Aquarium Newb takes on the fish world - Come watch me grow.

[Heuristic]

Sucked in by d2mini's build thread, I decided I needed to join this site. So, I did and here I am.

To give a quick backstory, a 5 or so months ago, my 2 year old son seemed to be really in to fish. So I did want any parent would do and aimlessly wander in to your local chain pets store and talk to whatever high school student was standing by the fish.

Knowing what I've learned in this time, I was luckily enough to have someone who basically hinted that I should really be doing a nitrogen cycle, but hey, here's a betta because they don't really give a **** what you put them in. That ended up being true as that fish is still trucking along in my FW tank. They said to let that go for a few weeks and then start adding fish. Did and did. So, I started adding fish. After a few months of this and researching why the hell I kept losing some fish and not others, I found myself kind of drawn in to the hobby. Sorry little one, you get to now reap the benefits of daddy's new hobby.

Fast foward to today. I still have the freshwater tank running with 3 cory cats, a sword tail andddd ******* betta fish still on time out in a different tank.

That said, after spending the last 4 months or so researching things constantly, I decided about a month ago to start a new adventure, a salt water tank :bounce3:

In this thread, I figured I'd just take everyone along with me as I ask stupid questions, post pictures of things a quick google search can answer and overall journal something that a few years from now I can hopefully go back and quote what a stupid thing I did as I continue to learn...


So let's begin...


A month back I bought a 75 gallon tank, ended up getting it for a pretty good deal. To go along with the tank I got a;
Hydor Pro 350 Canister Filter
Hydor ETH 300 in-line external heater
Current USA Satellite Freshwater LED Plus lights
Some instant Ocean Bio-Spira
a 100GpD Ro/Di filter


After those arrived, I headed out to the LFS and picked up some live-sand and began my journey

ever....slowly....creating... water...

I'm making progress, this was several, several hours of adding water.

Some of the nifty things I found in the sand(to which now I laugh at how many more "NIFTY" things I've found in the sand)

I stayed up until 4 AM that day just to finally get this thing filled to where I did, LOL. It was a very rough morning, but screw it, the tank was officially running and it was game on

After the tank was running for a week or so, I decided to venture off to the local fish store and ended up coming home with about 70lbs worth of live rock. I also added a HOB Oct Protein Skimmer

During this time, I had tried the shrimp method, and I truly couldn't get the ammonia to spike. Couldn't find any nitrites, but was seeing some nitrates.I was creating some nitrates, but I really wanted to get an ammonia spike. So, I bought some ammonium and threw it in the tank. After about a week, I am now at the point where it has rid itself of 2ppm of ammonia in 24 hours and nitrites shortly after that.



The plan now is to do a water change tomorrow morning and then head off to the LFS and pick up 2 clown fish(Remember, the 2 year old, he comes in to play on this decision, NEMO!!!!!!).

 

[Heuristic]

Some of the hitchhikers I've encountered so far...


The infamous Aiptasia

At first they were popping up every couple of days. After some research, I decided to just go with the pure lemon juice in the FACE(mostly because I have a wife who works in surgery so I we had syringes, and well, I had lemon juice handy) but also because there wasn't any fish in there so I wasn't worried as much about a PH spike. It's been about 2 weeks now and I've yet to see another one pop up. I know they're still there, but it's done the job.


I have encountered also, this spaghetti worm. Tonight I caught him WAYYY out of his cave, could see his entire body actually(but didn't capture a picture, only video).

This mushroom is actually even bigger now than when I took this picture, and there's another one I haven't took a picture of yet.

 

[Heuristic]

And ya... I'm going to go ahead and resize those pictures where I can... My god...

 

[Heuristic]

We, have, life!


Bought 2 Ocellaris Clownfish from Aqualife here in Sacramento

Acclimated them for around 2 hours adding about a 1/4 cup of water every 5 to 10 minutes. Once full, poured out to about 1/4 bag water and then filled again to the top with my own.


They both seem pretty happy right now.

 

[Heuristic]

man, fish are a different animal to capture correctly. I'll get there...

 

[Heuristic]

Missed one

You can see that the top tail fin doesn't have a stripe

 

[vikinglord13]

Nice, I'll follow along

 

[Heuristic]

I'm closing in on a week now with the the two clown fish. I've yet to see an ammonia spike(0), nitrites are at 0 and so far my Nitrates are still going down as the tank establishes more.

I have a big list of fish that I like, but before I make the list bias, it would be kind of cool to see what everyone else recommends as my "next fix to add". Would love any input

 

[marleesan]

Before adding more fish, you should get a quarantine system. When I first started I didn't quarantine, and my tank got ich and i had to go fallow for months and lost all of my fish

 

[Heuristic]

Just a quick cellphone photo update. Two Clowns are doing great, they just started attempting to eat pellets a few days ago, but they're spitting them out. I think they're too big, so a broke them up this morning and they had much better success with them.

I haven't seen them fighting at all either, pretty much always side by side

I am noticing some(what I think) is hair algae, very slowly starting to show up here and there. It isn't bad at all, but that may determine what my next fish is. Address it now.

