Reef Set Up

[Kaush]

Sorry for any misunderstanding. The fixture will be used with the existing 18W tube that is built into my tank. The new fixture is not a metal halide, but i will be using a marine white light 25W bulb in it. This is the bulb that i will be using Tube. It is the first one on the page, i currently have the 18W one, and I will be adding the 25W one so a total wattage of 43W.

 

[JakeKM]

I too am 16 and coming to the end of my GCSE's. A word of advice from one student to another, no offence intended here but if you struggle for money, get a job (part time ovcourse). Keeping marine animals is a costly hobby, i stress that it is well worth the effort but relying on my parents would not of covered the costs by far.
I started the hobby about two and a half years back and never to this day have i made an impulsive purchase, i always spend much time reading up on the animal regardless of what my LFS say. I would advise anybody to do the same.

 

[Kaush]

It has been a long time since my last update so here goes. I have been to Italy and a few other place on school trips, and so i left the tank in the hands of my family. All i told them to do is to feed twice a day and turn the lights on and off. I came back after about 2 weeks and the tank looks awsome. A lot of coralline growth all over the back wall, powerhead and filter parts and rock. The leather coral was pretty much in full bloom after a few weeks of 'hibernation', and my GSP's started to produce new heads. A small frag of zoas that i had high up in the tank that were not opening properly have now fallen onto the sand, but are doing suprisingly well, and have fully opened and have even developed a flourescent green centre, something they weren't showing in the LFS under MH lights. The one bad thing is that bubble algea is taking over some parts and one frag of zoas is not getting enough light because the bubble algea, and what looks a bit like caluapura is blocking the light.

I bought a BIG piece of ocean rock yesterday, just because i needed something to put a piece of GSP i fragged on, and i diddnt have the cash for a piece of live rock of the same size. Also, after treating the tank with Odinex i have introduced a fish for the first time in a while, a honey damsel, just to check the quality of the water and make sure there are no parasites left. I also have two hairy mushrooms and what looks like an 8 inch bristle worm.

I will post pics soon, but after the dissapointment of loosing all the fish, things are looking better.

 

[Kaush]

Well i write this update with mixed feelings. My cleaner shrimp died, it looks like it didn't shed properly. I have added a xenia frag which looks really good in the current. I am looking into upgrading my lighting and i wnet to the LFS today, and in the reptile section i found this Lighting unit. It is a dual ballast 25inch long 20W fitting. I was wondering if i could use this to increase the lighting in my tank. Would using normal florescent T8 tubes give it enough light to allow the coral to grow, it would 58W all together because i already have an 18W high output marine white light. Would it be ok for something like a hammer or frogspawn maybe?

I saw a fish which the LFS called a bluetriggerfish. It didn't look like a bluethroat because it was completly a dark blue colour. I am thinking it might be a juvenile niger trigger. Has anyone got any info on this species, would it be ok with coral?

 

[ben1987]

dont buy it, it will outgrow your tank several times over

 

[Kaush]

I have been busy with GCSE matters, so I have not been able to update, but I had a few hours to spare today so I decided to take some pictures:

FTS:

Xenia - I had to turn off the powerhead to view the pulsing

Hairy Mushrooms:

GSP:

Zoa colony, with light being blocked by bubble algae:

Zoa frag:

Sea weed type algea growing really big:

Honey Damsel:

Now my recent addition is quite risky, but very attractive. I was at the LFS and I talked to one of the people there about a nice looking mandarin they had, but he told me they couldn't get it to eat frozen, but they had some scooters which were....
so introducing my latest addition:

Hanging out by the feather duster:

You can see the dead acropora that I picked up in the background here:

There are some very large bristle worms in my tank:

they mostly come out during feeding time

Coraline growth from the back of the tank:

I fed some frozen marine mix a couple of hours after the scooter had settled in, and he is eating and looking active, mostly eating the brine shrimp pieces, so I might go and get some live brine shrimp in a few days. He is looking very active and searching the rocks and the sand for his natural food source. How does he look, I am not sure how to judge if he is looking healthy, the only thing I went on was that he is very active and eating well, but does he look to thin?

 

[seffieuk]

Right, a few things:

firstly hope revision is going well

what sort of a cuc do you have?

Does the finger leather ever show its polyps

The Xenia looks mighty close to the leather?

Oh dear, a scooter blenny is not in fact a blenny but a Dragonet, you will need to feed him with copepods - so you had best set up a culture quickly, will take about three weeks until you can harvest so until then buy a weekly supply. check on fleabay. If you can see the bone which runs down his side then the chances are it is already too late He can't live on frozen brine shrimp alone!

Seffie

 

[Kaush]

The revision is going well thanks, boring, but it must be done.

The cuc that I have in there at the moment is 1 super tongan nassirus snail, who doesnt seem to do that much, and 2 common hermit crabs. I have had cleaner snails like trubos, but they seem to die after they eat all the algea, even though I put green seaweed in for them.

The leather is always open, but before I took this picture I fed some flakes, and some landed on the leather, and the feeder shrimp were walking all over it.

The Xenia is touching the leather, but they both seem to be doing fine.

The scooter is eating, looks quite plump, cant see any bones, but I guess I might take it back and get a fish that will eat flakes and pellets.
Does anyone have any recommendations for a new fish for the tank?

