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Shadow's 16G Disaster. Fumigation Poisoned the Tank and Crashed It.

Snow_Phoenix

By Snow_Phoenix,
in Nano Reef Journals

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FlowerMama

FlowerMama

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That is huge. Sorry to hear about the flu. Couple days ago I started w/ a sore throat and coughing, now it's gone and I have head congestion. And my workplace sounds like a doctor's office and I have to go to work tomorrow. Bleh. Just so I can probably keep the sickness going.

 

But today's not lazy day, I have to be up & moving today. Need to clean the kitchen, do a water change on my 34, I really need to do a change on all of them, I've not kept up lately at all. It's been weeks for all of them.

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Snow_Phoenix

Snow_Phoenix

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That is huge. Sorry to hear about the flu. Couple days ago I started w/ a sore throat and coughing, now it's gone and I have head congestion. And my workplace sounds like a doctor's office and I have to go to work tomorrow. Bleh. Just so I can probably keep the sickness going.

 

But today's not lazy day, I have to be up & moving today. Need to clean the kitchen, do a water change on my 34, I really need to do a change on all of them, I've not kept up lately at all. It's been weeks for all of them.

 

I'm recovering - almost fully healed. Hope all that cleaning wasn't overly-strenuous!

 

But I have terrible news: My grandfather lost his battle with pneumonia and just passed away. :tears:

 

I'm taking a flight tomorrow up north and the funeral is on Saturday. As the eldest child of my grandfather's second son (my dad), I'm expected to give a speech. In front of hundreds of people. In a church. So, I'll be leaving the tank on its own for 3 to 4 days. I'll be keeping the lights off since my ATO just malfunctioned, and I don't have time to grab a new one. Just checked all the auto feeders for all tanks and they're working. Is there anything else I should be worried about? I only have a lone damsel, some corals and inverts which are so far doing quite well. Did a 50% WC today and they seemed to be much happier too - full PE on all corals noted.

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Snow_Phoenix

Snow_Phoenix

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Just to swing by and say, today is my birthday. I spent it at the ER with my mum, who suffered from a major asthma attack and was in critical shape until a few hours ago. The family is taking a real hit with health problems and losses this year. :(

 

Tank-wise, nothing new happened except my dad, who was in an odd mood after his father's funeral, asked me if he could get a small clownfish for the tank. I shrugged and we got a tiny one the size of my thumbnail. Less than five seconds he's in and the damsel whacks the crap outta the little fella. Took me 3 hours to tear apart the whole tank, fish the damsel out, re-add everything back and let the little clown live by himself. He's very happy on his own, and the damsel is going to be heading back to the store once my mum is out of the hospital. The reason is simple - he's just too aggressive. He even tried to harass my cleaner shrimp which was 3x his size by pecking at its antennae repeatedly. I decided enough is enough. At this rate I can't even add a small goby or blenny to the tank as I'd originally wanted.

 

Hope the rest of you are doing okay.

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Snow_Phoenix

Snow_Phoenix

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Best wishes again to you Shadow. Yeah, you guys need a break already from the hospitals.

 

 

Happy B-day! Sending good vibes your way!

 

 

Happy B-Day bud.

 

 

Thank you everyone. Best wishes to all during this Holiday season as well.

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Snow_Phoenix

Snow_Phoenix

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This December has been exceptionally hard. If you've been following this thread, you'd have realized that my grandfather had passed away during the first week of December, my mum had a near fatal asthma attack on my birthday and I got a little clownfish. The little clownfish was too little that he was minced by my powerhead into three separate pieces. It took me an hour of fiddling around with a loose piece of wire to get most of the flesh out.

 

And then I received some news. A friend from church overdosed on drugs and died on the backstreets of my city. It broke my heart.

 

To top all of that of, I went away for Christmas for four days up north. Right before leaving, I treated myself to a small Falco hawkfish (1" long), which began chilling out with my Diamond Goby (explanation here: I had him for a month, but didn't want to tell anyone anything because I knew how much ruckus it would cause since sand-sifters have poor survival rates in nanos - mine is eating pellets and frozen shrimp meat twice a day btw).

