Paneubert's 40G Breeder - Round 2

[paneubert]

Not the impeller!  I cycled the power on my powerstrip a few times after work to see if I could jump start it.  Guess what happened!  Everything went dark.  Haha.  One prong of the plug is now crispy.  Not sure why my GFCI in the wall did not trip, but the one in the power strip did eventually.  Tested this by plugging the pump into my bathroom GFCI.  Instant trip!  So that is fun.  Will salvage this guy for spare parts, and also still have the spare parts still on order from this morning.  Just ordered an entire new Mag 7 as well.  So I will have a new pump, and about 3 sets of replacement impellers and covers.  Ha!  

 

For now I have a super noisy and rattle-y spare Mag 7 running in the interim.  The noisy and rattle-y nature of it is why I ordered a new one......  That should come tomorrow.

 

Corals look pretty pissed off......

[paneubert]

Ok.  So I dosed a bit of calcium last night to get me to a good starting baseline.  I am going to wait a couple days before testing again, and keep doing that for a week or so to establish how much the corals are consuming.

 

Starting point is:

Ca = 430

Alk = 9.3

Mag = Not worried about it for now.

[paneubert]

Nothing groundbreaking to report from the last few days.  Did a 50% water change on the QT tank this morning and dosed the copper back up to where it should be.  Both clowns are active and the "newer" one does the little shake dance when the bigger one nips at it.  So they have their pecking order figured out.  Just have to hope the shakey dance means the little one has gotten the message to stay a male.  Neither have ever shown signs of ich or flukes, so I am almost sort of getting antsy about keeping them in QT.  Having a display tank with no fish just seems weird to me.....I might be turning into one of those people who uses QT to just observe for a while before releasing into the display.  We will see how I feel this weekend.  Clowns might go into the display soon.  I will probably justify it buy ordering some new fish and claiming I need the room in QT for the new ones.  Haha.

 

What else.....

 

Have been avoiding posting a full tank shot since I was getting a little bit of an ugly diatom bloom.  But it is already on the way back down, probably thanks in part to the clean up crew.  Also been avoiding a photo since my first order of coral frags are just randomly stuck in the sand as a temporary holding and partial acclimation zone.  So any photos right now would just look crappy.  

 

After having a fairly successful round of "thursday coral frag auctions" from AquaSD 2 weeks back, I went ahead and bid on some stuff last night.  The auction 2 weeks ago gave me a little bit of insight into how much different types of corals go for.  Ended up winning about a dozen Maxi-Mini anemones for significantly less than what they would retail for.  Haha.  I thought I was a hammer/torch/frogspawn guy, but it is seeming like I am going to end up with an anemone tank.  So those will be arriving next week.  Will probably go for a garden of them on one big rock, or try to line the rock/sand interface along the bottom of a big rock or something.  Not sure yet.

 

Harvested my phyto this morning.  No crashed jugs this time.  Both were pretty dark green.  Much darker than my first harvest, and WAY less crap left over in the sieve, which I am not sure is a good sign or a bad?  I guess good since it means most of the green and "stuff" in the jug was small enough to filter thru, which my target phyto strain should be able to.  So at least know that it is not contaminated with any "larger" sized algae strains.

[paneubert]

The kids convinced me that we needed to put the clowns in the display tank.  So they are in!  And of course I see a tiny white spot on the smaller one now that they are in a well lit tank. Hahahahaha!  I am sure it is nothing.  He was in copper for about 10 days.  So any ich should have matured and dropped off him in that time.  Any new ich should never have lived past hatching in the QT tank.  So......that is what I will tell myself.  He has little white circles on his tail as well, but those are just part of his pattern.  Big one has a halo on her head.

 

 

 

[paneubert]

Ohhh, and i have a definite pod explosion.  They are running around on the front glass with full lights blasting on them.  I bet if I put a mandarin in there then they would run and hide 😉.  I wonder what it would look like in the middle of the night.  Might have to check it out sometime.

[paneubert]

Full tank shot.  Corals mostly still on the sand since I have not clipped their plugs off yet.

 

[Christopher Marks]

I love following along with your journal @paneubert, very informative! The new maroon clowns are beautiful, hopefully the ich is over with too. 

[paneubert]

18 hours ago, Christopher Marks said:

I love following along with your journal @paneubert, very informative! The new maroon clowns are beautiful, hopefully the ich is over with too. 

Thanks. I know I am mostly talking to myself usually. Haha. 

[paneubert]

News from this morning is that there is a string of snail eggs on the front glass. Not sure which snails laid them. But from the quantity I assume some of the larger ones. Will get a photo tonight. 

[Clown79]

Tank and system look great! Very nice clowns too.

[skyscraper2290]

Excited to see it once you get all of your vitals mounted! How are the clowns acclimating to the DT? Got any new fish in QT yet?

[paneubert]

1 hour ago, skyscraper2290 said:

Excited to see it once you get all of your vitals mounted! How are the clowns acclimating to the DT? Got any new fish in QT yet?

Clowns are happy.  They sometimes swim together like in the photos from when they were first introduced, but now tend to stay apart.  The bigger one hangs in the back right corner while the smaller one hangs out in the front, near the maxi-mini anemones.

 

No fish in QT right now, but I have kept the heat and flow going.  Did not do anything to remove the copper either.  So it is primed for new fish if I get any.  The copper combined with no "hosts" in there for a while should keep it pretty sterile for any ich or other parasites that might hatch in there over the next few days.  Will probably order some new fish later this week.

