Welcome samn691

[Teeka01]

Welcome to Frag Outpost!!! Tell us about your system.

[samn691]

Hello! I'm quite new to the hobby, I currently have 2 saltwater tanks set up, a 10G propagation tank (which could easily become a QT tank if I needed it), and a 29G reef tank.
I started my first saltwater tank in march of this year but have been keeping freshwater tanks for a few years now. My first saltwater tank was very small, only 10 gallons! About 3 weeks after starting it I changed my 29G freshwater tank to saltwater and put all my freshwater fish in my tiny 10G tank. Since my 29G FW tank was already over crowded putting it in a 10G tank didn't help at all, a week later I went to the store and traded almost all my freshwater fish for a slatwater amonia test kit. The only freshwater inhabitants I have left are 2 pearl gouramis, 3 yamato shrimp (which I want to breed, any information is welcomed) and one otocinclus (I will provide a picture of my tank after I change some water tonight). In my saltwater tanks I have 1 Green Chromis, 1 Yellow Watchman Goby, 1 Skunk Cleaner Shimp, 2 snails and one electric orange hermit. I also have a few easy corals, a star polyp which someone at my LFS gave to me (they sold the star polyp rock but it had grown on the glass too so he ripped a peice off and gave it to me while the owner wasn't looking :P), a few mushrooms (all red, can't find an other colour in any LFS arround here), 2 red polyps (not sure what kind, I saw them on a rock at a LFS, I bought the 1.5lb rock because of them) and 2 polyps with green in the center (they haven't opened up in a week, my clean-up crew keeps knocking them over since they are on a tiny rock).

Tonight I mooved a lot of stuff arround, usually everything would be in the 29G, but right now its almost empty and everything is in the 10G. I started the 10G tonight, I made it for a couple of reasons:

1) I have an aptasia anemone problem and I want to spray the anemones with lemon juice in a diffrent tank (originally I would put the affected rocks in the 10G tank, but I'm doing it the other way arround so that the #2 reason could work).

2) My star polyp isn't doing very well, it needs more light (I think) and I can't make it go any closer to my lights then it is right now(I know I don't have adequate lighting (or I think) but I don't know what lights I should get) and by putting it in a tank which is less deep and using the same lights it is therefore closer to my lights. When it was in my 29G it was on top of a pile of LR but I ran out of rocks so I couldn't make it go too high up (I also didn't want to put ALL of my LR in one pile in a corner of my tank).

3) I need to separate my clean-up crew from my star polyp and from my polyps with green centers for a little while because my clean-up crew keeps walking on them and they aren't that strong to begin with (star polyp got atacked by fireworms and the polyps were healthy but they got walked on too many times).

Because I was putting almost all of my LR in my 10G tank, I decided to put my fish with it since I only have 3 (I left the 2 snails and the hermit in the 29G so that they couldn't bother my corals).
There, that was a little about me and my tanks.

By the way, for those who wanted to know, I'm a guy that lives in Quebec, Canada that has 3 aquariums in his bedroom.

[Teeka01]

Peppermint shrimp loves aptasia. I have 3 of them in my 120. They do run over to investigate everything new that goes in the tank Which is not a bad thing. Because they get the hitchhiker aptasia that my LFS has a terrible problem with.

You don't say what kind of lights you have. It depends what kind of corals you want to keep as to what kind of lights you need.

How long have you had the star polyps? If the person literly just ripped them off the tank they may need a little while to bounce back. Are you acclimating your stuff before you put them in the tank?

I am new too to saltwater. My tank is about the same age as yours is. This is my first tank. But I did 9 months worth of reading before I had the tank. I am still doing plenty of reading trying to learn everything I can.

[samn691]

I'll get some pictures of my tanks a little later, a bucket of 11L emptied itself while I wasn't looking, it was filled with old saltwater.

I thought of getting peppermint shrimp, but I wasn't sure if it would get along with my skunk cleaner shrimp. I'm going to try the lemon juice method. I’m not sure how it works though. Are you supposed to douse them with lemon juice while they are in the tank? Wouldn't the lemon juice change the PH and wouldn’t it be adding ammonia(or nitrites/nitrates)?

I have two lights, they are both Power Glo, one is 18"(15W, 18,000K, LUX 55) and the other is 24" (20W, 18,00K, LUX 80). I don’t have a clue of what the LUX and the K mean but they are on the box and I wasn't sure if they are details you wanted to know. I also have another kind of light that I could use, I would need to get a bulb for corals though, it still has the bulb it came with(see photos below). Are my lights good enough, would I need to buy new bulbs or would I need to buy new fixtures altogether?

