62G Starfire Reef [40x18x20]

[JDigital]

**TURN AWAY NOW IF YOU DON'T WANT TO READ A WALL OF TEXT**



Ever since I got back into the salty side of things, wrasses seem to be my bad luck charm.

I had a very healthy Leopard Wrasse that I got off reefwars for my 180G which vanished one weekend with no trace or body.

I lost another Leopard Wrasse in my home tank. Similar scenario, just vanished one day, no body to be found.

I picked up a Blue Sided Fairy Wrasse for my 180G tank yesterday from Ocean Creations that I had put on hold Friday until Han was OK to sell. This wrasse is now not doing that great in my QT tank. Won't swim and barely even bothers to keep himself upright. Only thing is he seem to be very attentive when it comes to his eyes, he's always scanning around the tank but I don't have high hopes for him. I can basically reach in and grab him with my bare hand.

And to top it off, I get home last night, my fish are doing well and all accounted as I walk in the door. Few hours later (only minutes before I was about to go down and feed the tank) I can hear my roommate hollering at me that my tank is making some noise.

I head down stairs and the alarm on my Tunze ATO is beeping wildly and my skimmer is overflowing. Wonderful.

After unplugging the skimmer and ATO I tried to diagnose the problem. Yup, you guessed it... A Wrasse.

As far as I can see, one of my smaller wrasses was able to get through an extra wide gap in my overflow teeth, which would have instantly forced him down the main drain line. Likely getting mangled when he got to the gate valve and forced through whatever small opening there might be. This in turn slowed the flow of the tank and my tank level increased until it began to go down the Emergency drain (thank goodness for Herbie Overflows). With more water going into the tank than what was draining from the tank for a few moments activated my ATO as the levels in the sump dropped a bit.

Once the wrasse had been forced out of the piping the system settled back down which then elevated my sump levels about normal (and above my ATO emergency float switched). This caused my already sensitive skimmer to overflow what it had been skimming since my mini-project on the weekend.

And to top it off, I had a dead, mangled wrasse in the skimmer section of my sump.

Ultimately it could have been a lot worse I suppose but I was finally starting to get this tank back on the road to recovery with my levels, PO4, and what has seemed to be a successful fix for my skimmer issues. So certainly frustrating.


WRASSES!

[lastlight]

sorry to hear of your wrasse's demise. i'd definitely put drain guards on your herbie lines to prevent a repeat of that. on the plus side i'm not hearing anymore talk of selling this tank which is great to hear (or not hear i guess).

[JDigital]

Originally Posted by lastlight

sorry to hear of your wrasse's demise. i'd definitely put drain guards on your herbie lines to prevent a repeat of that. on the plus side i'm not hearing anymore talk of selling this tank which is great to hear (or not hear i guess).

I wouldn`t say its not for sale.. I'm just not actively bumping the thread because all I got was requests to part out which I refuse to do. Nothing seems to be going my way with this tank so if someone comes along with the $750 I am asking for it (minus GHL and Vortechs) I`d sell, but if I`m only going to get requests to part out a currently running system it`s not worth the effort.

I will definitely be looking for a bulk head strainer in the coming days.

It`s sort of ironic... ever since I accidentally made this slightly larger gap in my overflow teeth I have been thinking "I really hope a fish doesn't go through there" while the whole time thinking that if one of my fish did decide to go on an adventure it would likely be the wrasse that actually DID. It's like I could see into the future man.

[michika]

That just sucks so much. Sorry to read this.

[kien]

As you said, it could have been worse and we're all glad it wasn't!!

[JDigital]

Funny you should mention that kien.

Came home one day last week, had a peak at the tank after walking in the door and everyone was there and accounted for. Came back down about 1-1.5hrs later to feed the tank.. Put the food in, stood back to watch... most of the food was gone when I thought to myself.. "There seems to be a lack of yellow in the tank...hmmm"

Start looking around in the rocks and sure as sh!t, BOTH my Candy Hogfish and Yellow Coris Wrasse are missing. Immediately I checked the surrounding floor to see if they had been spooked and jumped. Nope, no bodies laying around so next was checking the Overflow. BINGO! Sort of.. The Candy Hogfish had managed to stay away from the suction of the main drain and was chillin in the corner of the overflow box. Netted him and got him back in the tank.

Next was trying to find the Wrasse. I started looking around the refuge, nothing, then in the skimmer section of my sump. Nothing that I could see. My last thought was the return pump section, which I thought would be highly unlikely but somehow that little bugger made it through my baffle system and was in the return section. I tried netting him but he was too bloody quick and the space was too confined with the pump in there. So I had to shut down my main pump, un-couple and remove it. By then I stirred up enough detritus that I couldn't even see the darn fish anymore. In the end I tired him out trying to blindly catch him in the net and he just cowered in the corner. Finally got him back into the main Display. He looked a little beat up but he seems to be doing well now.

I HAVE to take care of this gaping hole in my overflow teeth. (or my fish need to grow fat enough to stay out).

[IanWR]

Could you use a narrow strip of eggcrate and attach it to the back of the teeth with small zip ties? Not an expert, just brainstorming.

- Ian

[JDigital]

Took some crappy iPhone pics tonight (gawd, I miss my old DLSR these days. )

Finally brought home my Acan's from the Office tank (again, a favorite of food of the Butterfly I risked):



Some crazy Mushrooms I picked up last weekend:



My Butterfly that perished picked this coral to almost nothing... the nubs that remained are starting to come back! I can't even remember what this LPS coral was..



I've never been one for trying out Chalice corals. I don't recall ever having much luck with them, but I picked this one up last weekend too.



Misc Zoas:





And finally 1 of 3 SPS frags I am testing out now that I THINK my tank is ready for them. The photos of the other 2 aren't much to look at unfortunately so I didn't upload them:

[lastlight]

sps looks happy to me. fingers crossed i guess. did you say all your appropriate prayers?

[JDigital]

Originally Posted by lastlight

sps looks happy to me. fingers crossed i guess. did you say all your appropriate prayers?

2 out of 3 aren't looking to bad. The digitata isn't showing much polyp extension. That could have been due to my 1.028SG though. Just finished a water change to help bring it back down.

The Acan colony looks much happier/healthier in this tank than it did in my 180G.