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[The Escaped Ape]

Maybe see how things go. It's always good to have more that one thing moving water in the tank, but it maybe enough for a tank that size.

[imcosmokramer]

Good start. more pics

[Sea Turtle]

Looks good so far. Nice job.

[sdbarton42]

thank you everyone! nothing has started spiking yet...ammonia is staying steady at 0.01 and nitrite is remaining close to 0.05 with a water temp of 76.5 plus or minus 0.2 degrees. i've got some anemone things hangin out on my rocks...not quite sure what they are but i'm pretty sure it's not aiptasia (according to what my LFS showed me when I bought the rock). I think one type might be a species of tube anemone (?) and the other i'm not really sure. it kind of has the appearance of aiptasia but the color isn't the same. maybe that doesn't matter but what i have is brown and what the LFS showed me was green. I dunno but what i think may be a tube anemone has either spread really quickly over one rock or it was covered and they are just now starting to open up. i'll try and get some pics but my camera isn't taking good ones and the "tube anemone" is clear so i dunno. I'll try again tomorrow.

[The Escaped Ape]

Take a picture and let's have a look. It's possible that it's not aiptasia, but it's quite likely they are (given the odds). If they are, better to catch them now...

[sdbarton42]

alright here are my little creatures. i also have some sort of copepod lookin thing on my glass that i forgot to take a picture of. The first is the thing that I think looks similar to aiptasia. The bottom is the anemone thing. It is hard to see but the one right in the middle is the easiest (you can see it's clear tentacles against the blue background). If you look to the right of that one you'll see a face on view of another one (it's harder to see). These have either spread like crazy over one rock or they are just starting to open up. I don't mind keeping them if they are not "bad" for a reef tank.

[sdbarton42]

well i bought a peppermint shrimp last week and he had a wonderful Thanksgiving meal of aiptasia! I came back on Sunday evening to find all of them gone and my shrimp sitting happily on top of the rocks messing with something in his little legs. By this coming Sunday I am going to fully stock my tank with 3 Margarita Snails, 1 Peppermint Shrimp, 3 Trochus Snails, 3 Bumblebee Snails, 1 Cleaner Shrimp, and 2 Zebra Reef Hermit Crabs. I already have the Margarita snails and the peppermint shrimp. I am really wanting to nail down what type of corals to put in my tank (I want to start stocking them after the New Year), but a problem arises when I start looking at lighting. I have a 28 Watt Coralife 10,000K/Actinic light. That comes out to be 2.8 watts/gallon. Would this be considered low lighting conditions or medium? What would be some good corals to put in my tank that would thrive under these lighting conditions? I know alot of stuff would survive but I don't want them to look washed out because I don't have enough light for them; I want them to look like they are supposed to

[jmeader]

I think you took the best route in getting rid of those aiptasia, nice going. I'm not an expert on the limits of light for corals but I would guess that you would be limited to mushrooms and zoanthids. Others could give you a better idea I'm sure. I've always used 2 bulbs for 2 different ranges myself, those being an actinic and the other being in the range of a Gro-lux.

[sdbarton42]

How often do Peppermint Shrimp molt? I woke up this morning and found what appeared to be my shrimp's exoskeleton. My first instinct was that he died, but I pulled it out and noticed that there was a hole in the top of the exoskelton where the back would be like he had done the whole intake water to swell his body and burst his exoskeleton thing. Also, there was nothing inside of it when I pulled it out (i.e. guts) to make me think that it was indeed my dead shrimp. I took a picture that I can post on here tonight when I get home for work. I just kind of want a confirmation I guess that this does sound like molting instead of dying! I checked ammonia and pH last night and ammonia was at .02 and pH was at 8.2. My water temp was around 76.4 F.

