Johnny Reefer's FOWLR

[Johnny Reefer]

Originally Posted by Ruth

Looking good so far - nice coralline growth on you rocks. What fish are you planning to stock?

Well, I have the three Triggers in there already...

I'd also like to get two large Angels...there is a nice Personifer (Chaetodontoplus personifer) at my LFS that I would like to get if it is still available in January...undecided on a second Angel species.

Thinkin' of a Tang for Algae control...maybe a Purple Tang.

And a Ladder Glider Goby (Valenciennea sexguttata) to keep the substrate sifted.

I would also dearly love to get a Butterfly of some kind. We'll see about that one!

Cheers,

[Johnny Reefer]

Day Ten-Tuesday December 6:

Temp: 81.0F
SG 1.025
pH 8.0
NO2 0.1
NO3 5
NH3 0.1

Cheers,

[Johnny Reefer]

Day 13-Friday December 9:

Female Blue Chin and Clown Triggers have Marine Ich.
Introduced a Cleaner Wrasse (Labroides dimidiatus) to aid in eradication of Cryptocaryon from female Blue Chin and Clown Triggers.
Cleaner begins cleaning Triggers within 1 hour of introduction.

Also begin lowering SG for hyposalinity treatment. SG measures 1.024. Intend to lower .002/day to 1.015. Intend to maintain 1.015 for one week.

Day 14-Saturday December 10:

AM SG reading: 1.0225.
Remove another 10 gallons and replace with FW.

Other readings this day:
Temp: 81.1F
pH: 8.0
NO2: 0.1
NO3: 5
NH3: 0.1
Alk: 5.04 ( will get this up tomorrow).

Male Blue Chin came out for PM feeding and decided to stick around for after dinner mints. Looks healthy.

Brown diatom algae beginning to set in.

[ree-fready]

3 weeks, no update on ick problem.

[Skimmerking]

Mark the tank looks great

[Johnny Reefer]

Thanx Mike.

Originally Posted by ree-fready

3 weeks, no update on ick problem.

Sorry. Yes, it has been awhile.
I have two excuses. HaHa.
I've been workin' 12 hour shifts, daily, since Dec 14th. Doesn't leave much time for CanReef.
Also, I tried makin' a post onto this thread on Dec. 11th. This was right after the CanReef new software was installed. The post didn't take. As if the thread was locked, or something. I queried about it but the answer didn't make sense. Something about "Display Options" at the "bottom of the page". Couldn't find "Display Options" at the bottom of the page so I'm not sure what I was missing. Didn't have time to bounce posts back and forth about it so I pretty much just walked away from it, figurin' "Well, there goes that thread".
Anyhoo, thanx much for bringin' it back to life!

Update? Sure! Good news and bad.
Good: The ick appears gone, although I can't be 100% certain because the Cleaner Wrasse continues to peck at the female Blue Chin and the Clown Triggers. Looks to me like the Cleaner and the hypo-salinity has done the trick, though. All three of those fish are doin' very well. I just recently started to slowly bring the salinity back up. Today it was 1.017. Aiming for 1.022.
Bad:The male Blue Chin died. i just removed him tonight, actually. I don't know what it was but I don't think it was ick. I never saw any spots on him, when I did see him, which was pretty rare. In hindsight I should never have bought that fish in the first place. I had an unsettling feeling about him at the store, actually. He and the female were in the same tank, but the male seemed to be hiding all the time, while the female was always out and about. But I bought it anyway 'cause I wanted a male and a female together. When I had it in my tank I saw the male all of two times, when it came out to feed on some mysis. The rest of the time, the whole rest of the time, all four weeks, it just hid in amongst the LR.
Live and learn. I'll never buy another fish unless it is showing obvious signs of healthy, robust activity.

Otherwise, the brown algae is still present and has not started to recede yet. There is a scant amount of green algae. Very scant. I have been running the lights for six hours daily (3:30-9:30) for the last three weeks. I'll begin to increase the lighting when I am off work on Jan 11th.

More updates to follow and thanx again for opening this thread up again.
It lives!, but not the male Blue Chin, unfortunately.

Cheers,

PS I just had to get rid of three smilies from this post. Somethin' else to figure out. I wonder if that is in Display Options? Haha. (Limited out on smilies).

Cheers,

[Johnny Reefer]

Two things:
1). Changed the name of this thread. (Original title: “Setting Up a 135 FOWLR.” Originally in Newbie Creation). It sorta didn’t evolve the way I intended. That being an experience in setting up an FOWLR. I guess it’s a Tank Spec now.

2). Update:
Things are good. SG is 1.019, and I have the lighting going for 8 ½ hours/day. Continue to slowly increase both.
The brown diatom algae has begun to recede, but there is still some present.
Still no green algae to speak of at all.
My LFS was gracious enough to replace the male Blue Chin Trigger with a 2 ½” Picasso (aka Humuhumu) Trigger, even though the death of the Blue Chin was not their fault. (I think the Blue Chin died from stress due to shipping). The Humuhumu was introduced today. (Freshwater dipped for 1 ½ minutes, in lieu of QT’ing). The new Trigger took to it’s new surroundings almost immediately, and is actually the “Boss” of the tank. It’s certainly telling the female Blue Chin who’s boss, by givin’ her a good chase once in a while. Oh behave! Hopefully, after a day or two, the Humuhumu will be satisfied that the Blue Chin understands the hierarchy and things will settle down. I certainly don’t want it to progress into anything further.
The Humuhumu doesn’t bother the Clown Trigger at all and the Cleaner Wrasse is doing very well. The Cleaner Wrasse eats voraciously at every feeding. Whether it be Mysis; Krill; Brine Shrimp; Formulas One & Two; Silverside bits…it goes after it.

Well that’s all for now…

Cheers,

[OCDP]

Tank is looking great.. looking forward to more updates

[bulletsworld]

Mark,

Your my inspiration to make my reef, 110gal into a FOWLR to. Besides I think all the cool fish are not reef safe anyway.

Your tanks lookin good!


Thanks a bunch,

Lee

[OCDP]

Originally Posted by bulletsworld

Besides I think all the cool fish are not reef safe anyway.

Couldn't agree more. I have thought about ditching the reef when I can setup a bigger tank and just go FOWLR myself. We'll see what happens when that day comes