I've gotten super behind on updating the blog. ALOT of progress has been made since my last entry. In order to get caught up I'm just going to post a bunch of pictures and skip the commentary. So here we go . . .

5 Gallon Mantis Shrimp Tank progress:

Frogspawn




Full Tank Shot





55 Gallon progress:

Echinopora (I'm not for sure if it's Echinopora or Echinophyllia, but it's one of those)




Blue/Green Zoanthids




Green/Grey Zoanthids




Clown Goby






Blastomussa (not sure if this is Wellsi or Merletti, I think it's Wellsi)




Montipora Capricornus




Pink Zoanthids




Tube Anemone




Full Tank Shots










Ok, I think that covers most of the new additions we've gotten since the last update. Things are going pretty well, other than the fact that our Nitrates in both tanks have been averaging 15 ppm even though we've got refugiums now on both tanks, plenty of sand and live rock, we've cut down on our feeding and added more mangroves and cheato. We're still trying to figure out what the problem is. We will probably be getting a new fish tomorrow so more pictures and updates to come shortly.

After getting the mantis tank upgraded a little bit, Gary wanted to get a small cleanup crew for the tank as well as a damselfish to add some life to the tank. So far the mantis shrimp only comes out of hiding every few days, but just to where we can barely see it. It's not very interesting at all, and in between appearances we don't even know if the shrimp is still alive. So with a damsel in there we will have something more interesting to take care of and watch. Apparently they are also too fast for most mantis shrimp to kill, so the fish should be safe in there (I really hope). Gary is hoping maybe the cleanup crew will entice the shrimp to start killing, I'm hoping they will continue to escape death and keep the tank clean.

So we went to The Coral Palace and got 3 dwarf blue legged hermits, 1 small Atrea snail and 1 Nassarius snail for the clean up crew. And we got a cute little Domino Damsel.

Here is a picture of the Damsel:




Well the owner had just gotten a whole bunch of new stuff in and it was super tempting not to buy the whole store. He had in stock almost every fish we've been wanting. He also had some skunk cleaner shrimp which Gary has been wanting to get. So we got one of these as well.

Here is a picture of the skunk cleaner shrimp, he's very cool looking:




The owner also had in three different clown gobies yellow, black, and green. Gary and I had just decided recently that we would like to get one of these, so it was a cool coincidence that the store had them all of a sudden. We were so tempted to buy one right then, but we don't have the quarantine tank set up yet. We really don't want to take a chance not quarantining the next fish we get, so we decided to wait. We plan to get the QT set up and go back for the green clown goby this weekend. Hopefully he still has it.

I've been taking a lot of pictures lately and I want to post some better pictures of stuff that I've posted earlier, or didn't have pictures of at all.

I couldn't get a picture of the sea cucumber we bought earlier, so here it is now:




Here is a better picture of the Candy Cane coral than the one I posted perviously:




And here is a picture of the candy canes with their feeder tentacles out:




Finally here is a better picture of the Midas Blenny, which we have since named Haku:




Haku has been doing great! We've had him for a few weeks now and he's swimming around comfortably, perching on his favorite rock, and he's eating great (he's kind of a pig).

We still don't know if our feeding regimine is right or not but so far we've been feeding him once a day most days of the week and then on some twice a day. We typically feed around 6:30 pm either frozen mysis, frozen brine, or Sweetwater zooplankton and then some days we also feed in the morning either Prime Reef or Formula Two flakes. We soak the night time food in Seachem Garlic Guard. And then every other day or so we feed the tank Cyclopeeze which Haku also eats plenty of. Twice a week we add to the tank Seachem Reef Plus, which is Amino Acids and Vitamins, so we're not sure if we also need to get some Zoe or some kind of vitamin supplement to put in his food as well. But so far he's turning out to be a beautiful and happy fish!

Current Mood: content

Well now that we have the Mantis Shrimp in the 5 gallon minibow tank Gary wants to make the tank look nice. So over the past couple of weeks we've been working on some upgrades to fix it up.

The first night we put the mantis in there it was just barebottom with some rubble rock, pretty ugly. A couple days later we went to The Coral Palace and got a bag of CaribSea Aragalive sand.

Well in order to put the sand in we had to take the mantis out first. This was another excercise I was not excited about. Gary borrowed this floating basket thing from the owner of The Coral Palace, which is what he uses to float macro, and keep the mantis shrimp in that he currently has in the store. So he used a net to grab the mantis and put it in this floating thing and then floated it in the 55 gallon.

