65 gallon photo story ( 29 gallon disaster )

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wastememphis

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I got a call Monday morning from my girlfriend, who was very worked up, about my fish breathing heavy. I calmed her down by saying that if there was something wrong with my water my starfish would be affected first then my soft/hard corals and that my fish would probably be the least affected. After her description of the other corals and starfish we decided that it was probably because the lights just turned on and that they were nervous that she was staring so close to the tank, bright an early in the morning.

-----The tank is 29gallons, has a fluval 204 canister filter, heater and a Rio Power head, 135watt power compacts, Male and Female Maroon Clown Fish and one Male Golden Midas Blenny…. Hard/Soft coral mix, deep sand bed, Rose Bubble Tipped Anemone, est. December 2003----

Friday night we went out to eat and returned around 8pm… when we looked at my tank, my starfish was missing two legs! I was stunned that exactly what I told her to calm down about was making me nervous. Now that I knew my fish were breathing heavy and my starfish was on its way out I didn’t know what to think. I went to bed and in the morning all of my xenia polyps were dying/dead… very shriveled. The starfish was still alive and hanging on the wall… but moving out of the current. I tested the water…

(I admit I rarely do that, I’ve touched it probably four times since Easter, when I bought it… my reasoning was bad which is that I had a great coralline algae growth and everything introduced into my tank did great I even had budding with my hard corals [frogspawn, candy cane coral] and enormous outbreakish growth from my xenia polyps which were now dead.)

…ok so I tested the water and the nitrate, nitrite and ammonia levels were at zero but my PH was at 7.0! I got real nervous because I knew that if my starfish died for water quality it was because of the PH. I went to my LFS and told them, they asked if I do water changes often, which I do 5gallons every other week… and if I cleaned the sand which I said sure (which means I take out whatever I see that I don’t think a crab would enjoy…) They said that it could be because of dead spots in the tank where no current is getting too… where waste build up. I explained how I have many leather corals that are branching onto two rocks that are big… so it’s hard to move those around to get behind so I just leave them and clean around the other rocks. But since I only have like 5 large rocks I can’t clean too much. I bought a Maxi Jet 1200 for more circulation, with the pre-filter. That was way too much, blowing all my dead polyps off the rock, so I traded it back for a Maxi Jet 600… which works fine (I love the feature to add oxygen into the water, it’s nice.) So we did about 15gallons of water changing throughout the day to get the PH back up and then went to bed.

Sunday morning I’m on my way out to work and we see that my polyps that were still alive on Saturday were now dead. When I was at work my girlfriend took a sample of water to my LFS who told her that all the levels were up from the day before, still LOW PH, but there was a spike because of the die off of the polyps and actually apstaia, which was something I wanted to rid from my tank anyway. So they tell her it’s because of the lack of cleaning the sand this time. And to make sure there is nothing released into the water when I’m not ready, she would have to clean all of the sand and we’d be lucky if anything lived. She tells me this at work, which made me sick (literally) and worried all day. She called our friend Tom who was a great help in setting up my tank, with his experience… and they both went to work moving my tank around and getting Fish/Inverts/Corals out of there for when the sand storm hit.

When it rains it pours, the saying goes… I told you earlier how I have leather corals growing on two rocks and since I’m not prepared for an event like this I have no room to put all my rocks in tanks with lights a heater and some sort of filter… so they have an over stocked 10gallon tank and a super cloudy 29gallon tank with stuff in it… I come home and we try to fix this situation, with the LFS already closed.

10 gallon tank 1: Actinic Lighting, Heater, Rio Power-Head, Large piece of live rock, both Maroon Clown Fish, Golden Midas Blenny, Two Skunk Cleaner Shrimp, Snails/Crabs, Frogspawn (floating), Sponge (floating), Orange Lobo (floating)… over stocked tank…. So I threw together another 10gallon tank.

10 gallon tank 2: 135 Power Compacts, Heater, Smaller Rio Power-Head, Piece of live rock with a Rose Bubble Tip Anemone, and a 18” + Bristle worm (which I want out), Lettuce coral, Candy Cane Coral and Brillo Pad Algae for a filter I took an old penguin HOB filter and took out everything and placed in some small pieces of live rock.

