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Bloodhouse First SW


bloodhouse

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Day 24.

After 2 days of no lights on, and a little bit of turkey baster clean up, it looks like my diatoms have disappeared. I've had my lights on the normal ramp on ramp off for a few days now and no diatoms. I'm kind of surprised that they just disappeared. My floss did have to get changed out twice though last week, so I assume that was why.

 

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Now I'm seeing some tiny neon green specs starting to cover surfaces of the rock.

 

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I've also added my first fish (drum roll)...

 

An Orchid Dottyback. It's a really tiny one! He's been hiding in the rock but did come out when I turned off the pump and powerhead to feed him.

 

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So far things seem to be going pretty well. I'll continue testing my water parameters daily to make sure I don't get any swings. I have 5 gallons for a water change and Kent ammonia detox on standby if needed.

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Day 29.

Second fish added a couple days ago. Electric Blue Damsel.

 

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Looks like the fin issue of the Orchid Dottyback was from nipping. Started doing daily 1 gallon water changes after I saw the fin looking raggidy just in case it was something with my water. Definitely looks better today. I'll keep an eye on it and continue daily or every other day water changes until the fin is 💯. I've gotten water changes down to a very quick 5 minute deal. 

 

Both fish are extremely active. The Damsel is a bit of a bully, but I won't be adding any other fish so they have plenty of space to share. I also broke a little bit more off my larger piece of live rock. Gave them more room to do laps around the tank. They both love it because now there's two small overhangs that they alternate swimming under. The Damsel has made the Orchid so much more comfortable swimming around the tank. He does chase every once in a while but it's usually a quick burst and then on to the next floaty thing it hopes is food.

 

Orchid has started nipping at the rockwork under a small overhang. I haven't added any pods or anything but I did see a little orange spec crawling on the glass. I think if I do have any pods or critters they're from my LFS water. All my rock except for a tiny piece was dry.

 

Haven't seen diatoms in a week or so. No new slimey bubbles anywhere so I'm happy about that. I attribute that to the Jebao rw-4 and water changes. The diatoms lasted like 4-5 days max. As soon as I saw them I bought the Jebao. Looks like I have some neon green corraline growing on the rock surfaces. Excited to see how that develops.

 

Tank looks good. I've put a lot of time and energy into this. It feels good nothing has died yet! Tank will remain fish only until I get back from a trip in March. I'm not sure if I have anyone who can feed my fish while I'm on vacation though so looking into auto feeder options. If anyone has a good one lemme know.

 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Day 40.

Getting some consistent diatoms it looks like, but only on the glass under the sandbed. All the rest of my sand looks perfectly clean. No diatoms on any of my rock surfaces, glass, black back, nothing. I'm wondering if I should just churn up the sand regularly? 

 

I'm still doing weekly 1-2gal water changes, levels have remained consistent. Fish look healthy and get along just fine. There was some initial bullying from the damsel but that's pretty much gone away.

 

Any thoughts on mixing my sand or just letting it be?

 

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Day 44.

So distilled gallon jugs of water from Wegmans grocery stores might have high levels of minerals. This site inlivo says this is what it has in it. I've been having these under the sandbed diatoms and I'm running chemi pure blue so I'm thinking there must me a source. I feed pretty light also. (Once a day flakes mostly)

 

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I'm also worried about copper in there for my inverts. Today I dumped it and went to Walmart and got the great value jugs.

 

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So I don't know how trustworthy this site is at all but this was interesting so I'm gonna chill on the Wegmans water and run some Walmart water in my ATO. All my saltwater comes from a LFS still so I don't think I'm getting excess phosphates from that. I'll let you guys know if I see any differences.

 

One of my hermits is missing. Not sure if he's molting or gone. There's a shell kind of jammed into my rock work so it's possible he's molting and hiding in there.

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I like the clean look of it, allthough mostly I am a fan of the natural looking reef tanks But plenty of room for some nice corals to grow.  😉

 

For the aquascape, maybe you could try to put the left stone diagonal against the standing stone. I think it would be interesting to see how that works out. 🙂

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17 hours ago, bloodhouse said:

Day 44.

So distilled gallon jugs of water from Wegmans grocery stores might have high levels of minerals. This site inlivo says this is what it has in it. I've been having these under the sandbed diatoms and I'm running chemi pure blue so I'm thinking there must me a source. I feed pretty light also. (Once a day flakes mostly)

 

Screenshot_20190303-225634.thumb.png.06537ddf0f6147c98b72f4599e001769.png

I'm also worried about copper in there for my inverts. Today I dumped it and went to Walmart and got the great value jugs.

 

Screenshot_20190303-230044.thumb.png.b1f4fd5a24ad6910e0e5ba47391ff975.png

 

So I don't know how trustworthy this site is at all but this was interesting so I'm gonna chill on the Wegmans water and run some Walmart water in my ATO. All my saltwater comes from a LFS still so I don't think I'm getting excess phosphates from that. I'll let you guys know if I see any differences.

 

One of my hermits is missing. Not sure if he's molting or gone. There's a shell kind of jammed into my rock work so it's possible he's molting and hiding in there.

Lots of folks on here use Walmart distilled water. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Day 64.

Back from a 10 day trip to Egypt. Came home to a huge diatom bloom. Friend who was house sitting kind of let the food build up in the filter floss. Not her fault she didn't really know. Things looking a little better after a week.

 

I decided to re-home my Electric blue damsel. The Orchid dottyback is just too docile and the damsel is getting more brazen about owning the entire tank. While picking up water from my LFS today I broke down and picked up a Black ocellaris clown. This is a really pretty fish.

 

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Also, got my first coral on my birthday yesterday! Purple tip hammer.

 

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My alk is sitting a little low but I'm very regimented in my 2 gallon weekly water changes so I ain't shook.

 

Can't decide if I want a third fish. The clown only swims in a small area of the tank, the orchid spends a lot of time in the rock work. There's a lot of tank here. Might look into something small. If this hammer does well I'll start adding more corals also.

 

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