The first few days I had the LR in my tank, I saw a brittle star flying in the water, grab on to a rock and I haven't seen it since then. Until today. I think I found it chilling in a shell with it's arms up

Also, my HOB skimmer has been on for going on almost 3 weeks now and I just couldn't get it working right. I would move it down a little, it would appear to be working, then a few hours later water would be flying up the top and almost over flowing the chamber. I figured that it just still wasn't broken so, so I said screw it and kept the canister really high and let it continue to run. Well, the bubbles are now closing in on the tube even with it raised. I think it's finally breaking in. :dance:

 

[vikinglord13]

If you let the pellets soak for a bit they should soften and no longer require breaking

 

[Heuristic]

If you let the pellets soak for a bit they should soften and no longer require breaking

I just saw this, thanks for the advice. I was actually thinking about doing this and I will now try pre-soaking them :thumbsup: One of them is getting big enough now though that they are able to actually eat the smaller of the pellets

 

[vikinglord13]

Great news. Once they get larger they will attack those pellets like there is no tomorrow

 

[Heuristic]

Tank Update:

Well, One of the clown fishes did not play nicely with the other one and killed the other one. I saw it with it's fins all chewed up and, well, dead. Not good. So I decided to wait a week or so, move all the rocks around and then try again. I re-added a now smaller Ocellaris clown hoping that the size difference would help smooth things out.

That's when the oddest thing happened. The one that took out the other fish is now the one submitting to the new one. They've been together for 3 days now and there hasn't been any kind of snipping, just general posturing to where the other only does the submissive dance almost immediately. Weird fish.

I also decided to test my luck with pairing by adding 2 firefish Goby. I read so much about how timid they were and how they won't really eat the first few days. These guys couldn't be any further from that stereotype. The ate the first night I gave them food(both brine shrimp and now pellets). They are always out in the open as long as the lights are on. They're a really cool fish to watch, especially when they turn on the jets.


Now on to the pics.

This is the new clown. Has slightly darker coloring

The original

Firefish's. These two have been inseparable. They even share the same cave when they sleep

I am having a hell of a time getting my Octo Reef Classic 100-HOB filter honed it. It's been a pain in the ***. Once second it's working great, the next it's flooding. To save this thread from that boring stuff, I have a thread going in skimmers

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?p=24862376

 

[dmarkham]

You may want to hold off on anymore fish till your tank goes through the algae and diatom blooms. What do you have for a Clean Up Crew?

 

[Heuristic]

You may want to hold off on anymore fish till your tank goes through the algae and diatom blooms. What do you have for a Clean Up Crew?

Nothing yet, I am getting an algae/diatom bloom right now actually. It's not all that bad, but I can see it on my rocks/glass walls.

I am thinking the next step may be to add a few members of a CUC, but not so much that they starve/die when things get back under control.

I'm closing in on 2 months since starting the tank. When does the worst of the bloom normally in that first time of "uglies"

 

[Heuristic]

Welp. sold my remaining freshwater fish to the LFS, which has now opened up a 10 Gallon quarantine tank.

I'm going to let the filter run in my DT for at least a week, then sit up my QT tank with the old water.


After that, all fish bets are off.

Right now, I'm thinking of finishing things off overtime with
Algae blenny or Starry Blentty
A few Cardinals
Yellow tang
One spot Fox-face
Skunk Cleaner
Peppermint shrimp


this tank as it looks right now will be very yellow/orange heavy so i there's a substitution that'd be great. Any recs would be appreciated

 

[Heuristic]

Oops, that's supposed to say, if there's a blue substitution.

 

[vikinglord13]

you could try one damsel, though it might not mesh with the clowns well. Perhaps a few chromis would work. Blue Reef Chromis is a beautiful color.

 

[Heuristic]

Update: Everything was going really well, the algae bloom has completely subsided, except, one of the firefish brought Ich in to the tank. The 4 of them successfully fought it off, but I didn't like the idea that any new fish I bring in to the tank not only will then have to fight it off, but could potentially stress the other fish off and start a domino effect.

To the quarantine tank they go. I originally bought everything for my 10 gallon tank to quarantine in, but last minute remembered that Petco was still having their $1 a gallon sale, so I ran out and picked up a 20g

Put all the fish in there using tank water, added the recommended 1st dosage of cupramine and waited 48 hours like the bottle suggested. Everyone in the tank looked great, but the copper dosages were reading higher than I figured they would considering this is supposed to be 1/2 a dosage

After the 48 hours and seeing the dosage was a little high, that night I greatly cut back how many "drops" from the cap I was supposed to put in there.... Woke up the next morning and one of the firefish was not looking so hot, by the time I could get home from work the first firefish had dropped. I checked my parameters and my copper was pretty high, somewhere around .8 maybe a fraction higher(that blue strip is stupid to figure out what it is). Also, the other firefish wasn't looking so hot. I quickly ran down stairs to prep wate. Did water change after water change until I finally got the copper down to .5. Probably ended up doing around a 50% change. I was too late, lost the other firefish.


It's now been a few days and closing in on a week of treatment and the clown fish still seem to be in good health and eating plenty.

I was thinking of running them through 3 weeks of treatment. Then it'll only be ohhhhh another 50 days before they can go back in to the DT :sad1:


In the mean time, I was thinking of maybe adding some members of the CUC or maybe even some easy to care for entry level corals so there's at least SOMETHING to look at in the DT that isn't a bristle worm or an occasional aiptasia :lol: