Hexadron's Nitoralis [Retired]

[Mstefa1]

Really? I thought Jordon came back which is why my email was loaded with notifications but as it turns out you guys are just wasting space in the database.. Guess time to unsubscribe.

[Kfmmartin19]

Really? I thought Jordon came back which is why my email was loaded with notifications but as it turns out you guys are just wasting space in the database.. Guess time to unsubscribe.

U mad bro?

[Hexadron]

You guys are bloody hilarious

Hey all, well I haven't really left, but I was away from here for a while. My sincerest apologies. I hope no one thought i abondoned them. To say the least I have LOTS of catching up to do with all your guys' tank journals. So i'll probably be lurking for a while to catch up.

Well I figure I better explain my absence. I have been really Career driven as of late, taking courses to better myself. As some of you may know, I am in Finance, and there is always something to learn. Anyways, long story short, I have been so busy travelling for work on business trips, and going away for various classes, I haven't had much time to devote to the tank or Nano-Reef In fact, I am going on another business trip next week, and then a few weeks later, vacation!

To say what's new with the tank, well not much. Haha, I know you guys are figuring I would come back with tons of updates, new livestock, and a nTOTM, but sorry to disappoint. I am too anal to add something, then leave for weeks at a time. Deckoz knows what i'm talking about...

The tank is maturing beautifully though. No damn coralline growth from what I can see, but the rocks (dry rock) is now full of life! Thanks to me adding the few choice pieces of life-filled liverock some time back, it finally paid off.

I mentioned I had a few 'special' livestock pieces on order, which are still on order... Just seem hard to get, which sucks, but it will come.

Everyone since last time is still alive and kickin'

• Lenny the Blenny has grown quite a bit and is no puny baby anymore.
• Jacques the Blood Shrimp is about the same (bought him fully grown), and molts on average about once every 2 weeks.
• Tons of pods always.
• Lots of brittle stars I can see more and more every day, and they have made their way into the dryrock work
• The 'dry rock' is pretty full of life. It is starting to 'color up' as well. Well not so much colour, as turn poopy brown, but it's all good!
• The two Zebra Hermits are well. Just doing what they do.
• I stopped dosing Zeo. I find at this point it's pretty well pointless. I have notice no change is chemistry or visually. Perhaps I'll give it a shot once I have some corals in there.
• Aiptasia almost all gone! I have been treating every so often with Airtasia-X and I only see one or two left.Gonna treat again this weekend. I still have like 6/8 of a bottle!
• Yup, still no corals. I can feel the waves of people unsubscribing already I just can't do it right now only being home a few days a week. After my trip though, hell yes. I am done with business trips for a bit and will be at home a lot!

Yup, that's the updates people. No pics. Deal with it. I'll see about getting a borin' ol' FTS for you guys soon though. I have tomorrow off, so i'll try for then.

TL;DR - I have been busy at work, tank is good along with all current livestock, no deaths, no corals added, dry rock is now full of life, no pics GFY.

[metrokat]

Need to see the shoes you shopped this whole time.

[Kfmmartin19]

You need to do us all a favor and just buy one little $10 sps frag and leave it in your tank while you're gone all this time. We want to see what that razor can do! Plus worst case scenario is that u are out $10...

[Hexadron]

Need to see the shoes you shopped this whole time.

 

Haha, funny thing, I just bought some shoes for my trip last week. I'll see what I can do kat

 

You need to do us all a favor and just buy one little $10 sps frag and leave it in your tank while you're gone all this time. We want to see what that razor can do! Plus worst case scenario is that u are out $10...

 

Good god, I really should eh? If I have time, maybe i'll head to the LFS, and see if they have anything.

 

I still need to figure out what the hell to do while i'm away for feeding. Most I went was a week straight, but everyone managed. more than two weeks though I think i'll come back to a bunch of bones and shells. I was thinking the Fishmate F14, anyone have any ideas? I feed pellets BTW, and not tons given my current livestock.

[metrokat]

Is there anyone you can trust to come in once/twice a week to feed? If yes then all you would do is take disposable cups, pre-measure food into the cups, leave them in the freezer and the tank sitter just dumps one of those measures into the tank on each visit.

[Hexadron]

Is there anyone you can trust to come in once/twice a week to feed? If yes then all you would do is take disposable cups, pre-measure food into the cups, leave them in the freezer and the tank sitter just dumps one of those measures into the tank on each visit.

 

I wish. I have a few friends I do trust, but they aren't too reliable, and my brother lives on the other side of the city which takes him over an hour to get here. Simply put, probably not gonna happen.

