spanko Posted May 15, 2009 Share Posted May 15, 2009 And to you as well... Aye, seems to be about that time. Thinking to toss in a Cheato bundle to help with the nitrates, do a 20% change, and test over a couple more days to make sure nothing creeps up on me then add in the first fish this Sunday or so. I have been pretty strict on what went in (vodka to increase carbon and thus bacteria growth, fully cured live rock, seed live rock from a mature tank, etc) so as to avoid as much of the expected algae bloom as possible and keep the cycle soft and fast. Been doing the Voka gig on my 29 biocube along with Prodibio. Have seen some better polyp extension on my SPS, glass is constantly clean only using the NimbleNano magnet cleaner about twice per week, getting a bit darker skim, but mostly the water is perfectly clear. Oh yeah no detectable trates either. Looking forward to your tanks progression. Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted May 15, 2009 Author Share Posted May 15, 2009 I <3 vodka dosing! Its allowed me to fatten up my Rhomboid via over feeding in anticipation of him being the first of two fish into the new tank (the second being a blue velvet wrasse who will be added at the same time). I have been pumping the guy full of mysid and gut loaded brine via several heavy feedings a day and without it I would have been up the creek without a paddle with "nutrients". My Tunze 9002 goes nuts in terms of skimmate that is a nasty black color and fills half the cup after about 4 days. He has to go first because he has developed a "stress bump" (per WWM diagnosis) on his head partly from the size tank he's in and I don't want to loose him. And I have to add a second fairy at the same time or else I will have one killing the other so it will be multiple tests daily with 50% water change standing by for the next week beginning Sunday. Sigh. Oh and I should add that the other part of that stress bump was caused by me being lazy and careless. During weekly tank maintenance I wiped down the euro brace on the holding tank. This dumped a bunch of salt into the tank that had encrusted and I didn't even think about the effect that would have and was too lazy to test since everything "looked fine". Fast forward three days and *EVERYTHING* looked P1SSED! So I tested last night and lo and behold my SG was 1.031!!! Up from my normal 1.026!! I didn't sleep much last night as I was adding RO/DI water slowly into the wee hours to bring it down to 1.027 where it is now. Fortunately everything this morning was back to being nice and happy looking except for my firefish who has disappeared. I will finish getting it down to 1.026 this weekend. Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted May 17, 2009 Author Share Posted May 17, 2009 Hello. I am a reef tard. :: Why you ask? Well let me tell you my son... I was out shopping for the yellow side red head wrasse I wanted to go into the new tank with the Romboid and whom should I run into...? SHD and Beau! This will become relevant in a moment. After looking closely at the male fairy who is right now peering at me from behind the big shelf rock I ran across a flasher that I thought was 'ok' but not really what I was looking for... Right up until the point where SHD show's me the shot of him she took with her Cannon 5D from hell camera! It just about caused a core dump! So of course I had to grab him too! So in the new 60 gallon I now have: One Super Male Rhomboid One female Rhomboid One Red Headed Yellow Sided Blue Fairy Wrasse One Carpenter's Flasher Wrasse YEAH! GO BIG OR GO HOME! WHO CARES ABOUT BIOLOAD!?! WOO HOOO! Sigh. God help me and these fish! On the plus side everyone is eating, the Carpenter is flashing the female Rhomboid but in an amorous way not an aggressive one, everyone has their own hidey hole, the two super males are not even paying attention to each other and staying at different heights and places in the tank, everyone is eyeballing me and expecting YET ANOTHER feeding as I type this. On the minus side I am going to be fighting a running ammonia/nitrite/nitrate battle for the next few weeks while the bacteria catches up to the bioload, I am going to be moving live rock from the holding tank over to the new tank as fast as I can move corals, and I get to test three times a day every day with 25% water change on Alert 5 stand by. Please now feel free to begin the castigation and flagellation. Oh and I will post photos when I take them. I promise. Link to comment
