My new tank

[Recty]

I cant recommend the process, since it goes against what most people recommend but I bought the tank and set it up on a Friday night and put fish in on Sunday. I almost did it on Saturday but I just wanted to make sure all my filters and heaters and lights were working like intended.

The bacteria in a bottle is a great solution for starting a tank up fast. The only concern is just to make sure you have lots of filtration, you need it when you dont use live rock.

For what it's worth, I added about 20 lbs of live rock within a month or so of having the tank online. I did it for the fish to have a more natural environment, but they were doing fine with the plastic tank decoration.

 

[SouthSider]

Do you still do water changes and how often. What type of filter are you running ( size and brand ) ?

 

[rekn]

ime, queens are extremely aggressive, especially as adults. it will need its own tank, a very large 1 at that.

 

[Recty]

ime, queens are extremely aggressive, especially as adults. it will need its own tank, a very large 1 at that.

The plan is to eventually have it by itself in it's own tank. However, that's a few years down the road. For now while it's nice and social I'll be keeping it in a smaller, aggressive community style tank.

Do you still do water changes and how often. What type of filter are you running ( size and brand ) ?

Yep, I still do water changes and it's been too short of a time to really say this is the best way to do things... but I do only do them every 3 weeks, I do 10 gallons every 3 weeks and it's been great so far.

Due to some ich problems, I checked all my water parameters which I normally dont do, they are pH 8.2, temp 76, salinity 1.021, nitrites and ammonia are 0 and nitrates are in the 40-60 range, which isnt bad considering how far between my water changes are.

The nice thing about a small tank is I can do 10g of water change and that is a 25% water change. If you take into account I've got 20 lbs of live rock displacing water and some other stuff, I've probably really only got about 30-35 gallons of water in the tank, so that makes a 10g water change really be 30-35% water change.

With my 210g tank, to change out 30% of the water I'd have to do 60 gallons at a time.

 

[rpjaws74]

didnt know these triggers to be actually nice looking!

 

[Recty]

Well unfortunately the scopas didnt make it through the hypo treatment. I'm surprised, he was the one who was handling it the best.

I found him behind a rock the other day, upside down but still breathing but he had three hermit crabs munching on him. I got him out and right side up and he was swimming but acted blind. He last a day but died tonight... RIP.

In good news, the queen and dragon wrasse are handling the hypo well. They acted stressed a little at first but now are both eating and acting their normal selves.

Here is the dragon wrasse looking out of his sleeping spot about an hour ago, pretty funny

 

[jonathansruelas]

hey retcy wheer did u perform the hypo treatment? and how ? my fish got ich so i need to do it as well

 

[Recty]

Where? In my main tank, but my "live" rock isnt very live, so it wasnt a big inconvenience except for a couple hermit crabs I took out.

As to the how? I just did water changes with no salinity water until I got it down to 1.009.

Unfortunately, I ended up going down to 1.006 as I didn't have my refractometer calibrated right. I'm not sure how that happened, but it did. That's the first one I've screwed up. Anyway, the fish were acting weird so I figured I better calibrate the refractometer again and sure enough it was .003 low.

I calibrated it correctly and readjusted my salinity but that's apparently too low for saltwater fish, I came out of the ordeal with a dead dragon wrasse and the scopas. Both had hugely bulged bellies, I guess they werent able to maintain their osmotic balance at 1.006.

Moral of the story, be careful when you attempt hypo. Some people hit 1.008 but 1.009 is to be safe, in case you adjust just a little bit lower than you were aiming for.

My queen trigger came out of it good and so did one of the damsels, and on a positive note I think 1.006 blew all the ich in the tank to pieces, it was only at 1.006 for 3 days and then raised to 1.009, but I havent seen ich reappear yet. I got down to hypo levels about 2 weeks ago, so anyway, I think the worst is over.

I'll quarantine all new fish I put into the tank now, hopefully never get ich reintroduced again. Probably wont be many new fish added, no reason to pack the fish in the tank when it is just a 40 gallon. Once the queen outgrows this and I do upgrade, then I'll add a couple fast moving fish, like some tangs.

 

[rekn]

didnt know these triggers to be actually nice looking!

as adults the queens are real show stoppers! by far, imo, the best looking trigs...on the same note and ime adult queens are probably the most viscous, destructive and mean fish you can legally buy!

 

[jonathansruelas]

Where? In my main tank, but my "live" rock isnt very live, so it wasnt a big inconvenience except for a couple hermit crabs I took out.

As to the how? I just did water changes with no salinity water until I got it down to 1.009.

Unfortunately, I ended up going down to 1.006 as I didn't have my refractometer calibrated right. I'm not sure how that happened, but it did. That's the first one I've screwed up. Anyway, the fish were acting weird so I figured I better calibrate the refractometer again and sure enough it was .003 low.

I calibrated it correctly and readjusted my salinity but that's apparently too low for saltwater fish, I came out of the ordeal with a dead dragon wrasse and the scopas. Both had hugely bulged bellies, I guess they werent able to maintain their osmotic balance at 1.006.