 

I double checked everything - ATOs, autofeeders, filters, powerheads, lights etc. I boarded all my corals at my LFS. Came back home to a severe stench of death. My first panicked thought was about my puppy, which we left at home since all the pet hotels/reserves were fully booked. Heard my pup whine from the kitchen and I nearly cried in relief. Next I beelined towards the marine tank, because that's the only thing I could think might have crashed. But nope. The tank was untouched - everyone and everything was accounted for, and my cleaner shrimp was actually cleaning my hawkfish. Next I ran into my Art room because I had 2 tanks - a 20G long with tetras, angels, rams and few other small-sized fish and a 30G standard which was full of aggressive cichlids, bichirs and catfish.

 

The 20G was the most packed - I thought that was the most likely one to crash. But nope. It was my 30G. I lost RM 1.5K (U$D 500) worth of livestock. The pump was clogged with dead shrimp and virtually gurgling but not pumping water upwards from the sump. Fish were scattered on the floor and floating on the surface. I lost some collector cichlids that were spawning pairs and producing fry.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Never in my whole life have I crashed a freshwater tank. Granted, it was a filter failure, but there's a first time for everything.

 

24 hours later after tossing out all the filter media, scrubbing down the glass, soaking all rocks, pebbles and sand in boiling hot water and re-setting the tank - I'm back to square one.

 

 

 

The tank is now re-cycling from scratch. I only have five survivors from this - two gouramis (1 in critical shape), 1 ornate bichir, 1 albino senegal bichir and 1 marble goby. I lost my eel as well. :tears:

 

Then today I went to pick up my corals from my LFS...and guess what? My leather finger was stung to death by someone else's anemone who took a midnight trip towards the other side of the holding tank. It crossed over eggcrate layers, dangerous pipe tunnels and even a mesh basket to sting my coral of all the other goddamn things in that tank. :rant:

 

Worse, the manager thought the finger was a display piece belonging to the shop, so he binned it even though it only melted partially. Even worse still, my LIVE feather duster worm was attached to that coral piece and was binned ALIVE as well. After muttering repeated apologies, I was given four large coral pieces (2 brains, 1 GSP and 1 green pipe organ) at the price of 1 coral colony. I am also apparently entitled to a free leather finger coral in a future February shipment in 2015 due to today's mistake.

 

I admit it's more than what I bargained for.

 

And then they decided to take it a step further and gave me a starfish for U$D 3.00.

 

So I returned home with all my other corals, a new starfish, 4 new corals and while I was unpacking, I noticed something scuttling around in one of coral bags.

 

 

 

It turned out to be a hitchiker decorator crab that camouflaged itself very well with my GSP colony.

 

So I ended up acclimating these two to my tank while unpacking:

 

 

 

The decorator immediately found a spot underneath one of my brains the moment he was in:

 

 

 

The other guy preferred lazing about:

 

 

 

And here are some snapshots of the tank as of now:

 

 

 

Green brain (not sure what type).

 

 

 

Red ball sponge.

 

 

 

Green brain (also not sure what type exactly).

 

 

 

Green Pipe Organ still in the middle of opening up.

 

 

 

Suspected Merulina sp. coral (still unidentified positively but it's a SPS).

 

 

 

My Falco Hawkfish, Falcon.

 

 

 

My Turbo snail cleaning my Astrea snail's shell.

 

 

 

My pea-sized rock flower nem and its annoying aiptasia friend.

 

 

 

My Diamond Goby, Spooks.

 

 

 

Nothing fancy, but here's today's FTS. Looks so pathetic without the leather, doesn't it? :tears:

 

Sigh.

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Pinner Reef

Pinner Reef

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Oh man, Talk about a tough month. :(

 

So sorry to hear all the troubles. Sending good vibes your way. Hope things turn around for you. The SW tank is looking good though.

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Dr.Brain Coral

Dr.Brain Coral

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I am so sorry for everything that has happened to you this month :tears: I will be praying for your mom and you shadow. I think the tank looks fabulous as is. Sure the leather was cool but with all these new corals it still looks amazing :)

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Snow_Phoenix

Snow_Phoenix

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Oh man, Talk about a tough month. :(

 

So sorry to hear all the troubles. Sending good vibes your way. Hope things turn around for you. The SW tank is looking good though.

 

 

I am so sorry for everything that has happened to you this month :tears: I will be praying for your mom and you shadow. I think the tank looks fabulous as is. Sure the leather was cool but with all these new corals it still looks amazing :)

 

Thank you both. I still miss the leather though. It was my centerpiece and really pricey. The new corals currently look a little shriveled, but they're slowly adjusting to the light/parameters/tank. I'll probably feed the brains some phyto-zoo mix though - they looked quite hungry to me today.

