We stopped by our LFS today to pick up some freshwater fish for my Grandma's aquarium and stumbled on a couple of things.....we didn't get any freshwater stuff!

Our 1st purchase was a purple w/green center aussie blasto. Only a single head but we have no doubt that it will grow well.

2nd was another dragonface pipefish. We lost one of our original pipefish a few weeks after we brought him home, he never switched over to frozen. Our other original pipefish (ironically the smaller of the two) doesn't eat red bugs. He switched over to frozen right away and refuses to touch red bugs needless to say it is getting a little rough on the corals dipping them all the time. Hopefully the new guy will take care of the never ending red bug battle.

We also said goodbye to a few of our corals that we've had since the beginning last week.
We had a hammer coral that started out as one head approx two years ago (the beginning of the nano-cube) that we sold back to the LFS with over 30 heads. It was sad when we went in there today to see it in all 5 head frags.
Also our doughnut coral. We got it around the same time as the hammer coral. It came to us with a diameter of maybe a 1 1/2", now it is 7" in diameter. It also went back to the LFS.

Nice new additions! How is the original dragonface?

The original is doing good. He eats frozen cyclopeze, frozen nutramar ova and pods. He will only eat red bugs if we blow them off the acro, then he will pick them off the rock. He has grown a little, looks skinny compared to the new one but I think it is because he is half as long and a quarter in diameter.

I'm very glad to hear he's eating well.

We have some new additions to share with everyone. We placed an order through LiveAquaria. David has wanted a porcelain crab for some time (our LFS never gets them in), so we got a pair. Katie has wanted a Starry Blenny since our algae blenny passed away, so we got one. David also has a theory on acropora crabs......he thinks they might help with the red bugs, so we got two.

Here are a few pics of the porcelain crabs and blenny, the acro crabs are hiding. Sorry for the bad blackberry pics

I love the new additions. I think the acro crabs might help red bugs too.

FTS?

Thank you very much, we like them too. The porcelain crabs have found their home in our ricordea garden. It is pretty neat.

Yea Porcelain Crabs are really cool!

Went to the LFS for DI like we always do... And these plates caught our eye. Supposidly they all came in super bleached and were starting to color up. At $25 we couldn't pass this one up! We really hope it ends up a cool color. What do you guys think it'll end up looking like? This pic is taken at night with the camera flash... Ill take a better one later with the tank lights.

Cool new plate!

It looks like it gets purple.

Well I don't know how stuff like this keeps happening but we went to a different LFS to pick up live rock for Katie's aquarium (well both aquariums) and stumbled on this scoly..... The ballast went bad in the tank they had it in so it has been without light for over a week. Think he will recover? For $35 we thought it was worth a gamble.


Edit: It looks better than this picture makes it look. Lights are off and it was taken with a flashlight and phone camera

Edit #2: And it was eating mysis in this pic

I think it'll do better.

Nice Finds lately!

They had another one too. Kinda regretting not getting it now that we are home and how good it looks in the tank.

Go Back

They are closed now and our schedule for the rest of the week is not too conducive to their schedule. Maybe over the weekend we will see if they still have it......

sorry for the lack of updates to anyone who is tagging along. I'm sad to say the beautiful scoly didn't make it one night after feeding it a hermit crab must have tried to pull the food mysis from its mouth and injured it. Tissue started receding from the mouth outward and soon you could see the entire inside was hollow Our CUC eventually cleaned up all the dead tissue except for a small piece around the size of a marble that fell off. This was a few weeks ago, and the piece still has color and has come around to form a sort of ring! I'm really hoping it'll come back! .

On another note, we got about 5 emerald and one red mithrax crab and they seemed to eat almost all of the gelidium algae we were plauged with . It is still growing on the back wall however and on the koralias... We have chaeto in the sump and gracilaria and I can't seem to get the nitrates down even with twice a week water changes. Been running a bag of carbon and a bag of phosban trying to help with the algae growth but nothing happens nitrates hover around 10ppm and phosphates come back around or at zero.

Sooooo... I've been doing a lot of research and decided to take the plunge and get a sulfur denitrator . I set it up yesterday and it needs to run for a couple weeks for the anoxic bacteria to start colonizing the sulfur media, but when they do... Bye bye nitrates, and hello heavier feeding of the corals . Ill try to keep posting updates on how its working and I swear to get new pics up soon.

Oh and animalmaster, the candy cane is still for sale

And my 125 is still not ready

It should be ready for corals by October/November.

