New Video of the Fish

Taken on my iPhone 3gs (very impressive video camera.) Scroll to 1:00 to see the diamond goby dart by!

New Fish!

Wow, so it's been awhile. I've been pretty busy with the tank, I just haven't made the effort to blog. In any case, there is some big news.

First, a loss. Emiril has passed on. He was a good crab and I don't know why he croaked. Could be I didn't have enough algae for him to eat, but to be honest, I'm happy not to have an algae problem.

Then there's the equipment update. I bought an RO/DI off Ebay. It's pretty cheap, and probably isn't that great. I didn't hook it up to my plumbing. Instead I spent ten bucks making a sink adapter. At the end of the day, it's working. I don't have algae and I'm not running to the store every ten minutes to buy ten gallons of distilled water. It was a good investment.

The next equipment project is lighting. I want to replace my 48" PC fixture with a really sweet 36" MH fixture. 48" fixtures just don't fit the 92 corners becuase even at it's longest point, the 92 gallon fixture is way less than 48". There's just one problem: money. I just don't have it. But I may just be able to pull it off. The MH fixture on Craigslist is $150. I posted my current light on Craigslist for $70 and have several people interested. If I can get the full $70, then that knocks me down to $80 out of pocket. The other thing is that if I keep the current fixture, I'm gonna have to buy new bulbs, which would cost $40. So if I can sell my fixture and buy the MH one, I'll really only spend about $40 for a much better fixture that actually fits my tank. I'm really hoping to pull this off. If I do, my set up will be sweeeeet.

In later news, our original four fish (Jaws, Fins, Red, and Blellow) are all doing really well. Fins is still not over his HLLE, but he seems to be getting better slowly.

The corals are okay, but need better lighting. If the PCs that came with the tank needed to be replaced when I bought the set-up, then more than ever now. Greeny is persisting, but one of the reasons I want to get a new light is to make sure he survives. Him and Red make for great entertainment.

Now for the best part: the additions!

We picked up Hippo off Craigslist for $30. Considering that baby 1" Blue tangs are going for $40, picking up a 4" blue tang for this price was a major steal. Blue tangs have always been one of my favorite fish. They are smart, friendly and beautiful. Just an awesome fish.

Blenny 2 I picked up at Living Sea as one of their specials. When I first threw him in the tank, I really didn't think he was gonna make it. Red and Blellow were really going after him. But a week later he's totally comfortable. I guess the others realized that he wasn't much of a threat. He swims all over. (He gets the name Blenny 2 because "Blenny" was our first fish ever, a midas blenny, with the greatest personality of any fish I've ever seen. Blenny perished in the 75 gallon tank crash last year, but his memory lives on in Blenny 2, who is a lot like him.)

Finally, Chromis is what he is: an out of place green fish. I went to Living Sea and bought three Chromis and threw them in the hospital. A week later, two were dead. I was annoyed, but they were cheap. In any case, Chromis is the last of the three stooges left and seems to love the display tank. Hopefully in the future I'll throw in another three chromis and get a good school going!

And now everyone together!

My latest endeavor

Somehow a friend in shul convinced himself that what his new apartment really needed was a big in-wall saltwater fish tank. So he came over to me during kiddush and asked me if I could put one together for him. Tonight we started filling his 135 gallon Oceanic tank (took 3 hours.) Tomorrow I'm picking up the live sand and rock. So far we are doing really well in terms of our budget!

Pictures coming soon!

Jello Melto

Well, the other night we had a bunch of friends over and one of them asked about the jellyfish, to which I replied, "Oh no! I totally forgot about it!" When something sits on the sand in the same place for two days you just kinda forget. Immediately I feared the worst, and unsurprisingly I found Jello stuck next to the overflow box. Surprisingly, it was actually still alive. I moved it and he pulsed around the tank for the first time to everyone's delight. Then it found a place in the front of the tank and just sat down, per usual.

The next day it was gone. Disappeared. Nowhere to be found. Checked the intakes, the overflows, everything.

Jello melto. RIP.

Blellow Problems

Blellow is nipping at our kenya trees. The smaller one is taking a hard hit, and it's hard to tell how much more it can take. The bigger one is also getting hit pretty bad. I keep him pretty well fed, but it might just be his nature. I can't tell if he's trying to eat the Xenia or the GSP yet. He's also eaten all of the tube worms, bristle worms, etc.