We weren't sure how long the mantis should stay in the floating thing though. We couldn't decide if we should put him back in the 5 gallon as soon as the sand settled, or if we should wait and see if there is a cycle and let it finish first. I knew I didn't want that mantis floating in the 55 gallon any longer than it absolutely had to. I kept getting visions of it getting out of the basket and getting loose in the 55 gallon. So we finally decided to put it back in the minibow as soon as the sand settled and just do water changes as needed if there was a cycle.

Here the basket is, with the mantis in it, floating in the 55 gallon:




Here the tank is after the sand settled:




After the next few days we ordered and received a microjet powerhead to replace the airstone we were using for flow and we got in a Coralife mini compact 50/50 bulb to replace the bulb that came with the minibow. Gary also fragged our silver branch xenia and moved a green striped mushroom to put in there.

Here is what the tank looks like now with the upgrades:




It's not great, but it definitely is better than before.

Current Mood: okay

Yesterday, while Gary and I were performing some maintenance on the tank, Gary noticed something moving around in the overflow area. After a closer look with a flashlight we realized we had a Mantis Shrimp in the tank!! Now, to me, this is horrible news and I immediately start to stress out, while to Gary, this is the coolest thing ever. Gary has been wanting to setup a tank for a Mantis Shrimp for a while now so this was his excuse to finally get one started.

Thankfully the mantis was in the overflow, so it wasn't in the main part of the tank, where we never would have been able to get him out. But the overflow is still not an easy area to get things out of. First of all Gary had to go quickly get set up the 5 gallon minibow that we had used previously as a quarantine tank but which was sitting empty. He took water out of the 55 gallon and put it in the 5 gallon. Then he took some rubble rock out of the refugium and put that in the 5 gallon as well. He let it run for a little while, letting everything settle, and then it was time for the big move.

At this point I was really starting to stress out because I'm imagining all these catastrophic things happening. In order to reach into the overflow we were going to have to take at least one of the pipes, if not both, out. So I was worried, what if we can't get the pipes back in, or what if the bulkhead pops out and all of the water from the overflow pours out onto the floor, what if something breaks, etc.

So far Gary was successfull getting the return pipe out of the overflow and had taken the couple of pieces of rubble rock that were down there out, but then he couldn't find the mantis anymore. During the process of taking out the rocks the mantis had gone down into the flexible tubing leading to the return pump. Thankfully the tubing is clear and we could see it in there. So now we had to disconnect the ball valve and the tubing from the return pump which wasn't easy. At this point I'm still picturing floods and other catastrophies happening at any moment. We then had to open the ball valve over a bucket until the mantis shot out of the tube and quickly close the valve again so that the entire overflow didn't empty into the bucket.

Now that the mantis was finally out of the tank (big sigh of relief from me) we had to put everything back together again. It was still a little scary, but everything went back together just fine. No catastrophes.

So now Gary has his mantis tank and it didn't cost us a thing. That part I'm happy about, but I am not excited at all about having this thing. We don't know yet if it is a smasher or slasher type but I'm not looking forward to finding out. I have no interest in seeing this thing kill and eat live food any time soon. But the good news is, if we hadn't have found it, and if it hadn't have been in the overflow, it would still be lurking in the 55 gallon somewhere, growing and getting bigger. We wouldn't even know it was in there until inverts and maybe even fish started to mysteriously disappear. I can't imagine what a nightmare it would be then to try to find it and get it out of the tank. So things certainly could have been worse, and Gary's happy, so that's good.

Here are a couple really crappy pictures of it. I haven't been able to get a good shot of it yet before it zips back under the rocks where I can't see it.

Current Mood: stressed

A few days ago I started talking to someone on www.reefmonkey.com who lives in Orlando. It turns out she works at a Fish Store there called Sea in the City. Since she is one of the most helpful and knowledgable people on the forum, we wanted to make a trip out to visit the store some time soon.

Well after trying to find some Cerith and Trochus snails locally for about a month now and still coming up empty handed we decided to call Sea in the City and see if they had any. They had both kinds in stock so decided to make the trip out there yesterday.

It took us about an hour to get to the shop but it was so worth it! The place was super small, so small there was only enough room for a few people at a time. But they had the largest and best selection of coral we have seen so far. They had tons of really good quality frags. Many of them were pretty small but at this time that's all we can afford, so for us it was perfect. They had a good selection of invertabrates as well. Their tanks were all super clean and their prices were amazing as well, not to mention everyone there was super friendly and helpful. I can't say enough good things about them.

