Tank birthday and I'm a Geezer

[Paul B]

I have a slight tank problem. Last week I bought a torch coral with a bunch of heads on it which is very cool as I have quite a few of them. Yesterday I noticed one head croaked, that is not supposed to happen so I broke down and tested the water for PO4 and nitrates. The two kits I have are very old and I have no Idea when I got them. They could be from Columbus so I am not taking the readings to seriously. The PO4 reads practically zero (which I doubt) and the nitrate is hard to read because it looks like ink so according to that kit it is like 4 million. It probably is 50 or so which is higher than I would like as I would rather it be near 25 or so. I am thinking this may be the cause of that coral dying but it could have been damaged when I got it as the rest of my corals seem fine. But The tank is way overloaded, the fish got to big, I feed like an all you can eat buffet because most of them are spawning and I can't do my normal maintenance because of the five pipefish. Every ten years or so I like to remove much of the rock and stir up the UG filter, but whenever I do that, I lose the pipefish. I think their tiny gills get clogged so I can't clean the gravel and it is over due. I also can't catch the pipefish. If I try to remove the rocks I would have to break many of the larger corals as they have grown across everything. I don't see this as a problem but an interesting situation that makes me think. I have a few plans, none of which are good plans but plans none the less. One scenario I will build tank dividers out of plexiglass and section off one quarter of the tank after removing the rocks. Then I would clean that and try to move it to half the tank. Then take all the rock and corals from the remaining side and put that on the clean side, then do that side. This of course would be a night mare. The other plan involves removing everything except the gravel to large vats which I don't have enough. I would break the corals very gently but they would not be happy. Then I would remove the fish and stir up the gravel. If I did this I have interesting ideas on what I want to do with the rock. I want it completely off the gravel and the entire reef would be suspended from above on nylon lines that you would not see from the front. I have been wanting to do this for years but the amount of disruption to the tank would be quite a bit. I love the aquascape I have now as very little of it is actually touching the gravel because I built long fake rock that spans large areas without hitting the bottom. In the mean time I re built my denitrifier coil. It used to be on the tank but during Hurricane Sandy the power went off and that thing was not high on my list to keep going so it stopped and I didn't want to turn it on again until I ran bleach through it. I wanted to try a different model anyway. It is now running in my workshop as I will seed it with bacteria and get it going again. These things excite me and get me thinking other wisw, I get bored.

 

[Paul B]

That coil thing is now changed. There is now an inside coil and an outside coil. The entire thing fits inside that blue tube that gets sealed and just makes it look cool. The tank is running well but I surpassed the ability of the bacteria to process nitrates. It will be fine if I could stir up the gravel as it has been to long and some areas clog. My pistol shrimp are not helping because they piled up the gravel in the center of the tank about 8" high so there are places with no gravel and you can see the UG filter plates. I also have to stop adding livestock and feeding so much but that is the consequences of having the fish spawning. They require a lot of food and I feed the pipefish herd a few times a day. All the fish are twice as large as they were when I added them and they eat twice as much. But it's all good

 

[Paul B]

Today I picked up this very cool clingfish although I have to admit, I never had much luck keeping them very long. You don't see them very often and I don't really like common fish.

 

[Paul B]

My boat is away for the winter but I have the two outdrives in my garage so in the spring I have to do yearly maintenance on them like paint them with antifouling paint, replace the zinc's and change the oil. I can't wait to get out and do some collecting in the summer as that is one of my favorite things to do. That and to watch the Supermodels they sometimes have at my marina when they want to introduce a new boat model.
My tank is doing very well, I just lost a small hammer coral but that is a good thing because it was shaded by an acropora that seems to be growing very fast. I don't know why. I couldn't get my fat fingers under it to move the hammer but it is what it is. I have plenty more hammers. The monti's are doing the same thing and I will have to break them soon as they are almost touching the front glass. Breaking them is not a problem as they seem to be the fastest growing coral and they even shade their own cousins and kill them. But again, that is a good thing. Sometimes I break off the shaded pieces and stick them someplace else but usually I just let nature take it's course.
I still have the pipefish, mandarins, ruby red dragonette, possum wrasse, pair of pistol shrimp and every thing else. A bananafish jumped out, actually both of them jumped out so I won't be getting more of them even though they are extreamly cool. I also don't know how many shrimp gobies I have as there is so many places to hide, I only see glimpses of some of them occasionally. I may go to my favorite LFS today because I want a mate for the ruby red dragonette and possum wrasse. I don't like to see lonely fish.
My water is always clear but for some reason today it seems exceptionally clear. I am not sure why but it disappeared, not even sediment. Maybe the large blue sponge sucked it all up? Who knows.
I have not seen my new clingfish eat anything yet, not even live newborn brine or live worms. What he does do is position himself right in front of a hermit crab like a javelin, he is very still an inch away, then he propels himself right at the crabs face. The crab is not amused and quickly pulls his shell down in front of his face and the clingfish crashes into his shell and bounces off. You would think that after a couple of hours of this, he would get a bloody nose (if he had a nose) or at least tire of it. But it is his thing so I assume he eats hermit crab faces.
You really can't get good picture of those ruby red guys as they don't like camera's, but he is in the back here

