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Fry and Leela's Adventures - Moving tanks.


FishFrog

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Bristle worms will self regulate their population. When they become too many for the food supply to sustain they'll die off to a manageable level.

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Thanks, I was hoping as much. It sounds silly but I can hardly believe the amount of life in these rocks, it is really fascinating. Can't wait for our cuc.

~ Hester

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Still no sign of nitrates or nitrites. Lots of algae though.

 

attachicon.gifhttp://www.nano-reef.com/index.php?app=core&module=attach&section=attach&attach_rel_module=post&attach_id=131202'>image12.jpg

 

Starting to look like a furry hulk in there.

 

Looks like lots of algae already. I suggest gfo in a media bag or if you want to spend, a reactor. You wont detect nitrates because the algae is consuming it before you can detect it.

 

Although you will get a diatom and cyano bloom because the tank is new, this much algae seems like there are phosphates somewhere.

 

Are you using RODI water or tap water?

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We have only used reverse osmosis water. We have some carbon and ceramic rings, also a skimmer but we need to find a way to make it less noisy.

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Thanks, I was hoping as much. It sounds silly but I can hardly believe the amount of life in these rocks, it is really fascinating. Can't wait for our cuc.

~ Hester

 

Watching and discovering all the life that comes in with LR is one of my favorite parts of the hobby.

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wow.such.chris

I personally would advise you to start removing some of that algae as best you can. It's not going to just go away on its own and you don't want it to really get out of hand. Just started my first reef and for some reason I thought the stuff would just disappear post-cycle... boy was I wrong!

 

Great start by the way, looking forward to seeing where you take this.

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Have you thought of setting up a fuge with macro algae like chaeto to compete with the algae growing in the display tank? There are multiple ways of dealing with phosphates.... Its up to you to figure out which solution works best for you.

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I personally would advise you to start removing some of that algae as best you can. It's not going to just go away on its own and you don't want it to really get out of hand. Just started my first reef and for some reason I thought the stuff would just disappear post-cycle... boy was I wrong!

 

Great start by the way, looking forward to seeing where you take this.

Thanks for the tip! We are expecting our CUC at any time now, will they not take care of the algae do you think?

 

Have you thought of setting up a fuge with macro algae like chaeto to compete with the algae growing in the display tank? There are multiple ways of dealing with phosphates.... Its up to you to figure out which solution works best for you.

I would love to but I'm afraid that we won't have much room for a fuge. But I will have a look at some other options, thanks for the advice!

 

Watching and discovering all the life that comes in with LR is one of my favorite parts of the hobby.

Yeah definitely! I have spent so many hours sitting perfectly still, trying to catch something new and somehow it always shows up!

 

The mystery crab is out and walking about, I am praying that it goes into my trap!

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wow.such.chris

A cuc will definitely help but if you can remove some large chunks by hand do it. Cuc will eat it, then excrete it eventually turning into NO3 so I'd say if you can and have the drive to do it, do it!

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Removed a lot of algae with a old creditcard we cleaned. Will do some more tomorrow. It comes of pretty easily. Hopefully our CUC won't starve ;-).

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Well, the brown crab sat around the edge of our trap all evening. It didn't let go of the rock, to go in, though, so we will have to think of something else.

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No luck again last night. Woke up this morning to see an empty trap, so was automatically worried about what could have eaten the food and escaped.. Luckily we found the food on the sand somewhere, so it must have been blown out somehow (?), as it wasn't eaten. These crabs are giving us a run for our money...

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I have officially giving up on trapping that damn crab with food in a glass jar/shotglass. He just hovers around the edges. I think he only lives on one rock, which is luckily at the top. I'm going to try to flush him out with some clean water, with just a bit lower salinity.

~ Hester

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Well that went great. The crab, along with a bunch of worms and pods, ran out of the rock. The crab saw us coming though and hid back in the rock for hours. I have no idea what to do now so I'm going to wait and see if he shows up again. I actually just think the poor guy is dead. This crab is my Moby Dick.