So, like I said, we went to this place to buy snails, but we couldn't help but get more than that. We got 5 of each of the Ceriths and Trochuses. They had three different types of conchs available. We were interested in the conchs but thought they were all too big for our size tank, however, they had a Persian Conch which they said would not get that big. So we bought one.

Here is a picture of the conch, it's only about half an inch long:




And as I said, their selection of corals was amazing, as well as affordable. So we had to buy some. After deliberating over what to get for quite a long time we decided on some Ricordia, some Candy Cane and a rock with three purple Mushrooms on it. They had such a huge selection of Zoanthids that we couldn't decide. We will have to go back again just to buy some zoas next time.

Here is a picture of the Ricordia. The owner showed us that it has three mouths, which means it may split soon:




Gary has been wanting to get some Candy Cane badly lately, so we couldn't pass up on this nice frag with three polyps on it:




And finally, this rock with the three purple Mushrooms on it was such a great deal we had to get it as well:




We will definitely be going back to Sea in the City soon. They have their own forum which we have joined and the have raffles every few months for huge prizes. Thanks goes to Carole (waterfaller1) for letting us know about this great place!

Update on the Midas Blenny. He's doing great so far. He started off a little skiddish, mostly just hiding in a little tunnel in some rock, carefully watching us. By the second day he was eating and coming out every few minutes for short little swims before going back to his hiding place. Today he is swimming almost constantly, or perching on his rock out in the open. He ate a good bit today of pods and cyclopeeze. He seems to be doing really well, we're really excited! Now it's time to think of a name for him . . .

Current Mood: pleased

Well we hadn't quite yet decided when we were going to get another fish and give the QT another try. But there was a local reefer selling his entire tank and stock that caught our attention. He had a Midas Blenny for $20! These fish usually go for about twice that in the store. The Midas Blenny is the one fish I have been wanting the most.

So we deliberated as to whether we should buy it or not. We also talked about whether we would put it in the QT or the main tank. We finally decided this was too good a deal to pass up and that we would put the fish in the main tank. We felt like if this fish has been in this guy's tank for over a year it probably is in good health. But just in case we will not introduce any other fish into the main tank until after 6 weeks or more and we will watch it carefully for any signs of disease. If we do see any bad signs we will move the fish to the QT and leave the main tank empty for a good 6 more weeks.

So we got in touch with the guy and set up the transaction. Today we went out to his house and picked up the fish. He is a beautiful and healthy looking fish. We were so excited but still nervous. We will be watching him very closely and watching the Ammonia levels better this time.

Here is a picture of him perching on a rock. He seems to really like to hang out on and underneath this rock:




Before we went to go get the fish though, we stopped by The Coral Palace to get some RO/DI water. While we were there we noticed he had some sea cucumbers in stock. We've been wanting to get something more to clean up our sand as we have a lot of detritus and some more diatoms messing up the sand bed. So we decided to get one of the cucumbers. We believe it's a Tiger Tail, but it's still pretty small. I'll have to try to get a picture of it and post it later, so far it likes to stay tucked behind or in between the rocks.

Current Mood: nervous

Today Gary got a call from The Coral Palace saying that the mangroves we had ordered were in, so he went over there to pick them up. Well while he was there he just couldn't resist, and he bought a Yellow Gorgonian. We've both been wanting one of these for a little while now. I've been a little nervous about getting one, however, as they can be difficult to keep. They need to be placed in an area with low light but high flow because if algae forms on them it will kill them. But we feel like we have done enough research to take care of one of these, so we got one.

Here is a picture of the Gorgonian:




We found a spot for it we think will be perfect. We'll just have to keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't have any algae forming on it.

I also wanted to include a better picture of the Silver Branch Xenia. We moved it to a spot with higher light and a little less flow and it seems to be really happy there.

Here it is:

Current Mood: happy

We've been really needing to add to our cleanup crew lately, as the green algae on the rocks is getting worse. Unfortunately The Coral Palace has not been able to fill our order yet, so we went to Trident Pets to get just a few things to help get us by in the meantime. We got some more Astrea snails and some little blue legged hermit crabs as well as some Nassarius snails to help clean up the refugium. We also finally got three Peppermint shrimp! Gary has been wanting some shrimp badly and we have some Aiptasia we would like them to eat. The are really cool!