OH, here he is

This stuff just grows wild

This is just a common red one

 

[mrehfeld]

Those are beautiful

 

[Paul B]

My simplified system. The large clear thing is an empty bio pellet chamber, There are just brittle stars in there, like a 5 star hotel, it is just there because I wanted to build one but I hate bio pellets as I think they are stupid and I almost crashed my system with them. The smaller acrylic thing is a chamber where I can control the water height and it controls the amount of water going through the de-nitrification chamber. As you can see, I have an acrylic fetish

 

[Paul B]

I was looking for my clingfish this morning before the lights came on and I noticed the blue stripe pipefish spawning. Those and the mandarins spawn just before the lights come on. Bluestripe pipefish are my favorite pipes because they can take care of themselves with no help from me. I am just here to give them something to make fun of. And of course to hatch brine shrimp every day because I feel that if you have a pair of fish and they are not spawning they are not very healthy and should be put in a nursing home. So now, as usual all my paired fish seem to be spawning. I wish I could get a copperband to do that but I only have one and I am sure my tank is way to small.

 

[Paul B]

My tank is doing great for some reason. I still have to move the entire structure to the back and break a bunch of corals to do that, but I am going to wait until after the holidays because I get a lot of visitors now and after I do that, the tank will need a little time to recover and re grow. The pistol shrimp pair are still making huge tunnels. It amazes me that they can construct tunnels so long under a heavy reef using just gravel. All my livestock is doing very well and many are still spawning. These duncans probably doubled in size in the few months since I have them

This mushroom is weird and I have seen this many times. The thing will sit there for years doing almost nothing and all of a sudden it grows to 5 times it's size. I have noticed that a number of times. Now that it grew I can feed it and it really grows when you feed it. I use clams to feed them and most of my corals and fish (the fish also get live blackworms every day) I do not use Mysis to feed corals because Mysis are mostly shell and corals do not need shell which is not even calcium. I still feel clams are the best food besides live worms that you can feed most sea creatures.

About a week or two ago I bought this staghorn. Tomorrow I am going back to get some more of them as it seems to like my tank so far and expands nicely. When I dove in Tahiti these things were like weeds with miles of them growing in shallow water. I love this stuff.

 

[Paul B]

I took a new picture

 

[Paul B]

The tank is doing very well. I pushed back the reef structure a little so I can clean the glass. I had to break that large montipora in the lower center but it already grew back and you can't even tell where I broke it and it was 2 weeks ago. I added 3 staghorn corals you can see two of them in the above picture, one is right in the center of that picture. They seem to be doing well and expanding nicely. The tank is still overcrowded but that is a good problem as the corals are growing and I keep needing to remove rocks to fit them. The fish are
1 copperband
2 bangai cardinals
2 fireclowns
1 possum wrasse
3 or 4 unknown gobies
3 or 4 unknown cardinals
1 clown gobi
2 mandarins
2 blues tripe pipefish
2 ruby red dragonettes
1 regular red dragonette
2 pistal shrimp
unknown number of crabs and snails.
Most of the paired fish are spawning and I am hoping the ruby reds spawn as they are young and I just got the female 2 weeks ago.
I built a denitrification coil and am cycling it before I add it to the tank as a test. So far it reduces nitrates from 40 to zero in 10 minutes that it takes water to go through the thing but only at one drop a second.
I am still writing a book which will be about half DIY stuff of stuff I designed over the last 50 years and forgotten practices that disappeared but I still use. I still use the brine shrimp feeder every day and feed clams and worms every day. The baby brine help me keep those pod eaters as I have quite a few.