So here is a little mini update. New SPS - too many to list (Garf Bonsai and Pink Lemonade included). We also said goodbye to a few old friends. Our purple firefish died. He was our second fish in the old nano-cube. Also the pipefish have all died. The last one - which was the 1st one - finally passed away. Also the porcelain crabs died. Don't know what happened to them but they both passed away within a week of each other. Its been a sad couple months for fish, but the corals are doing well. Some of our favorites are growing like weeds. Think we are going to make a trip to the store to replace some fish today.
P.S. If anybody is looking for corals we still have a bunch of stuff we can sell. Rics, blasto, candy cane, should frag the duncan and a couple chalices. Hopefully we will update the pictures someday soon.
Happy late new year
Katie and David

Hope to see some new pics!

I'll be posting some pics today. Nothing too fancy. Most of the new SPS are adapting to our lights... they came from a tank with 4x400W Radiums and they were up near the top.... ya, we don't have that kind of light So they browned out a little, now they're coming back, just taking their time.

Also the check valve on the aqua-doser failed over the Christmas weekend, so instead of dosing calcium 4 times a day like its supposed to... it didn't dose for almost 3 days before I caught it. Needless to say the Alk was fine (the check valve on that side was fine thank God) but the calcium was at like 280... Our pipe organ doesn't like the low calcium so its been closed for a while. Today is the first day its back open! And the SPS weren't too happy either...

Sulfur denitrator seems to be working well. We had another Gelidium algae bloom after the firefish died (it died where I couldn't remove it), but its starting to go away again. Red mithrax crabs do a great job keeping it off of the rockwork, they just need a little help getting it off of the back wall. Needless to say our chaeto and ulva in the sump isn't growing very fast because the denitrator and the bag of rowaphos is taking all of its food .

Oh and a few months ago our metal halide bulbs were swapped out: Phoenix 24K's for Radium 20K's. The radiums are actually 175W not 150W so we got a new external Galaxy fixture (which gets a lot of heat out of the fixture). The lighting is whiter, brighter, and everything has responded very well!

PICS!!!


tube anemone


candy cane


neon green Candy cane


ORA green duncan, and orange crush acan


Yay pipe organ finally opened!


blue polyp monti capricornis between green slimer and orange digitata


idaho grape cap, neon green cap


huge orange cap


laserbeam chalice


true undata, miami hurricane acan echinata


ORA blue/green paly's


baby orange ric


baby green ric


hollywood stunner chalice (its on the frag rack cuz it has long sweepers...)


wow! our crocea clam got big!


aussie blasto colony


ric garden

I love those aussie blastos and the candy canes.

Well, are you ready for the candy cane yet?!?!?

No, not very close

Your clam isn't a crocea. It is a Deresa and very nice looking.

Your laserbeam chalice and red blastos are sooo pretty.

Hmm good to know. My girlfriend just said "I told you so!" Haha. What's the difference? And thanks on the blasto's and chalice .

Hmm good to know. My girlfriend just said "I told you so!" Haha. What's the difference? And thanks on the blasto's and chalice .

Here is a good website to tell you a little bit about each of the different clams.
There are visual differences on the clams shell. The deresas is smoother than the crocea and the mantle has a different shape and color pattern.
http://animal-world.com/encyclo/reef/clams...aDerasaClam.php

Hmm good to know. My girlfriend just said "I told you so!" Haha. What's the difference? And thanks on the blasto's and chalice .

Wow so its been a while since we posted anything on here... I'm sorry about that for anyone who was following. We still have the tank and we still get new stuff on a regular basis, we have just been very busy lately...

But right now, I'm actually doing a red bug treatment with interceptor so I'll post the pictures and the results when I'm done. A lot of our acro colonies have bleached because of these little buggers... I've tried everything and interceptor is our last resort... so I'm currently treating the whole tank.. :/ We're on minute 30 though and I'm definitely seeing some changes in the red bugs behavior! I'll keep ya'll posted!

Red bug treatment is over. Here is my treatment information and results/side effects.

I want to first make a disclaimer that it is illegal to use prescription medication in any way not outlined on the package. I obtained my Interceptor through my own means and am knowingly using it for its non intended use. If anyone should choose to follow my lead I accept no responsibility for anything that happens in your tank because of your treatment. I wish to post my results of my treatment so that others may learn from it and use my experience to make their own decisions regarding red bug treatment. As it stands, Interceptor is the only known pesticide to effectively kill red bugs.