 

If anyone has experience with any automatic fish feeders, I would really appreciate any feedback. This would be better if if can mount directly to rimless tanks as well - Otherwise, it's Macguyver to the rescue.

[Kfmmartin19]

Haha, funny thing, I just bought some shoes for my trip last week. I'll see what I can do kat

 

 

 

Good god, I really should eh? If I have time, maybe i'll head to the LFS, and see if they have anything.

 

I still need to figure out what the hell to do while i'm away for feeding. Most I went was a week straight, but everyone managed. more than two weeks though I think i'll come back to a bunch of bones and shells. I was thinking the Fishmate F14, anyone have any ideas? I feed pellets BTW, and not tons given my current livestock.

Please do!

 

Don't know about auto fish feeders, sorry.

 

Just realized u r in Canada. The Canadians r taking over N-R! lol

[kveekx]

You need to do us all a favor and just buy one little $10 sps frag and leave it in your tank while you're gone all this time. We want to see what that razor can do! Plus worst case scenario is that u are out $10...

SPS colored up beautifully under my razor when I had still had SPS my alk and cal was a bit of a roller coaster too and they still looked awesome!

[metrokat]

I wish. I have a few friends I do trust, but they aren't too reliable, and my brother lives on the other side of the city which takes him over an hour to get here. Simply put, probably not gonna happen.

 

If anyone has experience with any automatic fish feeders, I would really appreciate any feedback. This would be better if if can mount directly to rimless tanks as well - Otherwise, it's Macguyver to the rescue.

You can do what I did: decapsulate brine shrimp eggs. The process involves hydrating, decapsulting and dehydrating again, then storing it in a hypersaline solution. IF you made such a solution, you could do the nanosapiens hamster bottle ATO idea and fill it with the BS eggs.

 

Put a TLF ball valve on the end to control the drip rate of the solution. It's fresh food daily as the eggs are nutritious and no shell to chew through.

 

Further, if it were to drip into a mesh sock of some sort, they eggs would stay in the water and hatch in 24 hours, the fry are small enough to escape the mesh and into the tank providing live food to the tank. The continuous daily drip of eggs will ensure a continuous daily live feed.

 

Dang I need to do this on my tank!

[Deleted User 4]

I vote for pictures of the new shoes!!

[Mstefa1]

Welcome back Jordon! Think the best thing you can do as previously mentioned is to drop in a nice new frag. Maybe SPS, maybe not but a nice frag. I bet you will be surprised when you come home to see it all colored up.

 

No problems leaving your tank for a week. 2 weeks? You either need a fish sitter or someone to hold your fish. Everything else would probably be fine. Good luck!

[Kfmmartin19]

Hey Jordon, I was looking around and it seems like this:

 

http://www.marinedepot.com/Eheim_Feed_Air_Automatic_Feeder_Automatic_Fish_Food_Feeders-Eheim-EH3581-FIFDFEAF-vi.html

 

might be your best bet for an auto feeder. I have read lots of good things about it

[brad908]

Hey Jordon, I was looking around and it seems like this:http://www.marinedepot.com/Eheim_Feed_Air_Automatic_Feeder_Automatic_Fish_Food_Feeders-Eheim-EH3581-FIFDFEAF-vi.html'>http://www.marinedepot.com/Eheim_Feed_Air_Automatic_Feeder_Automatic_Fish_Food_Feeders-Eheim-EH3581-FIFDFEAF-vi.html

might be your best bet for an auto feeder. I have read lots of good things about it

 

Yup, that's the one I'm getting when I get my Anthias.

[sunburn]

I wish. I have a few friends I do trust, but they aren't too reliable, and my brother lives on the other side of the city which takes him over an hour to get here. Simply put, probably not gonna happen.

 

If anyone has experience with any automatic fish feeders, I would really appreciate any feedback. This would be better if if can mount directly to rimless tanks as well - Otherwise, it's Macguyver to the rescue.

 

I have the Eheim automatic fish feeder that I used when I went to Florida for a week. Since you already use pellets, this should work perfectly for you.

 

The only problem I had was with the small pellets I feed. I use New Life Spectrum (small fish formula .5mm) which are suppose to sink, but they float for a while and got sucked up into my overflow before the fish could eat them. Soooooo...I had to coordinate my Apex to turn off my pump before the feeder turned on. The fish got used to the pump turning off and waited under the feeder for the food to drop.

 

If you use a feeder be sure to have it set up and use it a couple of days before you leave so you can fine tune it.

 

It can attach to a rimless tank.

[Kfmmartin19]

I don't like it when this happens...

[TristanC]

[Hexadron]

Hey everyone, wow it seems like i'm just popping in every now and then... Sorry 'bout that.

