The Porters' Aquarium

Tank update

2008-05-14T00:11:00.002-05:00

I found the Yellow Watchman goby when I was doing the water change-out last weekend. It was in the second chamber in the back of the tank. Unfortunately, I was unable to net it and bring it back to the front of the tank. After a few tries, I actually lost sight of him and was unable to find him again after 15 more minutes of searching. If I can successfully capture him, he is destined for a return trip to the fish store. Ben and I really do not want another fish that likes to hide in the back.

The flame scallop can still be seen in the back right corner of the tank. It is no longer wedged in between the back wall and the live rock, but it is still in the same general spot. It's shell is open and its tentacles are extended. I am concerned that it can still be seen under the lights during the day as they tend to like darkness, but maybe it will be ok.

The new Fungia coral kept rather still this week. It is getting somewhat buried in the sand by the Lawnmower Blenny's "dancing" in the front corner of the tank, but it hasn't relocated. When we first put it in the tank, it looked mainly like a coral skeleton, but now at night its tentacles can be seen. I am excited to see what it will look like when it has settled into the tank some more!

Fungia

2008-05-08T19:20:00.005-05:00

Ben and I decided to purchase a Fungia coral for Mother's Day for Allie. Nothing like a little aquarium expansion to show a woman you care! This is the first coral that we have for our tank that sits in the substrate (sand) rather than on the live rock like all of the others. Surprisingly, these corals are able to move around the tank although you would never guess it from looking at them. We will have to wait and see if our Fungia decides to be sedentary or if it likes to take small day trips.

Watchman, where are you?

2008-05-08T00:09:00.003-05:00

The little yellow watchman goby that we added to the tank has been noticeably absent this week. I still have not seen him out and about or even hiding underneath the live rock. I will need to do a thorough check of the back chambers when I do the next water change-out. This is not what we have been hoping for with a new fish!

The flame scallop continues to spend its time along the backwall of the tank. We will continue to feed it and watch its progress, but this is definitely not a good sign.

Hair Algae Help

2008-05-04T10:46:00.004-05:00

Earlier in the week, I added a Mexican Turbo snail back into the tank. We had a couple turbos in the tank in the past, but a couple died from flipping over and not being able to right themselves. Mexican turbos (as well as Astreas) are not capable of flipping themselves over if they are knocked off of the wall and fall onto their shell unlike the Cerith, Nerites, and Nassarius snails. This lack is thought to be due to their natural environment (shallow surf waters) which have more than enough current to allow the snails to be righted by the water action. If a snail is left on its back for a few hours, it will most of the time die. At any rate, turbos are known to be great at removing hair algae, so I thought it was worth another attempt. Boy was it a good choice! This little bugger has done a bang up job at trimming down the hair algae! Blenny, why are you here?

Since the last water change-out and tank clean-up, there is been very little red slime in the tank. I have been attempting to get that algae under control for months now and it looks like I might finally be making some headway! Yahoo!

The flame scallop has been seen lying at the bank of the tank wedged in between the live rock and the back wall. It is not moving back to a dark space when the lights come on as is normal. I fear that it might be on its way out. We will continue to watch it this week.

On Sunday, May 4th, Ben and I and his grandparents (Grandma & Grandpa Render) went out to some of the local fish stores to look for a fish for Ben. He has been wanting to replace his firefish ever since we decided to return it to the stores. Ben was really looking forward to purchasing a Neon Goby, but we have been unable to locate one for some time now. We stopped in at two different stores on Sunday, Aquatek and Gallery of Pets. We didn't see anything that interested us at Aquatek, so we zoomed up to Gallery of Pets before they closed. They didn't have a Neon Goby, but they did have a small Yellow Watchman Goby that caught Ben's eye. We purchased the watchman and brought it home to acclimate. It acclimated for about 90 minutes and then I released it to the tank. It swam to the bottom of the tank and hide underneath some of our live rock. We will have to see how it does in our little aquarium!

Changes

2008-04-28T01:18:00.007-05:00

A lot has happened since my last blog entry. Our 3rd peppermint shrimp died on us, and we decided to forgo any more peppermint shrimp purchases since we are unable to determine why they keep dying off on us! We also added a second emerald crab shortly after the first was re-introduced into the tank. Unfortunately, we haven't seen the new crab since we added it to the tank. The next morning, we found a emerald molt which means that the crab was likely highly stressed when we added it. We fear the worse, but it wouldn't be the first emerald crab to hide for 6+ weeks without our knowledge!

Four additional hermit crabs were added to the tank in an attempt to combat the hair algae that keeps cropping up on our rocks. These new hermits are much more like the originals that we had in the tank. Much more active than the scarlet hermits that we added and in an out of new shells like they were teenagers. They also seemed to have spurred something on in the scarlet hermits which are also more active now (but still not like these new hermits). They are constantly scurrying around and tidying things up.

About 4-5 weeks ago, we added a Lawnmower blenny to the tank to again try to address the hair algae blooms. This blenny apparently didn't read this contract before I purchased it though. It has basically ignored all of the hair algae in the tank! It is staying fat, so it is eating something in the tank...I am just not sure what that is.

Shortly after I added the blenny, the firefish started jumping into the back chambers again. I moved it back into the main tank a couple of times only to have it in the back chambers again by the next day. It was too stressed to stay in the main display. I decided to pull it out and put it into my small 5 gallon hex cube until I could think of something better to do with it. I decided to pull out the bunch of chaeto and toss it in the hex at the same time since it was putting out runners and starting to spread in the main tank. The firefish seemed much more relaxed in the hex tank. It could be seen swimming around the tank and would eat hardily when fed. I decided to leave him there for the time being.

