Our Tbs

[Alatriel]

Thanks everyone.

Spent the better part of the day cleaning up the mess and getting a new tank.

Been testing tubs every 6 hours to make sure params stay normal. So far so good. We decided to use the fuge light instead of the big light due to heat issues and coral bleaching. Feed sparingly for the next few days and keep up with the testing. The fish, anemone, and corals will be keep in the tubs until I make sure any mini cycle is over.

It looks like the bottom silicone seal let loose. :mad2: I guess the old tank will be resiliconed and used at a later date for a bigger sump or refuge for the 125.

Nothing more that I can do to insure that everything survives except waterchanges if things start to go bad.

 

[Safir]

I'm sure you could find foster homes or babysitters for your livestock in your local reef club if it looks like you'll be stuck waiting a while for the new tank to be ready...

 

[jezzeaepi]

Cyano has been the scourge of my tank. After batteling 20+ nitrates for few months, I finally got them down to 4 or 5. The cyano is still growing. I decided to check the tanks phosphate levels and found they were rather high, 0.5. I tested my water source, nothing. I tested my mixed SW, nothing.
What steps can I take to safely reduce them? Ive read that the "phosphate" media tends to cause other problems in the tank when used.

 

[drk70]

Run a phosban reactor.

I do and I think most people that have TBS rocks do.

 

[techreef]

Part II arrives!

Part II arrives!

I received Part II this weekend, and Richard outdid himself yet again. He sent a hulking mutant of a rock weighing 50lbs just by itself in my Part II package. It looks like shale in that it's very smooth and flat, measuring about 2' long by 1' wide. Of course it has sponges and corals on it, yet to be ID'd. But here is the good part: Richard was worried that I may not be able to fit this huge rock into my tank, so he packed an additional 20lbs of smaller rock in my Part II shipment just in case. That was super cool.

Will post pics soon. I asked Richard not to send me any anemones, as I'll be keeping slow-moving fish like a mandarin in the future, and didn't want to accidently feed the anemones. So instead, Richard was great and sent me 1) a porcelain crab, 2)3 shaving brush plants and 2 halimeda plants, 3)a BRIGHT orange tree sponge, 4) a beautiful purple gorgonian, 5) a white branching coral w/ purple polyps, and 6) a tiger goby, to keep my Part I hitchhiking tiger goby company.

Richard, thank you very much once again!

On to aquascaping. And more aquascaping. And again....

 

[BrianPlankis]

techreef,

Sounds like you SCORED! What an impressive collection of extras he sent you Please post pictures

Brian

 

[dazld]

Hi you guys, I haven't popped up for a while but keep up as time allows. I hope I'm not asking something thats already been answered but here goes. Last summer I bought a 90 gal tank with sump that had tbs rock. Thats what I wanted and it just came up in the local paper. Plus I was happy to think that any pests would have already been caught. Wrong about that, so after a few months I had a friend help me unload all the stuff out of the tank to catch gorilla crabs (we brought in a 55 gal to do this, took 6 hrs start to finish and was exhausting). We got four and I thought it was done. I realized a few months ago that there had to be another one in there. This past week I actually saw it. So, short of pulling this tank apart again, does anyone have a suggestion of what I might do to get it out? The nice young fellow at the lfs suggested a yellow coris wrasse, but they were out of them that day. Any thoughts on that, or some other remedy. OH PLEASE!

Next question, I have been trying to put together a plan for making my own RO water for a long time. Could anyone suggest the best system to buy and the best place to buy it? And, since I have the 90 gal and also a 12 gal nano, I need to harvest a lot of water. How are those of you making your own RO collecting and storing water?

I have more questions but have been interupted since I started this and it is late.

Thanks for any help.

Patsy

 

[Red_Six]

I cannot offer advice on getting rid of you crab. I control my crab population with mantis shrimp. :eek2:

I would recommend Air, Water and Ice for your RO/DI system. They have good prices and carry every kind of system to meet your needs. One tip I can offer that will extend your DI filter and give you better water is to manually bypass the DI filter and waste the first 10 minutes of water that is filtered. It takes a few minutes for the RO membrane to start working good and you will find the TDS levels start out higher than desired and then slowly tapper off. I set up a Rubbermaid 44 Gallon Brute trash can in my garage as a collection tank. I use a float valve on the trash can to automate the filling, and I plumed a Rio pump on the inside to circulate the water and allow me to pump into a bucket through a header.

 

[techreef]

Thought that I'd liven up this thread a little bit with the first pics of my tank, after I aquascaped it and installed the fan in the canopy, which allowed me to finally reassemble my tank and canopy.

Does anyone know what kind of coral this is? It was a freebie.

 

[techreef]

Jeez, sorry about the extreme close up pic before of that coral!

I have some bad news to report. Yesterday, I spotted and netted a cirolanlid. Brian, how long do i need to keep my tank fish-less in order to insure that no cirolanids survive in my tank?

 

[650-IS350]

I had about 3 pinky nail sized cirolanids in my 100 lbs of tbs. 1 I killed and 2 got sucked up in the powerheads.