Denitrification filter showing intake water and water exiting



You can see the staghorn here as well as the monti I had to breakto move back due to the growing and the pistal shrimp pushing the structure forward.

 

[mrehfeld]

Looks great, really looking forward to that book, are you self publishing or using something like Amazon?

 

[Paul B]

That is still a matter of debate as I have not gotten that far yet in negotiations but the book is going well. It is about half DIY stuff and money saving ideas along with practices that disappeared so I am trying to build most of this DIY stuff and take pictures as I do. That takes time. I have and use all of this stuff but some of it built many years ago so I don't have pictures of the process. I am trying t make this as easy as I can because realize many people can't or don't have common tools.
Things like building this hollow rock as large as you like for a buck



Or making a bottle that looks like Columbus dropped it overboard while he was washing his underwear.

 

[Paul B]

 

[Paul B]

I got to admit (and brag a little) my tank has been around a long time but I think it looks better than it ever has. I really have to many fish and corals but I really like the way everything is and for the first time in, I can't remember. I don't want to stick my hand in there and change anything. I had to remove some rock and bottles to fit the corals, and some of the corals are killing parts of neighboring corals but that is a good thing and supposed to happen. I got another staghorn coral yesterday (not in this picture) so I moved some things around. There isn't a spot on any fish, not even a scale out of place but that is normal and comes from their diet. Jenny Craig. I can't do my normal maintenance of stirring up the gravel because of the pipefish. They don't live through typhoons and I can't catch them so I will see how long I can go with no maintenance. The bluestripe pipefish have a short lifespan of only a few years so I will do the typhoon after they are gone. If I had time I would raise some of the fry as many of the fish are spawning. Of course, I don't know how I would collect the fry but I am sure I would figure out something. My book is coming out well and I am having fun writing it. I need a photographer for the cover so I am working on that.

 

[jgraz]

Paul
A while back I came across a how-to you posted about the bottles. I can't seem to find it any more. Would you mind giving us a rundown on how you handle the bottle prior to placing it in the system.

 

[JRWOHLER]

I believe he chills the bottle in the fridge, opens the top drinks the beer, then tosses it from the couch into the tank.

 

[Paul B]

There is actually a whole chapter in my book about that. I also know it is on here someplace but I can' find it. It is a little bit of a process to make it look great and I don't want to write it again as I just wrote that chapter last night

 

[Paul B]

Just got in from Key Largo early this morning. Our Closest friends bought a home there on the water so we spent much of the time on their boat. I love mangrove islands and they are one of my favorite dive and snorkel spots. I am always surprised at the lack of life in the sand in the tropics as compared to northern waters. If you lift a rock there, you usually find absolutely nothing, not even in a tide pool. But here in New York, even now covered in ice, if I lift a rock, there will be dozens of life forms. Worms, crabs, amphipods, stars, but in the tropics, nothing. That is one reason I put mud in my tank. For the life. I realize many of us view northern waters as polluted but they are not polluted, that is life and life needs something to eat. The reason all the great fisheries in the world are in northern waters is because of the nutrients.


I even brought my swing arm hydrometer out on the sea to calibrate it. I found out that the sea has perfect salinity so we don't have to change it.

 

[Paul B]

Me and my dive partner are trying to decide on some new dive gear.

 

[Paul B]

We came home from Key largo 2 weeks ago and I couldn't find my male blue striped pipefish. They usually don't survive when I go away as I need to feed them every day. Even though I made an automatic brine shrimp hatchery and feeder. I started to doubt my feeder design and figure it really doesn't work while I am away. Then yesterday I saw my pair of pipefish together. The male is pregnant so I assume he likes his privacy in the back of the rocks. So I was happy to see him. My pair of ruby red dragonettes are also hanging out together so I hope they will spawn soon. They seem a little young yet so I am not sure when that will happen but those two are my only paired fish that are not spawning.