Over the next 3-4 weeks, the small hex cube began to develop an ugly skin on the surface of the water. It was likely protein by-products from the fish waste and food. The small tank didn't have a very efficient export system and the water was slowly building waste. I couldn't keep the firefish in that tank for long. I spoke with Ben about the problem, and explained that I couldn't keep his fish in the small tank for much longer because it would get poisoned by the waste products. We toyed with trying to re-introduce the firefish back into the main display and again rigging up something to keep it from jumping into the back chambers. In the end, we decided that we should return the fish to the fish store to allow it another chance with some other aquarist. It just didn't seem to enjoy what we had to offer it here.

During the same time period that I had the firefish in the small hex tank, our Xenia decided to propagate. It began splitting off into two distinct stalks. Over about a 2 week time period the stalks moved away from each other and a thin ribbon of material stretched out between them into finally they had totally separated themselves! We now had two individual Xenia. We decided that we should sell one of the Xenia back to the fish store since it grows so fast and we know had ~10X the amount of Xenia that we started with.

Yesterday, Ben and I bagged up the firefish, one of the Xenia stalks, and the chaeto and headed out to our favorite fish store (River City Aquatics). They agreed to purchase the items for store credit. Ben and I went back to look for a Neon Goby, which Ben has been excited to purchase for some time now. Unfortunately, they didn't have any in today and neither did Horizon or Gallery of Pets. Ben was bummed. We will keep looking and researching. We might find something else that interests him even more. That will be for next time...

I did a 20% water change-out on the main tank last night. I pulled out as much red slime algae and hair algae as I could. I will measure water parameters in the next day or two and try to stay more on top of the tank. I decided to go ahead and decommission the hex cube last night while I was doing the water change out. The tank didn't seem fit for housing livestock and there wasn't much point in just cycling water through it.

Emerald Crab returns!

2008-02-21T22:15:00.003-06:00

Our tank has been steadily growing algae ever since we removed all of our crabs. The two scarlet hermits that we added seem to be...well, slow and lazy. They don't seem to do a whole lot for the algae problem. We have been talking over the last week or so and decided that we probably had judged the crabs too harshly before. The firefish after all, didn't actually get killed off like we thought. And the hair algae was much better when we had the crabs before.

We decided to try to find a small emerald crab to add back into the tank. I had seen some small crabs at Horizon Aquatics a little while back, so we decided to start there. We did find a small crab there and when we brought it home I tried to determine its sex. I found a nice illustrated guide on the web to do this. We now have a little female emerald crab! After about 1.5 hours of acclimation, we added her to the tank. She immediately went to work eating. She has been out in the open so we can see her which is just what we wanted! We didn't care for the reclusiveness of the strawberry or the hitchhiker emerald. We are glad to have an emerald back in the tank!

Dead Cardinal

2008-02-19T22:07:00.005-06:00

Allie called me up at work near the end of my day and told me that one of the cardinalfish was not doing well. I decided to pack up a little early and head straight home.

When I got there, the cardinal was stuck to the intake near chamber 1 in the back. It was still breathing, but labored. I netted the fish and brought it up into a plastic bag to float it to see if it might recover some. I noticed that one of its fins was a little bit torn. I thought I had seen the other cardinal picking on it the other day. Maybe it had escalated? The fish could also have simply not survived the shipping process well. Banggai cardinals are notoriously bad shippers. 10-12 days is about the amount of time that a fish will starve over, so it may just not have been eating well since we got it. :(

It continued to decline in the bag, so I called River City Aquatics and asked them for a humane way to kill a dying fish. They said a quick rap against a fence to break its back or severing the spinal column with a razor! Whoa...I wasn't ready for either of those. I did a little quick research on the web for humane deaths for fish and I found this website. Using a 20% solution of vodka sounded much less violent to me than the other approaches! I hopped in the car and head over to the liquor store for some vodka. By the time I got home, the fish was already dead. At least I know what to do next time should something similar happen.

On a positive note, the Xenia is once again doing very well. It is not back to its fully splendor, but we no longer worry it is going to melt away.

The mushroom polyp that floated off the main shelf, disappeared that first night. I guess it either blew off the rock I placed it on, or something came along and decided it was a snack.

Continued decline of Xenia

2008-02-12T21:33:00.006-06:00

The Xenia seems to continue to go downhill. It looks gray and decrepit now. I can find out what has changed in the water to cause it to start dying like it is. I guess it might be beyond saving.

One of the mushroom polyps has been acting irritated lately, retracting itself when all of the other polyp were fully opened. I guess tonight it finally decided it had enough. While I was watching, the polyp un-attached itself from the rock and rolled off the shelf! It pinwheeled through the water and landed in the back of the tank. I picked it up with some forceps and placed it on another rock so it could re-attach itself if it wanted. So weird!

The flame scallop also decided today was a good time to relocate. It had been in a nice spot at the front of the tank where we could all see it. Now, it found a little cave at the very back of the rockscape. We have to look through a very small cavity and can only see its tentacles. Bummer! It was beautiful to look at up front, but I guess it wasn't comfortable there.

Xenia dying?

2008-02-11T22:35:00.003-06:00

The Xenia is looking very bad today. I think it might have something to do with the fact that I removed the purigen bag from chamber 2 to re-charge it. That was about 36 hours ago. The purigen is just now ready to go back in the chamber. I hope it isn't too late!

The water parameters all look very good, but I am going to go ahead and do an extra water change right now in attempt to help the Xenia recover.