 

Well good news is my travels are over! I left my tank without an auto feeder Buuuuuut as it turns out everything is fine! No casualties, and when I finally got back and fed the tank holy shit, i've never seen Jacques (the Blood Cleaner shrimp) go more insane! He was flying all over the place.

 

The tank is dirrrrty! I haven't made time to clean it, but will be doing a super thorough cleanup (including pumps etc) next weekend. One sad thing to report is a few days after I got back one of my hermits passed. I am really not sure what caused this, as all was well, but a few days after i returned, i'm sitting at my desk where my tank is, and suddenly I hear this little click in my tank, and look and see one of his little pinchers floating about. I am thinking one of two things happened: 1) He got a little too close to one of the Vortechs and *bam*! hermit soup, or 2) He got into it with the other hermit's and had a Battle Royale! which did not end well for one of them.

 

Either way i'm down to one. Hermits seems to be little bitches and i'm not looking to replace any more of them. LOL. I am on the lookout for cleanup crew member(s) who won't/can't crawl on the glass out of the tank though. Suggestions are welcome

 

During my time away I reduced the light cycle to make sure I didn't come back to an algae nightmare, and i'm happy to report pretty much NO growth. Really I don't know what the hell i'm doing, but I have had zero algae problems since I started this tank. I am hoping that's a good thing, and i'm not doing something wrong! There is no sign of green anywhere! I just get occasional brown diatom/algae on the glass. My rocks still look really bare though.

 

Oh yeah, and i set up my ELOS Osmocontroller to top off while I was away and it worked like a champ. I was fearing the worst, but it worked out great. I'm really disappointed with how large the tubing is for the water pump though. Although i would recommend this ATO for a sump system, I am on the lookout for a nice slim ATO to replace it with in the near future. The new Hyrdrofill from Innovative Marine looks really nice.

 

Okay good news as I said, is i'm back, but the bad news is most of my time will be eaten up by courses i'm taking for work. I'm trying to cram everything i can in to finish by October. Either way i'll be sure to leave some free time for the tank though!

 

Pretty boring update I know, but i'm really looking forward to put this tank into overdrive come this fall.

[TristanC]

Woohoo! Glad everything is still doing good. I'm using the tunze nano ATO and it is very small.

[Deleted User 4]

Mmmm I still think the elos ato looks better than the hydrofill.

 

Can't wait to see new pictures

[Hexadron]

Woohoo! Glad everything is still doing good. I'm using the tunze nano ATO and it is very small.

 

I was surprised I was thinking the worst the entire time i was away. Phew, thank goodness!

 

Mmmm I still think the elos ato looks better than the hydrofill.

 

Can't wait to see new pictures

 

The ELOS has been working flawlessly; it's just that the tube for the water is huge, and is hard to conceal. I think before I splurge on another device, i'll try to get a reducer for a smaller tube just to go into the tank, I just hope it won't create too much pressure.

 

So next thing I get will probably be an addition to my skeletal clean up crew. Any suggestions? I'm really just looking for something that won't crawl on the glass/out of the tank and is peaceful.

 

Right now I still have my one zebra hermit, and my cleaner shrimp.

[shaner014]

I was surprised I was thinking the worst the entire time i was away. Phew, thank goodness!

 

 

The ELOS has been working flawlessly; it's just that the tube for the water is huge, and is hard to conceal. I think before I splurge on another device, i'll try to get a reducer for a smaller tube just to go into the tank, I just hope it won't create too much pressure.

 

So next thing I get will probably be an addition to my skeletal clean up crew. Any suggestions? I'm really just looking for something that won't crawl on the glass/out of the tank and is peaceful.

 

Right now I still have my one zebra hermit, and my cleaner shrimp.

 

Just checked back in after a hiatus myself. Glad to see your still around.

 

I reduced my ELOS tubing to 1/2" Outside Diameter tubing and it works flawlessly still. The water does kind of jet into the tank a bit, shoots out about 5" and I have it pointed slightly downward to bounce off my front glass. It doesn't overpower my Koralia or stir sand or anything.

 

Stock this thing!

[metrokat]

Still waiting for shoe pictures honey...

[Mstefa1]

Can't you dial down the power of the pump on the Elos? Otherwise if you have the line submerged in a rear chamber then you don't have to worry about it blasting anything (or looking at it for that matter). Basically the pump needs to be powerful enough to cover the head pressure depending on the height of your tank & stand in comparison to the location of your ATO reservoir.

 

The Tunze has a potentiometer that you can access inside the cover. Some people don't know it's there because you have to remove the cover to access it although the instructions are in the manual. I set mine so that it is just powerful enough to pump, but as little flow as possible.