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I'm sure it can't hurt, as long as the pH is matched
A dip in StressGuard or ParaGuard between tank transfers might help too, especially for those using nets instead of collanders But I stress following the instructions closely |
Hate to say it but I think its time to do away with the quarantine tanks Adam.
Trying to sum up your efforts so far has personally given me a head ache, I can only imagine what its doing to you. Imo quarantine is just too stressful for many species, I have personally never utilized it and have had great success introducing new fish. Purchasing fish with zero illness that will eat infront of you at the LFS and then go home to a well fed and healthy system is key here. That being said I have never had the brutal experience of Marine Velvet, I'm sure most who advocate for quarantine have experienced this. Sent from my HTC Desire HD using Tapatalk 2 |
I won't knock your procedures Zoa (sorry, can't recall your name), but I'll say that after bringing home some apparently healthy, although MI prone fish, and putting them in a fresh QT, I've recently been through MI and was glad I put them through QT
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I'm perhaps getting a little neurotic about how far I'm trying to take this quarantine thing, but I guess my problem is that I seem to really love the super sensitive, ich prone fish. Before I started this, I simply couldn't add new fish, every fish that would go in would be fine for the first day, flashing the second, look like it had been dropped in a bowl of sugar the third, and dead by the fourth. I had a few guys who didn't seem bothered, but it got the point where even the most robust were exhibiting distress, then even my "resistant" established fish started to die. I lost half my fish, then quarantine killed the rest. I feel like I'm damned if I do and damned if I don't at this point.
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I wouldn't say you're being neurotic at all
I think you have been through enough issues, with enough negative things happening, that you are losing your mind like some of the rest of us :silly: |
Well, for the first time since August 15th (or maybe it was the 18th?) My tank has fish in it. My display tank is now the happy home to a juvenile Australian Harlequin tusk (it still has it's false eye spots), and a very young doliatus rabbitfish. To be honest, if I wasn't going out of town for 5 days tomorrow, I would have probably done a full tank transfer protocol on them, but since I didn't want them to spend 1 second in a copper free tank that could have encysted tomonts waiting to hatch, it was either leave them in full strength copper for a 4th week, or get them out of copper and in to a sterile tank that had no filtration. The tuskfish was starting to lose his appetite, and it looks like he's developing fin rot, so I didn't think the extra week in copper was a good idea.
These two have now been through a three week cupramine treatment at between 0.5 and 0.6ppm, then a tank transfer to a sterile, guaranteed ich free tank for 3 days. The fin rot worries me a little, so I put them both in a paraguard bath for an hour before transferring them to the main tank. Hopefully with perfect water quality and good nutrition the tusk's fins will recover. Everything I know about the biology of crypt tells me that there's no way these fish should be carrying unseen parasites, and my system has been fallow since... late September I think (mid August if you count the days there was no fish in the display, but in the sump, though ich was clearly present in the sump in that time). I've even been neurotic about new invertebrates going in to the display, not a single drop of water from another system has entered mine, and anything with a dead skeleton or shell has been carefully rinsed with fresh water, then brushed with a toothbrush dipped in full strength bleach before being quarantined for at least a week, in which time the water in the 5 gallon QT tank was 100% replaced at least 3 times. All sps colonies and frags have been broken off the rocks or plugs they came on, and re-glued to new, sterile bases before being QT'd for at least a week. If I have any say in the matter, I'm going to have an ich free tank. |
Picture time!
First, some FTS: Front: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-56.jpg Back: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-55.jpg South Front: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-58.jpg South Back: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-60.jpg North front: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-57.jpg North Back: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-59.jpg And some growth shots: Sept. 10, 2012 http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-95.jpg Dec. 28, 2012 http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-68.jpg June 21, 2012 http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-97.jpg Sept. 10, 2012 http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-96.jpg Dec. 28, 2012 http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-67.jpg |
And the birds nest I have isn't doing so hot, so I'm going to replace it with one of these guys when they come out of quarantine:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-91.jpg And these are the guys I have downstairs going through the tank transfer protocol: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...wn/file-54.jpg I have a swiss basslet in there too, but he's too shy to get a picture of him. I also appear to have conquered ich, the rabbitfish and tuskfish in the display are in perfect health, not a speck on them since they went in! |
Time for an update!
