Hello everyone, I've taken this log that I started from another forum and decided to post it here as well.
I've been lurking and reading for some time and finally started my tank up. I had a 20 gallon tank with stand sitting round the house that was used probably 12 years ago by my parents for freshwater fish.
I'll use this thread as a log as well as a place for me to ask questions as the tank progresses. I'll keep the log here in the OP, and then maybe make comments and ask questions in subsequent postings. My intention at this point is to keep a FOWLR setup with just 2 clowns.
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Mid-October, 2010
Saw that J&L Aquatics had a sale on Koralia powerheads, bought 2 Koralia 425: 1 for the tank, and 1 for water prep. bucket. Bought a 100W Ebo Jager heater off Kijiji for the tank, still in need of another for the bucket. Tank slowly filled with salt water made from RO at home and tempered to about 26 degC.
October 25, 2010
Added (dumped!) 20 lbs of CaribSea Ocean Direct (original grade) live sand, and boy was that a mistake. The smart thing would have been to put the sand in the tank first and then put a cup or dish in the tank and then pour water into it to let it overflow into the tank of sand. Oh well, live and learn. The tank is super cloudy and I can't see a thing (not that there are things in the tank to see yet
).
October 27, 2010
Found a decent deal on Kijiji for live rock some time ago and arranged to meet with seller to purchase all of it (25 lbs). He wanted $4/lb which was fine by me. He threw in for free 2 heaters (1x50W Eheim Jager & 1x100W Marineland Visi-Therm) and a AquaClear 402 powerhead (that has no accessories what-so-ever: nothing to connect to the input/output ports, no tank rim hanger), and an electrical timer. Left the live rock in a bucket with heater and salt water and powerhead until the tank cleared.
October 29, 2010
Put all my live rock into the tank and have it all arranged. The seller said there were 2 blue hermit crabs in the live rock when he sold it to me, after looking at the rock for two days and putting them into the tank today, I've only seen 1, which is fine by me
October 30, 2010
Where I had previously found my parent's tank, there were also 2 AquaClear HOB filters! Only one of them has a powerhead though. I cleaned it out and started using that with just a sponge for mechanical filtration. For anyone interested, the HOB filter is called an AquaClear Junior
The funny thing is, while I've been reading online about the more recent AquaClear filters, I come across people with DIY mods cutting up the basket it comes with to create baffles to compartmentalize filtration media. My "Junior" just comes this way with 3 separate compartments!
November 3, 2010
Bought Kent SuperBuffer and Alkalinity tester. Tested the hardness and got 9 dKH which doesn't seem all that bad. I added a small amount into the tank and some into the new salt water mix.
November 5, 2010
Picked up 5 dwarf zebra hermit crabs and 2 nassarius snails. I got home and tested the tank water and the pH is up to about 8.3. I then drip acclimated them with my tank water and removed some more water from the tank to do a water change. The snails are pretty interesting to watch!
November 12, 2010
Picked up the two ocellaris clownfish that I've been meaning to keep yesterday and acclimatized them with the drip method for 4 hours.
While they were in the bucket being acclimatized, they would not swim anywhere around the bucket, they just flapped their fins and stayed on the side opposite of where the water was dripping from. I thought, maybe the dripping is causing the water to ripple and scaring them so I submersed the tip to avoid the rippling effect. However, they still wouldn't move around at all and as the bucket got filled the water level rose but they still only stayed at the bottom (still moving around though).
At the end of it all after the 4 hours, I put the two into my tank and one of them landed in a cave area and the other one landed closer to the end of the tank where the powerhead was. The one by the cave just swam/floated around in that one area for the whole evening and the other one by the powerhead started to move around in that half of the tank.
I went and watched a movie upstairs, came back down and the two clowns found each other and were swimming/exploring that same end where the power head was. But the one that was hiding earlier looked like, for a lack of better terminology, was ramming its head into a small cave area. Silly fish.
November 13, 2010
I woke super early up like it was Christmas morning all excited to come downstairs to unwrap presents but I only saw one fish and it was the same fish that was cowering inside the first cave area it was in when it first came into the tank. I thought, oh great silly fish is at it again ... wait, was it doing this all night?!?! Then I start looking for the other fish that seemed like it was coping better and I couldn't find it and I started panicking. I eventually found it in the back corner and there were 2 zebra hermit crabs and 1 blue legged hermit crab and 1 nassarius snail eating it
I'm not too sure about the snail, but it was stuck to the side of the fish, so I assume it joined in as well.
I immediately checked the water parameters and nothing was out of the norm.
November 15, 2010
My other clown fish still seems timid and I can accept that. It's still hiding behind rocks when the lights are on and will only swim out when it's totally dark. I sprinkle some pellets on the water surface and hope he eats them as I can't confirm that he eats since it's dark when he comes out. I hope it doesn't stay this shy
End of the day, I get home from work and I find my remaining clown's ..... remains. It didn't make it either. One of my dwarf zebra hermit crabs had dragged it under a rock and was picking at it. By now, I feel god awful and I have absolutely no idea what's wrong.
I realize patience is the number 1 thing in this hobby, but is this a sign of impatience? If it is, I certainly have no problems continuing to wait. Or is there something wrong with my tank? Or is there something in my tank killing my fish?
This is the development up 'till now, I'll migrate some of the other information over in subsequent posts.