So my wife and I had just lost our 4 year old betta fish Fred III (she has always named her bettas Fred). After burying him in our back yard in a ring box under a tree we decided to go look at getting a new one. It actually took us 2-3 weeks to decide to get another one, we get attached to our pets!
So she took me over to the LFS in our area and talked me into starting up a saltwater tank, and a bigger one because she wanted to have some bigger fish. We decided on the marineland 125g, which is a pretty big step up from our 10g betta fish tank! We bought a normal light, because we weren't going to do any coral, and a canister filter.
So we came home and started filling it up!
So we made another mistake and just filled the tank up with water from our hose in the back yard... but since we had already filled it up we decided to just let it do its thing and waited....
After it cleared up a bit and we bought some more dry rock we decided to do some aquascaping... We got a different type of rock to go with the rock we had already purchased and decided to get some barnacles too!
We waited for the tank to cycle we bought a sump and skimmer! My wife was worried about having a canister filter because she had read horror stories about them so we ordered one pretty quickly. I just wish we had bought it BEFORE we put all the water in... So we bought 2 30g trash cans and started draining the water until my brother-in-law and I could move the tank and stand... filled both up and could just BARELY move it. Well after that fiasco the tank eventually finished cycling and we decided to get some fish! Insert Biff:
So we had another mistake in here and moved water over from the DT to our QT that we had split in half.... I did not realize that the tank would not be cycled if I had just moved the water over to it.... I thought the bacteria was all in the water! Well we put Biff and a watchmen goby in one side and on the other side of the 20g that was split off we put a Caribbean blue tang.
When we bought Biff we did not know he could be a bully and had him with our watchmen goby... Sadly he attacked the Goby in the middle of the night and he died later on that day. I was really upset and thought about taking Biff back... I mean he had killed Goby McFly! After this happened we moved Biff over to the DT and kept the caribbean blue in the QT, still not realizing that the QT was most likely stressing him out.
When we went to another fish store over in PA the person we talked to compared the goby to a hotdog just waiting to be eaten... This is where I came up with the name Biff because everyone said he was going to be this trouble maker in our tank. Well we brought home another friend at this point, a powder blue tang! We moved the caribbean blue tang over and after drip acclimating (we drip acclimate everything) the powder blue we put him in the tank as well. We were worried about the caribbean blue tang getting picked on so we went out and bought a breeder box from walmart and had him swimming around that in the tank. I just wanted to keep him away from everyone! Well I woke up in the middle of the night and he was dead, I was really starting to get depressed because I had the idea of bringing animals to my home and then killing them.
The next morning I wake up and the powder blue tang was swimming really weird and was going up and down and faceplanted against the glass... he died shortly there after. At this point I didn't want to buy anymore fish and was fine with just having Biff. My wife talked me into getting some coral to make me feel better. So we bought a tiny Xenia and Devils hand leather... which started making me feel better. (can't find one of the xenia) What comes with getting coral? CORAL LIGHTS $_$
Well it worked and I decided, okay well we can just add a few coral... I had a work trip coming up and figured coral would be a safe bet to add. On a side note we were testing out water very frequently to make sure we weren't spiking. We went to the LFS again and found this AWESOME looking yellow fiji leather that I HAD to get.
(Odin is always so curious, also our first big algae bloom!)
Then Biff got Ich.
So we started treating his ich with Kick-Ich because it was reef safe. We took the carbon out and turned the skimmer off. The problem with the timing of him getting ich was that we were traveling to California for a week and wouldn't be able to keep up with dosing. Luckily my cousin stayed at our house! She fed Biff and our 4 cats, our dog is weird and loves the pet smart hotel. She actually medicated the tank while we were gone too! So when we got home Biff was looking really good and had lost all the ich, we kept treating because we wanted to finish out the complete cycle. Well of course while we were in Cali we HAD to stop at a fish store out there (we actually stopped at 2!) LAX Aquarium was AWESOME and I had no idea I was talking to the owner the entire time. Once he said that he packs up coral for people to take on planes all the time I had to pick out some stuff! Insert the duncan, lobo and sun coral:
(lobo left, duncan to the middle ish and sun coral on the right)
More in the next post! (ran out of room for images!