Here is a picture of one of them hanging under some rock:




The other day I came home and found that one of them had molted. It was a little gross but until our order with our tongs comes in we can't really reach the molt to get it out. Here is a picture of it (towards the bottom of the picture):




Yesterday, my friend and coworker, Steve, joined me in attending this month's meeting for the Brevard Area Reef Society. Steve has a 20 gallon tank with two fish and some Xenia and an Open Brain coral. We were really hoping to meet some people and make some connections with local reefers for the purpose of trading corals and equipment and advice. The meeting was hosted by one of the members at her house and she had a pretty nice tank even though it was only 3 months old. There were only a few other people there, not as many as we were expecting but it was good to talk to some other people and hear what they've got in their tanks, where they get what and what experiences they've had.

One of the bonuses of going to the meeting yesterday is that one of the guys there brought some Silver Branch Xenia frags with him to sell/trade. The Silver Branch is one of the types of Xenia I really like. Both Steve and I each bought a frag from the guy for $5 a piece! I couldn't believe how cheap that was and it was a good sized frag.

After I got the Xenia home and Gary and I acclimated it we were faced with the challenge of how place it in the tank. Unfortunately this frag did not come attached to a rock or anything, it was just free floating. We have no experience yet with how to attach coral to something so that it's not floating around in the tank.

First we tried just sticking it into a hole in a piece of rock. That worked for about a minute before the Xenia floated out of the hole and started to blow all around the tank! We ended up having to rearrange the entire tank trying to get this frag out from behind the rocks. At this point both Gary and I have both arms in the tank, our shirts are wet, the carpet is wet, etc. Gary finally gets the great idea to take a rubber band and gently use it to hold the frag against a piece of rubble rock. The rubber band did the trick and we found a place where we think the flow and lighting will be good for the Xenia, and that's where we placed it.

Here's a picture of it in it's new spot:




We're still not sure if it's getting too much flow where it's at, or perhaps we still need to adjust the flow throughout the tank. We'll just have to keep experiementing and watching it. Hopefully the Xenia will attach to the rock soon so we can take the rubber band off of it.

Finally, I wanted to throw in a full tank shot as it's almost been a month since we put the live rock in, to show the progress so far:

Everything in the tank is still doing very well. The diatom outbreak has completely subsided and taking its place is some green algae. We need to get some more snails to take care of it. The clean up crew is doing a good job, there just isn't enough of them. We're also noticing that coraline algae is growing everywhere! Everyday we see more purple on the rocks, even the base rock has some nice spots on all of it.

Water parameters are still good though:

Ammonia: 0
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0
pH: 8.2

So we went to The Coral Palace today to see if the owner has had a chance to get the snails, shrimp and mangroves we ordered. Unfortunately he was not able to go to Tampa this week so we did not get any of the stuff we had ordered today. But since we were already in the store, we decided to buy a couple little coral frags.

There was a nice little green striped mushroom on a little chunk of rock we decided to get. The owner threw in another little frag with a bunch of star polyps on it. Both of the frags are pretty small but corals aren't cheap so it's a start. We're probably going to try to get most of our corals from other reefers who are selling their own frags, these tend to be cheaper, and by buying aquacultured corals it helps to preserve the natural coral reefs in the ocean.

So we got our little frags home and gave them a long acclimation time, just to be safe. It took some more time for them to open up completely after being placed in the tank.

Here is a picture of the mushroom coral:




And here is a picture of the star polyps:




As far as the fish and QT issue goes, we've decided we will give it another try this weekend. But after much thinking and getting some advice off of the www.reefmonkey.com forums, we decided to buy a bigger tank for the quarantine. We went to Wal-Mart and got a 10 gallon for $10. We're pretty much reusing most of the stuff we had for the 5 gallon, only a couple new things will need to be purchased, so it was a relatively cheap upgrade.

Here is a picture of the new QT all set up:




We've also made some decisions on things we will do differently this time. We're not planning on running in hyposalinity this time unless we see signs of disease on the fish. We want to keep things simpler this time, without adding more confusing steps that we could mess up. We've also moved the tank into our office so that we wont be walking by the tank so often and causing the fish any stress.

We're planning on getting another fish and starting the QT process again on Sunday. So I'll post again when that happens.

