EvilTwin's 75g tank

[FragOutpost]

The digi is looking great. Sorry to hear that the gorgonian is not doing as well.

[EvilTwin]

Well, I guess it has got so bad that the vultures have moved in. I cought a hermit climbing up and down on the stalks this morning and the skeleton has become more exposed at the top. I am wondering if the polyps near the bottom somehow survive, will is eventually grow back?

[FragOutpost]

If the gorgonian doesn't completely shed all of it's flesh then there is a possibility that it could grow back, but it would be a long, uphill battle for it to recover to what it once was.

[EvilTwin]

One of the downsides to working from home is the need to take pics every time I walk by the tank. Todays art:

My new Lawnmower Blenny


The Twins...I love twins!


The xenia, looking a bit thin these days


The gorg, after a dip and a snip

[FragOutpost]

Lawnmower blennies are excellent consumers of filamentous algae and will starve if not acclimated to prepared foods. Nice fish! Is it eating yet?

[EvilTwin]

He was jumping all around my tank eating off of the glass and rocks. Everything I read indicated that they will graze on diatoms and micro algae, too. I've got a bit of a diatom problem so I am hoping he might help me with that. If I let it go for a while my sandbed turns into a carpet. I literally can pull sheets of diatoms out after a few weeks. If I am sorely mistaken, please let me know.

[FragOutpost]

I'm not sure how much it will graze on diatoms. You will have to let us know about that. But it will put a dent in some green hair algae which is how it got its name.

[EvilTwin]

Today, I added the new 40 lbs of live rock to my tank, forcing me to re-aquascape nearly half of the tank. I'll take some pictures tomorrow. During the move, I seem to have lost track of my blenny. I really hope I didn't place one of the big rocks on him or something. That would be horrible. all of the other fish have appeared except him. Because I was moving so much around. I decided to go ahead and add the hippo tang to my tank. I saw one at the LFS the other day so I went back for it this morning and did the acclimation while I moved the rock around. I also added an orange linkia star and two turtle conchs.

I had read that the hippo tangs are notorious for playing dead during acclimation. Mine was no different. It merely laid on the bottom of the bucket and barely moved for the 3+ hours that I did a drip acclimation. Once in the tank she (Dory, of course) spent the rest of the day hugging the glass as she swam the length of the back of the tank. She also kept doing loops over my veggie clip, pausing to eat occasionally. With the lights out, it seems she found a home.

More to come.

[EvilTwin]

Some new things going on in the tank:

I found hundreds of these on my glass today. No idea what they are.


One of the clowns is literally diving into the anemone all day long


The purple gorg. Not dead yet.

[EvilTwin]

The xenia. It is really bad at this point and I'm not sure why. It looks like the base is deteriorating on one of the stalks. I'm not optomistic


The tank after adding the new rock. I had to move things around a bit since.


Dory. She is currently in my 12g eclipse tank as I started to see spots on her within two days of getting her. I have her isolated and I am treating for ich. She is very good at playing hide and seek, as I had to dismantle all of my LR to get her out of my 75g tank. Next time, I quarantine first.

[EvilTwin]

awwwwwwwwwwwwww...how cute

[Teeka01]

It looks like pods to me. But I am not sure.

[D12monkey]

Originally Posted by Teeka01

It looks like pods to me. But I am not sure.

Bingo.. but there's a snail in the upper left also.

[EvilTwin]

Originally Posted by Teeka01

It looks like pods to me. But I am not sure.

Someone else had suggested the same thing, but I wasn't sure. Perhaps that is all they are. I just have hundreds of them all over my glass today.

[EvilTwin]

Originally Posted by D12monkey

Bingo.. but there's a snail in the upper left also.

Actually, that is a snail egg pod. I have a ton of those on the glass, too. It's from my nerite snails.

[FragOutpost]

They are definitely pods of some sort. Great shot of your clowns hosting!

[EvilTwin]

It's been a while since I've updated. This month has been tough with life and work and such. We were away for the holiday, so of course I was paranoid about how the tank would be for three days without me. I had an automatic feeder set up but I don't know how well it worked while I was away. Nothing died that weekend, though. So that was good.

The purple gorgonian is completely gone. The only thing left is the internal skeleton. I wish I could have done something to save it, but it just didn't seem possible. At least it was free.

I lost my hippo tang after two weeks of battling some kind of parasite. At first I thought it was ich and treated for such in a QT but it did no good and she perished. That was a tough two weeks.

I have a BAD diatom outbreak going on and I suspect it was because my DI water filter was out of juice, so my silicates were up. Lots of silicate in my local city supplied water. What is interesting is that the growths of algae, which is spreading in sheets across the bottom, is starting to curl up on itself, so maybe it it finally running out of nutrients in the tank.

Other than that, things appear well. The anemone twins (Thing1 and Thing2) are doing well, and one of the clowns is hosing all of the time in both. It is keeping the other clown from going into either anemone. I have some type of sponge-like creature that has been growing on the back of a rock and has nearly doubled in size. Some baby snails have been getting much bigger and I see them much more often. I have some pics to upload so they will be coming shortly. More to come.

[Teeka01]

I am really sorry to hear about your losses.

[EvilTwin]

It's been a while since I have posted anything about my tank as it's been a bit hectic these days. I spent a lot of time battling a red slime alage problem which now seems to be under control. I have built and installed my first attempt at a sump. Since my tank backs up to a wall that is empty on the opposite side in my basement, I was able to plumb through the wall and place everything in the unfinished area of the basement. The most notable and desirable effect is that my skimmer is now in the sump and I can't hear it. The plumbing took two evenings to do along with a few trips to Lowe's. Here's the final pics:





Initially, I was concerned about things running too slowly. The overflow box I have is a Tidepool SOS, which has an interesting mechanism that helps keep it quiet but slows the flow down a bit. It took some adjusting but I finally have it working well. I removed one one of the sweeping powerheads I had as they weren't doing a great job and put in the 400gph unit I have. Lots of flow going on right now. The nice thing about the sump location is it gives me options for plumbing in a good RO/DI unit there and space for a water recepticle for auto top-offs as future upgrades.

As for my critters, the fish all seem to be doing well. My clowns have each adopted one of the two BTAs. The BTAs continue to grow:

[EvilTwin]

My corals are another story, and I've been a bit concerned about them all lately, hence the changes in the tank setup. My green button polyp is not looking good after it spawned three new polyps in the last month or so. It seems to have collapsed down on itself. The other smaller polyps appear ok:




I have had an explosion of baby snails, which all appear to be Trochus snails. I had only one of these left in my tank and it seems to be laying eggs continuously. Here's a baby: