Our first salt water tank! (warning many big images!)

[J.R.]

FINALLLLLY!!!!!

This weekend we can put our fish back in! So overall it went pretty good. We lost one fish sadly to a huge spike in our stock tank, but it was the sensitive powder blue.

We have actually decided to move some fish to a new home, the clowns and a cleaner shrimp are heading up to our 10g in our kitchen. Our Yellow Belly tang, currently no pictures of that guy, is going to be heading into our frag tank. He is still really tiny and needs time to grow before we can put him in. Everyone else is heading back home to the DT! They will be confronted by an ARMY of copepods, who are in for a rude awakening.... or no awakening?

This weekend is going to be pretty hectic and now we just need to decide how to go about it. How long should we take to put everyone back in their tank? We don't want to put everyone in and cause the tank to crash. Does anyone have any advice for this? I imagine slow is the best route to go but how many can we realistically put back in over the weekend? Do we put everyone in and then just to aggressive water changes? any help would be greatly appreciated!

 

[mnat]

Just got all caught up, and first off welcome to the wonderful world of saltwater. Redfishbluefish gave you some great advice and kudos for you for following it.

For the jawfish, the behavior you saw with him at night kind of jumping is normal and actually I have seen it in plenty of wrasses as well. With a blue spot, you really need a solid cover to own one with basically zero space for him to get out. We swore them off for years until we got a cover made from artfully acrylic that leaves no gaps in the tank at all. Check them out, you have a standard sized tank so they should be able to make that cover pretty easily.

Keep asking questions and have some fun.

 

[J.R.]

Its been a while since we have updated this thread, maybe we should change that. Our main tank has been up for over a year now and man did we catch the bug bad (the saltwater bug).

First a little mini video of our female skunk clown in our rose bubble tip

Our tank; this picture is from a couple of month ago and it looks a mess (and no longer has those containers in it)... but I just really liked this pic:

Our Fungia plate that died and now has babies:

Yellow Fiji Leather:

And this Copperband that we have in a QT and finally got to eat mysis:

Current Livestock in this tank:
- 1 Red Tail Trigger Fish
-Pair of Orange Skunk Clownfish
- 1 Gladiator Clownfish
-1 Pacific Blue tang
-Trio of Lyretail Anthias, 1 male 2 female
-1 Scribble Rabbitfish
-2 Cardinals
- 1Gold Midas Blenny
-2 Cleaner shrimp
-2 Peppermint shrimp
-1 Arrow Crab
-1 Dragonface Pipefish
-1 Long tentacle Anemone
-1 Rose Bubble Tip Anemone

 

[Mark...]

Did all the fish go in at the same time? I would expect an ammonia spike unless you were adding nutrients to the tank during treatment.

If you haven't been to Reef Central or other high volume Aquarian sites you should do some research. Will save you money and headaches,

All the best...

 

[J.R.]

Did all the fish go in at the same time? I would expect an ammonia spike unless you were adding nutrients to the tank during treatment.

If you haven't been to Reef Central or other high volume Aquarian sites you should do some research. Will save you money and headaches,

All the best...

Hey Mark they were added gradually back in July 2017, we didnt have any ammonia spikes when adding them. By adding nutrients I did feed the corals during the time of no fish being in there so its not like it was left alone entirely. No problems since then.

 

[raccioppi83]

Heck of a journey. I just read it all. In your very first post you never really explained how you got salt into your tank because you filled it with fresh water from a hose. Umm assuming you just poured the salt into the DT?

 

[J.R.]

Heck of a journey. I just read it all. In your very first post you never really explained how you got salt into your tank because you filled it with fresh water from a hose. Umm assuming you just poured the salt into the DT?

we did, because we did not know any better a newbies mistake, but we were lucky no bad outcomes came from it. We now have a much better system.

 

[J.R.]

Just pulled some of these hitch hickers out of the tank, Im sure the starfish is fine but not so sure about those bristle worms.

 

[diana a]

they are both good