Rounding out of tank inhabitants

2008-02-09T23:02:00.003-06:00

We have really loved our new cardinals for the last few days, and thought it would be nice to get either Ben's or my fish right now. We were very close to having a completely stocked tank and we are sort of impatient to complete it. I had been doing research and wanted to get an Ocellaris clownfish (Nemo) for my fish. They are a hardy, peaceful fish that may decide to adopt one of our soft corals (Xenia or sinularia leather) as a stand-in for an anemone. Ben was interested in a Neon goby, a small black fish with a neon blue stipe. The neon goby is a cleaner fish that removes parasites from other fish much like the cleaner shrimp.

Back we went to River City. We got there and were disappointed to find that they had no Neon gobies in right now. They did, however, have Ocellaris clownfish. I found their smallest clown and purchased it. We also pick up a few more nerites. I could only see one nerite in their snail tank. The guy helping me asked if I wanted whatever he could find and I said sure. Well, a few minutes later he came back with 4 nerites. More than I was thinking of buying, but they were all very small and probably wouldn't need a whole lot of algae to sustain them.

When we got home, we were treated to a surprise: Ben's firefish was swimming around in the tank! He had been missing for almost 2 weeks now and was suddenly back! I quickly went to the freezer and pulled out some frozen fish food and fed him. It ate greedily and then swam to the back of the tank and jumped out of the water and into the back chambers! It must have been hiding back there for whole time.

The clown and nerites were added after 2 hours of acclimation. I decided that later on that night, I would do a water change-out and would try to bring the Firefish back in the main aquarium and rig up some way to keep the fish from jumping back into the chambers. I needed to basically extend the back wall up another few inches. Allie had a great idea of using some laminate for this purpose. It took a few tries, but I think I now have a ~4" laminate extension on top of the back aquarium glass that will keep the firefish from jumping into the aquarium backside chambers. Time will tell...

Big Purchase

2008-02-07T23:49:00.001-06:00

Now that ALL of the crabs from our tank we out, we felt fairly safe that the predator that was killing things was gone from the tank. We decided to go back to the store to re-stock.

I really wanted to get another peppermint shrimp for the tank, and wanted to add a few more snails (nerites this time) since we were starting to get algae growth on the back glass again. I had also read that many aquarists had great success with scarlet reef hermits for clean-up crew. Even though I had originally been biased against hermit due to the early snail deaths, I was much more comfortable adding them since they are SO easy to remove. They are almost always out in the open and they duck into their shells when they are frightened rather than scurrying under the rocks.

I knew from earlier phone calls, that Horizon was the only one with scarlet reef hermits, so I quickly went up there to pick up 2. We really wanted to shop at River City since we have done much of our shopping there. After I had the scarlet hermits, I met Allie and Ben at River City. I picked out 2 nerite snails, and then wandered over to Allie and Ben. Allie had fallen in love with some Banggai cardinalfish. They are very attractive little fish that sort of hover in the water column. Very cool! Allie really wanted the Banggai to be her fish for the tank, but was sort of interested in getting two. They are known to be a very peaceful fish and have been successfully bred in aquariums. We decided to go ahead and try to get a male and female Banggai for the now fishless tank.

Ben then pulled me back towards the invertebrate section saying he had to show me the coral that he wanted to buy. When we got back there, he showed me a flame scallop. What a cool looking creature. The scallop was very affordable and Ben had been saving up his tokens from his chores to purchase a coral. We decided to go for it. We all left the fishstore very excited about our tank prospects. We carried with us two scarlet reef hermits, two nerite snails, two banggai cardinals, a peppermint shrimp and a flame scallop!

It took about 2-3 hours to properly acclimate everyone. They all seemed to be doing great when they were added to the tank except for one of the nerites. It immediately flipped onto its shell. We had seen this before with a turbo snail. Something was definitely wrong with this snail and it was unlikely to make it. :(

Hyde?

2008-02-06T13:08:00.000-06:00

We came back home today to find our beloved emerald crab dead! His body was lying in a pocket of one of our favorite rocks. At first, I thought it was probably just a molt, but when I pulled it out, I didn't see any evidence that it was split open like an old shell should look like. I looked back into the tank again, and saw another, much larger emerald crab moving in our tank!

This new emerald had to have been a hitchhiker that came in with the live rock. That would mean it was alive in the tank and hidden from view for 6-7 weeks! We were shocked and simply could not believe it. We decided this emerald should be called Hyde. In our opinion, it was possible/likely that this hitchhiker crab was responsible for our emerald's death and possibly the fish was well. It had to go.

Allie read about a way to set up a crab trap using a smooth side glass/jar with some smelly treat inside (we used shrimp). The idea is that the crab enters the glass to get the food but cannot climb back out. This sounded much better than having to tear up the rockwork to get him, so we gave it a try. We put the trap in and turned off all of the lights since crabs are more active after dark. We checked periodically using a flashlight. No success! A few of the nassarius snails did enter, grab a bite and then leave. The emerald steered clear though.

I saw the emerald perched up on top of the mushroom coral rock and decided to make an attempt at netting him. After a couple tries, I was able to get him to basically jump off the rock and was able to net him while he floated down. Again, much simpler than I had anticipated.

After this hitchhiker crab was removed from the tank, we did a census in the tank. Our cerith that we presumed dead was back!

Strawberry removed

2008-02-05T01:23:00.001-06:00

Tonight I performed my weekly water change-out. I decided that I would use that opportunity to remove the strawberry crab from the tank. All of us thought it had to be the strawberry that killed the fish since it was the largest thing in our tank. Emeralds and strawberries are very difficult to remove since they are observant of movements and hide within the rockwork if you move in to net them. I saw that the strawberry crab was hiding in the top most rock when I was pulling out water, so I simply removed the rock and shook the strawberry into the 5 gallon bucket of old tank water. Much easier than I had hoped for! Hopefully our tank will be a safer place for future fish inhabitants.