First, I did a lot of research on the interceptor treatment and figured out my plan of attack. I calculated my "estimated" water volume in the main tank using the java calculator found here. The accepted dosage rate is 25mg of the crushed up pill per 10 gallons of water. I found my calculated water volume to be 57 gallons, measuring up from the top of the sand bed to the water line with the return pump off. I then imagined how many 5 gallon buckets my live rock and the overflow would fill up and I estimated at least 10 gallons. I based my dosage on a water volume in the tank of 45 gallons, for a dosage of 125mg Interceptor.

Contrary to some peoples beliefs, I turned off the return pump for my sump/fuge. Most believe that the interceptor needs to come into contact with EVERY nook and cranny and surface in your tank to be effective. I don't believe this to be the case. I believe they stay localized to their host corals, and with multiple treatments I believe that all the life cycles of the red bugs will be killed eventually. I prefer to try to keep as many pods alive in my fuge as possible. I did however run an air stone and the koralias in my main tank to keep the water as oxygenated as possible. Here is the timeline and results of treatment.

10:08am -Bombs away!

15mins elapsed: fish and shrimp are lively, everything looks normal

30mins elapsed: Some red bugs are "loose" on the corals while others are running around frantically.

45mins elapsed: all the red bugs are "loose" or "swaying in the breeze" or not moving

1hr elapsed: I think they're all dazed or dead... or dying.. The shrimp is acting very slow and I haven't been able to see the acro crab so I don't know how he is doing... The red leg hermits are still alive and moving around, but the blue leg and striped leg hermits and either dead or paralyzed.

1hr 15mins: nothing different

1hr 30mins: used the turkey baster and blew most of the red bugs off the corals. Some are still either clinging or stuck to the coral, but none are moving around. All hermits are dead. Shrimp is very still. Finally saw the acropora crab... it's very still as well.

1hr 45mins: Shrimp has gone back into the rock work. Acro crab is still, possibly dead.

2hr 15mins: Can't find the shrimp, Acro crab is actually still alive but barely... No red bugs in sight. The stragglers must have fallen off.

2hr 45mins: I have done a thorough search for red bugs and I cannot find any. I believe the shrimp to be dead. The acro crab is dead too... Hermits have been long dead... This treatment is not without its side effects. I am doing a 20 gallon water change and then placing two large bags of carbon in the tank. I will leave the bags in the tank for 30 mins, and then I will turn the return pump on and place the carbon in the sump.

3:15pm Everything is looking good in the tank coral wise. I believe the corals really liked the large water change... I wish I had the time and resources to do a wc this size more often. I fished the acro crab out from behind the stylophora (its home). It isn't "limp" so maybe its just dazed... I sat it on top of the stylo colony and its legs have "grasped" the coral. Not so sure if thats just rigor or its alive but we'll see. I'm not very hopeful.

As you can tell this treatment is not without its side effects. I tried for days to capture the acro crab and shrimp with no luck, so I decided to do the treatment anyway. I read one account of someones shrimp becoming dazed and still and looking dead, only to come back later so I still have a very small hope, but we'll see... I plan on doing another treatment in the coming days like many suggest. We'll see if any red bugs come back. Here are some pictures from the treatment. Before and after.

So interceptor update: Acropora crab dead, cleaner shrimp dead, emerald crabs dead, all hermit crabs dead, tube anemone alive, tiger tail cucumber alive, pencil urchin in sump alive, feather duster alive.. red bugs definitely dead. So the treatment isn't without its casualties. Judging by when I thought the red bugs were dead and when I did the water change I may have been able to save the invents if I had stopped the treatment earlier. I'm not sure if the red bugs would have been all the way dead.

On a brighter note I'm going to begin culturing my own phyto of strains Nanochloropsus, Tetraselmis and Isocrysis. I'm going to reseed pods after doing one more treatment I think. Looking forward to having a red bug free tank!

Well im glad the treatment got rid of the bugs although it sucks there were casualties. Hopefully you got rid of all of them and wont have to deal with them again anytime soon.

Thanks. ya it totally sucks about the casualties. I tried for a week to get them out with no luck... nets, traps, my hands... we are just a prime example of why its so important to dip your coals before putting them in your tank. were not sure where exactly we got them from but they've been plaguing our tank for at least a year now. were really looking forward to the acros coloring back up.

Did you guys ever consider trying a wrasse,pipefish or mandarin. I had red bugs in one of my first tanks and my target mandarin at the time decimated them.

Sorry to hear of all the troubles
I'm glad they sem to be getting better though!