In other words, he's a very pretty jerk.

Pictures of Jello

Jello is still alive, for now. We haven't had the fortune of seeing him swim yet, but we know he tried because he's managed to move across the tank. My guess is that once he started swimming the powerheads shot him across the tank. I turned off the powerheads in an effort to get him to swim. Still nothing. But here are some pics.

Blellow? Meet Jello

Impulsive behavior usually has disastrous results in this hobby. Throw a fish in your tank without quarantining it and you can expect a debilitating disease. Buy a fish without first having researched it and you can expect compatibility problems or starvation.

Buy a JELLYFISH when you know absolutely nothing about jellyfish or how to keep them?

Well, that's just a waste of $12.

His name is Jello (proper name is "Mr. Jelley.") Right now he just sits on a rock pulsing--he's yet to get up and swim around. Basically, I'll be shocked if he's alive tomorrow morning.

I'll keep you posted.

First Video and our newest addition, BLELLOW!

I wanted to get some footage of the new tank and the fish online earlier, but I never got around to it. And then we had the ich episode, which set things back for awhile. Well, the hyposalinity treatment is finally over. I moved Fins, Red, and Jaws back to the display tank after a month in the QT, and after a week of raising the salinity. I'm not sure whether ending the hypo treatment was premature or not. Some of the articles I read said that hypo should be done for about four weeks, which is what I did, but other people said eight weeks. I decided to move them out after a couple of close scares in the QT (there was an ammonia spike which almost killed them) and because Fins's HLLE (Head and Lateral Line) was clearly worsening in that tank.


But so far, so good. I haven't seen any ich on the fish since the first week of hypo, and the tank was empty of fish for a month, so hopefully it's all gone. If not, I'll probably resolve to a strong feeding regiment rather than trying out Hypo again. I think it probably works, but you also probably need a bigger QT and more time for water changes, neither of which I have.


I'll definitely be quarantining all the fish henceforth.


Our newest addition is Blellow, the bicolor angel (Centropyge bicolor.) I actually purchased him right as I started the hypo treatment but because he was already ich free (I picked him up from a tear down) I had nowhere to put him. So I had my mom babysit him in her kitchen tank, which was great because she took good care of him and somehow thought of his name. C and I were at a total loss, and then mom just said "Blellow misses you." She really connects to the fish. Blellow is a stunning fish and everyone seems happy, as you can now see. Enjoy the show!

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 6

So a few things have happened since I last blogged:

1. Fins has developed some serious HLLE (Head and Lateral Line Erosion, though for now it's confined to his face.) He also has some blotches on his body, which someone on RC claimed was Marine Velvet.
2. There was an ammonia spike in the QT over Passover almost killing the fish.
3. The initial hypo period of three weeks has passed, and no ich is visible.

I'm in a bit of a pickle. The ammonia spike in the QT scared the hell out of me and basically reminded me that I couldn't get away with having all three fish a QT with a biowheel forever. I was hoping to push hypo for closer to five weeks, but I've decided that Fins' condition, coupled with no further signs of ich, warrant a cessation of the treatment. Starting Friday I began raising the salinity in the tank (which was lowered to around 1.011 after I noticed some ich in the initial week of treatment) by adding a half of cup of Instant Ocean per day. Right now the salinity is between 1.016-1.017. I figure by adding a half of cup of salt per day, I'll probably achieve 1.023 over the course of 5-6 days, which is slow enough not to stress out the fish too much. (I've read that raising salinity must be done slowly.)

The plan is to then monitor the fish in the QT tank for another week, and then move Red and Jaws into the Display, which will be void of fish for over a month by then (and hopefully void of any ich.) The wife wants me to leave Fins in the QT until I figure out what the blotches are. I'm a bit torn over this because I'm certain that the HLLE will just intensify in the QT. On the other hand, it will be easier for me to do Vitamin C treatments in the QT.

In later news, the Display is fine. Our new Kenya Tree frag is really big and cool. I love free stuff. Greeny is miraculously still alive as well. It really does not seem interested in Silversides, but it does eat krill, so I'm going to keep feeding it such.