Moral of the story, be careful when you attempt hypo. Some people hit 1.008 but 1.009 is to be safe, in case you adjust just a little bit lower than you were aiming for.

My queen trigger came out of it good and so did one of the damsels, and on a positive note I think 1.006 blew all the ich in the tank to pieces, it was only at 1.006 for 3 days and then raised to 1.009, but I havent seen ich reappear yet. I got down to hypo levels about 2 weeks ago, so anyway, I think the worst is over.

I'll quarantine all new fish I put into the tank now, hopefully never get ich reintroduced again. Probably wont be many new fish added, no reason to pack the fish in the tank when it is just a 40 gallon. Once the queen outgrows this and I do upgrade, then I'll add a couple fast moving fish, like some tangs.

thats good that you didnt have to do all that extra stuff like water changes since your live rock wasnt very much established.
were you not quaranting the fish?
i am now also doing a qt so before i add any other fish.

 

[t11t5]

You take great pics

 

[Recty]

thats good that you didnt have to do all that extra stuff like water changes since your live rock wasnt very much established.
were you not quaranting the fish?
i am now also doing a qt so before i add any other fish.

I wasnt quarantining the fish. My original fish were ones from Petco that had been living in an ich infested system for a year almost, so I knew they had ich and they didnt even show any spots.

I originally just planned stocking from Petco only so I knew the fish would all have ich, I was going for a natural approach of thinking that they have had it for months and are fine and I was just going to leave it a that unless it got bad.

Then I ordered fish online that didnt have the ich tolerance and those fish showed tons of ich and were doing bad, so I had to treat.

At this point on, I'll quarantine new fish, although there wont be any new fish for a while. I'd like to add a couple real small tangs but I know how tangs in a 40g tank would go over

You take great pics

Thanks!

 

[jonathansruelas]

oh ok well good thing that you other fish were able to heal.. only if there wasnt no ich.. wouldnt that be the best of worlds

 

[Recty]

oh ok well good thing that you other fish were able to heal.. only if there wasnt no ich.. wouldnt that be the best of worlds

No kidding

Nice pictures, I don't know how you can get such good pictures of fish, its always so hard for me to get a somewhat decent one.

Lots of practice and nice gear. I've upgraded over the years to basically the best camera you can get without spending $8000 or more. I was taking pictures with a camera considered serious amateur level but a couple weeks ago I got one that is nothing but professional, it makes taking pictures very nice.

There is still a certain amount of "skill" involved in that you have to know how to take the shot, it isnt just automatic but after a while it becomes second nature.

 

[RobbyVonAwesome]

Dunno if anyone's mentioned this yet, but this fish has the word "GrANT written on it. Is that photoshopped or did the fish actually look like that?

:eek2:

 

[Recty]

I'm glad that my photoshop skills are so good you think it looks natural

It's a photoshop job, I worked pretty hard to make it look realistic. I did that picture and sent it around to a lot of the people I work with to see if they would notice my name was on it., only two of about 50 people noticed... most people online dont either.

 

[RobbyVonAwesome]

I didn't notice it the first or the second time. I've browsed through this thread at least a half dozen times before I saw it.

 

[TriggersAmuck]

Glad to see you are creating yet another interesting aquarium Recty. I moved away from an all trigger aquarium, much as I know you did a while back, but seeing your latest creation really makes me miss the trigger family!

Also, awesome photos! Do you find yourself using the fast 50mm more than the macro, or is the 50's closest focus just too far for most close up work? Do you shoot with tripod, or freely handheld? (You can tell I still shoot with film, because I know that most digital lenses have vibration compensation today, but I'm still curious).

 

[Recty]

Glad to see you are creating yet another interesting aquarium Recty. I moved away from an all trigger aquarium, much as I know you did a while back, but seeing your latest creation really makes me miss the trigger family!

Also, awesome photos! Do you find yourself using the fast 50mm more than the macro, or is the 50's closest focus just too far for most close up work? Do you shoot with tripod, or freely handheld? (You can tell I still shoot with film, because I know that most digital lenses have vibration compensation today, but I'm still curious).

Yeah, I'm already moved away from the all trigger concept. I need a much bigger tank for that to work out long term. I still need a much bigger tank eventually, but on a slower rate than I would have with 4 or more triggers.

As far as the lenses go, yes, I use the 50mm a LOT more than the macro. I shoot mainly handheld, there is rarely ever a time I can sit down with a tripod and know the fish is going to be right in front of me. The problem with aquariums is you get diffraction through the glass if you dont shoot straight at the tank, so if you have a tripod set up and are panning side to side taking pictures, all your sideways shots are going to look blurred and not good. So you pretty much have to handhold for fish pictures, unless you just set up in a good spot where the fish go a lot and take a picture when the fish cross there.

My older tank, the 210, had a 250w MH on it and it was a lot brighter than this tank. I could use the f/2.8 macro easily there, on this tank it is much harder due to less light, so the f/1.4 makes up for it. I usually shoot around f/1.8 to f/2, which is still twice as much light as I can get out of the macro.

 

[RealReef7]

any updates?