MGDMIRAGE Posted October 9, 2011 Share Posted October 9, 2011 Yeah Asterinas I have tons in my 40 now I just feed them to my harlequin shrimp. I have never personally noticed them do any damage to my reef. Link to comment
tedh Posted October 9, 2011 Author Share Posted October 9, 2011 Today it seems as if my aquarium has a light snow storm going on. The copepods ??? are multiplying fast. I can easily determine what seems to be three generations based on size. Everything seems to be catching and eating them. The astrinas are certainly on the move too. I still only see two of them. I found a snail that I did not intentionally add to the tank. It's a bit small now, but may be a keyhole limpet. Also, about a week ago, I found another snail that I did not intentionally add. He was on the front of the tank and it appeared that he almost had no shell. Life is appearing all over the place. Link to comment
MGDMIRAGE Posted October 10, 2011 Share Posted October 10, 2011 Today it seems as if my aquarium has a light snow storm going on. The copepods ??? are multiplying fast. I can easily determine what seems to be three generations based on size. Everything seems to be catching and eating them. The astrinas are certainly on the move too. I still only see two of them. I found a snail that I did not intentionally add to the tank. It's a bit small now, but may be a keyhole limpet. Also, about a week ago, I found another snail that I did not intentionally add. He was on the front of the tank and it appeared that he almost had no shell. Life is appearing all over the place. The one with an appearance of no shell may be a Stomatella they are pretty awesome snails and can really move when they gotta. Limpets almost have a triangle shaped shell if you take a pic i'm sure someone can ID. Link to comment
tedh Posted October 10, 2011 Author Share Posted October 10, 2011 Life is appearing all over the place. In addition to the thousands of white "bugs", now there are thousands of black to brown tiny "bugs" scurrying all over the sand bed. It's amazing to see how much life bloomed in this tank over the past week. Link to comment
chippwalters Posted October 11, 2011 Share Posted October 11, 2011 Interesting tank. Just bought a Walmart special like it. Following along... Link to comment
gupebreedr Posted October 14, 2011 Share Posted October 14, 2011 Your tank looks great. I'm in for the ride too. I love seeing these small setups. Give me ideas and inspiration for my new addition. Link to comment
tedh Posted October 17, 2011 Author Share Posted October 17, 2011 More photos! My girlfriend has a great camera and knows how to use it. Earlier this week, I added the zoanthids. I'm very happy with them. Got a great deal from the LFS - I'm lucky to have such a great place 5 minutes away (The Asheville Aquarium). Today, I got a yellow watchman goby and a pistol shrimp. They are very much in the process of rearranging the aquarium. So, things will likely look a good bit different by the time I post more photos. Link to comment
tedh Posted October 30, 2011 Author Share Posted October 30, 2011 An overdue update... As expected, the watchman goby and tiger pistol shrimp that I added to my tank completely changed everything. The shrimp rather quickly moved all the sand from the back of the tank to the front and moved all the sand under the rocks out so everything sank by about two inches. This resulted in having to move everything around to accommodate shifting rocks and piles of sand. I've attached a couple of images to show what the shrimp changed. The first photo shows the sand piled in front of the tank. The second image is a shot from the back of the tank that shows one of the shrimp's passages, and you can see where it left very little sand. Link to comment
tedh Posted October 30, 2011 Author Share Posted October 30, 2011 Since the pistol shrimp rearranged my tank, I had to adopt a different strategy. Clearly rocks on top of sand was not going to work. So, I went to my LFS and bought another pound of live rock rubble. I took just about everything out of the tank except the rock that had settled to the bottom with the help of the shrimp. This left cover for the goby and shrimp and they patiently waited together in one of their holes while I worked. I made sure all rock was supported by rock that touched the bottom of the tank hoping that this would reduce movement of the rock. I've attached three images. The first is in the middle of reworking everything. The second is the result of that work. The third is the next morning where you can see the shrimp was still not very happy with my arrangement. He again pushed a huge pile of sand to the front. That thing is a mini bulldozer. Link to comment
tedh Posted October 30, 2011 Author Share Posted October 30, 2011 Last week, I started having trouble with the light that came with my Deco 3 pico kit. It started taking a long time to light up in the morning when turning it on. It seemed to "flicker" as if trying to start up and would take 5-10 minutes to finally come on and stay on. I was quite concerned about that so contacted TOM aquarium to ask what I should do. They very quickly emailed me back to say they would replace it under warranty. The following morning - Friday - the light would not start at all. I emailed the person at TOM and they said they would put a rush on the replacement. I got the replacement on Tuesday. I must say I was quite impressed with TOM's responsiveness, concern and cooperation. They seem like a very good company. I've attached a couple of photos. When my light stopped working, I had to do something, so I put an old desk lamp by the tank to give it at least a bit of light and warmth. Nothing was very happy, but everything made it through just fine. It seems several days without real light actually helped stop a bit of hair algae growth. The green start polyps actually seemed to come out of the ordeal in better shape. Link to comment
tedh Posted October 30, 2011 Author Share Posted October 30, 2011 Over the course of the past week, the shrimp and I seem to have come to some kind of agreement about the arrangement of the tank. Things stayed generally the same for a few days. Then, I woke up one morning to find my Kenya tree and a group of polyps missing. I found them in one of the entrances to the maze the goby and shrimp have created in the rock pile. Once that entrance was "closed", the shrimp decided to go about burying two entrances which resulted in another huge pile of sand in front of the tank. I bought a set of tweezers (10, 7 and 5 inches) that have proven to be very useful dealing with this tiny tank. I managed to extract the Kenya tree and polyps. After doing that, I decided to add a bit more rock to the tank to fill in a few blank spaces and to add reinforcements in a few places to dissuade the shrimp from making so many alterations. I've attached images showing before and after adding the new rock. I did this yesterday. I was quite surprised to wake up this morning to find that the shrimp hardly changed a thing. At first, I was somewhat regretting adding the goby and shrimp. I don't see them very often and they really did disrupt things for awhile. However, I really like how they turn the sand over so much and they really have made the whole process a lot more interesting - the tank is far more dynamic now as opposed to the very static nature before. I do catch a glimpse of both the goby and shrimp now and then. I plan to get some kind of pellet food to see if I can train them to come out of their caves now and then. I consider them a much more welcome addition now. Link to comment
tedh Posted October 30, 2011 Author Share Posted October 30, 2011 An image dump. These were taken last night after everything stabilized following the addition of the new rock and some rearranging. I'm still expecting the shrimp to do some redecorating but hoping that I we can reach some agreement soon. Link to comment
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