tank has had a mild case of the dinos for the past month or so. It's not severe enough that anyone but me would notice it, though it did 'bloom' a little the first week of february. I had a mild heart attack at that, since I left on February 8th for 17 days for my wedding in California, but sometimes the best action is no action. My roommates took incredible care of my tank while I was gone, and while there are still dines there if you look hard enough, a change in Phos media and a thorough cleaning of the skimmer cup when I got home seems to be knocking them out altogether now. I looked at the dinos under my new microscope; I posted this in the main room, but for posterities sake, here's the pics: 10X: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps996c1ac6.jpg 40X: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3f5bf4ae.jpg While I was away, this guy (the tusk fish): http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psf69ccc76.jpg Attacked this guy (the flame wrasse):http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psbe0c7abc.jpg and killed him. My roommate fed a frozen clam as a treat and the tusk and the wrasse got in a fight over it. The tusk won. I'm going to go to a bait shop this weekend to pick up some barbless hooks and see if I can't fish the tusk out of the tank. He's spent every day since I got home chasing all the other fish. I'm going to need to think hard on what I want to replace them with. I went back and found all my FTS since I put the tank together, and I thought it would be cool to see them in one spot together. I think I've probably posted some before, but it's a cool progression March 30, 2012 - before water: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psfba38bed.jpg APril 15, 2012 - Cycling http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1706b427.jpg June 21, 2012 - first fish (may they RIP) and first corals. Also first signs of algae problems http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psbbcea1fd.jpg August 25th -All fish removed from tank due to ich outbreak. The capture required a total break down of rock and re-scaping. Never-will-I-ever not QT fish again. One of my radions also died (hence the dark spot) http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps84eca6fa.jpg September 10 - With the fish getting hypo in the sump and the plumbing diverted away from the display, no nutrient export of any kind happened in the display tank for 5 full weeks. This was the start of something awful. http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps55b6b406.jpg October 30, 2012 - Right around the time hypo failed (the ich came back) and I moved the fish out of the sump to a separate QT tank, something I should have done in the first place. This is what 5 weeks of no nutrient export, no algae grazing, and continued feeding will do to a tank. Coral growth utterly shut down at this point. http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8d784f81.jpg |
November 6, 2012 - With the skimmer, BP reactor and phosphate absorbing media now plumbed back inline with the display tank, and with a renewed ability to do water changes, I started attacking the algae aggressively. 16 Mexican turbo snails, mass manual removal, and dosing with Algae-fix marine made pretty short work of it. This pic is deceiving though, there was way more of it in there than you would think based on this pic at this time.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps89769e85.jpg December 28, 2012 - coral growth started to seriously take off in the low nutrient environment. I also ended up losing all my fish from before the ich outbreak on November 8th, so the tusk you see there was the first time the tank had had fish in it since August. He won't be in there much longer. http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psc020e568.jpg January 15, 2013 - Sigh, RIP flame wrasse, you were beautiful, but you didn't have big enough teeth. http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps12c01e14.jpg And today, Feb. 28, 2013 - The corals are growing like gangbusters, the dinos are going away, and the tank is almost exactly where I want it. I just need some more fuzzy sticks to fill in the holes, and the corals I do have to fill out a bit more. I had to majorly bump up the amount of calcium and alk I'm dosing when I got home from my wedding, so that's got to be a good sign. I took this pic while the feed mode (shuts down the return pump) was on, hence the low water level. http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps35115217.jpg |
You meant 2013 on the last 2, right? I fixed it for you :)
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ph, and one more thing, I ran a power meter on my radions for 24 hours to see how much energy they're using. My 8 radion are burning through 8.9kwh of electricity per day on their current settings, which at our electricity price equates to something in the neighbourhood of $22-$24 a month to run. that's way, WAY higher than I was expecting. I've currently got the power meter testing the power bar that runs my pump and skimmer, and tomorrow I'll have it test the bar that runs my heaters and vortechs. This tank is a bigger portion of our electric bill than I was expecting.
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you've had some good growth on some of those pieces. things look good!
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Underwater case for my phone arrived today, so I took some underwater pics!