I noticed that the two Odyssea Powerheads just stopped pumping any water, so I took them apart, cleaned them up a little bit, and had them working at full strength for about a day. I've already noticed that the one on the right has slowed down considerably. Here's my feeling: these pumps suck. Do not buy them, no matter how tempted you are to get something cheap. I bought two Odyssea EX250s from Aquatraders.com for $34 about a month ago. They are rated at 250 GPH, which compared to the 295 GPH of the MJ-1200 seemed pretty good, especially given the price of the MJ-1200. Well, huge mistake. I should have just spent $10 more and got two MJ-1200s off Ebay. Learn from my mistake, and don't get this item.

Spawning Event, New Frag, and Greeny Update

So, there was a spawning event in the tank last week. Despite being void of any fish right now, we still find a way to just stare at the rocks for hours. We noticed what looked like a bunch of sand coming out of the rock and floating into the tank and I assumed that it was just a bristle worm coming out of a hole and uprooting some sand. A

nd then it happened again a little later.

And then it happened again a little later.

The third time around I noticed that the small specs were actually little white eggs being shot out of the rock almost rhythmically. I'm certain it was not a coral--right now we don't have any frags that would spawn as such. More likely it was one of the ghost worms in the tank, or perhaps a snail that I could not see. We've noticed a bunch of baby snails in the tank, and I'd be thrilled if they grew to full size but I sort of doubt they will.

In other news, someone on Reef Central gave me free Kenya Tree frag. I'm not as obsessed with corals as other hobbyists. For starters, I don't have strong enough lighting to grow anything serious. Nor am I ready to invest in a calc reactor. I have been and continue to be a fish guy. That could change over time, but as of now, the swimmers still rule in my mind.

Still, I'm always open to free frags of stuff that has a shot of growing in my tank. Thus far that includes some non-pulsing xenia, green star polyps, a small kenya tree that was on the live rock I bought (which has, incidentally, trippled in size since) and this new Kenya tree frag. I didn't do much in terms of acclimation--it was getting late and I was in a lazy mood, so I just let it acclimate to the temperature in the plastic bag and then threw it in. A few days later, it's attached itself to a tall rock and appears fine. Hopefully it'll continue to grow, if slowly given my lighting and lack of supplements.

Greeny, the GBTA, is doing a bit better lately. I've successfully fed it silversides the past couple of days and it's looking a bit more open and healthy. The only trouble I have with feeding is Emiril, who loves silverslides and does what he can to steal the food.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 5

Just a quick update. As of today, all three fish are doing fine in the QT. So far, none of the fish have shown any signs of ich. Fins has been in there the longest (1 week today), but she continues to eat normally and has remained fat. Perhaps because of prior experience with tangs I do fear an onset of lateral line; it's a little hard to tell whether she's showing some head erosion because of the actinic light that I have in the QT. If something is going on, it's happening slowly, which is good. So far her body is free from any erosion.

Red is doing well--he's not showing any signs of ich since entering the tank. I suppose the real test will be in a couple of weeks. If the fish remain ich free through the expected ich cycle, then I'll feel comfortable that the hypo has worked.

Meanwhile Jaws continues to do his thing with the sand. He appears totally unaffected by the move. I guess that means that netting him, the ten hour drip acclimation to hypo and his two attempts to jump out of the acclimation bucket didn't stress him out as much as I originally feared.

I continue to add PH Buffer, but I think the PH is beginning to normalize. The hydrometer reads a steady 1.013.

In sum, so far so good. I'm happy with the decision to do Hypo.

Strange

I've been pretty worried about Greeny since I bought him. Granted, he was five bucks, so if anything were to happen to him, I'd be over it quickly. On the other hand, he was 5 bucks, and it's not every day that you get a GBTA for a tenth of what they cost (Living Sea was selling them as a special this week for $60.) Moreover, he makes a great friend for Red, and I'd love for it to be around in three weeks when Red is reintroduced to the tank.

In any case, I'm always a bit worried about Greeny. For starters, my lighting stinks. I'd get about 3 watts per gallon if my bulbs were new (as opposed to waaaay old) and if I didn't have a glass top on. I have no idea what the proper water flow would be for an anemone, and just figure that it'll move to where's its comfortable. And I'm never sure if it's eating enough.

So today, when Greeny began to shrivel up randomly in the middle of the day, I got a bit worried. Was that it? A week and the thing has decided to die on me??? Well, rest assured, he's okay. Apparently he just needed some shrivel time. Right now he's back to normal, as if nothing ever happened. Jerk.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 4

Well, the plan has worked to perfection thus far. Yesterday I completed the madness around 10 pm, when I released Jaws and Red into the 29 gallon tank. I drip acclimated them in the same bucket for about 10 hours. In other words, the drop in salinity was about 4 times faster for them than it was for Fins. Nevertheless, they appear to be fine. They are both swimming around and eating, and Jaws is doing his thing with the sand in that tank.

