Clownfish help!

[ForeverAndrea]

Hi all...it was great meeting everyone today. We didn't really get to chat with anyone, but hopefully we will get to know everyone soon!

Ok, now on to the problem! We have an Ocelleris Clownfish that has basically kept to himself for 3 years. Now, all of a sudden, he wants to host anything with tentacles. He has started hosting our frogspawn, and the frogspawn isn't very happy with being rubbed on all day. We are thinking about getting him an anemone to host, but we want to make sure we get one that will last while looking nice in our tank! We REALLY like the pink tip condy (pink tip haitian) and the sebae, but I am getting mixed information online. We want something with decent color, but we are not big fans of carpet anemones. Any thoughts/tips? I think we need to decide ASAP so our frogspawn doesn't decide to retract and die all together...


Thanks!

 

[xmenx2dad]

I have had a clown for about a year and a half, he alternates between a brain and a frogspawn. All 3 are doing well. It is possible that you may get an anenome and he will not like it and stay with the frogspawn. Just my observation

 

[Ntvper]

size of tank? lighting? water parameters? anemones can be picky. havent seen a clownfish kill any coral by hosting it so ya have no worries there. and its a hit n miss with an anemone/clownfish hosting. ive seen/heard a clown totally dis an anemone and go for the sponge of a HOB Skimmer.

 

[dsepp]

I've got a clown in my frogspawn and it has done great for the last year. I would suggest giving it a bit to see if the frogspawn adapts.

 

[ForeverAndrea]

Hmm...I guess we will give it a couple days. He started rubbing against it about 5 days ago, and the frogspawn still doesn't appear to like it. It is fairly sucked in right now. I don't want to lose the coral! We have a 90 gallon with 4 T-5 VHOs. We are having a slight problem with nitrates right now, so we are currently doing stages of large water changes. We can't seem to fin the culprit for the high nitrates though. Even with weekly water changes for a while now, we can't get them down to 0 again. Any ideas there?

 

[Ntvper]

whats the TDS of your water? use RODI water not just RO water. many, many, many things contribute. another few is how much ya feed to how many times a day, whats your filtration like, any sponge filtering? how much rock? whats your flow like? any dead spots? DSB or BB? refugium or sump? any cannister filters? any carbon? any recent die off or death? pics and many details i bet we can help ya narrow that down to a science for ya. even down to the frogspawn not happy releasing chemicals into the water can effect ph, nitrates, and phos

 

[ForeverAndrea]

Sorry for the lag in response time...busy, busy, busy! Our tank is a 90 gallon. I am going to try to attach pictures, this is my first time so bear with me. Our phosphates are a tad high, they measured .25. Alakalinity measured at 9dKH. Calcium measured right at 500ppm, and Nitrate (is high, of course...hence our problem) measured at 30ppm. Salinity is right around 1.023.

We feed once a day, and I really don't think it's the food. We've tried cutting back on the food, but it doesn't change anything. We weren't really letting much hit the ground during feedings. We did have a powerhead that had been off for a while, so we just turned that back on. (see pictures, the one on the left in the pictures). We have lost all of our snails...due to the high nitrates, no doubt. We only had 4 that we lost though.

We have a sand bed, as you can see, and we use a refugium. The overflow box has a sponge filter in it. We also have a skimmer, but we just turned it off yesterday because it's not skimming anything out of the water. We are just going to try turning it on every other week or so, since it's not really pulling anything out. We have been doing weekly water changes, at least 10%, usually more. Yesterday we did a 20% water change, in an attempt to change the nitrates. I don't think we really have any dead spots, our flow seems pretty good.

In case this matters also...the powerheads are two Tunze 6045's. We have 4 T-5s on the tank: 2-454's and 2-ATI AquaBlue Specials. The skimmer is a SeaLife Systems/Wildlife Supply Company Skimmer.

Any help/ideas welcome...we need those nitrates DOWN!

 

[lacosta28]

That is strange you would have high nitrates with weekly water changes. Are you using ro/di water? Do you have any problems with algea? What kind of light cycle do you keep.

This is off topic but what are those pink corals on the top right of the tank?