Starving Tank

2008-01-31T21:41:00.000-06:00

About two days ago, our fish and 1 cerith went missing. We haven't seen them return yet. We are assuming the worst. The tank has been very clean lately and the snails seem to be constantly scouring the tank for food. I am beginning to wonder if possibly everyone is hungry and maybe the emerald, strawberry or hermits decided they needed to remove some competition for food while getting a snack.

I decided to return the 4 hermits, the turbo and 1 astrea to the fishstore to see if that helped increase the algae/diatom production for the tank.

Brain Coral

2008-01-26T23:39:00.001-06:00

After the re-scaping, Ben decided he needed to add another coral to the tank since the layout changed and there were some "open" spots without coral. I had been reading some forums and had decided that I wanted to switch out our actinic lights for a 50/50 power compact bulb to include more 10,000K lights which were of more use to the corals. We also had been fighting red slime algae, so I thought we should try to add some macroalgae to the tank in an attempt to out compete the red slime for nutrients. Seemed to me that we NEEDED to go to the fishstore!

We got to River City and quickly found the 50/50 PC bulb that I needed for the tank. They recommended using some chaeto for macroalgae if I was going to add it to the main tank. Ben found a nice open faced brain that he liked for his coral. We were all set to head home.

Upon arriving home, we discover our new Peppermint shrimp was dead! Maybe the re-aquascaping was too much for him. We are sure having bad luck with peppermint shrimp.

Re-aquascape

2008-01-26T04:06:00.000-06:00

I decided last night that I needed to re-aquascape our tank in order to combat the red slime. By re-aquascaping, I could remove the deadspots in the tank that were allowing the red slime to thrive and I could also make a new scape that gave us better locations to place corals and provided more hiding spots for livestock. It took a while, but when Allie and I finished, I really liked our new formation!

Earlier that day, we had another turbo that flipped over and could not right itself. By the time we saw it, it was apparently too late. It died shortly after. The turbos are notorious for falling off things and not being able to flip themselves, but we had no idea it was going to be this bad!

New additions + red slime

2008-01-20T22:21:00.001-06:00

We brought home our new Peppermint shrimp today! This time we picked out a smaller specimen to ensure that we didn't have an old shrimp. He is very cute!

While we were at Aquatek, they were having their 10th anniversary sale. We had $27.50 in store credit and everything was on sale for 20% off. We decided to pick up another coral! We ended up buying a Montipora Digitata, our first stony coral! Ben really liked a leather coral that was at Aquatek that he said had pom-pom coming off of it. I decided not to purchase because it was very expensive. Ben was very sad, so when I came back home and started acclimation on the peppermint and coral, I headed back out to another local fish store (River City Reefs). They had a nice selection of leathers, and some much more affordable than we saw at Aquatek. I picked up a smaller leather for a fraction of the price and brought it home for Ben. I believe it is some sort of sinularia coral.

Because Xenia are reportedly toxic to stony corals (Montipora) if they come in contact with them, we decided to do a little bit of coral re-arrangement. We moved the Xenia from its central location to the right side of the tank on a rock shelf that we hoped it will spread up. We moved the green star polyps from the back left up towards the front so that the Montipora could use its perch, away from everything else. Time to see if the corals like their new spots!

We started noticing a significant issue with red slime algae around this same time. This is actually a nuisance bacteria that forms in systems with high nutrient level in the water in areas of low water movement. It also seemed to be affected by the amount of light it receives. Over the coming days, I would try increasing the water flow, physically removing the algae, reducing the amount of food I was giving our fish, and reducing the amount of lighting. The red slime was still there and growing!

Peppermint Shrimp

2008-01-12T22:25:00.002-06:00

Our Peppermint Shrimp died the day after the Turbo snail was added to the tank. The shrimp was fairly large, so it could have been old age. More reading has lead us to believe that adding too much Iodine to the tank could cause stress, premature molting and even death of shrimp. It is probable that some of the measures that I was using to save the finger leather coral caused the untimely demise of the peppermint. :(

The new turbo that was added to the tank to help with the hair algae problem doesn't seem to be doing very well. We have already had to flip him back over a few times to avoid him dying upside-down! The turbo ended up falling one last time and this time he rolled down into a hole in one of our live rock. I was unable to reach him and ended up having to extract him with pliers after he was obviously dead (our Nassarius snails were moving in to clean him up!) We are very sad for our Turbo!

Turbo comes home

2008-01-11T23:30:00.001-06:00

Ben and I made a quick trip out to Aquatek (quickly becoming our favorite LFS) to re-home the remaining hermit crabs from our secondary system and to purchase a turbo snail for some help with the hair algae. The exchange process was very simple. They just took our bag of 7 hermit crabs and added them into their population of hermits for sale. We were given $10.50 store credit (half the value of a new hermit, not bad at all!). We went over to the snail tank and one of the employees fished out 3 of the smaller snails for us to look at. Ben pick the one he liked best and we walked to the front of the store to complete our purchase.

We now have a new tank residence with the ability to eat hair algae (not sure yet whether it has the proclivity for eating hair algae) and an "empty" 5 gallon hex tank that we can use as a quarantine tank for future fish purchases. We only purchased one snail because Allie and I are sort of sensitive about overstocking the snails. Some of the books we have read have given us a real soft spot for them. We are going slow to make sure that we have fat and happy snails. One other reason that we started with one Turbo is because turbos can grow to be fairly large snails and have more of a tendency to knock overcorals than other snails.