 

Here are the snail eggs I saw this morning.  Will be interesting to see if they hatch.  The clowns have not tried to eat them yet.

 

[skyscraper2290]

Well hopefully they will start hanging out more together. Are you planning on doing a RBTA? What fish are you thinking of ordering? 

 

Great picture of the eggs, I remember I would typically scrape them off the glass whenever it used to happen to me. 

[paneubert]

18 hours ago, skyscraper2290 said:

Well hopefully they will start hanging out more together. Are you planning on doing a RBTA? What fish are you thinking of ordering? 

 

Great picture of the eggs, I remember I would typically scrape them off the glass whenever it used to happen to me. 

Rumor is these (Cerith) are the only type of snail eggs that can hatch and survive in a tank.  Not sure why that claim is made or what makes it true.  Maybe other common snail larvae need fancy food or no flow or something.  Who knows.  No plans for an anemone for the clowns.  Just the crap-ton of Maxi-Mini and rock flowers.  The clowns will survive.  Haha. 

 

As for fish on order....not 100% sure.  My wife wants a Coral Beauty.....which I am hesitant about due to them eating corals occasionally.  I still might go for it.  Six Line Wrasse.  Etc....

[paneubert]

And the hair algae is setting in.....  Just on the uppermost surfaces of the rocks closest to the lights.  I do feed heavy, but also skim 24/7, have carbon in a reactor (although I have not changed it in a few weeks), have bio-pellets going, and change out my filter socks as soon as they start to clog. Cheato/rubble center chamber in the sump has been lit 24/7 for about a week since I am lazy and haven't put that light on a timer yet, but no hair in there....which is intriguing. I would have expected the hair algae to appear in the sump since that light spectrum and timing should have provided a better home for it.  Maybe it is just part of my cycle and tank maturing?  Haha.  Wishful thinking......  We will see how the clean up crew responds to it.  Took the opportunity to change out my carbon since I was thinking about it.  That might help.

[paneubert]

I see some frequent water changes in my future.....  Ordered the following and going to attempt to QT them all at once.

 

Coral Beauty - Small

Six Line Wrasse - Medium

Royal Gramma Basslet - Medium

Talbot's Damselfish (2) - Medium

 

5 fish in a 10 gallon QT tank.  Lots of filtration in there....so....we will see?  They arrive Saturday.

[skyscraper2290]

Wow! That’s a lot of fish at once, I hope you get lucky with your coral beauty. Still have the snail eggs?  

 

Once ce the fish get into your display it will really add some great movement! Looking forward to pictures

[paneubert]

Part of the snail egg "line" is waving in the breeze now, but it is overall still attached to the glass.   Nobody has tried to eat them yet.  And yeah....that is a lot of fish all at once.....wish me luck.  Haha.  They are all fairly "small" fish, so I am hoping it works out.  If things go south, I can always just trust in the QT procedures that the seller claims to use and toss them (or a few of them) in the display tank.  They detail quite a long list of QT procedures on their end. 

[skyscraper2290]

Definitely good luck! Have you started to mount your corals yet?

[specore]

On 9/7/2018 at 5:42 PM, A Little Blue said:

I have the same RFA (yellow one). It’s basically lime green unless you want to blast it with just blues. That’s how they sell/take pics (under heavy blue light that makes everything POP). 

Sorry about the clown. Homegrown  Phyto is a good idea and will save you some $. 

I definitely prefer when they show them to you both ways, under actinics and under more natural light. 

[A Little Blue]

2 minutes ago, specore said:

I definitely prefer when they show them to you both ways, under actinics and under more natural light. 

More than half of my corals look nothing like original pics from the seller/vendor. 

Even corals I bought from local guys looked different in their tanks under their lights. That’s why I’ll never buy those fancy designer corals from boutique vendors who cook their corals & sell that BS for ridiculous $$$. It’s a JOKE. 

[A Little Blue]

P.S Tidal Gardens show both Actinic and 10,000K photos. 

[YHSublime]

You're in my favorite planning stages of a tank. Getting all the corals, starting to figure out what's going where. Tagging along!

[paneubert]

Well that was an ordeal!  Had the bright idea to cut off all the "pegs" on my frag plugs and then superglue the smaller frag disks to big 1 5/8 inch disks.  To allow a heavier base, room for the frags to spread/encrust, etc..  With the drawback that I lose all the ability to wedge them into small cracks in the live rock with the pegs.  Ohh well.  So why was it an ordeal you ask?  Because I forgot that I had 20+ frags, on my sandbed, and two kids who want to help and touch everything.  Haha!  But after a lot of clipping, squirting, and waiting for glue to set, I got everything glued down.  Ran out of time to do any sort of intentional placement in the tank, so they are all back on the sand again.  But at least now they aren't pointing at weird angles based on how deep the sand was (some of the pegs hit glass and would not stay vertical).

 

I have my dozen anemones coming in tomorrow, so I also did not want to decide on coral placement until those guys bulldoze all over the rock and settle down.  So I am looking at probably another week of a sandbed covered in corals, but that is ok.  

 

No photos since they are all pissed from being yanked out of the water.  Probably a TON of photos tomorrow night after I add the dozen anemones.

[paneubert]

Ohhh....and I found out I somehow superglued strands of my wife's hair to 3 or 4 frags.  LIke......in between the smaller and larger disks, with long lengths sticking out both sides floating in the breeze. So that is fun.  Haha.  Going to need to go in the tank with some little scissors I think.