Starfish, Maroon Clown, & a Gargonian

This weekend we added, Patrick, the starfish:

Elizabeth, the maroon clown fish:

Who, unfortunately, didn't reappear the next day after we added her to the tank :(

And, a gargonian, filter-feeding invertebrate:

These are a couple pictures of the tank with the new additions:

There have only been a couple of other developments since our last post.  The second bubble-tip anemone ended up committing (what Josh calls) anemocide.  In other words, it crawled onto the koralia (creates the current in the tank) and was shred to bits!  *sigh*  I think we'll have to give up on those type of anemones.  Our condy anemone also decided to move; if you look close in the picture above you'll see him in the bottom right corner of the tank with the kenya trees.  We have since moved him to a huge crack in a rock on the top left of the tank.  This seems to be a favorite spot for all the marine life in the tank, so we're hoping he'll be satisfied there.  We also had our water tested at the pet store when we went to pick up the new tank mates and were informed that our alkalinity was rather low, so we bought some supplements for the tank.  This can be a cause for the anemones moving around.  We'll see how that helps!

Angela the Angelfish

Meet, Angela - the bi-color angelfish:















We just added her to the tank last night.  My family has suddenly become enamored with the idea of having marine life named after them.  So, this one was named after my mother.

Other fish that have been named after my family include, Bo (my sister's boyfriend) - the sea urchin (left) and, Danny (my step-father) - the blue velvet damsel (right):












My sister, Elizabeth still needs to pick out her fish.  I suppose we should name some of them after Josh, the kids, and I.  Guess we'll see...

Our new anemone hasn't found his/her home yet. It's been moving all over the tank. We were hopeful that he would remain in this excellent spot:



Unfortunately, last night he was getting VERY close to the overflow box and we had to turn it off to prevent the disaster we had with the last anemone splitting himself up. Then, this morning, he had moved down to the cavern below these rocks. At first, Josh thought maybe he liked the light and had crawled up there to get closer to it. Now we're beginning to wonder if it isn't the flow of the water he likes and that's why they keep getting to close to the overflow. I personally think they are depressed - either they're hiding under a rock or trying to commit suicide! LOL Ah well, maybe he'll find a "safe" home soon enough. We'll just have to keep a close eye on him.

Toadstool Leather and Bubble Tip Anemone

Last night we added another bubble tip anemone (hopefully, this one will stay put!) and a large toadstool leather:















This is what the anemone and the toadstool look like in their "resting" state:
















Another picture of the tank as it looks now, during the day:



We have also added some "moon lights" to the tank.  Several things in the tank react to these lights like a black light and they glow in "psychedelic" colors:














Here is a full view of the tank's moonlight:

Sea Urchin, Condy & Flower Anemones

This weekend we added a sea urchin:


This guy is pretty cool.  It's hard to see in the picture, but he has an orange ring on the bubble in the middle of his body (which we call his eye) and several white and blue spots on his body.  For something with so many spines sticking out everywhere, he gets around very well.  The other marine life don't seem to mind him much either, but the best thing about him - he eats algae!  :)

We also added a condy anemone (left) and a flower anemone (right):












Neither of these anemone's are a good host for clown fish (we just think they're 'pretty' LOL).  In fact, the condy is kinda... sticky!  You have to be careful with him and peel him off of you, as we learned while putting him in the tank.  He's also great at grabbing his mysis shrimp and gobbling them up.  He could do the same to a small fish if he got the notion and he'll sting, too - even corals.  That's why he got put in an "out of the way" place under an arch of live rock in the tank.  Both anemone's have stayed in place, unlike our first rose-tip, bubble anemone.  He once again floated on up in the overflow box and I had to dig him out with a hanger.  Ack!  Here is another picture of him after his "split."















The photo on the right (above) is another picture of the frogspawn (taken with the "good" camera this time).  Frogspawn is another type of invertebrate that clown fish sometimes like to host in.  We're hoping since we've had so much trouble with the other anemone that maybe the clown fish will be able to host in this, though they haven't taken to either yet.  We're considering getting another, much larger "tree" of frogspawn, but wanted to see how it would fair in the tank first.  Our research says that frogspawn is pretty easy to keep.

Here are pictures of the Xenia's & Mushroom Coral (left) and Kenya trees (right) that I didn't include in the last post:















The Xenia's are the light pink (all though in this picture they look more peach) coral.  They look like small hands whose fingers are constantly opening and closing to catch things in the water to eat.  They're pretty cool.

Clown Fish, Anemone, & Frogspawn

First, here's a current picture of the tank:

I really should have been better about keeping this updated, but the end of school and a wedding have kept us quite busy for the past few months!

Our most recent additions include two ocellaris clown fish (named Marlon & Coral, of course), an anemone (that has now become two smaller anemones), and frogspawn. The large anemone wasn't too happy with where we tried to place him in the tank. He kept moving around, sliding off the rock, and even lost his grip and got caught in the tank's current and was being swept all over the tank! We figure something similar to that must have happened when we were sleeping one night, because we awoke one morning to find him caught up in the mesh cover of the overflow box. He'd been sucked to it and split into three pieces. We were able to save two of the pieces, keep on eye on them in the sump for a few days, and then had them moved back to the main tank. They seem to be thriving so far, tho they prefer to hide and it disappoints us not to be able to see them on display. We're hoping they'll warm up to "sunning" on the rock more. Here is a picture of the anemone "before and after."