 

[ForeverAndrea]

At the time, we are just using RO water most of the time. We do not have a system set up at our apartment, so we get our water from water supply places/machines. We thought it might be the water, so we checked it. There are ZERO nitrates in the water...and we checked it multiple times. I wish it were the water, that would at least be an answer.

The coral in the top right is an XL Cabbage Leather...there are also 2 feather dusters in the rock with the coral. Didn't love that coral before, then we changed the lights and now I'm a fan! :spin1:

 

[Gomer]

I admit, I didn't read this whole thread.

1st, I don't like the idea of carpet nems. In general, they are hard to keep and as a natural resource, they aren't handled well. As from what I gather, they take a LONG LONG time to get to the size we get them (ie, tens of years old).

Your clown will host in what it wants to. You can't really force it to host in what you want it to. Each time I redid my tank, the clown changed hosts. It has been in a Duncan, a frogspawn, a torch and currently an open brain. In EVERY SINGLE case, the coral wasn't happy. It retracted but wasn't technically damaged. After a week or two, the coral accepted the clown and the clown stays there. The coral is now seemingly 100% happy, puffy, eating etc etc. It just took a bit of adjustment. Let the clown be happy and if the host is a good viewing area, just be happy with that!

(I've heard of clowns hosting in montipora before lol()


As for nitrates, it is as simple as food in, export out. We tend to feed a lot. More then necessary to sustain. When we feed for good growth etc, we need to compensate with appropriate export. More aggressive skimming, macro fuges, bio pellets and more WCs etc. Your live rock can only keep up with so much. Because of my situation, I went the biopellet route, and lower feeding a bit. Time will tell

PS. weeky water changes can still have high nitrates if your WC export can't keep up with the input. (my case)

 

[ForeverAndrea]

As for nitrates, it is as simple as food in, export out. We tend to feed a lot. More then necessary to sustain. When we feed for good growth etc, we need to compensate with appropriate export. More aggressive skimming, macro fuges, bio pellets and more WCs etc. Your live rock can only keep up with so much. Because of my situation, I went the biopellet route, and lower feeding a bit. Time will tell

PS. weeky water changes can still have high nitrates if your WC export can't keep up with the input. (my case)

That makes sense. However, in our case, we were skimming 100% of the time and NOTHING was coming out. We thought the skimmer had busted, so we took it the the LFS and they hooked it up to their tanks. The skimmer was fine, there is just nothing for it to take out of our tank. Wouldn't the skimmer be taking at least SOMETHING out if there was anything to take out? This has us stumped.

Also, I am very unfamiliar with the other things you described (macro fuges and bio pellets)...what are we talking cost-wise? And what are they? lol

Thanks!

 

[Ntvper]

well if that starfish is real then your tests may be false. starfish cant live in high nitrate enviroments. or so im told. get a second and third opinion on those nitrate issues. skimmer not skimming? i dont buy it no offense but if your nitrates that high then there is crap in the water that can be skimmed out. maybe not settup right possibly run it 24/7 most gets skimmed out at night. your snails may have died due to starvation, thats a pretty nice clean tank there. which test kit ya using? are ya using the cap or your finger to shake vial? now off the wall comment, if its RO water from some places ya might wanna check it for TDS. thatll contribute to high nitrates. I seriously think your test is off. everyone goto andreas house and test her nitrates lol. take your water sample to SWR for a test too. and i may be all over the park with my thoughts this morning but my skimmer goes nuts everytime i feed frozen, do u feed frozen? and all inverts come with the warning label of 'sensitive to high nitrates of 20 ppm'. i really doubt u have nitrates that high maybe .30 thats allowed. so after getting many second and third tests done and finding the average, get a bacteria booster itll help. also side note seeing your sandbed may be holding the nitrates hostage deep clean that bad boy (slowly) dont do it all in one shot youll release too much bad stuff that may end up hurting your corals and inverts but if ya clean it deep and it comes up black or releases lil bubbles it might be the culprit that is anaerobic bacteria doing its thing.

PS Macro fuge is a refugium with macro algae in there as an phos/nitrate exporting system cutting slime algae and other algae down in the DT