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps235ab8b7.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7fefeace.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psc3b92269.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps67bac43c.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps55aba744.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps792e3e2e.jpg I just wish my phone's camera could deal with the LED's a bit better |
Nice. Love that abro. Did you get the LifeProof?? Those things are awesome!
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I sure did! I have one on my old 4S and I loved it, but never got one for the new phone. Then the day before my wedding in Palm Springs I was walking from our hotel room to the lobby and stopped by the pool deck to say hi to my future in-laws. My dad, who was 100 feet away at the hotel restaurant tried to call me to get my attention. Hand got caught on my pocket pulling out my phone, and the it did a slow motion tumble in to the pool. Spending two hours in a US Apple store the day before my wedding getting it replaced was the exact last thing I needed to be doing that day, so I ordered the LifeProof case for the 5 as soon as we got home.
What's worse, is that I already had a different brand of water proof case for the 5, but it was such a tremendous POS, I had taken the phone out in frustration the night before the pool incident. It was sitting on the couch in the hotel room when my phone went for a swim. When you talk on the phone with a LifeProof case, you can't even tell it's covered up, the one I had for my old 5 made it sound like I was at the bottom of a very deep well. |
Those SPS shots make me want to pick up the stick addiction again :neutral:. Great to see everything is coming together for you on this tank Adam!
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Sticks look great man!
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Nice pics Adam
I'm goin' got it, want it, got it, want it, want it :smile: |
I swaer Canreef doesn't send me e-mail updates when people respond to this thread. Or I'm just really, really bad at e-mail.
Levi, anytime you want back in to the SPS game, you call me. For the first time in my reefing career, I am actually on the cusp of needing to frag things because of space. Also, I spent too much money at one store, and I've come to realize as time has gone on that I've actually bought the exact same species three different times for three different species. I didn't realize I was doing it because things change so much under my lights/brown out so much under store lights. I've got like 4 whole colonies that I'd happily trade away at the moment because they're duplicates. and Greg, if you're ever in Calgary, stop by and I'll frag whatever you want! |
and I know this is the main room, but I'm gonna put it in my thread because I love it and I don't want it getting lost - This is Ferdinand. Coolest. Reef. Fish. EVER.
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psaa654082.jpg He may or may not have a taste for corals. Time will tell, he's very curious. He's already taken a tiny nibble on one of my frogspawns, but since I don't care all that much about LPS, I'd happily let him eat it if he would be cute about doing it. Thankfully he didn't bite anything off and spit it out as soon as he put it in his mouth. However, he's eyed a few SPS pieces like they might be tasty, so time will tell if he's a permanent addition. The interwebs didn't mention anything about them being coralivores, so I'm going to chalk it up to curiosity for now. |
way too many posts from me, I also forgot to mention that I got an order from Canada Corals a few days ago. UPS almost screwed that pooch beyond repair, but between me and the girl from CC calling them, they actually did deliver on the day they said they would.
I picked up a forest fire montipora frag, a rainbow montipora frag, an echinopora mammiformis frag, and some sort of Acropora secale frag. Considering that they were drunken saturday night internet shopping purchases, they turned out really well. I re-scaped half my tank to fit them in, so I'll post pics of it soon. I also picked up a sebae anemone about a week ago. Unfortunately, the thing is bleached to within an inch of it's life. I keep hoping it will make a come back, but it won't last more than 48 hours in one spot before it launches itself in to a power head. I've got foam on all of them and I'm turning them off at night, but trying to nurse this thing back to life is exhausting. So far my true percula clowns are ignoring it, and tonight I had to shoo them away from one of my mag floats as it looked like they were about to spawn on it. I've half a mind to give up on the Sebae and track down a good sized GBTA, but they are such notorious wanderers/splitters. http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...pse808d237.jpg |
Thanks for the nice offer Adam
Ferdinand is cool Best of luck with his diet :lol: |
Not sure if this helps but FWIW I found when I had a sebae anemone that it was really terrible at attaching to anything (even when it was healthy). It's like it prefers to wedge its foot into a deep crevasse and then pressure itself into place. The only place it stayed successfully was a fairly deep crevasse created by the placement of two large rocks near to each other.
