FredTheCat
New member
<B>The Story So Far</B>
OK so, I'm new here so I figure I better introduce myself. The name is FredTheCat and in the real world I'm an animator. My home office is where I spend the vast majority of my time because, frankly, I have no life and there's always work to be done.
Anyway, way back in high school (longer ago than I care to admit) I had a brief affair with a freshwater tank but the lure of fancy saltwater fish got me and I ran a minor saltwater tank for a while. Nothing too in-depth and it didn't really get my full attention thanks to puberty (
) but it was doing alright.
Cut to now and I have a pair of daughters the age I was when I ran my tanks. A year or two ago I gave one of them an Eclipse 6 gallon tank which she fiddled with for a while but never really got off the ground. Eventually the empty tank ended up stuffed in the shed for a number of months.
One day a few months ago I decided since I'm sitting here at the computer pretty much every minute of every day, it might be fun to set up a small tank right next to me which I could putz with during the frequent waiting periods I have while the computers perform my bidding. At last I would be able to give the thing enough attention to make it worth doing.
I dug the Eclipse 6 out of the shed and spent many hours reading this and other fine fish-oriented websites until I felt I had a pretty good understanding of what I was getting myself into. Started the tank with a nice live rock (covered in red coralline algae), live sand, and seawater from my LFS. Once I started seeing some nusiance algae I added 3 cerith snails and 3 nassirus snails (we call 'em Snorkles around Casa d' Cat) and just enjoyed watching them for a few days...who'da thunk snails could be so darn interesting?
Soon I was ready to add some more life to the tank and picked up a nice pair of blue/green chromis. I'm really fond of the chromis, they look great and have very entertaining personalities. One of them was breathing heavy when he arrived and I was concerned, rightly so as it turns out, he died a couple days later leaving me with just the one chromis and the snails. The remaining chromis and the snails were all thriving so I suspect I just got a defective fish.
I found another nice chunk of live rock at my LFS that had some life on it and added it to the mix. The rock contained about 4 smallish mushrooms, a couple of small sponge balls, and what I would soon identify as an aptasia. It seemed like a great way to "test the waters" (so to speak) with some of the other aquatic lifeforms without shelling out a bunch of cash.
As for the aptasia, I was aware that these were considered pests and read many threads discussing their removal, but as far as I was concerned it was just one more cool thing to watch in the tank. It wasn't hurting anything and it was just one, after all, so I left him intact to see what he would do. I'll get back to him later.
The mushrooms began to multiply so now I've got 6 small shrooms and a couple more just starting. The orignal rock started growing quite a bit of linty-looking algae and the snails seem to prefer the tank sides and the sand so I endeavored to get something else fun that would take care of that for me. I really wanted a crab and the Sally Lightfoot seemed to fit both needs at once.
The Sally voraciously ate away the problem algae in the first couple days and only took a swipe at the chromis on occasion (though I swear the chromis was intentionally taunting him!).
Where I ran into trouble was with the cerith snails. The Sally took great joy in snatching up a cerith, flipping it upside down and digging away at the inside of the shell. He didn't seem to be able to reach the snail itself, withdrawn in the shell, but he'd just leave the poor ceriths upside down and scamper away! Being almost perfectly round, they couldn't flip themselves back over so I spent a couple days on snail life-saving duty.
I have no idea how these things survive in the wild! My LFS said I could trade the Sally back in for something else but he was pretty entertaining anyway so I decided to watch him for a while.
We were due to take off for a week-long vacation and I had a good friend (who is getting slowly but surely lured into this hobby) that was going to drop by and take care of the tank while we were away. The morning we're getting ready to leave, the crab just up and died. Water all tested out fine and everything else in the tank seemed perfectly happy so I gave the poor Sally a hasty funeral and away we went.
When we got back a week later the tank had been well-tended and everything was good but I wanted to get a replacement critter to take care of any ongoing linty algae problem. My tank runs unavoidably warm in my office, sometimes reaching close to 90. My LFS guessed that the water was just too warm for the crab and I'd essentially cooked him
They thought I might have better luck with a Lawnmower Blenny in my circumstances so I picked one up (We call him Muppet. If you have one you'll understand.) Anyway, he fit right in and handled his duties admirably. This dastardly hobby had me, I needed more.
I recently finished up a large animation project and decided to celebrate by splurging on a bigger tank. I spent a couple days going back through all the forums reading up on reef cubes because I really wanted to get into some of the more exotic livestock. I settled on a 24 gallon AquaPod.
Into that I put another bag of live sand (CaribSea if you care) and 15 gallons of seawater from my LFS. They also suggested I use a 3.38 oz. bottle of Instant Ocean BIO-Spira bacteria to get it going so I dropped that in. I also seeded the tank with some of the water and some of the sand from my original tank and let it cycle. This period is extremely short when using live sand and real ocean water and I was soon able to move the whole lot into the new cube and topped off the tank. The chromis and the blenny clearly enjoy their new larger home. The mushrooms seem to be a bit flacid so far but I suspect they'll come around once they get used to the environ.