Odds and Ends

2008-01-11T02:08:00.001-06:00

Also occurring on the 9th, the Cleaner shrimp had its first molting in our aquarium! Shrimps molt in order to grow. The shrimp are more vulnerable for about two days following a molt while their new exoskeleton is hardening.

The finger leather coral is now looking much better after we move it up the rock face to get more light and underneath the output port to get it out of the direct water flow. It has steadily improved over the 4-5 days since it was moved to its current spot. It looks as good or better than when we bought it.

On at least two occasions now, I have witnessed an Astrea snail climbing to the top of a piece of live rock and releasing either sperm or eggs into the aquarium! It is really fascinating to watch everything that is going on in the aquarium.

For the last 3 or so night, I watch at the corner of one of the pieces of live rock to see the orange arm come out of a hole in search of food. There is some sort of worm that is inhabiting the live rock that feeds only at night. It can stretch almost 2 inches from the mouth of the hole where it resides. I have seen it sort of "suck up" pieces of sand or food. The worm itself is transparent, so the piece of sand can be watched as it moves back down the body of the worm. So weird!

Hair Algae...again

2008-01-09T22:19:00.001-06:00

Over the last few days, we saw a green hair algae begin to grow and spread on the back glass of the aquarium. I researched what could be done to reduce this algae growth. Allie and I really preferred to get a snail to combat the algae rather than some other creature just because they are a much more peaceful tank citizen. Unfortunately, most of the snails would not eat a long, filamentous algae like hair algae. Turbo snails are reported to be able to eat hair algae, but are also known to be rather like bulldozers in their movements throughout reef tanks. The other options that we heard when we talked to some local fish stores were a couple types of blennies (lawnmower blenny and sailfin blenny) that were good at eating filamentous algae, some tangs, and some nudibranchs. The lawnmower blenny really gets to be too big for our tank (~5"), the sailfin blenny is a bit closer to what our tank could handle at 3-4" but sort of difficult to find. The tangs were out; they get way too big and are too aggressive for the setup we are going for. Finally, the nudibranchs (sea slugs basically) generally have a toxic ink that they use as a defense mechanism. They have been known to kill all tank inhabitants when they die!! Not so interested in that one...

Allie and I spent a few hours researching other fish that could possibly help with algae control. There was a goby called a Rainford Goby that is reported to eat hair algae. Gobies are much more docile and tend to be smaller which makes it a better fit for out tank. However, when I spoke with Bruce from Aquatek, he said they really rather will sample hair algae periodically rather than really attacking it. We decided that I should just look for a smaller turbo snail to add to the tank and we also decided that we would again re-home some of the smaller hermits back to the main tank to help with algae removal on the glass near the substrate.

Ben and I took off for River City Aquatics which I knew to mainly carry Turbos for snails...or so I thought. When we got there, I found out that they didn't have any of the bigger turbos, but instead had Cerith, Astrea and some Nerite snails. I decided to pick up two Cerith snails to replace our deceased snails that were killed off by the homicidal hermits earlier on. I really like Cerith. They are sort of a cross between the Nassarius snails which spend most of their time buried in the sand and the Astrea snails which are usually on the rocks or the glass. Like the Nassarius, the Cerith spends some of its time buried in the sand and it can also right itself when it falls on its back in the sand (Astrea cannot do this). But the Cerith will also eat some film algaes and diatoms on the glass like the Astrea. Ben also found his favorite fish (the Firefish) while we were at River City. We decided that we were ready for a fish in our aquarium now! Ben and I returned home with two Cerith snails and 1 Firefish.

While the snails and fish acclimated, I began searching for some small hermits to add back to the main tank. I pulled out two some hermits (1 blue-legged and one zebra) along with about 4-5 empty shells so there would be less risk of snail homicides. I dropped them into the main tank and watched as one of the "empty" shells proceeded to get up and wake over to the live rock. Make that 2 blue-legged and 1 zebra...

When the fish and snails were finished with acclimation, it was after 9pm so the tank lights were already off. The fish immediately swam down into the live rock and hid. The snails began move up the live rock to begin their cleaning duties. We had our fingers crossed for a safe first night with a new fish and 3 hermit crabs...

Strawberry Beefcake

2008-01-03T23:06:00.000-06:00

Today was another big day for our aquarium. We heard from Aquatek that they were supposed to get a shipment in today around 3pm that was likely to contain Strawberry crabs! Ben was very excited to hear this as he has been wanting a pink crab since he heard about them. We were indeed able to purchase a strawberry this evening. Even though they are said to be related to the Emerald crab that we first got, this dude is much bigger than our Emerald. Both crabs are said to get to be ~2 inches. Well, our strawberry is already that big. Our little emerald is only about 1 inch. We are keeping our fingers crossed that we got a friendly crab!

While I was out running errands today, I got a call from Allie. She said, 'I think we have a dead shrimp now!' I said, well what are you seeing? She told me that there was a clear or white shell that looked just like our peppermint shrimp. I told her that it was more likely that our shrimp molted! She looked at it again and then agreed that is what happened. Allie quickly found Ben to show him the exoskeleton of our peppermint shrimp. We now have confirmation that at least one thing in our tank is growing! :)

We watched one of our corals, the finger leather, quite a bit today. It doesn't seem to be acclimating well to our system. The first couple of days, it seemed to be doing well. It sort of swelled up and then little feather-like flowers pop out all over the coral. After those first couple of days, the coral seemed to sort of shrink up. Last night, I tried moving the coral's position in the tank to get more light and water flow. I had a suggestion from one of our LFS to give it a bit more Iodine to help it recover. And finally, while at Aquatek buying our strawberry, they suggested that we actually want to move the coral back down out of the light and water flow. The coral is once again further down the rock face and a little sheltered from the light. We are keeping our fingers crossed for this one!

I now have two tanks to keep track off, the one we intended to have and our own little Alcatraz. This morning I went into check on our little murderers and counted 11 hermit crabs instead of 10 like I thought I had. I know for sure that I had pulled two dead crab bodies from the tank yesterday, so I must have started with 13 instead of 12. Clearly, one of the hermits felt bad for the miscommunication, so they killed another crab today. Now we are actually down to 10...

Homicidal Hermits

2008-01-02T23:28:00.000-06:00

On New Year's Eve, we started to worry about our snails. After the re-aquascaping, we had counted the snails and thought they were all accounted for. Now, however, we could not account for one of the Margarita snails and two of the Nassarius. We began to suspect the hermit crabs which do sometimes attack snails for their shells. We watched the tank intently, and eventually decided that we were definitely missing a Margarita, but that all four Nassarius were present.

On New Year's Day, we could not locate one of our Cerith snails. This was too much casualty, too quickly. We decided it was time to get the hermits out of our reef tank. I ran to Petco and purchased a relatively affordable 5 gallon hex tank. This was going to be the new home for the hermits. I added about 1 inch of reef base to the hex and moved two of our smaller live rock fragments to the new tank. I moved 9 of the hermits that I could reach easily. Our plan is to increase the number of emerald crabs and snails to deal with the algae rather than utilize hermits.

On January 2nd, I discovered that one of the three hermits left in the main tank had been killed over night. Looking at the hex tank, one of the largest hermits had also been killed! The hermits are very opportunistic hunters and apparently even their own kind are not safe. I moved the remaining hermits from the main tank into the hex. We are now down to 10 hermits and 8 snails. We will have to see how many we have tomorrow morning...

Costly mistakes

2007-12-29T23:33:00.000-06:00

I had begun to feel that some of the original liverock that I purchased wasn't really ideal for making a reef aquarium out of our Biocube 29 when we had brought home our first 3 corals. When I arrived home with the latest two, it was pretty much confirmed. We had at least 3 pieces of rock that were basically just solid hunks of rock with a bit of coralline algae growing on them. They didn't really have the nooks and crannies and surface area that the other rocks in our aquarium had. Also, we had a very limited number of flat areas onto which we could attach coral. Allie and Ben also agreed that we did have a few pieces of rock that seemed to hold little interest for the crabs and snails and took up a lot of space in the tank. I had to admit that I had made a rather large and costly mistake with those rock purchases.

Ben and I once again hopped in the car and sped over to Gallery of Pets to look at their available liverock. I had always thought that the pieces they had were rather nice looking specimens. When we got back there today and really inspected the pieces, they were all really too large to work in our aquarium. Ben and I decided to swing down to Aquatek. The last time we were there, they had a huge aquarium just chock full of cured live rock. We showed up there this afternoon, and the amount of liverock was much larger than I even remembered. Ben was quickly able to pick out 3 new pieces for us to bring home. We also decided to buy about 4 lbs of live sand to add to the tank while we were re-doing everything.

With a lot of sadness, Allie, Ben and I pulled out the 3 original pieces of liverock that we felt needed to be removed from the tank. We felt like were basically letting down a mini ecosystem. We were going to kill off whatever was living on the rock. With the new pieces, we were able to make a new aquascape that left more room above the rock for corals and fish while at the same time providing more ledges for corals as well as more caves and passageways for mobile tank inhabitants (shrimp, crabs, snails and future fish). In the end, I was glad that we decided to go ahead now and replace the rock rather than a year from now, but at the same time it was a rather sobering experience to realize how costly my impulsive decisions were on the aquarium fauna.

Strawberry Crab

2007-12-29T23:11:00.000-06:00

There seems to be two camps of aquarists or possibly just schools of thought when it comes to hermit crabs. Many of the online forums that I have read through and most of our local fishstores believe that a lot of hermit crabs (1 per gallon or 1 per 2 gallons) in your tank are a good thing. A few of the very popular book authors, Calfo & Fenner, seem to feel that very few hermit crabs are actually necessary (1 per 10 gallons) and more than that could be harmful to your snail and coral populations. We spoke as a family about our number of hermit crabs after the hair algae outbreak and decided that we wanted to look into re-homing some of our hermit crabs to get down to a small number. Ben quickly reminded me that one of the staff at Gallery of Pets had told us about a pink crab that looked very much like our Emerald Crab, but pink. The Strawberry Crab or Red Boxer Crab is basically the Hawaiian version of the Emerald Crab (who is from the Caribbean).

I started to call around to local fishstores to ask about re-homing our hermits as well as determining whether anyone carried a Strawberry crab. After 3-4 calls, all of the stores basically said the same thing: You are going to want those hermit crabs and basically to "wait and see". Most of the stores report little problems with hermits attacking snails as long as there were empty shells available for the crabs to move into and no one reported any trouble with the crabs and corals. Unfortunately, none of the stores had a Strawberry crab either! Ben, by now, really had his heart set on a pink crab.

Ben and I packed into my car and headed down to Gallery of Pets to gather some more hermit crab shells and to speak with them about ordering a Strawberry crab for us. They agreed to try to get a crab on their next shipment and asked us to check back in with them after the 1st of the year. They also pulled 6-8 hermit shells out of one of their tanks for us to bring home. While we were there, Ben and I took a look at their beautiful coral displays and decided to pick up a Finger Leather coral and some mushroom polyps. The corals add a whole other dimension to the tank and are very addictive!