[sdbarton42]

So...my peppermint shrimp died yesterday. He did molt earlier in the week, and I removed it from the tank. Yesterday I bought a cleaner shrimp and put him in my tank. He hung out in the front right corner of the tank pretty much the rest of the day. I broke off a tiny corner of frozen food, rinsed it with tap water, and placed it in the tank to feed them. The peppermint shrimp hung out underneath his rock ( there is like a 2" gap underneath the rock and the substrate so I could see him) and I watched him actively capture food and eat. Then like 2 hours later I happened to look in the tank to check on the cleaner shrimp and my peppermint was on the substrate underneath his rock dead. I don't know what happened! He was eating and acting what I assume to be normal only a few hours before. The two species didn't have any interaction aside from I believe some tentacle touching when the cleaner was on a rock. I dosed with a drop of both Strontium and Molybdenum and Iodide yesterday. My parameters ,all checked within the last 3 days, are:
Temp: 76.8
pH: 8.2
Alk: low (that was tested three days ago and I added some buffer)
Ammonia: 0.02
Nitrite: 0.05
Nitrate: 0
Calcium: 500
Does anyone have the slightest idea of why he coudl've died?

[jmeader]

Most shrimp are very sensitive to ammonia at any level. The only shrimp I know of that can withstand a small amount of ammonia is intertidal grass shrimp, used for feeders.

[Saltlick]

I had a weird thought when I was driving out at lunch today, now granted, it would quickly become covered with coraline algae and it would probably freak out the fish, but what if you hooked up your powerhead with a "crazy arm waving inflatable tube -man" kind of thing. it would shoot water everywhere....sadly maybe even UP. I was just wondering about that today. As for minis, the only thing I was thinking is that a good 10 mini should have a good 20 sump, lol.

[Saltlick]

The Powercompacts are little pricey for me (I am a grad student!). The Vortech is definitely too expensive, but it looked pretty nice.

This is sounding like the alarm bell I would consider listening to. No matter how far you scale it down, reefing is a tough and
expensive gig. You might need to lay out the entire thing on paper as far as costs go, and consider the recurring costs of food, supplements, electricity, water, salt, lamps, da-da da-da da-da. It goes on and on, as you know.
______________EDIT

Whoops, should have read through the post, was not aware you had already bought stuff....derh. I do that alot. Good luck.

[sdbarton42]

Alright alright. Sorry I haven't been on in a while but I've just been majorly patient and letting the tank do it's thing. I now have my very first coral! It's a Lavender Coral and has been in my tank for 24 hours now. I'm planning on feeding it Marine Snow and I'm going to start that in about a week. The only concern I have is one polyp didn't open up fully like all the other ones, and I want to make sure they are not in too big a current. They are waving continuously but it isn't real hard. I just wouldn't want to damage them. Here are pics!

[Pasfur]

I was browsing around today, visiting from another site, and I just couldn't let this thread go without registering and posting some comments.

There are signs of future problems already present in this tank, and it is very visible just from looking at the picture you posted. I think this is the jmeader was attempting to communicate when he suggested that it is easy to get in over your head on a reef system of this size. When you've been in this hobby for a long time, like any other activity, you develop an instinct. You start to see things differently and know when to make adjustments.

That being said, let me tell you what scares me about your setup. Hopefully this will amount to nothing and you will have amazing success. At worst you will have some additional advise to consider.

First, your reef structure is not designed well at all. You have huge rocks lying flat on the bottom, across the sand, with only 1 power head for circulation. This is a recipe for slowly cooking a disaster in any reef, especially a mini reef. Detritus accumulation is a serious potential issue, and I think you would be very well advised to take two actions. First, rearrange the live rock structure to raise these large flat rocks off the sand bed. This will allow water to better circulate beneath the rocks. Second, add the 2nd power head that was long ago recommended.

The next thing I notice is a lack of coraline algae covering your live rock. Your tank has been set up for 2 months and you have virtually zero coraline growth. You have had plenty of time to achieve significant coraline growth, and would have achieved this growth if the system were properly matured. This is an idea of how your rock should look:


Over time, something will grow on your rock. If it is not coraline, it will probably be cynobacteria or hair algae, or both. The likely reason you are not getting good coraline growth is due to calcium and alkalinity. You need to be testing for both and adding a supplement to achieve the desired range. The water changes do not appear to be doing the trick, so supplementation is probably necessary. You want alkalinity at 8 to 12 DKH and calcium at 400 - 460ppm. I personally use Kent Marine Super Buffer DKH and Kent Marine liquid calcium in my reef and FOWLR tank (pictured above). The b-Ionic product is also a very popular balanced additive. Regardless of the specific product, this is becoming a necessary part of your routine.

