Jesse's 30 gallon reef + 10 gallon planted dorm tank

[kinetic]

5 hours ago, jesseatam said:

I'm pretty sure I was sold empty snail shells... Probably going to try to just stick to reef cleaners from now on if possible. Everything else I bought is doing well though. However, I feel like the mushroom might be losing a bit of color but it is also expanding more.

 

I'd also recommend AlgaeBarn for snails. They have ORA bred snails (rather than wild caught) so they have been in controlled water / stable PH for the most part. I haven't lost a single Trochus or Cerith snail since I got my shipment, which is crazy. 

[jesseatam]

I’m thinking the fish are about done with qt. I’ve done a single round of prazi, I still think there’s a little bit of flashing happening but I’m not worried. I’m just very eager to actually have fish in the display again, but I’m still cautious as to if there’s any residule toxins from the chemiclean.

[jesseatam]

Alright spotted a small white dot on the edge of the gobies left pectoral fin, and there’s some opaqueness in his tail too. Definitely no fish going in the display now this weekend which is a major bummer but I had a gut feeling something was going to happen. If this turns out to be ich I’m going with copper immediately. No playing around this time, I’ve seen what it can do. Plus I’ve become attached to these little guys, even if they aren’t named yet but I’m working on that 

[kinetic]

6 hours ago, jesseatam said:

Alright spotted a small white dot on the edge of the gobies left pectoral fin, and there’s some opaqueness in his tail too. Definitely no fish going in the display now this weekend which is a major bummer but I had a gut feeling something was going to happen. If this turns out to be ich I’m going with copper immediately. No playing around this time, I’ve seen what it can do. Plus I’ve become attached to these little guys, even if they aren’t named yet but I’m working on that 

Have you ever looked into using the Tank Transfer Method (TTM)? You don't need copper and it's fairly quick and painless.

[jesseatam]

6 hours ago, kinetic said:

Have you ever looked into using the Tank Transfer Method (TTM)? You don't need copper and it's fairly quick and painless.

I never really looked into it actually, I’m not sure if my parents would let have another tank though to be able to do it. Another issue for me would be getting my hands on enough water since I’ve been using distilled water and don’t have an RODI system.

[kinetic]

6 hours ago, jesseatam said:

I never really looked into it actually, I’m not sure if my parents would let have another tank though to be able to do it. Another issue for me would be getting my hands on enough water since I’ve been using distilled water and don’t have an RODI system.

You can actually use buckets rather than actual tanks! But yes, every 3 days changing the water is a bit tough without a RO/DI.

[jesseatam]

3 hours ago, kinetic said:

You can actually use buckets rather than actual tanks! But yes, every 3 days changing the water is a bit tough without a RO/DI.

Hmmmm... Well, I definitely have enough money saved to get a decent RO/DI unit I’d just need to think about where I’d set it up if I decide to purchase one.

 

In other new I just put in a reef cleaners order! Getting a bunch of different snails and some pods. I looked into algae barn but the pricing reef cleaners has is hard to beat (plus I had a discount code too ).

[kinetic]

6 hours ago, jesseatam said:

Hmmmm... Well, I definitely have enough money saved to get a decent RO/DI unit I’d just need to think about where I’d set it up if I decide to purchase one.

 

In other new I just put in a reef cleaners order! Getting a bunch of different snails and some pods. I looked into algae barn but the pricing reef cleaners has is hard to beat (plus I had a discount code too ).

You can literally hook it up to a kitchen sink when you need it, then store it away when you don't need it. I set mine up in the laundry room and have it fed from the output of the washing machine and the drain goes right into the drain of the washing machine. Super easy.

 

AlgaeBarn's critters are ORA, and tend to live. All my snails from AlgaeBarn are still alive (which is incredible really). I had some from reefcleanrs in the past and I seem to keep needing to buy more because they die too quickly =(

[jesseatam]

5 hours ago, kinetic said:

You can literally hook it up to a kitchen sink when you need it, then store it away when you don't need it. I set mine up in the laundry room and have it fed from the output of the washing machine and the drain goes right into the drain of the washing machine. Super easy.

Hmmm, looks I have to do more research.

5 hours ago, kinetic said:

AlgaeBarn's critters are ORA, and tend to live. All my snails from AlgaeBarn are still alive (which is incredible really). I had some from reefcleanrs in the past and I seem to keep needing to buy more because they die too quickly =(

I definitely want to try out AlgaeBarn as I’ve heard nothing but great things about them. Wow I’m sorry that your snails didn’t seem to last long, personally I haven’t had any luck with nassarius snails and then the nerites started to slowly drop after like 4 months but I’ve had great success with all the others, I even had some baby ceriths born in the tank grow into adults.