It makes a while (I don't really remember, maybe a month) since I have the star polyp, it did bounce back, but then it got attacked by fireworms and now its starting to be a little better, its not growing but it does open all it's polyps.

The way I add new corals to my tank is the same way that I use to add fish. I let the bag float until it’s the same temperature as the water in the aquarium (about 10 to 15 mins). I don't add much water at first, (I take a pipette from a test kit to add water to the bag, I use a pipette that has never been used for tests and I don't squirt the water in the bag). I start with one full pipette, I wait about 30 seconds and watch the fish for any signs of added stress due to the fact that I have just added some water. If everything is fine, I add two full pipettes. I wait about five minutes then I add about five full pipettes. I wait five minutes and add more water with a cup, I do this until there is three times more water then it first had. After that I net the fish while its in the bag and place it in the aquarium, I don't try to shake the net to make it go out faster, I wait until it goes out by itself.

Yesterday morning at 3AM I decided to open my aquarium lights to see if I had any creatures that I didn't know about. Guess what, I found some! It was probably a worm. It was gray in colour, it was coming out of my live rock, it was probably looking for food. It was about 2mm in diameter, but it was scared of the light so it started to shrivel up and went back in his hole. I saw two of these, on different rocks. Any idea what they might be?

I have a fireworm problem, I don't really want to control their population, I want to eliminate them completely. Is there a way to do that? All the information I saw on the internet talked about controlling their population, if it is impossible to eliminate them completely I guess I'll settle for control, but in order to do that, I would need to buy a fish and I don't know what fish I could get. I am going to buy one or two tank bred percula clowns so it would have to be compatible with that and it would have to be small enough to fit in my tank.

Could anyone tell me if my tank is big enough for 2 perculas, the fish I have right now, 1 more Green Chromis and which ever fish you could advise me to use for my fireworms?

Could anyone tell me what a refugium is? I think its for biological filtration, but what exactly do you put in it besides caulerpa (I think you put caulerpa in it).

What do protein skimmers remove in your water? I heard that they completely eliminate any trace elements you could have added to the tank in less then 24 hours. Do they make your water clearer by removing the fine particles in the water?

I don't think that I have mentioned that my filtration isn't very good (I think it's not very good, but I might be wrong) I have an Aqua Clear 200 hang-on filter (Aqua Clear 200 is the old name, now I think its Aqua Clear 50) it's made for aquariums from 30 gallons to 50 gallons and it pumps 150 gallons per hour. Is my filtration good enough or do I need to buy something else? Is it something I could build myself? By the way, my aquarium is not on a stand, its directly on the floor, but if my filtration system would need a cabinet, I could build one. I wanted to build one anyway, just never got around to it, to busy with my aquariums lol.


I have more questions then I thought.

[samn691]

Here are my Power Glo lights and my other type of lights that I'm not using right now.

[samn691]

Wow, didn't know they would turn out so big!
They are bigger in the pictures then they actually are in real life. Should I resize them or do you like being abe to read the fine print?

[Teeka01]

You would need more light. If you are using both lights on the 29 gallon, that makes just over 1 watt per gallon which is very low light That very well indeed might be part of the problem.

I can't tell you about lemon juice as I never used it in my tanks. I have my peppermint shrimp.

About that mystry critter you have. Do you hear a clicking? Does it have a bunch of legs? If it came in on your rock it may very well be a mantis shrimp. They can become very long. If it is one don't grab it. They can give a very nasty sting. Get a flashlight with blue or red lense to look in the tank at night. You won't startle everything that way. I got moon lights for night time.

A refugium is a place for you pods and micro algae to grow. Some people, like me, have their refugium in their sump. A sump is where you can hide you protein skimmer and other equipment so that it is not on your tank. A protein skimmer helps to take the waste out of your water. Micro algae helps to lower your nitrates.

[samn691]

It wasn't a mantis shrimp. It had no legs, no bumps or anything, it was completly round, it had no scales, it looked like flesh.

Do protein skimmers remoove the trace elements that we add for corals (trace elements in a bottle)?

Whats the difference between micro and marcro and what is micro algea?

[samn691]

pic of my yellow watchman goby


http://i53.photobucket.com/albums/g6...7/DSC01329.jpg

Picture was taken a few days after buying it (it was hungry) now the blue dots stand out a lot more.