I also notice that you dosed strontium, molybendium, and iodine. Why? Did you test for these and find that you are lacking? It is extremely dangerous to add anything to a marine aquarium that you can not test for to confirm the existing levels. There is simply no reason to be dosing for any of these, especially given that you are presumably doing weekly water changes.

That is about all I have. I just hated to see this system, which appears to be successful, begin to experience a cyno bloom and then crash suddenly when action can be taken today.

I am a Mod on another site, so I probably won't be here to follow up on these comments. I'm sitting at home bored off my rocker today and thought I'd check this forum out. In any case, I hope you take my comments with a degree of urgency.

Good luck with the tank!

[sdbarton42]

There is coraline growth, though not as much as in those pictures. My camera does not take aquarium pictures well. Also, I have two powerheads, one on each side of the tank. How am I supposed to get my big base rocks off the substrate surface when that is where they are supposed to be? My calcium levels are above 500 and my alkalinity is hanging out right between the low and normal range so I added some buffer to the tank. My lights are on a timer 10 (on):14 (off). The only thing that I have noticed that may be an issue is my heater is only heating my water up to like 76, and I am not sure if that i warm enough. I"ve read so many different things. But yeah thanks for the advice, and I appreciate the concern.

[Saltlick]

I am not sure how much stock I would put in a person's opinion who is "not sure he will be around to check for
a response", and his first post is to rag your setup. I know how it goes when people get bored and registration
is free. I have seen things on cigar boards that make my hair curl, and I am dying to say something, but I do not
have posting priviledges. But when people are bored or drunk, better to listen to people from your own community
who plan to be around and back up their advice.

Not that all of the stuff the person said was wrong, per se', but EVERY tank is different, and that coralline algae
picture is not from a 2 month old tank, I feel comfortable saying that. It is a temptation pic, meant to show you
that if you did everything he said to do, you would some day get to that level. That is more of a 3-5 month pic,
depending on flow. What he said is also correct, in that most reefers pride themselves in relatively maintenance-
free tanks, at least as far as vacuuming is concerned. People ask me, "Isn't salt water hard?" I say, "No, it's
complicated in some ways, but in many ways it is much easier to maintain." I never "vacuum" my substrate, I let
worms and starfish do that. BUT, I have most of my rock on little tripods of rock, where a huge piece of rock may
be standing on three points, some 2 inches off the sand, sometimes only one point, where water flows under it and
sweeps detritus along towards a collection point. The powerheads sweep the scrunge off the sand. It is the same
principle as people saying "you need to make lots of caves for fish to live in." But there is NO wrong way to do it,
when aquascaping is the subject. Just easier ways. I think this is mainly what was being said, but it sounded to
me like "you are going about it all wrong."

MY own opinion is 29 is scary small for a first reef, cause little things turn big awful fast. My first was 110 gallons
and my second, some 8 years later, is only a 40, lol. and that's not just Economic Shrinkage. I just hate asking for
people's help moving anything, so if I ever move a reef again, I am not going to kill myself. But hey, just ask for
alot of advice when you need it and you should get it.

[The Escaped Ape]

I agree. As posts go, it was rather authoratitive sounding, but not all of it is as definitive as all that. Coralline grows at different rates in different tanks. Live Rock starts out with differing amounts of coralline to start off with. Do we maintain our tanks to ensure we have loads of coralline? Does everyone starting out have to hit the ground running at great speed?

Stick with it sdbarton, you'll be fine. Keep reading and posting!

[sdbarton42]

aw thanks guys! yeah that post was not a good way to start the morning off and I was kind of upset about it just cause I want it to work and I feel like it is going pretty good. All my parameters are normal and I haven't had massive die-off. I'm super excited about my first coral and hopefully the store will get more in that I want so I can keep on keepin on lol!!! I will add fish in a month YAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Saltlick]

I should READ more before I post. HOLY carp, you are runnng a TEN! Man, what nards, lol.
I like the variety of the rock. nice pieces. A little advice that helps you slow down and keep
your purchases in control. I like to blow off aquascaping while i am waiting to get some reef
life established, like tiny crustaceans that fish will feed on one day, and other beneficial sand
life. Take your rock and move it up to the front of the tank and get a nice magnifying glass
and spend your evenings looking up close and personal at the things that live inside your rock.
Just freakng amazing. Keep it up, good luck.