Reef Set Up

[xxBarneyxx]

As both your leather and zoas are not overly healthy at the moment (and both are pretty hardy corals) I would strongly recommend not adding anything more until these are ok.

I would agree that you have too many fish and not enough filtration. Both tangs are not suitable for this size of tank either I'm afraid.

Personally if I was you I would take a few of the fish back, make the changes that have been suggested and concentrate on getting some more LR and getting the corals you have into a healthy condition before adding anything more.

I know how tempting it is when you see all these amazing corals in the LFS but rushing now is not going to help. You need to make sure your system is healthy and thriving before you add anything more to it.

Are you testing the water quality at the moment? What are your water stats?

 

[Kaush]

the pH is 8.0, salinity is 0.022, the temp is 26, nitrates <20ppm and calcium 400ppm. Do you think maybe i should increase the salinity to above 0.022 because of the corals? Would the sponge need feeding or does it just filter the water? I feed the tank micro plankton so would this be enough for a sponge, and i feed the fish marine mix, could i feed this to a sea fan, what do they eat, and how often?

 

[BigC]

PH is slightly low, salinity need to be brought up to around 0.024- 0.026 Calc is sound. What are your Alk and Mg readings. Nitrate s are high aim for below 10 and lower if poss. Are you using RO.
If your new to this sideof the hobby I wouldnt be keeping sponges or non photosynthetic fans at this stage.
Need to do a we bit more research on certain areas methinks Bud!
As with all things, adjustments to water chemistry needs to be done very slowly and over a lengthy period of time.
BigC

 

[Kaush]

How can I increase the pH? Should I be doing water changes to reduce the nitrates. No I use tapwater which has been made safe using some drops.

 

[ben1987]

Water changes remove nitrates yeah. You will also have high nitrates as tangs are messy fish and produxe a lot of waste. Tap water will have a nitrate reading in it, test it as it varies on where you live. RO water would be better

 

[Kaush]

I dont have an RO unit at the moment, so how could I get RO water? I know my LFS used to sell RO water, and already salted water from their big tank, but since they closed their big tank down to make some changes, I do not know where to get RO water. Is there any way to increase pH? Another thing is that one of my chromis iis quite a bit lighter in colour than the other one. One has quite a dark top half of its boy and lighter bottom half, and the other is just light blue, and is not as energetic as the other. Is this maybe a difference in sex or is there something wrong with the lighter one?

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Raising your salinity will most likely raise your PH a bit as well. Agree on the nitrates, check what the nitrate level is in your tap water and if its low enough a few good water changes should help bring it back down. RO water would be a much better option though, especially if you want to keep corals.

As big C said non-photosynthetic critters are harder to keep and have higher requirements so I wouldnt recommend them either.

 

[seffieuk]

I dont have an RO unit at the moment, so how could I get RO water? I know my LFS used to sell RO water, and already salted water from their bug tank, but since they closed their big tank down to make some changes, I do not know where to get RO water. Is there any way to increase pH? Another thing is that one of my chromis iis quite a bit lighter in colour than the other one. One has quite a dark top half of its boy and lighter bottom half, and the other is just light blue, and is not as energetic as the other. Is this maybe a difference in sex or is there something wrong with the lighter one?

Just ring round your lfs and ask - anyone who is selling marine fish will probably also be selling RO water - however, for £65 you could buy your own unit see if you could do a few jobs or negotiate more studying time with the bank of mum and dad to earn the £ notes (lol we don't have £ notes any more do we!)

Seffie x



Fish can get darker or lighter when stressed

 

[Kaush]

Wats the difference between RO water and usd Prime on. The drops I use are called Prime, and it says that it removes Chlorine, Chloramine, Ammonia, Detoxifies Nitrite, Nitrate and provides Slime Coat.

 

[ben1987]

RO is ran through several filters making it near on perfectly pure. There are things in tap water that cant be removed by drops. No matte what the drops say they do they are never as good as RO

 

[Kaush]

Ok thanks for the info. I just did a water change and the nitrates are looking lower. I also rearanged the rocks so they look a bit more together and not just like induvidual pieces if you get what i mean. I will post some pics when everything settles down, but therre is a bit of a gap at the right hand end of the tank where there is not enough rock to do anything, so hopefully i will be getting some rock soon. Also, the slug i found a while ago seems to have grown quite a bit which is one of the reasons the algea levels have decreased, along with the two new tangs.

 

[Kaush]

AHHHH!! I woke up this morning and turned on the light as normal and my super tongan nassiurus flew out of the sand and started going up the rock work and kept falling down. 30 minutes later I walk by and I see my nassirus on top of my pyramid snail. I pulled out the nassirus but it was too late, its feeding tube type thing had already sucked out the pyramid snail! What the hell is up with that? Is this a normal thing?

 

[Kaush]

Well I have some updates, but not really good updates. The regal tangs white spot seems to have gotten worse, with some bump type things appearing on it. Unfortunatley I have lost both the chromis for unknown reasons. The first one that I wrote about, which had no colour was breathing rapidly and the same can be said for the second one as well. However the second one still had a lot of colour, and one thing I noticed about them both was that the black bit in there eyes was large when they were fine, and then when they began breathing rapidly before they died, the black bit which I guess is there pupil was much smaller than before. I have checked the nitrates and they are 0.3 mg/l. Does any one have any idea why they died? All the inhabitants seem to be fine, but the two tangs are still pretty secretive, hiding behind the rocks. Also there seem to a large number of different feather dusters appearing form the rocks, is there some reason for this?

 

[SkiFletch]

Hows your surface agitation? Possible you had poor gas exchange and they suffocated...?

 

[Kaush]

I have the powerhead facing a wall quite low so the sand does not get disturbed but there is still a lot of surface agitation, and I think maybe it is too powerful for the fish because the clown fish only swim in the opposite side by the heater, and the two tangs are always hidng, with the regal coming out to scratch on a shell. I have just added some LED lights that my mum got cheap, just for night viewing, and a little extra light during the day. They use batteries so I dont know how much their output is. They are JML ones like on tv, does anyone have any ideas on how many wats they are.

Here are some night shots.

The clowns

Moved the powerhead and intake

New coral frag

The lights

Also I found this thing on my frag of zoas, and it probably why they have not opened propaly for a while. The pic is not good but it is a reddy brown colour and has like fins stiking out of its back kind of like feathers. It is a nudi? I have a greeny brown slug in there already that came form one of the frags, and it has grown in size a lot, from about 2cm to an inch in 3months or so, guess its eating a lot of algea. But this one os more colourful I guess and more exotic looking if you know what I mean, so is it a coral eater or poisonous?