We had 3 dragonface pipefish. Apparently they didn't care for them and they were more interested in nutramar ova... and we have a Hawaiian flame wrasse who isn't the nicest fish so getting another wrasse like a six line probably wouldn't have been the best idea. We never tried a mandarin because we didn't feel we had the pod population to keep one alive. Too many pod eaters already...




Thanks. Ya it was a last resort kind of thing with the interceptor. I really hope they don't come back. It's recommended to do 3 treatments... one a week after the first, and one two weeks after the second. We'll see if I need to do that, I don't really want to but I really want those red bugs gone. They started as just a few on our acro validia and stayed that way for a long time but then they spread and it was all over...

Nice to see you posting on here again.
Hopefully, this will take care of the problem for you.
I have a tablet of interceptor in my ReefMed cabinet myself, haven't had to use it yet.

Thanks weetie! So far no red bugs have popped back up... aaannnnndddd..... OUR SHRIMP SURVIVED!!!! I woke up this morning to our shrimp hanging upside-down under his favorite cap! He must have just been dazed. Acro crab definitely died though, because bristle worms were cleaning up his remains :/

I hope you never have to use it, but if you do it seems pretty effective. Just try your hardest to remove all the inverts first!

So no signs of red bugs coming back yet. Acros are getting their color back and our purple validia looks better than it has in at least a year. I'm starting to culture 3 different types of phyto: nanochloropsis,tetraselemis,and isochrysis. Going to be using it for our reef and possibly selling it depending on how well it does.

Still no red bugs! Acro's continue to color up and our purple validia has color on it (which it hasn't for over a year). I have a culture of nannochloropsys, tetraselemis which are going strong (they're getting very dark!) but the isochrysis is proving to be a pain to get going...

So isochrysis culture never started up... I now have 4L of tetra and 4L of nanno going. They are getting very very dark! Last measurements taken were at 14 million cells/ml for the nanno and 1.4million cells/ml for the tetra.

New Pics! Taken with my phone so don't mind the blue glow

So for anybody who cares, were still in the hobby... just not very active. Katie is working a ton and I am going to UC Davis now. This means I only have the weekends to take care of the tank. There are a few updates to the tank I'd like to share though.

1) B-Ionic calcium disaster... I have been fighting the check valves on my reef doser for quite some time now. With the super concentrated liquid going through them 2 times daily it seems to destroy any check valves I have ever tried, regardless of whether they were designed for liquid/chemical use. I have finally found some that sort of work, but they still have problems... Because of the fact that the liquid flows back into the B-Ionic container, the peristaltic pump fills with air and no longer accurately doses the 2 part. My solution? Raise up the containers to about the same level as the pump...... DON'T DO THIS!!!!! Gravity caused the liquid to flow from the calcium container (1 gallon) into the sump over the course of a couple days. I was unaware of this until I woke up one morning and everything in the tank was melting... Needless to say I had to shell out over $200 to have the aquarium guys come over (while I was at school taking a test!) and do a massive water change on the system. My salinity had gone over 1.030 and the calcium was out of the range of their tester (~800ppm). Lesson learned... gravity is a force to be reckoned with . Thankfully none of the fish or inverts died, only some of the corals. Things are doing much better now.

2) We lost our tang sometime before the above accident... He was doing just fine one day and the next I couldn't find him. He was a voracious eater and got an algae sheet every other day, and mysis/cyclopeze/nutramar ova mix the days inbetween. I have a hard time believing he died of starvation but anything is possible..

3) We lost the flame wrasse too! Actually just before we lost the tang IIRC... This was the saddest day because she was a beautiful fish and just like everything else we have no idea why we lost her. Like the tang she was a voracious eater so I doubt she didn't eat enough.

4) And probably the saddest is 3 days ago we lost our mated pair of clowns. We have had them since 8/1/09 (they were a late birthday present to me). I really can't say what happened to them because I have no idea... but they both died at the same time! I woke up and found the female dead under some zoa's on the right side, and the male dead on the bottom on the left side. The neon gobies are still alive and doing just fine so I have no idea what happened. Water chemistry checked out just fine but I did a 10 gallon water change just in case. No coral or invert deaths either...

So, through all these trials and tribulations I have decided that I need to spend more time with the aquarium on the weekends, making sure that everything is working. The problem with automating everything is that you automate yourself as well and you forget to check stuff and make sure that it is working properly. Also some of the corals have grown sooo much its actually pretty ridiculous. I think we need to have a fragging party one day because whole colonies are starting to grow onto each other and attack each other. Guess if I can find the time, we'll have a for sale thread up soon.