The single aptasia continues to do fine and causes nothing any harm but since I do want to get into the zoas and corals and based on the relentless insistance of folks saying they must be eliminated I decided to add a peppermint shrimp to the family. He's been in there a couple days now and shows no interest whatsoever in the aptasia . I'm giving it some time, maybe it just has to work up the guts to attack.
Since my two live rocks seemed sorta lonely in there I picked up a couple more nice ones. No fun extras on these but they have great little caves, with one of the stones essentially hollow, a fact my blenny just loves.
So that pretty much brings us to today. I've kept the old tank alive with sand and snails and will be starting it fresh for my wife. She's the sort that'll put a sunken pirate ship in there, so we'll see what happens there
I went across town to check out what was purported to be a pretty large semiLFS and indeed it was. They had a huge variety of marine fish, many I've never seen at my normal LFS. While browsing I discovered a tank that had three TINY baby chromis and I just couldn't resist. They follow my larger (but still small) original chromis all over the tank. It's obnoxiously cute!
So to sum it all up (geez, what a stupidly long post, eh?) what I'm working with is:
Main Tank - AquaPod 24, stock everything, a small no-name powerhead that (in conjuntion with the built-in pump) gives me a moderately good but not great amount of movement in the water column. 20 lbs of CaribSea live sand, 4 live rocks (about 3-4 lbs each), 15 gallons of LFS seawater, 4 cerith snails, one large and one small nassirus snail (plus a small army of incredibly absurdly tiny baby nassiruses discovered during the tank transfer(!), one lawnmower blenny, one average size chromis and three babies, one peppermint shrimp, a few mushrooms, a tiny sponge or two, and one as-yet-uneaten aptasia.
"Wife's tank" - Eclipse 6, stock everything, about 8-10 lbs. CaribSea live sand, 4-5ish gallons of LFS seawater, a cerith and a nassirus I left in there to keep the idle tank clean and likely a number of the nassirus babies I didn't manage to transfer.
In the future I intend to add quite a bit more live rock to form an attractive display for some zoas and/or other corals in the Main Tank, as well as build up the wife's tank essentially from a bare slate. I look forward to hearing the input from all you folks along the way. I've spelled out the details of my setup because I know reading that sort of thing was a big help to me in getting started and I hope others might benefit from my experience to this point. I don't have pictures of the setup yet but I'll try to get around to that soon.
Regards and apologies for the long first post!
-FredTheCat
OK so, I'm new here so I figure I better introduce myself. The name is FredTheCat and in the real world I'm an animator. My home office is where I spend the vast majority of my time because, frankly, I have no life and there's always work to be done.
Anyway, way back in high school (longer ago than I care to admit) I had a brief affair with a freshwater tank but the lure of fancy saltwater fish got me and I ran a minor saltwater tank for a while. Nothing too in-depth and it didn't really get my full attention thanks to puberty (
) but it was doing alright.Cut to now and I have a pair of daughters the age I was when I ran my tanks. A year or two ago I gave one of them an Eclipse 6 gallon tank which she fiddled with for a while but never really got off the ground. Eventually the empty tank ended up stuffed in the shed for a number of months.
One day a few months ago I decided since I'm sitting here at the computer pretty much every minute of every day, it might be fun to set up a small tank right next to me which I could putz with during the frequent waiting periods I have while the computers perform my bidding. At last I would be able to give the thing enough attention to make it worth doing.
I dug the Eclipse 6 out of the shed and spent many hours reading this and other fine fish-oriented websites until I felt I had a pretty good understanding of what I was getting myself into. Started the tank with a nice live rock (covered in red coralline algae), live sand, and seawater from my LFS. Once I started seeing some nusiance algae I added 3 cerith snails and 3 nassirus snails (we call 'em Snorkles around Casa d' Cat) and just enjoyed watching them for a few days...who'da thunk snails could be so darn interesting?
Soon I was ready to add some more life to the tank and picked up a nice pair of blue/green chromis. I'm really fond of the chromis, they look great and have very entertaining personalities. One of them was breathing heavy when he arrived and I was concerned, rightly so as it turns out, he died a couple days later leaving me with just the one chromis and the snails. The remaining chromis and the snails were all thriving so I suspect I just got a defective fish.
I found another nice chunk of live rock at my LFS that had some life on it and added it to the mix. The rock contained about 4 smallish mushrooms, a couple of small sponge balls, and what I would soon identify as an aptasia. It seemed like a great way to "test the waters" (so to speak) with some of the other aquatic lifeforms without shelling out a bunch of cash.
As for the aptasia, I was aware that these were considered pests and read many threads discussing their removal, but as far as I was concerned it was just one more cool thing to watch in the tank. It wasn't hurting anything and it was just one, after all, so I left him intact to see what he would do. I'll get back to him later.
