Costly mistakes

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

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

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

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

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

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!

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!

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?!

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!