Eeeew

Eeeew, Jaq molted. Disgusting and kinda cool at the same time. He's already out and about too, red as ever. We did lose a princess fish though, NO idea which one, I'll replace the Green Chromis this week though, they are a schooling fish. Hrm.. wonder if Manny has her hostage somewhere.




Complimentary tank shot!


Oh.. what happened to the sump? Welp... I filled it full of water and the baffles collapsed! So I replaced the plexiglass with 1/4" glass and it should be ready to try again Sunday night or Monday. It feels a LOT more sturdy.

Fish from HELL

I wanted 2 more Green Chromis as they are a schooling fish so I headed to the fish store. What did I see?? A pretty little fish sifting through the sand cleaning... oooh needed one of those! The price was right so we came home with 2 more Chromis and the Fish I'm thinking of calling Lucifer!

Firstly... meet Snow White and Cinderella... to go with Sleeping Beauty. HEY, if you know my family you know why we have all those names.




Now why no pictures of my new sand sifting friend from HADES?? Simple... demons can't be photographed.

Fish Type : Diamond Gobby
Temperment : Timid (in WHOSE world??)
Diet : Carnivore (yeah... my toe)

I put the Gobby and the 2 new princesses in the acclimation bucket and kept hearing an odd noise.. I look over and my fish tank is covered in water and the floor is wet! I go over and start the acclimation process.. which normally involves scooping out water from the bucket while slowly replacing it with tank water... but this time it opened the doors of hell and that so-called fish started jumping OUT of the bucket!

Now now.. you all know that I don't "touch" fish.. I raise them... I watch them... I don't TOUCH them! Now I'm faced with a jumping killer fish. I debate and debate and decide to just dump them into the main tank... hoping the shock doesn't kill them.

I dump in my bucket and plop... plop... there go the chromis... the water empties out of the bucket and no 3rd plop... musta missed it so I lay the bucket down and low-and-behold that thing is flopping around inside the dry bucket!! Scared the crap out of me!

I let him flop for a while.. figuring he was bound to wear himself out... he stopped flopping and I dumped him into the water where he floated down into the depths of outter darkness... ok maybe not THAT low but he's now hiding behind my rocks planning world domination no doubt.

I can breathe now... off to find a good Priest to exorcise this tank.

BTW, I named him Charles Manson... Manny for short.

Mysis Experiement

I kept hearing about Mysis shrimp and how fish love them... well I was at the fish store so I bought some, pretty cheap stuff. I toss the stuff in my tank after melting it in some warm water and it exploded into hundreds of tiny white things... oops.. overfeeding.. but will they eat it?



The term "feeding frenzy" comes to mind! The fish were frantically grabbing all they could... featherduster grabbed one... crabs were racing for them when they hit the rock...

Jaq came out of his hiding place and it was awful! He couldn't catch one... one would float by him, all of his legs would start to grasp at it and his whole body would shake then it'd float away... I think he did finally get one piece, poor guy.




Oddly enough, even the elusive Nessarius snails came out of the sand just to nab a bite at the shrimp. This one has a weird "thing" on it's bum.. hrm...



Welp, that brought my tank to life.... here's a new piece of purple corraline! Yay!!

New Additions

Finally added some new life into ye'ole tank. First is Jaq, the peppermint shrimp. He's been hiding in rock caves eating.




Then there's Sleeping Beauty (yup, I only have girls)... she's a green chromis. Right now she's kind of pale because she's stressed but her color should come back in full soon. It was cute though, I checked on them last night and she and butterfly were sleeping side by side.




All of my featherdusters are back!! I also have 6 hair worms now.

Doing great!

Things are going great since the water change! I have all of my rock-dwelling featherdusters back... still no sign of copepods but I may need to buy a new Live Rock to get those back. My sump is almost done and the test run yesterday went really well, I just have a few minor tweaks for it.


Here's my Hawaiian Featherduster... he's doing so well he put out a 2nd set of plumes! Now he has a set inside of a set and he's getting bigger.




My test snail is doing good too, he's all over the tank.



Butterfly is the only creature that doesn't seem to have been affected by whatever happened during the tank crash. She is one beautiful fish though, such a vibrant blue. After 100's of pictures I finally got one of her being still!



My hair worms are all back! I now have 5 or 6 of them.



Coralline is coming back also, right now it's the neon green but hope to have purple soon! I know.. patience... anyone that knows me though knows that's not my strong point.

Sump Beginnings

Time to add a sump...

I bought a 20 gallon fish tank from a store going out of business and got a killer deal! So off to Lowes to gather all of the stuff




I mark where I want the baffles (only to find out later it didn't work heh... I'm SO not sure what I'm doing!)



Then I siliconed it together with a difuser panel to keep the critters in the fuge.

It's Aliiiiiiveeeee

Things came to life after the water change!!! I've had 3 hair worms surface, my mysterious mouth (aka/possible bivalve) opened last night, I was so excited! I also have one tiny, sad looking featherduster alive in one of my rocks. It's not a full plume, just a few tentacles but hey, at least it survived!

I lost my last percula though yesterday and hurried and put everything back into the main tank from the smaller 10 gallon. I couldn't acclimate them... Butterfly was twitching and slamming herself into the bottom of the tank so I figured it wouldn't hurt to toss her back into the big tank... within a few minutes she was fine!

Sooo... what's left over from all of this?

Butterfly
6 crabs
3 hair worms
1 featherduster /rock
1 hawaiian featherduster

Not much eh... least it's a start and the water must be good, I bought a new snail yesterday and dropped him in and he lived! He's very active and sliming around so the water must all be fixed.

Take 2

Time to redo the tank.. I moved the remaining hermit crab and Butterfly into the Quarantine Tank with the one remaining Percula and then began the process...

Draining time... I rearranged a few rocks too while I was at it.




And more...


Almost done...



That was fast.. now time to fill it and add the salt...





Stay tuned!

CTF

"Catastrophic Tank Failure"

2 hours after a routine water change everything in my tank is dead except for Butterfly. Seems all inverts, including my beautiful coral, are all gone.

I'll decide what to do later.

*****

Ok, after talking with friends I've decided to try and revive the tank with tiny water changes. In a few days I'll drop in a snail and if he doesn't belly-up I'll try a tiny clean-up crew. Then a while after that I'll try another coral.

Lost Count...

Ok, not going to count days anymore... it's been about 6 weeks though.

Been on vacation and lots has changed.

Butterfly is the same... hiding a lot though.





My 4th polyp opened up on the coral and there's a new polyp growing! Since I moved them they have stretched up and opened up fully.






My bi-valve moved forward a tad and a new black featherduster worm came in from where he was.






I have a new patch of purple coralline algae on one of my rocks, yay!




The ugly brown stuff is gone and on this rock was replaced by a bright green algae, hoping it turns to purple soon but TRYING to be patient about it.





Tank shot...





Here are some new additions! They are tiny aquacultured percula clowns. Kyna named hers Shrek and Anneke named hers Baby. They are in quarantine for a few weeks.




I also bought a Hawaiian Featherduster and it's SO pretty!




Per the local fish store I'm going for a 20% water change tomorrow, should be interesting. I also got in the first piece of my new sump (thanks Chuck!) and hope to start putting it together next week.