Felicia Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 That poor shrimp LOL. I wouldn't even try lowering your nitrates/phosphates. I would wait to see what the clams can do for you! If your derasa is gaping I would be concerned with lowering nutrients. Yeah that clam does not look happy to me Love the lion fish though! Cool shot! It looks like that blenny can hold his/her own. Wow, Mushu is big. Is that a current picture? Clam appears to be gaping. That photo is from like a week ago, and yes the derasa was gaping. I originally put it on the front center rock in my scape and it put its foot down, but it didn't like where it was. It kept moving and then it managed to fall off the edge of the rock, but it hadn't released its foot before it did that. Anyways, it appears to have ripped off its foot in the process. Since then it has been gaping sometimes but its been otherwise healthy (full mantle extension, reactive to shadows and touch). This has been going on for like 2 months now, so I think we're out of the woods on it dying. I was really worried for a few weeks, but now I am convinced its just healing its foot. The last week or so it has looked WAY better with much less gaping. The other two clams are totally fine and absolutely never gape, so its not a water quality issue. If you look down through the gaping part into the derasa, you can actually see a small gap where the foot should be. So there's actually a small hole down to the sandbed. Poor clam was silly and ripped its own foot off. Yep, Mushu is pretty big. He's definitely much bigger than the other two lions. Its not so much his length as it is just that his body is very substantial compared to a lot of fish. I kind of feel sorry for the shrimp too, but I got over it when I used to feed live brine to the seahorses as a treat. The shrimp are cute, but the lion fish need to eat and its fun to watch them make shrimp vanish whole Yeah I'm hoping the squammy will help with nitrates, but my test kit was reading 25 ppm nitrates again last night. I'm beginning to wonder if my test kit is bad because it has never read anything but 25 ppm. I just got the test kit a few weeks ago, so its not expired, but 25 ppm seems high to me. I believed it at first, but then I did 2 10 gallon water changes in the last week and added a ton of chaeto and the nitrate hasn't budged. Also, its supposedly been at 25 ppm for like a week and a half now, but nothing in the tank (including SPS) is showing any stress or issues. Anyways, I may have to get another nitrate kit to confirm this because it seems off. I'm using a Salifert Nitrate kit btw. 2 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 In other tank updates, I did another 10 gallon water change yesterday along with a bunch of maintenance on the tank. I converted the TLF Phosban reactor over to biopellets. I went ahead and used the TLF brand biopellets since those are what was available locally. I started with 1/4 of the recommended amount. I also put about half of my usual amount of GFO and some carbon in a filter bag and set it in the sump. I figured that would still help a bit with phosphates while I'm getting the biopellets figured out. I also did all my water testing right before the water change. Here are the parameters: Alk: 9.3 Ca: 385 Mg: 1140 PO4: 0.03 NO3: 25 Alk and Ca have been really stable for about the last 10 days, so that is great. Ca is still a bit lower than I would like, so I increased the dosing amount a bit last night. I'm up to dosing 24 mL of each part of B-Ionic. Also, I finally know what my Mg is since I got a new test kit, so it looks like its a bit lower than I would like. I added ESV B-Ionic Mg to my doser last night. I just have it dosing 3 mL once a day to start with and I'll slowly increase that. 1 Quote Link to comment
gena Posted June 10, 2015 Share Posted June 10, 2015 Maybe you could have your LFS do a nitrate test? Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 10, 2015 Author Share Posted June 10, 2015 Maybe you could have your LFS do a nitrate test? Good idea. I wasn't really planning to go to the LFS this weekend but maybe I'll go on Saturday and get them to double check. I'm really thinking something might be wrong with the test kit I got. 2 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 Ok, so I decided to spend the evening troubleshooting my nitrate test results. I decided to repeat the Salifert test with my current water (after a 10 gallon water change yesterday) and also use the Salifert test on some fresh mixed saltwater to make sure it isn't a bad kit that is erroneously reading high. I also decided to test my tank water with two different API nitrate tests that are like 3 years old. Here are the results: 1) Salifert Tank Water: 25 ppm (still the same as before the big water change and as every single other time I've tested with this kit) 2) Salifert fresh mixed SW: 2.5 ppm 3) API Kit #1: 5 ppm 4) API Kit #2: 10 ppm What the heck? All over the board! Granted, the API kits are old, so they may be bad but I'm still baffled. At least the Salifert kit reads really low for fresh SW, which makes sense. So does that mean that test is right and my water is actually at 25 ppm nitrates? It just seems so high based on my filtration, plus chaeto, plus 3 clams. I only feed 3 times a week now. This seems way too high and I don't see why it wouldn't come down at all with a water change. I hate test kits... 1 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 I finally got around to framing and hanging some cool aquatic prints by the tank. They're prints of scientific illustrations from the American Museum of Natural History's research library. They came as a cool set with a book of excerpts from different scientific essays on oceanography. And for the Lily lovers, here's how she feels about me working on the tank. And...I have another video for you guys! A bit better video of feeding the predators! 10 Quote Link to comment
kimberbee Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 I love those prints! Looks like a nice little set up you have there! 1 Quote Link to comment
gena Posted June 11, 2015 Share Posted June 11, 2015 Loved the video....the antennata really is gorgeous! Oh and sooo nice to see my Lily girl again . 1 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 11, 2015 Author Share Posted June 11, 2015 I love those prints! Looks like a nice little set up you have there!Thanks Kimber! I definitely enjoy that wall of my living room. Loved the video....the antennata really is gorgeous! Oh and sooo nice to see my Lily girl again .Thanks, Gena. The antennata is definitely really pretty. She is such a nice shade of red and she has the most elaborate fins. She's still just the most shy of the lions but she's slowly warming up. Hopefully there will be more photos and videos of her to come as she's out and about more. Yep Lily's NR appearance was overdue! Hard to believe she just turned 5 in May! She's still very kitten like with her antics 1 Quote Link to comment
vlangel Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 I love the art work! And your cat is too cute with its lazy pose. I love how your tank looks. I can't believe how mature the corals are and relaxing all the motion is. 2 Quote Link to comment
Nano sapiens Posted June 12, 2015 Share Posted June 12, 2015 All that finnage is awesome! Very interesting to see the different feeding behaviors. 1 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 12, 2015 Author Share Posted June 12, 2015 I love the art work! And your cat is too cute with its lazy pose. I love how your tank looks. I can't believe how mature the corals are and relaxing all the motion is. Thank you! The prints are from this set if you have any interest. Its a pretty cool set of a book and prints. Lily is quite the diva about me working on the tank. That was her exasperated, "I give up at trying to steal back your attention" pose. Some of the corals have been with me for quite a long time and made it through several tank crashes, so that's why they look mature even though this tank is pretty new. Thanks for the compliments! All that finnage is awesome! Very interesting to see the different feeding behaviors. Yeah, I love the fins on the lions. They each have very different and unique fins. Glad you liked seeing all the different feeding behaviors. I wanted to get a video of all of them eating so you all could see what feeding time is like. Quote Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted June 13, 2015 Share Posted June 13, 2015 This is definitely a tank you can love for a while. Such fun inhabitants! 2 Quote Link to comment
Mirya Posted June 13, 2015 Share Posted June 13, 2015 So Amazon suggested this to me today while I was browsing completely unrelated to fish stuff: I think Lily needs one to play with! 5 Quote Link to comment
Mr. Microscope Posted June 13, 2015 Share Posted June 13, 2015 So Amazon suggested this to me today while I was browsing completely unrelated to fish stuff: I think Lily needs one to play with! LOL! IDK, that might give the cat some bad ideas. 2 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 14, 2015 Author Share Posted June 14, 2015 This is definitely a tank you can love for a while. Such fun inhabitants! Definitely! Dat Nintendo 64 yo I was wondering if anyone would notice that. I love my old N64! So Amazon suggested this to me today while I was browsing completely unrelated to fish stuff: I think Lily needs one to play with! Woah! That's awesome. I think Lily does need one! LOL! IDK, that might give the cat some bad ideas. Haha! Lily has lots of fish/sea creature shaped toys and she hasn't gone on a fish eating streak yet 3 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 14, 2015 Author Share Posted June 14, 2015 Took a few photos last night! Mushu was being quite the ham, begging for food last night. Draco was posing too! Falkor The starry blenny being adorable as usual. 9 Quote Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 Your pictures are so awesome of these guys! 3 Quote Link to comment
vlangel Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 Your pictures are so awesome of these guys! I second the awesome pics! 1 Quote Link to comment
kimberbee Posted June 15, 2015 Share Posted June 15, 2015 Really beautiful! I want a stuffed lionfish for myself!! 1 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 15, 2015 Author Share Posted June 15, 2015 Mario kart FTW Of course I have Mario Kart Your pictures are so awesome of these guys! I second the awesome pics Really beautiful! I want a stuffed lionfish for myself!! Thanks so much, you guys! You're all too kind. The lions make it way too easy to take nice photos. Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 16, 2015 Author Share Posted June 16, 2015 Did my 10 gallon water change and other tank maintenance today (change filter sock, clean skimmer, scrape glass). The biopellet reactor seems to be kicking in. I had been getting a ton of algae on the glass within a day of scraping it, but the last couple days it has stopped growing and some of it had actually disappeared. Here are the water test results (these are right before the water change): Alk: 9.9 Ca: 380 (still a bit low, so I increased dosing by 4 mL per day) Mg: 1095 (still low, so I increased dosing by 3 mL per day) PO4: 0.03 NO3: 10 (down from 25 ppm) Salinity: 1.025 The nitrates are actually probably a bit higher than 10. The color looked like it was between that for 10 ppm and 25 ppm on the chart, but it was definitely closer to 10. Hopefully this wasn't too fast of a drop. Everything looks great and there are no signs of stress. SPS have great PE and color and the clams look great. 1 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted June 17, 2015 Author Share Posted June 17, 2015 The antennata ate frozen last night! Yay! She ate a nice big old frozen krill and didn't spit it out. Progress is being made on the weaning front. Now I just need to get Draco onto frozen and I can stop maintaining the ghost shrimp tank. Draco is interested in frozen, but he's just such a beggar that I can't stick to starving him long enough for him to go for it I started last night with only offering frozen and if he won't take it, he doesn't get fed. Hopefully he'll go for the frozen in a couple days. 2 Quote Link to comment
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