Beginner's 20G Fowlr

j3tang · #1 11-18-2010, 12:40 AM

This is what the tank looked like October 30.

It actually looks to me like there's a lot of tiny fuzz/hair on the live rock, is that hair algae?!?! or is it just harmless microalgae? also, it appears as if there were a few dead white worms(?) plastered to a piece of the live rock, should I have removed it before putting it into the tank?

OMG! WHAT THE HECK IS THIS?!?!?! I frequently stick my head into the tank and never noticed this until just now! Stuff like that scares the crap out of me! Is that a bristleworm? It's huge!! Some people remove them, some say it's part of the eco-system and should be left in there to do it's job. I've left it in there (because I'm bug-aphobic and don't want to go anywhere near it).

So far one of the things that I've had issues with is the pH. I've received some help from another board member, but can't quite pin point the source. However, the use of Kent Superbuffer has cleared that problem up.

Anyways, this is a FTS of the setup of death currently.

There were 5 dwarf zebra hermit crabs, 2 nassarius snails, and 1 blue legged hermit crab in the tank (along with that nasty looking bristle worm). I found the remains of 1 dwarf zebra hermit crab the same night I found my second dead clown fish so now I'm down to 4 dwarf zebra hermit crabs. I was given extra shells for the hermit crabs, but all the shells seem a little large for them at this point.

I think it might have just been too soon to add the fish even if the live rock was already cured. I will refrain from adding anything for the next 4-8 weeks unless someone else thinks otherwise. I'm just wondering now what I should do with the CUC that's already in there. Should I remove them, will they starve? I've also refrained from turning the light on since the clowns would not come out when it's bright and I don't intend to turn the lights on for the next bit as the 6700K just seems to promote plant/algae growth anyways.

Myka · #2 11-18-2010, 02:38 AM

It's hard to hard without seeing the head, but that looks like a Eunicid worm. That is a bad worm, and needs to be removed. They can kill fish by grabbing onto them and quickly pulling back which rams the fish into the rock. They can move at some silly rate like 200 ft per second or some such thing!

I would suggest you remove the rock you saw it go back into and dip the rock in freshwater. If the worm is in that rock he will come out quite quickly when dipped in freshwater. If he doesn't, try a different rock. Don't leave the rock out for too long, and don't leave it in the freshwater for more than a couple minutes. This will probably cause a bit of a cycle in your tank.

Anyway, the worm may be the cause of your fishes demise, but the new tank could be the cause as well. Your tank doesn't have any algae growing yet which is probably why the hermit died. No food = starvation. If i were you I would try to take the hermits and snails back to the store, until there is more for the little guys to eat. There is also no need for 5 hermits and 2 snails in a 20 gallon tank even later on. Too many, they will just starve to death.

It could very well be that the clowns were not in good health when you bought them. Some of them can be quite sensitive and some of them never seem to acclimate very well.

I would also suggest you try to get another small piece of live rock...something with some color (purple/pink is good, green is not so good) in hopes of seeding the tank a bit better. Your rock is awfully white and looks as though there is not a terribly large amount of life on it.

Once you get that worm out, and let your tank sit for another couple weeks monitoring the ammonia and nitrate (no need to test for nitrite in sw aquaria) you can try fish again. I would also suggest you not worry about pH so much, and quit dosing the buffer.

For more information on pH use the link in my signature. The write-up is aimed towards reef tanks, but the part on pH is relevant to FOWLRs too.

Good job keeping a log going! That will be helpful in the future.

j3tang · #3 11-18-2010, 05:38 PM

I will definitely give all that a try. I think tonight's mission is to try to get the worm out first. I'll have a go at the suggested reading too, depending on how successful I am with the worm tonight

By "freshwater" you just mean something that's not the saltwater mix right? so like tap water or something ...

So it may be a possibility that when the clowns were hiding/sleeping in the rocks, the worm got to them?

Actually the dead zebra hermit crab .. it were pieces of its legs that I recognized on the sand (out of it's shell). The pieces are gone now so something must have eaten it.

Thanks again for all the suggestions!

beefORchicken · #4 11-18-2010, 06:27 PM

i see you're running an ac filter. i do the same on my tank and by the looks of it you took off the grate part of the intake. i've done the same on mine and my starfish crawled in one night had got cut up a bit. i suggest doing a little diy. what i've done is actually cut the grate end of the pipe off, cut the bigger size ring off the tube (the part that fits over the intake in your tank now) and use the big ring to friction fit the grate to the intake. then you have a grate but the darn tube isn't so long. if you need a picture i can try to show you that way.
just a tip!

j3tang · #5 11-18-2010, 07:49 PM

do you mean the slotted cone shaped thing at the bottom - the intake strainer? It's actualy attached. I didn't take that part off, it's still in stock form.

On the contrary, instead of being annoyed with it being too long, I actually find it a bit too short. I've done a couple water changes (about 20% each time) and the water level dips below the intake tube so I gotta turn off the filter and prime it again once I'm done. Not a big deal and I can certainly extend the intake lower too if need be, but I'm not concerned at this point

Although I am still kinda curious about what you did with yours, I would love to see some pics

edit:

ok, I thought luck was on my side when I walked through the door when I got home to see the nasty worm sticking out of one of my pieces of rock. I immediately threw down everything and went for the worm.

By the time I got to it, the worm had already slithered back into the hole, but at least I knew which rock it was in. So I pulled the rock out of the tank and put it in a bucket and just flushed it with warm tap water. The rock was there for a few minutes but the worm didn't want to come out. After a bit of waiting, I had to put the rock back into the tank .. with the worm still in there .. somewhere.

Right now I've just got red light shinning on the tank hoping it will come out on its own.
Mine actually looks kinda like the one in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xXmb9MpikyA

j3tang · #6 11-20-2010, 02:21 PM

I'm getting the feeling that maybe there is the chance that the tank hasn't cycled at all. I've seen stories where people can't get ammonia up above .25 ppm so there isn't enough of it to get the tank cycle started. I've attempted to add ammonia myself.

j3tang · #7 11-24-2010, 01:25 AM

ammonia has been added over 2 days and there are readings for ammonia and it looks like it's slowly getting converted to nitrite. I wasn't attempting to make a huge peak so I didn't bump the ammonia up too much. Since it does look like the ammonia is getting converted, I'll let the tank do its thing and hope for the best when I add fish (again).