Nuvo 10 build woot woot

[Oldfishwife]

My Nuvo 10 arrived today and boy am I impressed! This thing is solid and beautiful. The color of the glass is amazing and it’s so thick! The back compartments are all a nice size and the replacement Sicce .5 pump I bought fits perfectly. No touching sides and runs very quiet. The mesh top is heavy and a nice snug fit with very fine mesh -shouldn’t block any light. We’re doing a leak test right now, but will drain it and put it in place to be ready for sand, rock and water tomorrow. Not at all bad for $99!!!

[WV Reefer]

2 minutes ago, Oldfishwife said:

My Nuvo 10 arrived today and boy am I impressed! This thing is solid and beautiful. The color of the glass is amazing and it’s so thick! The back compartments are all a nice size and the replacement Sicce .5 pump I bought fits perfectly. No touching sides and runs very quiet. The mesh top is heavy and a nice snug fit with very fine mesh -shouldn’t block any light. We’re doing a leak test right now, but will drain it and put it in place to be ready for sand, rock and water tomorrow. Not at all bad for $99!!!

 Yay!!  😃 

 

 

 

They are nice looking tanks.  

[seabass]

Very exciting.  I love the possibilities of a new tank.

[Oldfishwife]

We have water!!!!!

 

this rock wouldn’t be my first choice, but I couldn’t find any nice looking live rock locally so I went with a 7 lb piece of Liferock and a couple of small pieces of cured live rock. The big Liferock is taking up more space than I planned, but it does seem to be a solid base for frags with lots of crannies and bumps for attaching stuff. I think I’ll leave the height for corals. May build up the back a bit if I find a piece or 2 I like. It’s a start. I love the nice blue of the a80. Great shimmer, though more intense than halides. Now I have to get my RFG hooked up and the Kessil controller. Wheeeeeeeeee!

[sadie]

what are your plans for this tank (fish? what kind of coral?)  looks great.

[Nevvy]

Awesome! Everything is looking good, can't wait to see what you decide to stock the tank with .

[Oldfishwife]

I made a few little changes. I had forgotten that I had put that very old conch shell aside for this tank. It will be a great hiding spot for a gobie. I shifted those 2 pc of live rock, too, and added a bit of height. 

 

Ammonia is 1.5 after adding Dr. Tim’s bacteria and ammonia, so we’re off and running. I LOVE this Bimini pink sand. It’s easy to move around a bit without clouding up the water column. Loving the tiny shells in it, too. 

[sadie]

that is sweet!

[banasophia]

Looks great, excited to follow! I have Caribsea Liferock in both of my tanks and I’m very happy with it. 

[Oldfishwife]

4 hours ago, banasophia said:

Looks great, excited to follow! I have Caribsea Liferock in both of my tanks and I’m very happy with it. 

It’s very pretty rock. I would have preferred the real stuff that I used to get, but I don’t miss the bristle worms and other stuff that came in on it. Some pods would be nice, though. 

[mcarroll]

Bristleworms.

 

One of the most crucial members of the cleanup crew and indeed of the tank's ecosystem. 

 

If your tank really didn't have any I'd suggest ordering some from any of the various suppliers like sustatinable aquatics and indo-pacific sea farms, et al.  (listed usually as "polychetes")

 

Should You Keep Bristle Worms In Your Aquarium? (on another site) is one of the more rational treatments the poor bristleworm has gotten in recent years. 

 

But as is usual it can't help but to pump up the exceedingly-rare-to-the-point-of-being-unheard-of-in-actual-tanks fireworm as a legitimate worry. 

 

This is unfortunately typical of every article I turned up on a google search just now.   LOTS of fear-mongering even on articles disseminating some good info.  It works as click bait (oooh!  deadly fireworms!), and even as data (ok, I know about fireworms)....but don't misread it as information (I need to worry about or eradicate fireworms right now).  😉 

 

The article linked does at least give them this credit, and this does give a good description of the visible services your tank would be missing without bristleworms:

Quote

In the wild, as well as your tank, these worms are incredible cleaners. They are scavengers and will eat any dead or rotting thing in your tank. This includes leftover food and dead animals.

 

They are also able to move through rocks and crevices and get into places other organisms cannot. They make great additions to your tanks cleaning crew.

 

Any organism that helps you clean the tank without causing your tank problems is a bonus.

 

Because these organisms enter the tank typically in live rock, it’s likely you will not have to pay for these little cleaners.

 

The good species can be just as effective at cleaning as snails or even some starfish.

Other than the assertion that bristleworms, snails and starfish are interchangeable on some level (not really), that's sound advice.

 

However even when they are acknowledging the bristleworm's meek and utilitarian reality as the most common and highly useful worm we have.....they have to bite into the fireworm hype:

Quote

While most worms in your tank are detritivores (feeding on mostly detritus), some are carnivores. This means they will attack fish, usually as they sleep. Recently they were found to actually contain a venomous cocktail which explains the burning and pain that comes with contact.

