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Offline johncuth1170 (JohnC)

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Finally have fish - Yay
« on: March 18, 2011, 11:12:27 PM »
I am now an official SW aquarium keeper. I bought 2 tank raised ocellaris clownfish about 3 weeks ago and they have been in the aquarium about 2 weeks. They are eating eagerly and have already settled their dominance issues. In fact I am already seeing one of the fish growing faster than the other. They are the cutest things. Amazing personality and always at the front glass.  The funniest thing I saw was: I have my 2 aquariums kiddie-corner to each other. I've seen the clownfish hanging out at the tank wall nearest my freshwater tank and my pearl gouramis were at the tank wall nearest the saltwater tank. Both sets of fish were swimming up and down in unison. I really wonder what each was thinking.

Current state of the tank is that I  did lose one emerald crab. I don't know if he died as a result of an environmental issue or the other larger crab (now called Hannibal for obvious reasons) killed him. If it was environmental then it must have been transient as I didn't detect any change in salinity, ammonia, NitrIte, NitrAte, pH or dKH. All the other livestock seems to be doing well - except for a couple of dumb nerite snails that haven't been able to right themselves after falling, and a few dwarf ceriths that a couple of the hermits have evicted.

The issues I'm facing now are slowly rising phosphate levels contributing to the level of film alage (I need to clean the glass every 3 days) and 2 small patches (about the size of a dime) of hair algae. I think I'm at the "green algae" stage - about half of the live rock is covered with a calciferous bright (I mean fluorescent) green algae which the trochus snails seem to love. So I have a pound of GFO coming in the mail.

The guy I got the clownfish from is going to let me know when he gets a really good Royal Gramma in.

I love this hobby. :)
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There is however one important underlying principle which must apply to all who have anything to do with living things. We must reconize the dignity which all creatures posess, and we must respect it for as long as we have them in our charge. - "Coldwater Fish" by Roy Pinks

Offline LittlePuff

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Re: Finally have fish - Yay
« Reply #1 on: March 19, 2011, 11:02:04 AM »
 :up:
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90gal Upgrade from the 55gal.
55gal 5"porcupine puffer, 2 clownfish, 1 molly, and chocolate chip starfish, one Orange Diamond Goby

Offline johncuth1170 (JohnC)

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Re: Finally have fish - Yay
« Reply #2 on: March 21, 2011, 11:54:49 PM »
A couple of pics....
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There is however one important underlying principle which must apply to all who have anything to do with living things. We must reconize the dignity which all creatures posess, and we must respect it for as long as we have them in our charge. - "Coldwater Fish" by Roy Pinks

Offline marcelle

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Re: Finally have fish - Yay
« Reply #3 on: March 22, 2011, 12:19:14 AM »
Hello, I don't have a lot of informations about salt water tanks, but this looks really nice and your fishes are so cute. Congratz... :)
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Offline ShieldWolf

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Re: Finally have fish - Yay
« Reply #4 on: March 22, 2011, 12:36:51 AM »
Congrats on a job well done. I've always wanted to try a saltwater setup. Maybe & that's a big maybe lol, I can use this as motivation to do one.
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Ever notice in the Bible, whenever God needed to punish someone,make an example or needed a killing, he sent an angel? Ever wonder what a creature like that must be like? An existence spent praising your God, but always with 1 wing dipped in blood. Would you really want to see an angel?

