Monkfish Posted April 21, 2008 Share Posted April 21, 2008 Really nice photos The clown is really diggin that hammer ya? Im looking to get something for my clown to hide in just not sure what yet. Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted April 21, 2008 Author Share Posted April 21, 2008 Thankyou The hammer digs the clown too. They do use it just like a nem. It's amazing to watch it open up at feeding time. It knows its going to get fed. EDIT - spelling Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted April 22, 2008 Author Share Posted April 22, 2008 Well I have officially started fragging my tank. I have 3 separate pieces of xenia advertised on ebay and a piece of live rock with zoas/palys/red mushrooms and 2 pieces of xenia. Someone's going to get a bargain!!! Oh and half of my sarc too! I'm dead excited! Watch noone want it now . It's collection only which is rare on ebay and I have said I would deliver locally so maybe I might get some interest... Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted April 22, 2008 Author Share Posted April 22, 2008 More shots: FTS FTS closeup Left Right Stag. You can see still where the tissue was receding near the bottom. Looks much happier and much more green already. I will donate to a MH tank if it looks like it's suffering with my light but it is doing better already I think... Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted April 22, 2008 Author Share Posted April 22, 2008 Sold one with 15 mins at £10!!!! Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted April 30, 2008 Author Share Posted April 30, 2008 Well I have finally recouped some of my costs! I have sold all of my frags! The small xenia went for £7.70 3 pieces £10 Large £19.69 Rock with xenia, zoas, palys £16.09 Sarc £10 Total £63.48 Original cost - xenia £12, sarc £10 - £22 Profit = £41.48!!! Not much I guess when the tank cost me nearly £1000... But it is soooooo satisfying!!!!!!!! Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 7, 2008 Author Share Posted May 7, 2008 New FTS Currently downloading photoshop to adjust the colour balance and get it looking less bright and dark in places. EDIT - guess I shouldn't have taken the pic after just cleaning the glass and disturbing crud The leather seems to be recovering from its ordeal OK... Can wait till the zoas cover the plugs! More on the way too - purple and pink ones Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 7, 2008 Author Share Posted May 7, 2008 Hmm just checked my params... pH - between 7.8 and 8 Ammonia - 0 Nitrite - 0 Nitrate - <5 Phosphate - 0 Calcium - 460 KH - 7 My KH has fallen since changing my salt. Used to use Instant Ocean but have recently changed to Reef Crystals due to people saying they were good. My KH has fallen from 12 to 7 in the space of 6 20% water changes. My Calcium has stayed the same. Unfortunately the KH decrease seems to have destabilised my pH. Any ideas anyone? I don't want all my corals stressed due to the fluctuating pH. PS The pH was taken 4 hours after lights on. i will test again before lights off to double check but its odd that my pH has been a stable 8.2 for some time now. Note to Newbies: When people say don't add corals until your tank is mature - this is why! My tank is 3 months old and still not completely stable. All corals seem to be doing OK but it makes me worry. Worry is one thing you can do without in reefing. It causes you to make changes which in itself can balls things up! Link to comment
SPS20 Posted May 7, 2008 Share Posted May 7, 2008 Hmm just checked my params... pH - between 7.8 and 8 Ammonia - 0 Nitrite - 0 Nitrate - <5 Phosphate - 0 Calcium - 460 KH - 7 My KH has fallen since changing my salt. Used to use Instant Ocean but have recently changed to Reef Crystals due to people saying they were good. My KH has fallen from 12 to 7 in the space of 6 20% water changes. My Calcium has stayed the same. Unfortunately the KH decrease seems to have destabilised my pH. Any ideas anyone? I don't want all my corals stressed due to the fluctuating pH. PS The pH was taken 4 hours after lights on. i will test again before lights off to double check but its odd that my pH has been a stable 8.2 for some time now. Note to Newbies: When people say don't add corals until your tank is mature - this is why! My tank is 3 months old and still not completely stable. All corals seem to be doing OK but it makes me worry. Worry is one thing you can do without in reefing. It causes you to make changes which in itself can balls things up! Your parameters aren't so out of whack as to be alarming. My advice would be to simply stop supplementing Ca+ for a few days and only supplement Alk, until the Ca+ falls into line. You will have trouble getting your Alk up so long as your Ca+ levels are so high, as you risk a precipitation event if you push the Alk up too aggressively. So, my advice is keep pushing (gently) upward with Alk, and allow your Ca+ to fall on its own. Within a week or two, you should be able to get your Ca+ down to about 400-420 and your Alk up to 9 or so. IME, new tanks aren't unstable because they are new, per se, but rather because the owner (you in this case) hasn't had a chance to get to know the way this particular tank responds, how much calcium demand there is, how fast organics accumulate, etc, etc. I have seen tanks slapped together and packed with corals within a few days after initial setup with no problems. The trick is that the people who pull off feats like this test like crazy for a few weeks, and generally have the experience to bring things into line quickly if they should slip. Keep chugging along, you are doing fine. Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 7, 2008 Author Share Posted May 7, 2008 I'm not dosing calc. Maintaining with water changes alone. This is why I am concerned that it has fallen 5 points after just 6 water changes after being stable for so long. If I was dosing fair enough but I'm not. Calcium is how I want it - don't really want it any lower than 440. It hovers between 440 and 460 at the mo... Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 10, 2008 Author Share Posted May 10, 2008 Well my stuff I ordered has arrived. I tried to delay it coming after panicking about my pH and alk over the past few days. Lets hope getting it up means its going to stay there. I think the earlier comment about the coraline might be true - my coraline seems to have really taken off this week. All of a sudden it has exploded! Maybe that is what has happened... Anyway what arrived is: Purple and green ric - it's gorge! Purple with bright green blobs! Purple mushrooms with blue spots Blue mushrooms Mithrax crab 5 sexy shrimps - they are so teeny. They're sat tight at the top of the rock line in a little group waving their ass*s! Can wait for everything to settle so I can get some pics I also bought a Mg test kit today. My magnesium is 1200 - kit says normal range should be 1300-1500. How much will 100 under matter (obviously a lot judging by my alk ) All this cost me a grand total of £99 Total = 1092.83 Minus frag sale = 63.50 Grand total: £1029.33 Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 10, 2008 Author Share Posted May 10, 2008 Got some anyway Sexy shrimps and the little patch of GHA I've been cultivating so I could get a mithrax crab EDIT - what do you think of how my stag is doing? Would like imput as when I got it it looked like a gonner! My first ric (well technically my 2nd - my 1st "fell off" and disappeared ) Blue mushrooms And the purple mushrooms with blue dots Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 12, 2008 Author Share Posted May 12, 2008 Sexies hanging out. Tried to get a better pic but battery on camera died and I'm on my lunch Link to comment
wilo Posted May 12, 2008 Share Posted May 12, 2008 love this tread as i am looking at getting a nano the same as you and love the way you have it set up. can i ask where you purcahsed the 24g nano as i am in liverpool only down the road from you and i cant find a LFS by me that sell them. Cheers Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 12, 2008 Author Share Posted May 12, 2008 Thankyou for your kind words! I just can't wait for my tank to be more mature and start filling out... Also can't wait for the live rock to be more coraline. Patience is a virtue! I bought it at Oasis in Salford, Manchester. They have a Website which has their postcode and opening hours. The are very knowledgeable (the older guys) and will give you sound advice (I got told not to take a fish the other day as it had a hollowed belly and they hadn't seen it eat for a couple of days...). They have lots of stock too. Whatever you do don't touch the one off the M60 near the Trafford Centre with a barge pole. The stock is awful and the tanks grotty... You could try Abyss their website is quite good. They are shut at the mo as they have had to move premesis. They have loads of stock! More than I have ever seen anywhere else. Only downside is Mark, the owner's sense of humour takes a while to get used to... Another good place to visit is Fishmansfrags. He is based in his lounge (and dining room, spare bedroom and garage!). You have to make an appointment but he is a good place to get a clean up grew from. He might also give you a bit of sand to seed your sand bed if you ask nicely Took another pic of the sexies: Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 12, 2008 Author Share Posted May 12, 2008 How adorable is this little guy. He's called peas. I now have Chish and Fips (clowns) Sausage (neon goby) Ketchup (cleaner shrimp) And now peas (Mithrax crab) Nothing else in the tank is named though... Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 12, 2008 Author Share Posted May 12, 2008 OMG I finally have a picture I love! Check this out! Link to comment
yeast Posted May 12, 2008 Share Posted May 12, 2008 Nice picture. I really like mushrooms and ricordeas. Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 12, 2008 Author Share Posted May 12, 2008 Thankyou. The pic doesn't do the ric justice. I wish I had a camera good enough to capture the true colours - vivid purple and bright green. Link to comment
wesleytf Posted May 12, 2008 Share Posted May 12, 2008 your alk will swing much faster than your Ca simply because of the amounts of each of them. My advice to keep them both stable would be to top off with kalk. as your corals and coralline start to grow, you'll see it drop even faster. It will get to be impossible to maintain via reasonable w/c. If you want to start doing 100% w/c every few days, you can, but I think you'll find it easier to remain stable with supplementing. when I start a newish tank, I monitor heavily, do more frequent w/c, and supplement ca/alk as necessary via CaCl and NaCO3, I buy the cheap stuff from a bulk reef supply store, works great. I would suggest just adding small amnts of cooked baking soda with your top off water to keep up your alk as your Ca drops to a normal range, and then switching to Calcium hydroxide (kalk) in your top off. FYI, even though you're mostly softies, you'l still have ca/alk demand from corals as they build CaC03 spicules and such. Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 12, 2008 Author Share Posted May 12, 2008 Thanks for the advice. Is it true that backed baking soda is more "active"? Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 14, 2008 Author Share Posted May 14, 2008 Well I have started dosing baking soda and it seems to be working quite well. I am not dosing to 12 - further investigation shows that extremely high alk increases the CO2 load of the water (high as in the recommended high ca and alk for maximum hard coral growth). I suppose it isn't too much of a deal as I have a fairly small bioload but I'm not taking the risk... Link to comment
wesleytf Posted May 14, 2008 Share Posted May 14, 2008 Well I have started dosing baking soda and it seems to be working quite well. I am not dosing to 12 - further investigation shows that extremely high alk increases the CO2 load of the water (high as in the recommended high ca and alk for maximum hard coral growth). I suppose it isn't too much of a deal as I have a fairly small bioload but I'm not taking the risk... yep, that's why I suggested 'cooking' it. that'll blow off the excess CO2. What I find works well is about 3 parts unbaked to 1 part baked. Or you can check your pH before dosing--below 8.1, use cooked, above 8.4, use uncooked. In the middle, do a mix. All in all it doesn't matter a ton, just try to keep things constant. Eventually you'll get bored of this, and discover that switching to kalk in your auto top off will do all these things for you. Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 14, 2008 Author Share Posted May 14, 2008 Thanks - makes even more sense now. I always got it but just not to the point where the CO2 was involved. I'm low tech me - no ATO... Link to comment
Sexy Shrimp Posted May 16, 2008 Author Share Posted May 16, 2008 Well after telling someone on here that my neon goby does a better job of cleaning than my cleaner shrimp it has finally decided to do its job. I think it was more a case of location. He has now taken up residence below the clown's hammer and the clowns are now going to him regularly. I originally think he started going there to nick the food the clowns were feeding to the hammer... Link to comment
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