Corals

2007-12-29T22:37:00.000-06:00

After our small scare with hair algae, I decided I needed to look into a protein skimmer for the tank to keep the dissolved organic levels down. I knew that Oceanic made a skimmer that fits under the hood. The closest fishstores to us were sold out of the skimmer, so I decided to take Ben and Allie down to Aquatek for them to have a look-around while I purchased a skimmer. I went to Aquatek right before I picked up the aquarium and I really liked it. As added insurance, I decided to pick up a bag of Purigen to drop into one of the back chambers of the tank. Many aquarists have reported great success with Purigen or Chemi-pure to drop nitrate levels in their tanks.

While at Aquatek, we spoke with some of the employees and decided to take the plunge and get our first corals! After quite a long conference, we decided to pick up 3 small corals that were supposed to be very easy to take care of and rather bullet proof. We came home with a Pulsating Xenia, a Green Star Polyp, and a Zooanthid colony. We hope to treat these new additions right and be rewarded with beautiful, expanding corals!

Hair Algae

2007-12-29T22:29:00.000-06:00

On December 26th, we noticed a greenish-brown band of dirt or something about midway up the face of our tank. When we looked at it more closely, we noticed that it was actually algae. And probably hair algae. I thought that I had read that this was due to the amount of phosphates or nutrients floating about in the tank. It is also dependent on the amount of time I was keeping the lights on. I quickly went out to River City Aquatics for a consult about the algae. They weren't overly concerned saying that it is a fairly normal cycle to see in new tanks. They recommended I get more hermit crabs to gobble up the algae as well as a glass cleaner to mechanically scrub the algae off the glass. I came home with a Mag-Float magnetic glass cleaner as well as 10 new crabs! The Mag-Float was fabulous! I popped it into place and proceeded to drag the magnet across the glass to clean off the algae. Within about 10 minutes, the glass was clear again. After a quick 20 minute temperature acclimation, the crabs were released into the tank and immediately got down to business.

New Additions and Update

2007-12-25T22:47:00.000-06:00

On December 23rd, the family went out to purchase a shrimp to add some movement to the aquarium. When we got to Gallery of Pets, we spoke with them about our plans for the tank and about our intended purchase. They said it is usually best to add 2 or more shrimp/fish to a tank at once since some of the creatures will be more territorial when purchased on their own. Ben decided that he would like to get two shrimp then. One Peppermint Shrimp because they are known to eat Aiptasia (which Ben really dislikes in our aquarium!) and one Cleaner Shrimp since they are supposed to be very good at removing any parasites that my tag along on future fish purchases.

We brought them home and floated them for about 15 mins to get their water temperature up to tank level and then we moved them to a small fishbowl that we sat alongside our aquarium. I set up a drip line to slowly add our saltwater to the fishbowl to slowly introduce our new shrimp to our salinity and pH. After about 1 hour, we had added roughly twice the initial water amount to the fishbowl. I netted our new shrimp and added them to our aquarium. They swim down to the live rock and found a ledge and cave to hunker down in.

Christmas day arrived and the shrimp were doing just fine in the aquarium. Allie and Ben gave me some new marine aquarium books as gifts and after reading, I decided that the aquascape that I initially setup was not ideal. Allie and Ben helped me brainstorm and we re-arranged the live rock to have a slightly lower profile and more bowl like shape. We are still getting used to the new arrangement (moving from basically a central pile to more bowl-like appearance), but I think I really like it. We seem to have more nooks and crannies than we did before.

Early on in the tank setup, we had seen 2 brittle starfish moving in the tank. After we added the reef sand to the tank they hadn't been evident. Well, today we confirmed sightings of at least 3 brittle stars, with a possible fourth! We were all very excited! What a great Christmas present!

Our first wave of janitors

2007-12-20T00:13:00.000-06:00

Tonight, we all went out to two of our local fish shops (River City Aquatics and Horizon Aquatics) to look for some aquarium janitors to help keep our tank in tip-top shape. After visiting both stores, we decided to make our purchases at Horizon Aquatics.

After about 2 hours of acclimation, we have added two zebra hermit crabs, one emerald crab, four nassarius snails, two cerith snails, two margerita snails, and two astrea snails. All of these serve various functions like cleaning up debris, eating algae, stirring up the sand, etc. They are also fun to watch! These are all quite a bit bigger than the other things that we had been seeing in the tank so far. It is nice to see activity throughout the aquarium!

Come out, Come out, Wherever you are!

2007-12-20T00:01:00.000-06:00

In the days following the addition of the Live Rock to the aquarium, we began to see signs of life emerging! Initially, Allie spotted a brittle star on one of the live rock near the back of the tank. We also saw two featherduster worms or some other sort of fan worms (likely Bispira brunnea) attached to two of the live rock. Two Aiptasia anemones were also spotted. Aiptasias (or glass anemones) are thought of more as pests than anything else. They can quickly populate your tank and are know to nettle neighbors to get their way.

About a day after the rocks were set up, we saw another brittle star in the tank! We also learned that some of the stringy hairs that could be seen attached to some of the rocks were worms (picture 109)! Later that night, Ben and I spotted yet another starfish in the tank. But this time, it was an Asterina Anomal instead of a brittle star. We also began to notice about 5 snails that were moving about the tank. After some research, I think these may be Stomatella Varia snails. Our tank is alive with hitchhikers from our live rock!

Live Rock Day!

