A New Look and Ridding Myself of Evil Fish!
A New Look and Ridding Myself of Evil Fish!
It's been a while now so I thought I would update my thread. Today I spent several hours working on my tank. I had to get the evil quartet of damsels out so I could actually keep a clownfish or two in the tank. The damsels have killed all THREE of my previous attempts at keeping clowns. So, I found somebody who wanted to buy them.
To get them out I had to take all the rocks out. While I was taking them out I thought, "Why not re-arrange the rocks the way I wanted them in the first place?" I went and picked up 15 gallons of water (my RODI needs it's filters replaced- too lazy) and started mixing up some fresh saltwater to do a water change at the end of all this trouble. I took all the rocks out of the tank and the corals and put them sepparate into too grey tubs from walmart (i use these to move so I have tons!). PLEASE, if your doing something like this learn from my mistake and wear GLOVES! My hands are all kinds of torn up and I have a bristle worm spine stuck in my thumb (that sucker HURTS!:blown
It was alot more difficult to get the damsels out than I thought concidering there was only two rocks left in the tank when I went to net them. I managed and put them in the tub with the corals.
This time around I made sure to stack the big rocks on the bottom of the stacks and give them the "shake test" before placing the next rock. Ideally I would have preffered to epoxy the rocks together but I wasn't as prepared for this as I would have liked. For now this will work. I managed to get my two "mountains" on each side of the tank with, what I'm calling, a mushroom bridge in the middle. I was able to place ALL of my corals on the rocks (couldn't secure them, no glue-will get more later) and get rid of the frag rack for now. I'm really happy with the aquascape this time around and expect to keep it that way. this way I have plenty of room for the corals to grow out and plenty of swimming room for any future fish I may get. (i only have two in there at this point)
My biggest mistake was that I put my SW mixing powerhead in the tub with the damsels and one of them decided that he/she wanted to hide in or near it and got sucked in to meet a very violent end. This powerhead is so powerful that I can't keep it in my 90 gallon tank without getting a sand storm and tearing my corals to pieces. The fish was ripped in half and rolled into a very tight ball. Poor thing never stood a chance! Yet again.... another lesson learned!
I scraped off all the xenia to sell to the buyer of the damsels also but as you all probably know, you can't really get rid of xenias. The residue or little bit of tissue that is left on the rocks will probably grow back bigger than before.
Well, since the buyer didn't show up today the damsels had to go into the QT to await purchase tomorow evening. Since they had to be in the QT I had to get my pair of clowns out and introduce them to the DT earlier than I planned. It's only a few days early but still! Well, after an hour acclimation, they are enjoying the newly found elbow room. These are much much bigger than the previous pair and the single male before. Those were barely an inch in total length where the female in this pair is two inches and the male is just barely shorter than her. Beautiful ocellarous(sp?) clowns, and PIGS (they ate fore me right after I introduced them to the tank)! I feed them 3 times a day and keep the tank at 82 degrees to intice them to spawn for me. I'll do another post with details on that when the time comes. Anyways! I know nobody reads these threads just to learn! Lets get on with the pictures already!
1st is the new FTS! It looks great to me! If you remember the last FTS I had this "great wall of china" thing happening!
2nd is the right "mountain" close-up
3rd is the left "mountain" close-up
4th is the two hammer corals that I aquired and think look really great together. I wasn't sure if I could do this (have them touch) but it doesn't seem to adversely effect them so :dance:
5th since I had room for one more picture I decided to show you guys the snow we got here in Dallas a few days ago! Woo hoo! actual flakes of snow! Usually we just get sleet or ice!
. It's never a good thing but at least you learned a few lessons and are now taking the proper steps. I think QT'ing fishes are must before going into your DT. It only takes one to wipe out all your fish and that is a tragedy that can be avoided by QT'ing. As far as your little baby clownfish,I don't think the peppermint shrimps killed and ate him. It was still a juvenile and probably got ich easily from the tang and eventually died 5 days later. His body was most likely eaten by tank scavengers along with the peppermint shrimps right away so that's why you didn't see a body. It still sucks losing a fish though 