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Tamberav

Tamberav

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Sorry for the loss of your friend and your fish :( It is crazy how things always go wrong when away from home. I was also away on holiday and my ATO became partially unplugged on one of my tanks (return pump was sucking mostly air when I got home).... probably the cats had a party while I was gone..... and the other tank had a heater failure and didn't turn on. Its the dead of winter here so the tank was veryyyy cold. I lost a handful of SPS. Ugh.

 

Sending happy thoughts your way... I hope they get a cool new leather for you.

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Snow_Phoenix

Snow_Phoenix

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Oh my gosh, sorry to hear of all this badness. It will turn around. It has to.

 

 

Sorry for the loss of your friend and your fish :( It is crazy how things always go wrong when away from home. I was also away on holiday and my ATO became partially unplugged on one of my tanks (return pump was sucking mostly air when I got home).... probably the cats had a party while I was gone..... and the other tank had a heater failure and didn't turn on. Its the dead of winter here so the tank was veryyyy cold. I lost a handful of SPS. Ugh.

 

Sending happy thoughts your way... I hope they get a cool new leather for you.

 

Thank you both. I just hope next year will be better, both reefing-wise and RL-wise. Sorry to hear about your troubles as well, Tam. Winter is freezing cold! Thank goodness you didn't lose the whole tank - I can only imagine how chilly the water might have been.

 

As of right now, I'm down to only four fish in my large freshwater setup. My large gourami just passed away this morning. My ornate bichir is right now quite stressed in QT, but I hope he makes it.

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Snow_Phoenix

Snow_Phoenix

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Things are finally perking up. My bichir is no longer stressed and is actually back to his usual self, that silly goat.

 

Also, here's a better FTS of the 8G - GSP and green pipe are about 90% open now:

 

 

 

Also, does anyone know if a Hawkfish might attack a smaller sized invert that is introduced to the tank after he's established in it? I was thinking of getting a White Spotted Nem shrimp, but I'm reconsidering. He hasn't gone after my Hawaiian shrimp or my Cleaner, and actually allows my Cleaner to clean him, but there's no telling with this guy. LA says that Falcos are supposed to be the least aggressive of all the usual hawkfish up on trade. :wacko:

 

 

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Snow_Phoenix

Snow_Phoenix

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Happy New Year - hope this year would turn out better than the last one.

 

Here's some snapshots from my tank:

 

Yp8pOrH.png

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Topshot FTS on 2/1/2015.

 

 

 

And here comes a mystery! This mysterious creature was bleached and white when I first discovered it months ago. But due to the angle of the rock and the fact it didn't seem to move, I presumed it was a baby shroom. Well, few months later and now the whiteness has turned into a rosy pink glow (it's more pink than what's displayed) and it has petal-like projections around a small mouth. My first thought was: OMG! Could this be another nem? Or better yet, a baby pink BTA or rock flower? Well, you guys decide! Sorry if the pics aren't top-notch quality - my hands shake a lot (due to tremors), so I can't snap stable pics. :(

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Snow_Phoenix

Snow_Phoenix

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Also, as a side note, here's my present stock list:

 

Fish:

 

Diamond Goby

Falco Hawkfish

 

Inverts:

 

Rock flower nem (hitchiker)

Mystery nem (hitchiker)

Decorator Arrow Crab (hitchiker)

Sand-sifting starfish

Brown Legged Hermit Crabs

Nassarius Snails

Trochus Snails

Astrea Snail

Hawaiian Shrimp

Cleaner Shrimp

Porcelain Anemone Crab

Mini Maxi Carpet Nem

 

Corals:

 

Green Star Polyp

Green Pipe Organ

Green Brain #1

Green Brain #2

Brown Magician Palythoa

Whammin' Watermelons Zoa

Radioactive Dragon Eyes Zoa

Fiery Grapes Zoa

Merulina sp.

Green Hairy Mushroom

Green Mushroom

Green Implosion Palys

 

Planned future Stock:

 

Feather Duster Worm/Coco Worm

Green Brittle Seastar

Blue legged Hermit Crab

Tuxedo Sea Urchin

Gorgs/Sea Fans (if I can get any)

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