So she took me over to the LFS in our area and talked me into starting up a saltwater tank, and a bigger one because she wanted to have some bigger fish. We decided on the marineland 125g, which is a pretty big step up from our 10g betta fish tank! We bought a normal light, because we weren't going to do any coral, and a canister filter.
So we came home and started filling it up!
So we made another mistake and just filled the tank up with water from our hose in the back yard... but since we had already filled it up we decided to just let it do its thing and waited....
After it cleared up a bit and we bought some more dry rock we decided to do some aquascaping... We got a different type of rock to go with the rock we had already purchased and decided to get some barnacles too!
We waited for the tank to cycle we bought a sump and skimmer! My wife was worried about having a canister filter because she had read horror stories about them so we ordered one pretty quickly. I just wish we had bought it BEFORE we put all the water in... So we bought 2 30g trash cans and started draining the water until my brother-in-law and I could move the tank and stand... filled both up and could just BARELY move it. Well after that fiasco the tank eventually finished cycling and we decided to get some fish! Insert Biff:
So we had another mistake in here and moved water over from the DT to our QT that we had split in half.... I did not realize that the tank would not be cycled if I had just moved the water over to it.... I thought the bacteria was all in the water! Well we put Biff and a watchmen goby in one side and on the other side of the 20g that was split off we put a Caribbean blue tang.
When we bought Biff we did not know he could be a bully and had him with our watchmen goby... Sadly he attacked the Goby in the middle of the night and he died later on that day. I was really upset and thought about taking Biff back... I mean he had killed Goby McFly! After this happened we moved Biff over to the DT and kept the caribbean blue in the QT, still not realizing that the QT was most likely stressing him out.
When we went to another fish store over in PA the person we talked to compared the goby to a hotdog just waiting to be eaten... This is where I came up with the name Biff because everyone said he was going to be this trouble maker in our tank. Well we brought home another friend at this point, a powder blue tang! We moved the caribbean blue tang over and after drip acclimating (we drip acclimate everything) the powder blue we put him in the tank as well. We were worried about the caribbean blue tang getting picked on so we went out and bought a breeder box from walmart and had him swimming around that in the tank. I just wanted to keep him away from everyone! Well I woke up in the middle of the night and he was dead, I was really starting to get depressed because I had the idea of bringing animals to my home and then killing them.
The next morning I wake up and the powder blue tang was swimming really weird and was going up and down and faceplanted against the glass... he died shortly there after. At this point I didn't want to buy anymore fish and was fine with just having Biff. My wife talked me into getting some coral to make me feel better. So we bought a tiny Xenia and Devils hand leather... which started making me feel better. (can't find one of the xenia) What comes with getting coral? CORAL LIGHTS $_$
Well it worked and I decided, okay well we can just add a few coral... I had a work trip coming up and figured coral would be a safe bet to add. On a side note we were testing out water very frequently to make sure we weren't spiking. We went to the LFS again and found this AWESOME looking yellow fiji leather that I HAD to get.
(Odin is always so curious, also our first big algae bloom!)
Then Biff got Ich.
So we started treating his ich with Kick-Ich because it was reef safe. We took the carbon out and turned the skimmer off. The problem with the timing of him getting ich was that we were traveling to California for a week and wouldn't be able to keep up with dosing. Luckily my cousin stayed at our house! She fed Biff and our 4 cats, our dog is weird and loves the pet smart hotel. She actually medicated the tank while we were gone too! So when we got home Biff was looking really good and had lost all the ich, we kept treating because we wanted to finish out the complete cycle. Well of course while we were in Cali we HAD to stop at a fish store out there (we actually stopped at 2!) LAX Aquarium was AWESOME and I had no idea I was talking to the owner the entire time. Once he said that he packs up coral for people to take on planes all the time I had to pick out some stuff! Insert the duncan, lobo and sun coral: (lobo left, duncan to the middle ish and sun coral on the right)
More in the next post! (ran out of room for images!