They are somewhat difficult to see in the second picture; as I said, they like to hide, but you can see some of their "tentacles" (?) sticking out from the rock. You may also notice the "blurred" clownfish in this picture. Here is a better picture of them as well as a picture of the frogspawn.

Let's see what I can remember about what's been happening in the aquarium since the last update...

We did purchase a couple of three stripes, but they both ended up dying. We never did get pictures of them before they died. And, all though I hate to lose any fish, this was probably for the best because they were QUITE aggressive fish! We have also lost one of the blue velvet damsels, one of the yellow-tail damsels, and both shrimp. In total, we have added about 6 more hermit crabs, 4 turbo snails (now down to 3), and 4 zebra snails.

We also purchased another 20-30 lbs. of live rock and 20 lbs. of live sand. The live rock we got this time came with some life on it! The pink, tree looking corals on the right of the tank are called Kenya trees. A rock on the bottom to the left of that (which you really can't see in the photo above) came with some mushroom coral and Xenias growing on it. The mushroom coral started out as a VERY bright green color. However, the summer heat (or so we think) raised the water temperature a few degrees. This seemed to have a rather adverse effect on the coral and for a while we weren't sure everything growing on those rocks was going to make it. However the Xenias and Kenya tress have perked up again and the mushroom coral, while it still has more of a translucent white color now, does seem to be hanging in there. We've learned how to feed the coral by crushing up mysis shrimp and feeding them directly through a syringe. We have also cut down on feeding the fish flake food and have begun feeding them mysis shrimp as well. We hope this will help with our cyano problem.

Yes, we still have quite a large problem with cyano; it seems to be quite resistant (or the chemical we used to treat wasn't worth a flip!) to everything we've tried. We know the water conditions are well within specifications and we've tried keeping the lights out for several days, increasing the current in the tank, more frequent water changes, and finally removed the affected rock (which was nearly all of it) and treated it with chemiclean in separate tubs. The chemiclean treatment seemed to work after a few days because the bright red fuzzy looking algae turned into brown spots on the rock. However, it has come back and is just as bad, if not worse, than before. We've basically run out of ideas on what in the world to do about it.

We've had our sump up and running for about a month now. We ended up having to toss the pipework Josh worked so hard to build for getting water to the sump and found an overflow box on sale. The overflow dumps water from the main tank into the right side of the sump, the water flows through baffles to the center of the sump where we keep a few snails, hermits, chaeto, live sand, and small pieces of live rock. From there the water spills into the left side of the sump that contains some store-bought filtration (biological, chemical, and mechanical) left over from our old AquaClear filters (pre-sump) where it is pumped back up into the main tank. The tank seemed to go through an adjustment period after we removed the HOB filters and used only the sump. This is when much of our fish death occurred, even though the water readings indicated that everything remained within acceptable levels. We did read that it is typical for tanks to go through this kind of adjustment phase when switching filtration systems.

Now that we've started making our own water with the RO/DI filter, we have run into some water quality issues. Apparently, the PH of this water requires some adjusting to keep it within acceptable levels, so we have had to use a PH additive to maintain the correct PH levels in the tank. We've also learned that the instant ocean salt we add to the water does not contain the correct level of magnesium. We are still researching this and other water additives that will be beneficial to corals, reef, and other marine life we plan to maintain in the tank.

Now, I'll just need to do better about keeping this updated so I don't have to remember quite so much and make such a long entry next time! ;-)

Adding Again

We're at it again! ;-) We've added another 10 lbs. of uncured rock, 22 hermit crabs, 2 peppermint shrimp, and 2 blue velvet damsels (all though one didn't make it past the next morning). We also removed the air stones and were VERY surprised by how crystal clear the water became without them!

The tank:

The shrimp (either Jacques or Pierre):

The blue velvet damsel (swimming with our regular blue damsel in the second photo):

And, since we were already at the pet store and it's a free service, we had them check our water while we were there - they said it was perfect! >.< But, that doesn't help us solve our red algae/cyano problem. It's spreading rapidly! We've added a Koralia powerhead to help the current in the tank and we've tried keeping the lights off for several days. No luck reducing the problem yet. The only option we may be left with now is to treat with Chemiclean.

The blue velvet damsels are MUCH less shy than the other blue damsels (and I happen to think they're prettier, too!  ;-)  Goby has become a tad more social and we are seeing him come out more often as well.  He still LOVES to stir up the sand and create his mountains and valleys.  In fact, if the other fish start messing up his art, he chases them away!  LOL

We've also built our own sump! We used a 20 gallon, tall tank and added four panes of pre-cut glass to create baffles and separate the pump and protein skimmer from the live sand and rock we plan to house in the center of the tank. We also plan to move our water heater to the sump and may use one of the HOB filters as a refugium.  These are the pipes that will control the water flow to the tank:

We have also purchased a 75 GPD, 5-stage RO/DI filter to make our own water that can be used to top-off the tank and do water changes. 

Water Readings

Water Readings 4/18/10:
PH - 8.2
Ammonia - 0 PPM
Nitrite - 0 PPM
Nitrate - 0 PPM
Temp. - 76° F
Salinity - 1.022