It definitely helped that I was able to find two pieces of plaster coral in the basement of my house and a little freshwater fish house for the fish to hide in. Jaws appeared to be a bit more stressed when I eventually threw the two of them in the tank. His time in the bucket was nothing short of stressful. Two times--once at the beginning of acclimation and once at the end--he tried jumping out of the bucket and was almost successful. Luckily in both cases he plopped right back into the water, but I was definitely surprised to see how high these fish can jump (there was about 2 inches of water in the bucket, which is itself more than 12 inches tall, and Jaws managed to jump about six inches above the bucket.)

But I'm happy to say that the two of them appear to be doing fine today, and that the hypo appears to be working. So far there is no sign of ich on any of the fish and they are still eating and swimming normally. Fins doesn't seem to mind his former tankmates sharing the cramped space, which is nice as well.

In sum, it appears okay to lower the salinity on a clown and goby faster than it might be for a tang. Meanwhile, the three fish appear to be fine together in the 29 gallon tank. Fins even looks less stressed out now, especially with the rocks in place.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 3

Ah, the excitement never ceases in our tank.

The wife, who is an expert at spotting ich, called me over to take a look at Red last night after shabbos. It's a good thing she looks, because I'm pretty much in denial that any of my fish could ever have a disease. In any case, it was pretty inevitable. If Fins had ich, then removing Fins from the tank wasn't going to solve the problem. Once the ich is in the water it will find a host. It will only die if it has no fish to host it. With Red and Jaws still in the display tank, the ich wasn't going anywhere.

So Red has ich, and Jaws--while still not showing any signs of it--will get it eventually. Now the question is what to do about it. The big issue is that I've already started hypo on Fins, which means that the salinity in the QT is very low, and throwing Red and Jaws inside will just kill them through shock. I contemplated setting up another QT, but without a viable source of biological filtration on hand, I decided that they've got a better shot in the QT. So what I'm drip acclimating them to the lower salinity over the course of the day. It's a long time for a couple of fish to sit in a bucket, but I figure that they send fish in bags overnight across the country. Hopefully they'll pull through--the jury is still out.

In the meantime, catching the two was pretty difficult. Red was particularly hard to catch, and it forced me to move all the rocks around, destroying the aquascape that was and forcing me to create a new one. The resulting aquascapes has its pros and cons. On the one hand, we can now see Greeny, who is basically front and center. All of the rockwork is pushed to the back corner of the tank, so everything--the rock, the tank--all look bigger. The con is the effect all the moving will have on the coral. It's all in very different locations now, often further from the light. We'll have to see if it pulls through.

Last night I had a bit of a scare with Fins. I was out all day and didn't have a chance to check on him. When I finally got home at night he was obviously spooked, breathing fast and not eating. The not-eating scared me the most because even in hypo he's been a pretty voracious eater. I quickly realized that I forgot to buffer the water that day and that the PH probaby spiked. I through in a little calcium carbonate and Fins quickly began to calm down.

So to conclude and sum up, I'm worried about the Red and Jaws, and more the Jaws than Red. The display tank is empty of fish, but Pincher and "Emeraldo" the Emerald Crab that came along with Greeny are having a blast playing king of the castle. The hypo treatment in the QT is going to go for about four weeks, at which time I'm going to start raising the salinity. Meanwhile, over the course of that time the display tank will remain free of fish, so that the ich can cycle, find that there is no viable host, and die a much deserved death. In the meantime, here's some shots of Pincher and Greeny.

Greeny

Our newest acquisiting is a Green Bubble Tip anemone (Entacmaea quadricolor) named "Greeny." The name has as much to do with it being green as it does with Mike Greenberg from ESPN's Mike and Mike in the Morning. Hopefully I can find something fat to call Golic.

I wanted to get a bubble tip anemone as soon as I bought Red because they host Tomato Clowns. There was only one problem: they are usually pretty expensive. The wholesaler who sold me Red was selling them for $50 which is way out of my league. Luckily I stumbled upon a guy on craigslist who was selling off his fish. I stopped over at his place (which was actually in the neighborhood!), saw Greeny, and $5 later--yes, $5 later--Red has a really cool new friend.