SeeDemTails Posted May 17, 2009 Share Posted May 17, 2009 Bioloads are for noobs to worry about. I could keep 20 fish in my tank if I had to. dont be afraid to be the 'dominant wrasse' and stop aggression. If you see them fighting attack with a piece of rigid hose and dominate the aggressor. Link to comment
Psychosis Posted May 17, 2009 Share Posted May 17, 2009 Call me childish, but that sorta made me laugh. Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted May 17, 2009 Author Share Posted May 17, 2009 Bioloads are for noobs to worry about. I could keep 20 fish in my tank if I had to. Heheh. Thank you dear. But will the fish be happy? I think I can support the number and size in there in comfort but I am worried about a brand new cycled tank having to keep up. Especially with the heavy feeding I am going to have to do to fatten everyone up and keep (hopefully) keep the aggro down... dont be afraid to be the 'dominant wrasse' and stop aggression. If you see them fighting attack with a piece of rigid hose and dominate the aggressor. Interesting... I hadn't thought of trying that. I noticed the Red getting a bit territorial against the Rhom so I am worried. Hopefully it works out or else I am going to have to go in with hose. Personal experience on this? Call me childish, but that sorta made me laugh. Me too. I had an image of a wrasse in leathers with a hose... Link to comment
Kraylen Posted May 17, 2009 Share Posted May 17, 2009 Be careful dude, you are pushing the wrasse space limit. Golden Rhoms are gonna get big and mean... The flasher will pester them also. Be sure to cover the hell out of your tank dude. Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted May 17, 2009 Author Share Posted May 17, 2009 Be careful dude, you are pushing the wrasse space limit. Golden Rhoms are gonna get big and mean... The flasher will pester them also. Be sure to cover the hell out of your tank dude. Yep. Thank you. Thats what worries me. The Rhom is about 5" in size and is actually more timid than the other wrasse. Not what I was expecting. I may move one out if it goes bad. RIght now the flasher and the female Rhom are hanging out together and the yellow is acting like the male of a harem. Typical can't make up her mind queen of the room woman, the female Rhom divides her time between hanging with the male rhom, the flasher, and the Red! So far this morning during feeding and after no aggression like last night so time will tell. I am at my limit, I think, for fish after I put the black clown in. Oh well. Photos as soon as I can shop out those 15 hippo tangs and baby hammerhead shark I have in there! Link to comment
Kraylen Posted May 18, 2009 Share Posted May 18, 2009 Good ish man. Just remember that fairies will be shy at first but once they claim a tank they can be as mean as a mystery. Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted May 18, 2009 Author Share Posted May 18, 2009 Good to know Kraylen. Thank you. So far today its bounced back to Rhomboid as king with him being aggressive. Then all of a sudden he just ignores the new male as long as that male stays on the other side of the tank from the... Oh well me and my big mouth. Now Rhomboid is over in Red territory and red is hiding where as before they were ignoring each other... Oh I think I see why... The rhomboid female is over there and he see's his reflection in the glass and he's going after it... Going to have to do something about that! Bugger me sideways! If this keeps up I am for sure going to get rid of the Rhomboid male as I got a very good offer for him and I don't like him as much as the other fairy. Well that was exciting! As I was typing we had a nice 5.0 magnitude 15 second earthquake epicenter reported at 33.940°N, 118.338°W which is about 30ish miles from my house. Link to comment
seahorsedreams Posted May 18, 2009 Share Posted May 18, 2009 Dood! It knocked me over! I'm less than 10 miles away and that slip mid way in... Yee Haw! Some water slashed on the floor but all is good. Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted May 18, 2009 Author Share Posted May 18, 2009 Ask and you shall receive my son... Here are the photos... My new favorite. Even more so than the male Rhomboid. A yellow sided velvet fairy wrasse. Right now he is scared of the Rhomboid and the Rhomboid alternately ignores him and goes after him. If it doesn't work itself out then I am going to have to loose the male Rhomboid because I like this guy much more than the Rhom... Here is a flasher that I was going to pass on until SDH showed me a photo she took of him while I was in the store. After that I told myself I can put up with the 20 gallon a day water changes to put this guy into the tank! Mr. Rhomboid with "his" harem. Even