The mushrooms began to multiply so now I've got 6 small shrooms and a couple more just starting. The orignal rock started growing quite a bit of linty-looking algae and the snails seem to prefer the tank sides and the sand so I endeavored to get something else fun that would take care of that for me. I really wanted a crab and the Sally Lightfoot seemed to fit both needs at once.
The Sally voraciously ate away the problem algae in the first couple days and only took a swipe at the chromis on occasion (though I swear the chromis was intentionally taunting him!).
Where I ran into trouble was with the cerith snails. The Sally took great joy in snatching up a cerith, flipping it upside down and digging away at the inside of the shell. He didn't seem to be able to reach the snail itself, withdrawn in the shell, but he'd just leave the poor ceriths upside down and scamper away! Being almost perfectly round, they couldn't flip themselves back over so I spent a couple days on snail life-saving duty.
I have no idea how these things survive in the wild! My LFS said I could trade the Sally back in for something else but he was pretty entertaining anyway so I decided to watch him for a while.We were due to take off for a week-long vacation and I had a good friend (who is getting slowly but surely lured into this hobby) that was going to drop by and take care of the tank while we were away. The morning we're getting ready to leave, the crab just up and died. Water all tested out fine and everything else in the tank seemed perfectly happy so I gave the poor Sally a hasty funeral and away we went.
When we got back a week later the tank had been well-tended and everything was good but I wanted to get a replacement critter to take care of any ongoing linty algae problem. My tank runs unavoidably warm in my office, sometimes reaching close to 90. My LFS guessed that the water was just too warm for the crab and I'd essentially cooked him
They thought I might have better luck with a Lawnmower Blenny in my circumstances so I picked one up (We call him Muppet. If you have one you'll understand.) Anyway, he fit right in and handled his duties admirably. This dastardly hobby had me, I needed more.I recently finished up a large animation project and decided to celebrate by splurging on a bigger tank. I spent a couple days going back through all the forums reading up on reef cubes because I really wanted to get into some of the more exotic livestock. I settled on a 24 gallon AquaPod.
Into that I put another bag of live sand (CaribSea if you care) and 15 gallons of seawater from my LFS. They also suggested I use a 3.38 oz. bottle of Instant Ocean BIO-Spira bacteria to get it going so I dropped that in. I also seeded the tank with some of the water and some of the sand from my original tank and let it cycle. This period is extremely short when using live sand and real ocean water and I was soon able to move the whole lot into the new cube and topped off the tank. The chromis and the blenny clearly enjoy their new larger home. The mushrooms seem to be a bit flacid so far but I suspect they'll come around once they get used to the environ.
The single aptasia continues to do fine and causes nothing any harm but since I do want to get into the zoas and corals and based on the relentless insistance of folks saying they must be eliminated I decided to add a peppermint shrimp to the family. He's been in there a couple days now and shows no interest whatsoever in the aptasia .
I'm giving it some time, maybe it just has to work up the guts to attack.Since my two live rocks seemed sorta lonely in there I picked up a couple more nice ones. No fun extras on these but they have great little caves, with one of the stones essentially hollow, a fact my blenny just loves.
So that pretty much brings us to today. I've kept the old tank alive with sand and snails and will be starting it fresh for my wife. She's the sort that'll put a sunken pirate ship in there, so we'll see what happens there
I went across town to check out what was purported to be a pretty large semiLFS and indeed it was. They had a huge variety of marine fish, many I've never seen at my normal LFS. While browsing I discovered a tank that had three TINY baby chromis and I just couldn't resist. They follow my larger (but still small) original chromis all over the tank. It's obnoxiously cute!
So to sum it all up (geez, what a stupidly long post, eh?) what I'm working with is:
Main Tank - AquaPod 24, stock everything, a small no-name powerhead that (in conjuntion with the built-in pump) gives me a moderately good but not great amount of movement in the water column. 20 lbs of CaribSea live sand, 4 live rocks (about 3-4 lbs each), 15 gallons of LFS seawater, 4 cerith snails, one large and one small nassirus snail (plus a small army of incredibly absurdly tiny baby nassiruses discovered during the tank transfer(!), one lawnmower blenny, one average size chromis and three babies, one peppermint shrimp, a few mushrooms, a tiny sponge or two, and one as-yet-uneaten aptasia.
"Wife's tank" - Eclipse 6, stock everything, about 8-10 lbs. CaribSea live sand, 4-5ish gallons of LFS seawater, a cerith and a nassirus I left in there to keep the idle tank clean and likely a number of the nassirus babies I didn't manage to transfer.
In the future I intend to add quite a bit more live rock to form an attractive display for some zoas and/or other corals in the Main Tank, as well as build up the wife's tank essentially from a bare slate. I look forward to hearing the input from all you folks along the way. I've spelled out the details of my setup because I know reading that sort of thing was a big help to me in getting started and I hope others might benefit from my experience to this point. I don't have pictures of the setup yet but I'll try to get around to that soon.
Regards and apologies for the long first post!
-FredTheCat
Thanks!
) I do a lot of top-level corporate stuff for a well-known financial institution and the like. It's not glamorous but it beats digging ditches!