Unfortunately, Greeny has planted himself behind the rock wall. The problem with anemones is that they can just get up and walk to whereever to whereever they feel comfortable. In the end, I'll probably have to rearrange the aquascaping entirely so that we can all see and appreciate this thing. For now, though, here's the best I can do:

Unfortunately you're only seeing about a quarter of the whole anemone. Hopefully it'll go for another walk tonight to somewhere a little more visible, otherwise I'll be stuck trying to rearrange, which, to put it lightly, is a real pain.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 2

A bit of an update on the hyposalinity treatment with Fins. We're now day three of treatment. The salinity in the tank is down to 1.014 and everything appears normal. There are no signs of any ich on the tang, but I'm aiming for at least three weeks of treatment. I believe hyposalinity is supposed to be like a really long freshwater bath, with more permanent results.

Fins continues to eat plenty. Yesterday I fed him a sheet of Nuri (little of which still remains), spectrum pellets and mysis shrimp. Today he'll finish off the rest of the Nuri and in addition to the pellets, I'll probably give him some Formula 2. He's looking fat, which is always important with Tangs because they expend a lot of energy swimming (and I'm guessing even more so in hypo.)

The light in the tank is now on. I actually think Fins kinda likes it--makes him feel a bit more secure, especially without a rock in the tank to hide behind. Speaking of which, I'm going to my mom's today to check on our latest addition, and I hope to pick up a rock I saw in the basement. Hopefully that will make things a bit less boring for Fins.

The big question is now whether I push Fins a little further and drop the salinity down to 1.012 as originally planned. I probably should. It'll probably only take one more gallon of distilled water. Guess I will.

Hyposalinity Treatment, Part 1

Well, I've finally tried to do something about it.

Fins, our sailfin tang, didn't show any signs of ich (the dreaded fish parasite Ichthyophthirius multifilis) when we bought him, and the quarantine tank was filled with my mom's porcupine puffer (Diodon holacanthus) whom she wanted out of her tank and sold, so I opted not to quarantine him and threw him into the display tank immediately. I was well aware that tangs often hide ich inside their gills, but I was hoping for the best.

In any case, the first sign manifested on his tailfin about three days later. With the puffer still taking up my QT and not wanting to have to deal with a sick fish, I told myself that it was the nutritionally related fish virus Lymphocystis, and changed up his diet. With time, the sign on the tail was gone. But then it made a strong reappearance and I was convinced that we had ich.

Finally, yesterday and not a moment too soon, someone came and picked up the puffer. I quickly prepped the QT for hyposalinity. Hyposalinity is a method of curing Ich by lowering the specific gravity (the salt content) of the seawater to level that the fish can live but the parasite cannot. Using a hydrometer, tank water generally has a salinity around 1.023. With hypo, the idea is to drop the salinity to 1.012 (if using a hydrometer, which is not recommended, but I don't have a refractometer. If I did, I'd be shooting for 1.008.) Hyposalinity is considered less painful for the fish than other "cures" (i.e., copper or malachite green) which I have used without any success. This is my first time with hypo, so again I'm hoping for the best. For the most part, I'm following instructions found here: http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/fish-diseases-treatments/23131-hyposalinity-treatment-process.html. But be warned, there are a lot of conflicting reports on how to do this. So far, this is what I've done:

1. The quarantine tank is a 29 gallon tank with 3 inches of sand and a biowheel. That's it. I really should have a rock in there for the fish to hide, but I don't yet.
2. After the puffer was sold and out of the QT, I siphoned out five gallons of water from the QT, getting rid of any left over food or puffer poop that fell into the DSB. I made sure to leave enough water so that the biowheel could continue running.
3. I then checked to make sure the specific gravity in my QT was the same as it was in the display tank.
4. Later, after the lights went out in my display tank and my fish were preparing for sleep time, I turned off most of the lights in the house including the lights in the room that housed the quarantine tank to keep it as dark as possible so as not to stress out the fish during the netting and reacclimation process.
5. I then took a plastic bag filled it with water from the display tank, netted and bagged the tang, and brought the bag over to the QT, where it sat in the QT water and began acclimating.
6. Once I acclimated the tang, I let him into the QT and threw a towel over the tank to ensure it would stay dark and less freaky for the fish.
7. The next morning, about 12 hours later, I started the hyposalinity process by going to the store and buying 10 gallons of distilled water.
8. At home, I mixed a gallon of the water with Kent Marine PH Buffer (calcium carbonate) because I read lowering salinity in the tank using RO or Distilled water can cause devastating PH spikes.
9. I poured the water into a gallon jug with an airline valve stuck in the bottom and placed the jug on top of the tank. I opened the valve and started dripping the distilled water into the tank. I'm dripping in the distilled water as I might if I were using Kalkwasser or acclimating a fish.