Offline johncuth1170 (JohnC)

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Re: Finally have fish - Yay
« Reply #5 on: March 22, 2011, 10:28:27 PM »
Thanks guys - I really appreciate it. A big thanks goes to Aiptasia and LittlePuff - their help and advice was invaluable.
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There is however one important underlying principle which must apply to all who have anything to do with living things. We must reconize the dignity which all creatures posess, and we must respect it for as long as we have them in our charge. - "Coldwater Fish" by Roy Pinks

Offline jbmathwiz

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Re: Finally have fish - Yay
« Reply #6 on: March 27, 2011, 10:13:25 PM »
Sweet tank dude, how big is it? Are you planning on any more additions besides the Gramma? Also is this going to be a reef tank, fish only, etc? Just curious... It looks great so far! Keep up the good work, and post more pictures if you have a chance.
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Offline johncuth1170 (JohnC)

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Re: Finally have fish - Yay
« Reply #7 on: April 02, 2011, 12:42:41 AM »
Thanks JB. The tank is a 29G. As for new additions - there will only be one more as I like to keep my tanks well understocked (e.g. in my 75G I have 4 pearl gouramis, 1 emperor tetra, 1 Cory Metae - my oldest fish , 4 sids, 6 kubotais, and some unknown number of otos). The choice is between a Royal Gramma or (my wife's preference) a Fridmani Dottyback.

I intend to keep it as a FOWLR for the forseeable future - though a colleague has asked if I want any of his mushrooms. I want to get into a routine and get my hands wet with this tank before I try anything more ambitious. I had forgotten how bad salt creep could be. :)

I will definitely post more pics especially of some of the other fauna (e.g. there are some pineapple sponges in the patch of red macro algae you can see in the pic above).
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There is however one important underlying principle which must apply to all who have anything to do with living things. We must reconize the dignity which all creatures posess, and we must respect it for as long as we have them in our charge. - "Coldwater Fish" by Roy Pinks

Offline jbmathwiz

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Re: Finally have fish - Yay
« Reply #8 on: June 06, 2011, 12:07:52 AM »
Any updates John?
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Offline johncuth1170 (JohnC)

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Re: Finally have fish - Yay
« Reply #9 on: July 06, 2011, 12:06:43 AM »
Hi JB. Apologies for missing your question - work was extremely hectic in may and june.

Here's a quick update....

The tank has been set up for just over 6 months and I'm very happy with it.

My big plans of getting a Royal Gramma had to be cancelled as about 2 & 1/2 months ago a colleague asked if I would be interested in taking his pygmy angel which had just started nipping at his corals. So after doing some research I agreed. A couple of days later my colleague came in to work with two buckets. One had the angel and the other had a medium sized rock that had about half a dozen different colored mushrooms on it.

After 2 weeks of quarantine in a 10G tank I have (during which the angel would only eat frozen mysis) it was added to main tank. After about another 2 weeks of shyness (and picky eating - though it did clean up a small patch of hair algae) I have to say the angel is doing great and eats pretty much everything. It is an extremely active fish - constantly darting in and out of gaps of the live rock. And it satisfies my wife's wish for something blue.

My clowns are also doing splendidly - they have grown (almost doubled in size) and have associated with with one of the Koralia powerheads. The angel and clowns do not interact much - though they all rest behind the same rock at night.

The mushroom rock that my colleague gave me is now absolutely covered - there must be around 20 mushrooms now.

Skimmer has worked flawlessly and I'm getting ready to do a thorough clean of the pump, impeller, and air intake - and clean the skimmer exterior.

One issue I've had is that for some reason I lost all my trochus snails. All of them ended up on the sand (right side up) and wouldn't move. After a couple of days I would lift the shell only to see the nassarius  snails feasting on the carcass.

The other issue is that I'm currently battling a minor outbreak of cyano that started after I added a couple of pieces of dry rock from bulkreefsupply. To fix that I've been siphoning out the loose stuff during water changes, cutting down on feeding, cut down on lighting hours, and tweaking the flow directions of the powerheads and skimmer. I'll probably get some more trochus as they did a great job of cleaning up diatoms and cyano previously.

Apart from those 2 issues - everything is going great. Maintenance is a breeze. I'll add some more pics in a day or 2.
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There is however one important underlying principle which must apply to all who have anything to do with living things. We must reconize the dignity which all creatures posess, and we must respect it for as long as we have them in our charge. - "Coldwater Fish" by Roy Pinks


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