The character of the article doesn't leave you with the feeling that you have a nice pack of detritavores.....it leaves you in morbid fear of the unlikely fireworm.  Or at least that seems to be the goal of the writing.  (As if petting a garden variety bristleworm doesn't also invoke a burning and painful sensation.  It does!)

 

In reality, if you find fireworms causing some problem, you have them....otherwise you don't.

 

If you don't find fireworms causing damage, then like almost everyone else you just have bristleworms.   

 

Less tank cleaning for you -- more plankton for the tank.   

 

Bristleworms are a rare win-win that you almost have to do nothing to enjoy.

 

Simple.  🙂 

 

99.9% of everyone only has bristleworms.

 

This is one of the best threads I've found on bristleworms so far....no real fear mongering at all and good information being shared:
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/help-is-this-a-fire-worm-or-an-ok-species-of-bristle-worm.86678/

 

Even the worms that we're told in other places to fear are really omnivorous rather than predatory or carnivorous.

 

Tank problems with these worms are more likely to be related to starving the tank (and thus starving the worm.....a commonplace activity to acheive "zero nutrients") than to the worm itself being a problem per se.

 

Something I don't think most folks account for in the "bad worm" cases you can find out there is that worms grow (up or down) to their food source.....in terms in individual size as well as in terms of population.  Big worms usually starve/get out-competed by more numerous smaller worms that can access more of the tank's minute feeding zones and which can subsist on much smaller meals.  When there's not enough food, all worms will have a smaller number of surviving young as well.

 

Most worm "problems" are in tanks that have an oversupply of worm food...by definition the tank is overfed in this case.  That makes overfeeding the real problem, not the worms. 

 

Sometimes (maybe depending on the nature of the food being oversupplied) this kind of problem ends up creating one gigantic worm, but usually it's an "outbreak" where there's a ton of surviving babies.   

 

In either case the worms still aren't the problem per se...the excess food being supplied is.  (Which is something we control.)

 

If you never go through an overfeeding phase, then IMO it's almost impossible to find a big worm or have a large brood of surviving baby worms.....so those problems are completely avoidable IMO.

 

Ron Shimek's 2003-2004 series on reefkeeping.com called "A Spineless Column" had a great set of polychete articles:

• The Worms Crawl In…
• The Large Worm Turns…
• Polychaete Annelid Identification, or “You Can Always Tell A Bristle Worm…

Calfo and Fenner's 2003 book "Reef Invertebrates" gives great coverage to live rock and it's hitchhikers if you can get a copy.   

 

I sadly still haven't read Fenner's "The Conscientious Marine Aquarist" from 2001 but I'd be surprised if it didn't give the topics a similarly good treatment...and it's probably a lot easier to get than the Calfo books, which have been out of print for a number of years.

[Oldfishwife]

We used to have lots of bristle worms in all of our tanks. They just came with the territory, like aiptasia. They never caused any problems and we didn’t have to worry about detritus. We had one big guy who would slither out of his rock at feeding time. He must have been 6” long and at least 1/4 wide.  I was surprised that people want to avoid them and other hitchhikers now. Things do change in this hobby. 😂

[Mena]

I just found this guy. He was on my sand bed moving from one side of the tank to the other in the front glass. The lights had been on for about half an hour. I want to believe he's a good guy so I can put him back in the tank. Please help

[Clown79]

57 minutes ago, Mena said:

I just found this guy. He was on my sand bed moving from one side of the tank to the other in the front glass. The lights had been on for about half an hour. I want to believe he's a good guy so I can put him back in the tank. Please help

It's a bristle worm

[Mena]

3 hours ago, Clown79 said:

It's a bristle worm

Yes, I apologize I didn't make it clear that I know it's a bristle worm. My question is whether it's a good one or a fire bristle.  

[seabass]

Although fireworms are a type of bristle worm, it looks like a typical (good) bristle worm to me.  However, I admit to discarding large ones that I find out and about (probably unnecessarily).

[mcarroll]

Bristleworms are as common and as good as earthworms.

 

Actual confirmed sightings of the "possibly bad" kind are as rare as hen's teeth.  They are worried about way too much.

 

Actual sightings of the "possibly bad" kind doing actual damage are up there with UFO and Big Foot sightings.  As far as I know there's no actual footage.  And any footage I saw would be subject to scrutiny.

 

Big Foot.  🙂

[Clown79]

On 12/22/2019 at 10:35 AM, Mena said:

Yes, I apologize I didn't make it clear that I know it's a bristle worm. My question is whether it's a good one or a fire bristle.  

No apology needed. 😊

 

Ya, it looks like a typical bristle not a fire.