I've read conflicting reports on how to administer hyposalinity treatment, one saying that rapid salinity change is the best way of killing the ich (which I believe) and one saying that you have to change the salinity slowly so as not to hurt the fish (which I also believe). I followed the latter approach, which called for lowering the salinity over a period of 48 hours with tangs. I figure that the drip method will probably help prevent a PH spike, make it easier for the fish (but not the parasite) to acclimate to the new salinity, and will ensure that the new water will be well mixed with the tank water.

I don't have a powerhead going in the tank. That's also something I've heard mixed opinions about. The plan I'm following from the instructions at Reef Sanctuary, however, say not to have a powerhead.

The tang is breathing a little faster, but I checked the water and everything, including PH is on point so far. He's also eating and swimming around, so it's possible my presence is just freaking him out. Since I started this morning, I've got the water down to about 1.019. I'm guessing that after five gallons I'll probably have to take out and drip in another three gallons to take it down to around 1.012. I'll keep posting progress reports as times goes on. The full treatment takes about four weeks, so we've got a long way to go.

The 92 Gallon Corner Bow-Front Set Up

The tank has basically three areas of filtration. The first area is the Rena XP-2 Filstar that I got used from the guy I bought the tank from. It's a canister filter for tanks up to 75 gallons, but I don't really use it as such. All I have in there are a few micron pads which I clean out every month or so. It does a nice job of keeping particles and other crud from floating around in the tank.

The bulk of the filtration is provided by the in-sump ASM-G2 filter that I bought from a guy off reef central. The G2 uses a needle-wheel Sedra pump (usually a 3500, but the guy I got it from had already upgraded the pump to a 7000.) It sits in a 29 gallon tank made into a sump. The problem with the corner tanks that is that they don't leave a lot of room at the bottom for a sump. This fits nicely, but it's not that easy to get to, so I'm happy that once set, the ASM requires no priming. Water is returned through a Mag-Drive 9 pump on the other side of the sump.

Biological filtration is provided solely by the live rock and live sand in the tank. In my experience, live rock, live sand and a good protein skimmer are the best way to maintain strong water quality. Biowheels and other media used to grow bacteria tend to increase nitrate production, which can get out of hand quite quickly in a saltwater tank. Unfortunately I only have about 60 lb of live rock, and I really should have about double that. That is something I'll have to get to at some point. Notice the nice piece of tonga rock in this photo.

Most of the rock is Bali live rock. It's nice because it's not too dense (unlike the tonga) and it has a lot of holes for the fish to swim through. There isn't a ton of coralline growth yet, but I'm beginning to get some. I'm hoping that the rocks will be covered in it within the year. My only concern with the rock is how I set it up. Although I think I did an admirable job aquascaping, I feel like it's only a matter of time before my diamond goby disrupts the sand bed to a breaking point and all of it falls.

At the bottom of the tank I have about 80 lb of Live Aragonite sand. The 80 lb gives me a 2-3 inch sand bed across the tank, which I'm quite happy with. I wouldn't necessarily call it a DSB (deep sand bed) but it's doing a nice job. The sand is white but needs constant movement to keep it clean and free from dead spots. To do this I have the help of 6 hermit crabs, a coral banded shrimp, and most importantly, a diamond goby. Although the diamond goby does eat a lot of what's in the sand, there's plenty of critters to go around.

This is the tank fully set up. You'll notice that I bought two Odysea EX250s and mounted them on the inside walls of the tank to get some water movement. The EX250s are rated at 250 GPH, but I sincerely doubt that's what they are doing. In any case, they were cheap and you get what you pay for. The lighting came with the set up: it's an Odyssea Power Compact fixture with four 65 watt bulbs. That gives me about 3 watts per gallon, which has been enough to support some green star polyps, xenia, and other softies. If I really get into coral, I'm going to get a metal halide fixture.