~ Hester

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We decided to get rid of the rock the crab lived in. Not necessarily because the crab was living on it, but it's odd shape didn't allow for a stable scape. Since our CUC will be arriving on tuesday or wednesday, we thought it would be wise to make sure our scape was (life)rock solid before any livestock went in. Since the small piece kept being unstable, no matter were we put it, we got rid of it. Still have 15 pounds of LR in there which should be enough for the 13,5G of water we have in there.

 

The new looks:

 

post-82054-0-50471900-1386531334_thumb.jpg

 

The red dots you see are our Christmas lights :D

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We were supposed to pick up our CUC order today from our LFS. I just called to check if everything was okay and was told that they couldn't get the snails we wanted but they did have some Mexican turbo's and sea stars. So annoyed now. We will be ordering online from now.

~ Hester

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Yeah that's the kind of thing you have to be prepared for when ordering through a lfs like that. The store I worked at seemed to only get things in like that maybe 50% of the time. Sometimes we'd order something and it just wouldn't ship, most of the time it just wasn't available to order. Even as an employee I had to try several times just to get a specific fish to ship, and one fish (an extremely common one) I tried to get for around a year and never got it because it was never available.

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Yeah that's the kind of thing you have to be prepared for when ordering through a lfs like that. The store I worked at seemed to only get things in like that maybe 50% of the time. Sometimes we'd order something and it just wouldn't ship, most of the time it just wasn't available to order. Even as an employee I had to try several times just to get a specific fish to ship, and one fish (an extremely common one) I tried to get for around a year and never got it because it was never available.

:( It is a shame. I would rather support a small shop (only local one which does reef tanks) than buy over the Internet, but the way they do business really isn't great. If you can't get an order then at least let us know instead of just forgetting about it. This as well as the fact that the shopkeeper continuously tries to sell us urchins, starfish, dragonets and other animals which (at least according to most accounts here) are really not suitable for a nano tank, has made me lose faith in them. It is too bad.

~ Hester

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Another big thing was things weren't ordered because they just weren't. If I was there on ordering day I always stuck my head in the office at least a couple times to ask if such and such had been ordered. Another common problem is things not being passed on, such as a customer placing the order with one employee only for that employee to never pass it on. And another huge problem my store had was nobody would follow up with the customers, so we ended up with a lot of people getting upset because they were never called and told if something came in or didn't come in.

 

Granted all stores aren't like that, but mine was.

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I like the layout you used with the rocks, gives for plenty of hiding places for the fish and inverts.

 

Which LFS did you use in Amsterdam? I have WaterWeelde here in The hague, not sure how far of a drive that would be for you guys.

 

I am getting ready to start my tank next year january after all the december bills have been paid (stupid vacation I took cost me a fortune). And i'm still debating on getting either LR from WaterWeelde or from AquariaVeldhuis (online). WaterWeelde uses Maricultured rock and AquariaVeldhuis sells the Indonesian LR.

 

Also do you do the SW yourself? Or do you end up being it at the LFS since its such a low quantity? Same for RO/DI water?

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I like the layout you used with the rocks, gives for plenty of hiding places for the fish and inverts.

 

Which LFS did you use in Amsterdam? I have WaterWeelde here in The hague, not sure how far of a drive that would be for you guys.

 

I am getting ready to start my tank next year january after all the december bills have been paid (stupid vacation I took cost me a fortune). And i'm still debating on getting either LR from WaterWeelde or from AquariaVeldhuis (online). WaterWeelde uses Maricultured rock and AquariaVeldhuis sells the Indonesian LR.

 

Also do you do the SW yourself? Or do you end up being it at the LFS since its such a low quantity? Same for RO/DI water?

Dankjewel!

 

The only saltwater LFS in Amsterdam (that we could find) is called 'Aquarium Holgen', I believe they have a shop in the Hague too. The people are very friendly and their RODI water is very cheap, but like we said before, not getting the best advice/service there as it turns out.

We bought our LR from Holgen, it was also from Indonesia and packed with life. Hitchhikers such as a ton of worms, macroalgae, some kind of coral (Xenia I believe), an anemone crab and a hairy crab. In the end we didn't have a cycle, so I think the rock had been there for a while.

 

We mix the SW at home. As far as the RODI water is concerned, we are looking at some RO units because cycling back and forth to Holgen with four jerry cans is already really annoying. We are car-less students :P

 

How big is your tank going to be?

 

~ Hester

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