[jesseatam]

My snails came in yesterday, the bags were cold but most everything seems to have recovered. The most eventful things that happened yesterday however is that last night I noticed my rock flower anemone was spawning! It’s a male, but since it’s by itself no chance for babies . I tried to get some video of it but it’s not too great. Also during and after the spawning there were these little worms swimming around, I’ve seen them before but never swimming freely like this. Finally added some empty barnacle clusters or whatever they’re called to the tank. I figured they’d make a good hiding spot for the blenny and maybe I’d even be able to mount the euphyllia in the holes since they’re on frag plugs.

 

Rock Flower Spawning: 

 

Worms:

 

[jesseatam]

Also bonus picture of the porcelain crab 

 

[jesseatam]

Decided screw it and finally put the fish in, their colors look so much better under the spectrum of the display tanks’s lights. They seem to be sticking pretty close to each other which is kind of adorable  They get a little spooked when the power heads turn on 

 

This is also the first time there’s been any fish in this tank in like 6 months.

[jesseatam]

Excuse the ugliness but just as i expected 

[jesseatam]

Also turns out that gorilla crab I had is still alive, that damn crab is unkillable! Maybe he’s earned his stay at this point.

[jesseatam]

Both fish are doing well today, they haven’t taken any pellets but the goby has been grazing the rock and I’ve seen the blenny hunting and eating small worms and pods so as long as they’re not losing any weight I’m not going to worry too much. What has surprised me however is how territorial the porcelain crab is, I don’t think it’ll be an issue though as both these fish are quite quick.

[jesseatam]

Picked up a skunk cleaner shrimp (who I immediately named Jacques of course) and a new emerald crab to help with some bubble algae that’s been popping up and pick up the slack of the hermits. It was the first time I went to this store and it was easily one of the cleanest set ups I’ve ever seen. All the saltwater tanks were absolutely pristine (didn’t really look at the freshwater stuff oops ) and on top of that it’s local too! I’m probably going to be getting most of if not all of my stock from there now if possible.

[jesseatam]

[jesseatam]

So as you guys know I’m a high school senior and next year I plan on going to college and majoring in marine bio/marine sciences. I was at an accepted students day yesterday and was able to visit the schools wet lab and I was amazed. I got to see all sorts of cool stuff like algae and copepod cultures, and even saw a pair of interruptus angels!  They also had and were culturing cool fish like cleaner wrasse (apparently there are haiwaiin cleaner wrasse too?), yasha gobies, and of course clownfish. Speaking of the clownfish, they were absolutely massive! You can never really appreciate the size of a lot of the fish online until you them in person. Anyway seeing the huge pairs may or may not have given me the clownfish bug again so now I need to decide whether to go for a single or a pair hmmm...

[jesseatam]

So may or may not have bought a pair of clowns... These guys are my weakness.

[ajmckay]

Can't go wrong with clownfish!  They're just so well suited to reef tanks it's insane not to have one... 

 

What school were you checking out?  

[jesseatam]

11 hours ago, ajmckay said:

Can't go wrong with clownfish!  They're just so well suited to reef tanks it's insane not to have one...  

They’re great fish, I’ll post some pictures of my new guys in a bit.

11 hours ago, ajmckay said:

What school were you checking out?  

The school is Roger Williams University, it’s in Rhode Island so it’s like a 4 hour drive from me.

[jesseatam]

So for the clowns I ended up getting a mocha davinci and a mocha misbar. There was this big “ultra black phantom” clown that I really liked but I wasn’t willing to drop $125 on it (I ended up getting both the clowns and two emerald crabs for less than that). The davinci has a really cool asymmetrical pattern which caught my eye but his dorsal fin is a little messed up and his overall body shape isn’t as nice as the misbar’s. They’re around the same size as my wyoming whites were when I bought them.

Excuse the poor quality of the last photo. Also these guys are in the QT hence the ugly tank ?.

[debbeach13]

Good luck with your new fish. Very nice looking.

[Patrick17]

Beautiful clowns ? 

[jesseatam]

Thinking about going all soft corals in the tank. I’m just not sure what I’d do with the candy cane and the frogspawns as they’re still in rough shape from the whole chemiclean fiasco, although the candy cane has been recovering pretty well considering. Speaking of the whole chemiclean incident, I’m still getting some sort of growth. It usually starts to appear midway through the day after the lights have been on a while, I think I’m going to turn the intensity down to see if that has any effect.