That's it for now. I'm working on a new Kalkwasser drip method, where I've plugged the bottom of a gallon jug with a plastic air flow valve. It's working fine, the only problem is that I haven't figured out where to put the thing to let it drip the Kalkwasser. I've been leaving on top of the glass top for now, but I want it to drip into the sump because it doesn't look very good having a gallon jug sitting on top of the tank. I have noticed some coralline algae growth though, so I'm pretty excited about that.

I'd also like to start a refugium somewhere along the lines. I'm thinking I can do it in the sump where I have the return pump. The problem though is that the MagDrive 9 is simply too big and powerful. Putting a light in there might also be kinda complicated.

Playing God

"Playing Poseidon" is a pretty stupid name, but "Playing God" was taken.

I think I love fish tanks because I think love playing god. I've always enjoyed setting up the tank more than actually taking care of it. In setting it up lies the thrill of starting a self-contained world teeming with life; in taking care of it lies the arm shoulder deep in poop-laden saltwater. This blog is dedicated to my latest venture into marine fish-keeping--from setting it up, to stocking it, and most importantly, to being shoulder deep in fish poop.

The whole thing started at least 15 years ago with Felix, my sister's carnival goldfish. Felix was an anomoly of sorts. Unlike Jaimy, the goldfish I took home, Felix lived past the first day in our care (to our credit, Jaime was buried in a cardboard jewelry box in the backyard... and then a few days later dug up by me to see what remained) (not much). And then Felix kept on living. When we realized that the fish in the bowl wasn't going anywhere fast, we decided to learn a little. We got a bigger bowl. We got an airstone. Within no time we had two more carnival goldfish (Bonapart, an albino with red eyes, and Sputnick, a regular goldfish with communist leanings.)

As the fish grew, the family as a whole became a bit more in the fish. We were always animal people. We already had Aree, an airdale terrier confined to city living, and Herman, an ageless box turtle who sat still in his shell for months at a time before we remembered he existed and that we had to feed him his canned corn. We were pros. We were heartless.

The first ten gallon tank was HUGE. It just seemed so endless compared to the gallon bowls that the three goldfish inhabited for so long. From the fake plants rooted in the neon gravel to the tacky bubble tubes in the back corners that connected to the undergravel filter everything just seemed incredible. And the Big Three--Felix, Bonapart and Sputnick--were in carnival fish heaven.

But if fishkeeping has one flaw, it's the constant lack of satisfaction. A few weeks after watching the goldfish in the new tank, we became a bit bored. It was time for new fish. Swordtails. Guppies. Mollys. Whatever it was, we wanted color. With new fish came new challenges. First, the Big Three, being kinda devoid of any nice color and extremely territorial were incompatible with the new guys, and were relegated back to the fish bowl, where they soon thereafter died of a broken heart. Felix was the first to go. He was an old fish, but he still had some fight in him, and I owe everything I ever learned about this hobby to him. At the time, though, all that mattered were new fish. Sputnick and then Bonapart followed.

Other challenges included disease and then, overstocking. Before long the 10 gallon was simply too small to get anything accomplished, so we moved to a 29 gallon tank that was immensely successful. Before long we were breeding freshwater fish and two or three tanks in addition to the 29 for rearing the young and hospitalizing the sick. The constant water flow made the house feel like Wrigley between innings. Needless to say, it was all a bit much.

One day, my mom had a colleague and his family over for dinner. By this time, familial interest in fish had waned and it was just me and one of my older brothers running the hobby. The guy noticed that my brother loved fish and made him an offer he couldn't refuse: "We're getting new carpeting, do you want our 90 gallon saltwater fish tank?" It never really dawned on us why anyone would ever want to get rid of a huge fish tank... In any case, a few days later the tank was in our family room. It was huge. To date, the only bigger tank I've ever had is the 92 I'm currently running. Compared to the 29 gallon tank and the 10 gallon tanks, this thing was a behemoth.

But it was also very, very flawed. It was an older set up that didn't have much in terms of equipment. It ran on a pretty large Amiracle trickle filter sump with builty in protein air stone protein skimmer which never worked. At the time, we didn't realize how important protein skimming was, so the fact that the one we had was entirely useless didn't really seem to matter to us. The tank was not drilled, and instead used a pretty bad overflow that always collected air. Many years of swallowed sea-water could have been avoided had we just consulted my father (a very handy doctor) who, years after my brother and I moved out of the house, got the idea to modify the overflow tube with a syringe.