2007-12-17T00:42:00.000-06:00

Today was the day that Jason and Ben got the live rock into the tank! It wasn't as straight-forward as they hoped, but by the end of the day they had 45 pounds of beautiful live rock, hand-selected by Ben. Here is Jason's report on their day:

"Today started out very exciting for Ben and I. We woke up and found that our tank looked crystal clear! I did a specific gravity reading and it read 1.024. Right where we want a reef setup to be! I spent some more time researching the type of live rock we wanted to add to the tank to have the appropriate hiding places for our future livestock. There are a few different choices (locations like Fiji, Tonga, Caribbean, Marshall Island as well as types of rock like base rock, turf rock, worm rock and reef rock). It looked like the best bets for our tank would be to get some Pacific reef rock like Fiji or Tonga. The Pacific rock tends to be lighter and less densely packed which allows for more water circulation and more surface area for the beneficial bacteria and algae to grow on.

I pulled a water sample from our tank and Ben & I hopped in my car to pick up a few last minute supplies before heading over to Horizon Aquatics. When we arrived at Horizon, I handed over our water sample and then started browsing through the store with Ben. We took a look at what live rock they had to offer and Ben began ticking off the pieces he wanted to get. After a little while, Kat (member of Horizon) called us over and give us the bad news. We had about 0.5 ppm of ammonia in our water sample. This level could be harmful to fish and the owner felt that we should perform a 50% water change with RO (reverse osmosis) water before adding any live rock! Ben was crestfallen.

We returned home and told Allie the bad news. It was almost 5pm (local stores close at 6pm on Sundays) and we needed to do a water change-out before we could add rock. She remembered that Gallery of Pets had their own reverse osmosis set-up and sold pre-mixed saltwater for $1/gal! I called them up and found that they had enough on hand for me to drain and refill our cube with their pre-mix (ammonia-free) saltwater. Ben and I raced over there, picked up 15 gallons of water along with a more accurate ammonia testkit. We then raced back to Horizon Aquatics and purchased 45 lbs of their live rock (which happened to be a mix of Fiji and Tonga reef rock). We had them add a bit of their tank water to the live rock bags since we still needed to do the water change-out at home.

Ben and I arrived back home at about 6:10. I pulled out our siphon and 2 new 5-gallon buckets to begin the change-out. The tank drain was surprisingly easy. I had the tank fully drained in about 20 minutes. I saved about 8 gallons of our old water because I didn't expect to have enough to entirely fill the tank with the pre-mix. I added 10 gallons of the pre-mix to the tank and then Ben and I began arranging the live rock. The 45 lbs made a nice aquascape in the tank with lots of passageways for the shrimp and fish to use. I added the other 5 gallons of pre-mix and only needed about 1 gallon of our old water to top it off. Right about 7pm.

There was probably 1-2 gallons of old mix in the overflow/pump area of the tank, but when all was said and done, we probably did a 75-85% change-out. The live rock itself will probably very quickly bring the ammonia levels down to zero where the tank will be safe to add other creatures. Now we will let the tank cycling for about a week while monitoring ammonia and nitrate levels.

Sidenote: I spoke with the proprietor at Gallery of Pets about the ammonia levels in our tank. The first thing she asked me was did I test for ammonia in our tapwater before using for saltwater mix. I said yes, I had and it read zero. Then she asked, did you test it before or after you added the water conditioner? I said before. She said that was how the ammonia got past us. The ammonia is bound up as chloramine in the tap water. The conditioner breaks that chloride bond and sets the NH4+ free in the water. Ammonia/ammonium can be dealt with by the saltwater bacteria, but it takes time. The chloramine itself is not detected by the ammonia test. I needed to test AFTER the water conditioner was added!"

Ben's 6th Birthday Present?!

2007-12-15T22:53:00.000-06:00

Ben has been in love with a blue crayfish that he had seen in a local pet store for about a year now. He was constantly reminding Allie and trying to determine a way to make it his own. Allie and I had been fairly convinced that having fish/crayfish was going to be more work than we had bargained for, so we tried to avoid bringing one into the house.

As time went by, we began to see that his interest might be sustainable and maybe we really should look into some sort of tank for Ben. Allie spoke with some fish shops and quickly found that blue crayfish would need to be housed alone. They will constantly try to kill any fish that are put in a tank with it. That didn't seem like that would be an interesting tank for very long.

At this point, Allie and I began to seriously talk about getting some sort of tank for Ben. Our ideas bounced between getting a small 10 gallon freshwater aquarium with shrimp and frogs to getting a 55+ gallon reef aquarium. After conferring with Ben again, we found out that he really wanted to have an aquarium with shrimp, snails, crabs and a starfish (after hearing that his beloved blue "lobster" would try to kill its tankmates). After doing about 20-40 hours of research and speaking with many local fish stores, we determined that it was possible to create a tank that could house what Ben wanted!

Now, however, Ben's dad had gotten himself hooked on the idea of a saltwater aquarium. I was VERY into the idea of an invertebrate tank with some corals and maybe 1 fish. The corals and the invertebrates were very exciting to me! I decided that Ben's aquarium (probably more aptly named the Boys aquarium) could be housed in a Oceanic Biocube 29 gallon all-in-one aquarium.

The setup that Ben requested for a tank was actually a very sustainable aquarium. Shrimp, crabs and snails have very little bioload on the tank. The hardest part was going to be providing enough grazing ground for the starfish. After a bit more research, I found that members of the serpent or brittle starfish could be successfully housed in a 20-ish gallon tank with enough live rock. Even adding a fish or two would likely also be very doable for this system. The plan was formed!