch.....When i first bought it from ebay (I know before anyone shouts) it was the size of an english 50 pence piece........now......it's easily 3" square and growing. How can I split this? is it easy ? can I do it ? should I ?

Apart from that all is well, no additions fish wise.....I'm getting married in 4 weeks and then 3 weeks of honey moon ......so once I'm back I'll start stocking up......I dont trust anyone else in the feeding...so the less there is at the moment the better....plus my funds are going towards her....I mean our day (lol)

Thats it for the update......I'll take some piccies this weekend after the water change.
P.

 

[SkiFletch]

Sounds good, got pics?

As for the aiptasia, I've been using a new method with much success as I too experienced the same troubles with joes juice. Heck, I even tried injecting them with straight sulfuric acid... Instead, I now hit them with something to get them to withdraw into their hole in the rock. And then, I superglue their hole

 

[Truck]

we need an update.