Good luck. They are very nice anemones when they are healthy but they seem to only come into the hobby way too bleached. |
That cow fish is awesome! How does he manage in the flow? Does he retreat to calmer waters ? I tried a box fish once (okay maybe twice), and they just couldn't handle the flow at all. They'd get blasted around by the powerheads and when they retreated to calmer spots they were bothered by the bigger fish.
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This guy is doing great, I think it's because there's so many places in my tank where there's interference so as the day progresses there are relatively calm areas. He doesn't even seem to mind the high flow spots now, as he's doing a much better job of positioning himself in them so that he controls his position instead of just getting blasted. It took him a couple of days to figure out that the sand bed and close to the rocks were calmer than right in front of the powerbeads, but he's almost (not quite) at the point where you can't tell there's current in the tank when you look at him like all the other fish.
How big were the boxfish you tried? this guy is bigger than most I've seen in stores/in people's build threads before so that might be helping. I'm really hoping for long term success with him. I never in a million years thought I could have one of these guys, then when I saw two of them at Wai's and my roommate went "Whoa! COOL!" I immediately turned to google to show him why I couldn't have one. Then Google actually suggested I might be able to have one. Now he's my favourite thing in my tank. Honestly even if he eats a little bit of coral I might not get rid of him. I have a lot of coral, and he's cooler than most of my coral. |
Sounds like someone is attached :-). I had a fish like that once (Queen Angelfish).. Tough call between the fish and the corals.
Both boxfishes that i previously had were pretty small. Probably an inch? |
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I also pried a colony of acans off the rock that the anemones tentacles could reach if the current was right. I'm sure the nem would have won if it were healthy, but I'm thinking maybe the irritation was causing it to want to wander. |
I finally figured out how to fix the white balance on some of my iPhone photos. They're still not perfect, but they're waaaaay closer to real life than in the past. Ferdinand is front and centre, clearly expecting me to feed him:
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psada620c9.jpg Got some new goodies. The sebae anemone I picked up didn't work out. I think it was just too bleached. It wouldn't eat, wouldn't attach, wouldn't right itself (it flipped over every day for almost two weeks), and finally turned itself inside out. So I picked up what's regarded as a 'harder' anemone to keep, but so far in my tank is doing brilliantly. It attached right away, moved a couple inches, and settled down: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps57759cd9.jpg And some other new goodies: http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps3f633fe4.jpg Red planet, finally! http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psaaf22553.jpg I think pocillopora, you can also see my new rainbow monti in that pic (thanks Argentiner for the frags!) http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps9f2badad.jpg I got a small order from Canada Corals (didn't see the group buy, oops), that's an echinopora mammiformis and an Acropora secale. Both are pretty brown at the moment, but I'm hoping uner my lights they do something magical. I also got the rainbow monti in the pic above http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psd864d237.jpg Terrible blown out photo of the forest fire monti, also from Canada Corals (excellent service, incredible packaging, thanks guys!) and just some other, sort of colour corrected photos. There's still too much blue in them compared to what you see when you look at the tank, but I'm getting closer to 'as seen in real life' pictures. I'll get them perfect eventually. http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...psc0d23151.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps992539a9.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1e76ecb5.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2c89a7e8.jpg |
http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps914022b2.jpg
(this is the most accurate colour photo I've ever been able to get of this colony) http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2f26484c.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps2ada3e25.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps0298129d.jpg http://i1100.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1938d4a8.jpg |
Nice scores! And wow that tri-colour looks insane!
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Wow, that white-balance shot looks awesome Adam
Now you need some more Red corals :smile: Oh, and Ferdinand is tre` kool |
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That tricolor has been been growing like crazy, I broke the original mini colony off it's base in to 4 small pieces and glued them to a new rock. It's completely encrusted over that rock and has now cemented itself down to the rockwork underneath. It does not mind being in the brightest spot in the tank one bit. |
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I hope you find the happiest places for your different corals
It's funny, talking about LEDs ... Another member has recently told me he may dump his latest ones and go back to T5s. I'm not surprised I don't have the money to play with LEDs, so I have no input ... Here's to your red planet growing like a weed :smile: And keep the pics coming |
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