the flasher seems to treat him as the alpha fish for some reason. That is when he's not flashing the female Rhomboid. I guess its a shape/color/size thing regarding the female... Another of the pair One more of the flasher And the female rhomboid by herself. The back of the tank franken-plumbing in action: One of the reasons I did the franken-plumbing was to make water changes less messy. Here you see the drain from the closed loop intake feeding the bucket... ... And here you see the pump returning the new water to the tank via the sump return line. I shut the valve on the return pump return line, open the 1/2" valve and the MAG 5 pumps the water right on up into the tank no fuss no muss... Also pictured is the mass of electrical connections while I put the finishing touches on my controller code as well as the live brine holding tank. Weaning these guys off this is going to be a Mark 1 Mod 0 B1tch! I am WAY over feeding to keep aggression down and to fatten them up which is great in the short term but bad in the long for me as getting them from live to pellets is going to be allot of work and its causing big nitrate problems! Game plan for weening them will be putting frozen mysid and live brine together, then only frozen mysid, then frozen and pellet, then pellet. Each step should take about 7-10 days (I hope!). Link to comment
spanko Posted May 18, 2009 Share Posted May 18, 2009 I love the Wrasse pictures well done!! Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted May 18, 2009 Author Share Posted May 18, 2009 Thanks Spanko. Time will tell. I am not sure if everyone is going to stay. It's ALLOT of fish for the tank! Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted May 21, 2009 Author Share Posted May 21, 2009 Some shots of the "test" corals in the tank. So far everyone is happy... And the obligatory shots of my new favorite fish... Part of how I spent my Wednesday evening after my son went to bed was making this to replace the crappy white egg crate. Really easy to do. 1/2" black bird netting from OSH garden section they use to drape on tree's and a 36" screen kit from Home Depot because OSH was out of the materials to make it, dremmel to cut the rim down to the right size, and a flat head screw driver to push the spline in. Total time was about 30 minutes or so. The other part of my evening was spent working on a skimmer won't skim problem... Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted May 21, 2009 Author Share Posted May 21, 2009 That's me Mr. My Tank Is Far Too Sexy For You Dweebs But I Don't Want To Flaunt It! I also see you are the master of PUNishment today! <lol> Link to comment
Urchinhead Posted June 2, 2009 Author Share Posted June 2, 2009 Update for the first week of June... Turned off the holding tank yesterday and finished moving the last pieces of coral in there over to the new tank. Now everyone is in and somewhat happy. Also took possession of Son of Jabba brain coral from Jamie and PGA last night. A *BIG* thank you to both of you for being such good sports and taking care of him! Sadly (not really as it was a *REAL* PITA but my wife liked it so I was stuck!) the sun corals didn't make it when Jamie's tank crashed. As you can see Tri those AOG would have been a tight fit... Looks like some corals didn't make it but I am not 100% sure so if someone wouldn't mind commenting I have an annotated photo. Also points out various items of interest in the tank. Including by far the stupidest, most fearless, and biggest *B1TCH* of a clownfish I have ever had to deal with! She hosts the Derasa and defends her clam like it was the fish equivalent of enriched uranium and I was the fish equivalent of Al Kaeda! She will let me feed her and even pet her at times but if my hand gets within 4" of that clam its ON LIKE DONKEY KONG! And she is vicious! She *KNOWS* she is going to get a swat and *KNOWS* that this is the same hand that feeds her but that doesn't stop her! It still tickles thank God but a couple of times she has snuck up on me and almost made me soil myself it was so startling! I realize the tank looks like crap and I am not done with the rock work quite yet, don't know if all the corals including the big monti cap will stay (anyone want it for cheap? Local pickup only) but so far I am fairly happy with it. Oh and of course you can see the trademark Urchin moving around the base of the plateau rock... Link to comment
Phixion Posted June 3, 2009 Share Posted June 3, 2009 What?!? You're moved in already?? How's all the plumbing holding up thus far?? Link to comment
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