We also new nothing about live rock, other than that it was expensive. At the time, aquarists with fish only set-ups decorated their tanks with fake corals, etc. Nowadays, the FOWLR (Fish Only with Live Rock) set up is much more prevalent than it was in the mid-nineties. So the trickle filter was basically a nitrate factory and the protein skimmer was useless. We tried lots of fish in the 90 gallon tank, but it never really worked worth a damn. Success was hard to come by.

My brother eventually went to college and I was in eighth grade. The 29 gallon tank had been down for awhile, so I set it back up as a cichlid tank. Cichlids are very, very cool fish, and no saltwater hobbyist should take them for granted. It was a beautiful tank, but disease struck and all of the fish died over the period of a week. I took it as a sign to try something new, so I bought a CPR bakpak off Ebay, some live rock from some guy, and a power compact retrofit kit and started my first attempt at a reef tank.

It didn't work.

I had constant hair algae because I used tap water and just dumped Kalkwasser in to the tank quickly. Corals never really lived very long. I did have an amazing Sea Apple and a very fun shrimp. But again, success was hard to come by. What the 29 gallon tank did, though, was get me reading. I started learning the basics about tank weight, water, lighting requirements, what live rock and skimming did, the history of fish keeping, etc. It helped lay a foundation for things later to come.

Then I went to college and dropped fish altogether. I turned off the light in my brain and that was it. No more fish. Why in god's name would I ever want to clean a tank again or start a siphon with my mouth or invest hundreds of dollars I didn't have into fish I couldn't even pet?

Well...

After I finished undergrad, I moved back to Chicago a new man, married, starting law school, and without a fish tank. It didn't last. We were invited over to some friends and lo' and behold, right in the living room was a 75 gallon freshwater fish tank. The switch in my head flicked on, and I just couldn't stop myself.

About a week later we had a 29 gallon tank in the living room.

About two months later, when we had bought three fish that were all way too big for the 29 gallon tank (a Midas Blenny, a Picasso Trigger and a Raccoon butterfly) we upgraded to a 75 gallon tank.

For the first time I was having success with Saltwater fish. I realized that success depended on a couple of fundamentals: water quality and feeding every day. You'd think I'd have figured this out years before, well--no one's perfect.

The 75 gallon tank was incredible. We were having great success, and thanks to the advent of craigslist, we were keeping costs minimal. The whole set up (a 75 gallon tank with stand, glass tops, a koralia and maxi-jet powerhead, 50 lb of live rock, 75 lb of live sand, a cpr bakpak protein skimmer with a new acella pump, and an emperor 400 bio-wheel) cost me only $300. The tank held a bunch of very happy and compatible fish.

But I got greedy with success. I wasn't quarantining my fish. When hair algae popped up on some of the live rock, I picked up a beautiful yellow tang to take care of it. Beautiful and disease laden. The disease, which I never managed to identify, wiped out all of my fish. I should have figured it out pretty easily though, as my juvenile emperor angel was cleaning him off all day (see the video in the side bar.) The illness progressed over the course of a weekend, when due to sabbath observance, I could do nothing but watch them suffer. It was a harrowing experience, but typical of a negligent aquarist. Two months later, after I was convinced the disease was gone, I somehow sold my 75 gallon set up for $500, which was $200 more than I bought it for.

Again, I thought I was done. And again, I was wrong.

Just before the Spring 2009 semester started, I convinced the wife to drive to Milwaukee with me and pick up a new tank. I found a 92 gallon corner tank, stand, light and Rena XP2 filter on Craigslist for $300. We always wanted a 92 corner tank, but there were two problems: (a) they retail at $1500 for the tank and stand, and (b) they are very hard to find used. So, we upgraded.

The point of this blog is to keep track of what we've done and to prompt discussion. I've found that despite being in this hobby for most of my life, I know very little. Through wetwebmedia and more recently, ReefCentral, I've found a network of fellow hobbyists who seem to know just about everything. I hope this blog will be an open forum for you all to teach me something new, and maybe even learn something, but most of all, to be a place to get a good laugh from our incredibly dorky but unrelinquishable hobby.

Feel free to comment and create a live discussion. We look forward to hearing from you.

The Tuna