Today when I got home from work I couldn't see the new Firefish, I assumed he was hiding as he was still a little skiddish (sp?). So we put some frozen Brine shrimp in the tank to feed him and he still didn't come out to eat. At this point I was starting to get worried and moved in to take a closer look. He was lying on his side not moving. Gary got out the net and picked him up . . . he was dead.

So I checked the levels in the QT to see if the Ammonia was too high and it was 0.50 ppm. I honestly don't know what level of Ammonia is high enough to be lethal but I'm thinking that is what killed him. Let me back up and explain the actions we had taken up until this point, I'm sure to someone more experienced it will be obvious what mistakes we made.

The first night we brought the fish home we fed him some shrimp pellets after he had been in the tank for a couple hours. We did not see him eat and did not remove the food from the tank. This was probably our first mistake.

The second day I checked the levels and the Ammonia was up to 0.25 ppm. I guess we were afraid to do a water change so soon as it might stress the fish, I think this was a mistake, we should have done one that day. I fed the fish once in the morning, more shrimp pellets, which he ate some of, and once in the evening, some flake food which he didn't eat at all. Once again I didn't remove any of the leftover food from the tank. I was planning to do a water change the next day and would siphon out all the uneaten food then. The fish was starting to come out of hiding more often throughout the day and seemed to be getting more comfortable. Things were looking good so far.

The third day I decided to begin dropping the salinity for the hyposalinity treatment we had decided to do in order to kill any diseases the fish might have. We had read up about how to drop the salinity safely over a few days by removing 1/5 of the water volumn every 12 hours and replacing it with freshwater. I had decided to take this process even slower and do a water change every 24 hours instead.

So after feeding the fish shrimp pellets, a little less this time since it seemed I was overfeeding it before, we did the first water change. While doing the water change we decided to remove the fake rock that was in the middle of the tank. After each time we fed the fish, food would quickly be swept under the rock by the flow of the water, making it impossible to siphon out the food without rearranging the tank. We thought it would be cleaner and easier to maintain if there was only the PVC pieces in there. We siphoned up all the food that was leftover and it was quite a lot that had been sitting in there from the past two days. We obviously had been overfeeding and decided from here out, to feed less and quickly remove any leftover food from the tank after the fish has stopped eating.

It seemed like this water change and removing the fake rock process had really stressed the fish. We tried to do it as quickly and smoothly as possible but after that point we barely saw the fish come out of hiding in the PVC pieces again. Later that evening I fed the fish a shrimp pellet and he did not come out and eat it.

The fourth day we did not feed him in the morning and figured we would feed him and then do another water change as soon as we got home from work around 3 pm. Of course that is when we found him dead.

So the things I think we did wrong were:
1. We should not have had that big fake rock in there to begin with. It did give the fish a nice place to hide but it also kept us from cleaning up any uneaten food.
2. We were overfeeding the fish. We should have only put in a small amount of food and only if the fish ate that amount should we put anymore food in the tank.
3. We weren't cleaning out the uneaten food immediately, so it laid in the tank causing the Ammonia to rise.
4. We weren't testing and doing water changes often enough. Obviously since the tank is so small the Ammonia can rise much faster and we should have been much more strict about paying attention to that.

I feel so dejected right now. It was our fault the fish died, we caused a living thing to die because we didn't take good enough care of it. We did all this reading and research and it wasn't enough, we failed. I'm afraid to go get another one now because what if we mess up again and another one dies? Did we learn our lesson from this one, or am I wrong about what caused the fish to die and whatever it was we're going to do again?

We now have a dilemma facing us. We know that quarantining a fish is the right thing to do. We don't want to put a fish in the main tank that has a disease and then spread the disease and kill other living creatures that we've worked so hard to protect. But the process of quarantining the fish is so risky at the same time. Our QT is so small it takes much more work than the 55 gallon to keep the levels consistant and we're totally inexperienced on all of that, water changes, testing the levels, feeding, cleaning, etc. A 5 gallon tank should probably only be kept by experts and here we are, total newbies, putting our stressed out first fish in a 5 gallon. So what do we do, skip the quarantine process and risk destroying the entire tank, or do we stick with the quarantine and risk killing more fish because we are still inexperienced?

I will have to seek some expert advice on this one. Of course we're not giving up, but I do feel pretty sad and frustrated right now. We're going to wait a few days and try to figure out what we are going to do next. Whatever the next step is going to be I will of course post the updates.

Current Mood: depressed