 

[Kaush]

Well I returned the Scooter, as I in the summer I will be going on holiday for a few weeks, and there will be no one to feed frozen food, only flakes and pellets. I returned it and got an African Midas Blenny. The LFS worker was not sure if it would take flakes, as they mainly feed pellets and frozen, so when he put flakes into the tank it was the first to go and feed from it. It is not a uniformed gold like in the pictures I have seen on the internet, it has some darker orange areas, but I am putting this down to stress. Does anyone have any advise on this fish? When I first put him in he was sitting on top of the rocks, and was breathing quite heavily, I had'nt seen him for a while so I moved some rocks and found him curled up, so i decided not to interrupt him and left him alone. Is this normal for him to hide like this?

 

[scott133]

hi

if it was me i would leave you tank alone and not add anything for 3/4 week just leave to settle

regars scott

 

[Kaush]

Managed to get some shots of the new blenny, it was quite difficult to get him to stay still for long enough. He was very shy and secretive for the fist day, but after that he has become more bold and frequently swims in the water column, and is eating flakes and pellets voraciously.

Leather shed yesterday, polyps starting to open up now

The Midas is a beautiful fish, and I especially love the blue eyes

 

[seffieuk]

He certainly is lovely and fairly rare I believe

Seffie x

 

[ben1987]

i love blennys, i have a bi-colour and my mate ahd a midas. They are so funny

 

[Kaush]

UPDATE!!!!

Sorry it has been a while since I last updated. I have been very busy with GCSE's and work experience. It has been a year this month since I began my adventure in the salty side of aquatics so I thought I should show everyone the progress that has been made:

In the beginning -

Now -

My new anchor/hammer coral. I am not sure which one it is, but it was sold to me as a 'cabbage coral', and only cost me £25. It has opened quite nicely, especially considering my light levels.

Now this next pic is of my honey damsel when I first got him -

And this is him now -

He has lost a lot of his colour, and has grown really big, the biggest damsel I have seen other than the Garibaldi.

My African Midas Blenny chilln' where my feather duster used to be -

And introducing my latest additions, and probably my last fish additions - a pair of percula clowns -

Seeing double -

They look really orange compared to the last pair I had, that might be because the last pair were occelaris, but I am not sure. I originally thought that these guys had been dyed or somthing.

Now for some coral - Here you can see my slightly hairy mushroom and a small frag of Red Sea Xenia

There used to be another mushroom on that frag, but whilst I was on holiday the frag fell of the rockwork and the mushrrom detached itself

Here is the original frag of xenia that I bought. It has now increased in size and has spread to other areas of the tank, including the picture above with the mushroom.

Here is another area where the xenia has spread to, a dead acropora -

This is a pic of my star polyps which are just starting to come back. They too fell off the rockwork face first into the sand, and I thought they were dead for a while but they are coming back!! -

Here is my leather coral, the oldest member of the community - sulking as usual -

Middle of the tank -

Snail -

Crab -

Some pics of my beautiful bicolour angel -

He is quite a shy and skittish fish but is the king of the tank, that is except for this guy....

My beautiful Snowflake Eel. I know the pictures are bad, but since I recently moved the rocks a bit he sits in the back where it is hard to get a pic of him, but I will try to get some good pics during feeding. Speaking of feeding, this little guy has baffled the people at the lfs. He will only eat cockle, and sometimes muscle meat, instead of lance fish, which is supposed to be his favourite. Any lancefish put near him won't even get a second look, whereas cockle meat will be slowly, but surely gobbled up. He only eats once or twice a week though, and only about one piece of meat each time. Is this normal or should be eating more? He is about just under a foot long at the moment.

Some other pics

After months of being M.I.A, the mushroom that detached from the rock seems to have found a nice resting place, but hasnt attached to the rock yet.

And finally, a FTS of what the tank used to look like, for comparison -

Please feel free to comment on how you think the tank looks now, and suggestions for improvements.

 

[milkton]

hi, first want to congratz u wit the nice transformation of the tank! huge difference and looks a lot nicer!

second, would want you to know that u should wait 1-3 weeks before adding another specimen to your tank once u add something so that it doesnt overload your bacteria. attention - there is a possibility of you losing all those creatures because of adding to quickly. right now im 14 years old and started the hobby at 13. from this past year i learned ALOT! when i first made a tank, i rushed things and bought many fish at once without the cycle without anything. after 2 weeks, everything died.

learned my lesson to not rush things, bringing this up cause i can see that you are. advice will be to stop buying new specimens and make your water param's excellent, hold it for bout 2 weeks and wait till it stays perfect cause fluctuating water params are dangerous. after that, u should focus towards equipment and such. once u got that covered, you can buy the most expensive fish at your LFS that matches with ur tanks capacity and ability with NO worries. after that last year i had when my fish died, my parents wouldnt trust me with expensive fish anymore so i decided to take my own advice and stop and cool down, i hope you can learn from this because i certainly have. now im free from the restrictions of my parents because they trust me now, i know i still have lots to learn and experiences not experienced, i dont think im the best person to trust with this hobby but i can give advice from my experiences, there is a start for everything.

srry if im being a bit rude but i dont want you to feel the pain i did when my fish died. besides all that, GOOD LUCK with your new tank!!!

PS. ur first few posts said taht ur tang had ich, shouldnt ich be hiding in your sand? why isnt it on your new fish???

hope this helps