Hey RICHARD how come I did not get a tiger goby in my shipments hahahahaha.....

 

[liverock]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8030384#post8030384 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by delsol650
I had about 3 pinky nail sized cirolanids in my 100 lbs of tbs. 1 I killed and 2 got sucked up in the powerheads.

Hey RICHARD how come I did not get a tiger goby in my shipments hahahahaha.....

They don"t like that cold Pacific water!!
Haaaaaaaaa


TBS

 

[techreef]

Does anyone have a suggestion for how many nassarius snails would be a comfortable number for a 90G reef tank? As I slowly begin to stock fish over the next 6 months, I'd like to have nass. snails. I have only the astraea snails from the TBS package currently.

 

[skippy2]

I would start out with 10 nassarius and 6 ceirth snails. Try that. You can always add a few more at a time if you think it is necessary.

 

[BrianPlankis]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=8021480#post8021480 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by techreef
Jeez, sorry about the extreme close up pic before of that coral!

I have some bad news to report. Yesterday, I spotted and netted a cirolanlid. Brian, how long do i need to keep my tank fish-less in order to insure that no cirolanids survive in my tank?

Sorry for the delay, I missed this the last time I checked the thread. I would suggest reading this article for more information, but I only tested a single specimen for starvation, it lasted 19 days with no food and looked like it hadn't eaten in a while, so I would say 30-90 days minimum.

Personally, I don't like to sit around and wait though, I like to take action. I would recommend the stinky water trap and see if you capture any

Brian

 

[jezzeaepi]

Have any of you had problems with your serpent stars? I had 3 of my 4 porcelain crabs dissapear recently. I found the brittle by a corpse earlier today, of what looked like a fresh kill.

There are three possible explanations:
1)My brittle star(about 10 inches accross) has been getting real excited lately when I feed my fish. I dont give him anyhing but hes always looking. Might he just grab a porcelain crab and eat it? The porcelains never seemed bothered by him, even if he was right next to them hitting them with his legs while moving around. They have co existed for months. More recently thoguh I started feeding the serpent just smaller bits of food(pea sized at most). I found that he was lazy with the larger chunks of shrimp and would leave them half eaten under rocks.
2)I know there is one, possibly two gorrilla crabs in the tank that are about one inch accross. Would they kill my porcelains but leave my fish and corals alone?
3)The small pistol that I think Ive had for 4 months is actually a mantis. I would have a hard time beleiving this though because I havent lost any fish, and still have a ton of hermits and snails.


Im leaning towards 1.
What do you guys think?

 

[techreef]

I recently spotted a 2" big gorilla in my tank. because the leftovers were sitting at the mouth of his cave, i know that he was responsible for carving off one of my shaving brush plants right at ground level. i've also recently seen chunks of pink sponge/tunicate being pulled into holes. I'm beginning to believe that the larger gorillas are the most destructive creatures in TBS tanks. if I didn't want to keep my barnacles (what's left of them, anyway) alive so badly, I don't know that I'd worry about mantis shrimp more than gorillas.

my purple serpent star really reacts during feeding time so far. (5 flakes of Formula I) Maybe he nabbed your crabs, but my porcelains are so speedy, I can't really see the star being able to catch one. I would look at the gorillas or a possible mantis first.

 

[jezzeaepi]

My porcelains showed no sign of fear of the serpent. They let him touch them all the time.

I dont know what I can do. Theres no way I take his rock out, they hide underneath everything. They ignore my traps. I cant stab him or kill him because its always in a reccess that I cant get too.

Starting to get really ****ed here. All of my reasons for buying tbs in the first place have been destroyed by tbs itself. 5 of the 7 porcelains I got have been killed by something.
All of my sponges have been killed by the keyhole limpets that I dare not remove because they are the only thing in the tank that eats bryopsis that trys to grow on everything.
Even the corals that hitch hike on the rock have a high mortaliy rate. Since they dont use much light at all, they require a ton of food. Too be able to feed them enough, the tanks phosphates and nitrates will go through the roof. Id say about 20% of the corals are dieing slowly from tissue loss, and algae regrowing on the dead skeleton.

I hate to say it but Im going with regular "dead" rock from fiji next time. I want to move forward with my tank, but removing all of the pests is damn near impossible to do before they kill all the good things that you bought the rock for in the first place.

 

[Strykur]

Hey guys (and gals)

After following this thread and reading every post I feel like I know every one of you The amount of information I have taken from this thread is crazy, thanks to every one of you for sharing.

I finally broke down after several years of fowlr tank and asked for a small tank to start my reef experience for my birthday. My wife bought me a 24g hqi aquapod and here I am, part of the family

I received my first part of my TBS shipment last Thursday and having a slight Ammonia problem atm, but doing daily water changes and hope to have it under control soon.

The rock was Fantastic!! with very few bad critters.


I know you all love pictures and I did take a few of part one that seem to have turned out great, I promise to post them along with part 2 once I get it

I also wanted to say thanks for all the pictures of your awesome tanks, I am sure that is what got me on the TBS track

Scott

 

[skippy2]

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