29 gallon tank: It had 7” of water when I got home, we added a lot more water and kept sifting out the “ash” type junk that settled on the sand again, and again, and again… in this tank there was a Toadstool Leather, two Green Finger Leathers, misc. Inverts, and three Peppermint Shrimp whom wanted nothing to do with being caught, a heater, Maxi-Jet 600 with pre-filter, and a Fluval 204 canister filter.

That brings us to today… I’ve done many water changes, ran out of salt, and chromaplex/zooplex… and I went on my way to the fish store when the opened to have my water tested again. This was at noon today… the 29gallon tank was pretty good… low PH just below 8.0 and some trace of nitrates… which I can just do another 5gallon water change to correct. The 10gallon tank with the fish in it has pretty much the same water quality as the 29gallon tank so I’m going to gradually reintroduce the fish and corals back into the tank later tonight…. On the other hand the anemone 10 gallon tank is perfect and has the best quality, I’m not sure if my anemone is going to make it and I don’t want to put a dying animal in my newly cleaned out tank or for my fish to beat up until it dies (since they are really aggressive) so I’m going to see how its doing when I get out of work tonight. I also bought more salt (another 5gallon bucket) and some chromaplex.

There is a bad/good side to this. I messed up by only having one thing to sift my sand, other than some bristle worms. And as far as I can tell that is what made my tank’s levels go crazy, since I haven’t checked the quality in awhile… but since my starfish was new (2weeks… and it was a sudden decline over night, I’m going to say something kicked up some sand and made the problem noticeable) So I lost a starfish, all my xenia polyps and possibly my Rose Bubble Tip Anemone, but I ordered a new tank. By the end of this week I might be the owner of a new 65gallon AGA Aquarium. I figure that this could very well happen with a larger tank but I think that since I know my faults I can make this tank much easer to clean/keep stable. It will have an overflow built in as well…

29 gallon tank: 36x12x18
65 gallon tank: 36x18x22

So there is more height and width to the tank, and I can still put my power compacts on it for now, I’ll just have to move my corals up higher, this is where the photo journal will start when I get the tank in. I’m going to need peoples input for sets ups and options with the sump and other equipment though!!!! Since I never got my sump going on my 29gallon tank I never had a protein skimmer which my new tank will definitely have to have. I also need to know peoples option on what I should do with my anemone, I have no problem leaving it in a 10gallon tank until it recovers, but it wouldn’t take silversides from me today and since I’m going to be moving my corals back into my 29gallon tank I will need to put my compacts on that tank… leaving me with no sufficient lighting to put on the anemone, should I buy 20 compacts for a 10gallon tank??? I don’t know what to do. But thank you for any input/advice/comments/corrections/anything ha-ha….

I’d like the tank to be fully ready to add salt two weeks after I bring it home, this way I can have a two month cycle till my 29gallons 1 year anniversary… so that’s kind of like a present? I don’t know. But thanks for reading; I hope someone learned from my misfortune.
 

wastememphis

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It can all be summed up in smiley form for everyone who doesn't want to read this beast of a post:

:confused: :eek: :confused: :thud: :confused: :soda: :idea2: :confused: :thud: :(
 

wastememphis

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65 gallon photo jouranal (29 gallon disaster)

I'm going to see if a disscuion in this will be a quick way to decide what is best for the new tank... I can still place the powercompacts on the top of the tank when I transfer stuff in a few months but I know I'll need halides to get light to the bottom... so once that is figured out I would like to put my compacts under my tank lighting up the sump with misc algae and mongrove trees... I haven't thought of a sump idea yet, though I'm sure I will quick... but any imput on that or a return pump rating would be great! (700gph??) I think the tank will have a mega-flow, not a corner one.
 

wastememphis

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While I was at work my anemone died, switching the order of best water quality from my coral one to my 29gallon fish tank so in a quick move my girlfriend called to confirm then put my corals back into my main tank. When I got home from work we put the fish and everything else but one rock which the bristle worm is on back into the main tank. The only things that didn't make it were one fromia starfish, a lot of xeina polyps and a rose bubble tip anemone. :( I bought a bucket of salt, which is rock hard... so I'm going to have to return that, but hopefully the water quaitly will remain stable tomorrow while I have school from 8am-710pm.
 

wastememphis

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Can you hook up two metal halides off one ballast? I'm thinking about getting two bulbs for the 65gallon tank (36x18x22) 10000K I just don't know what type, the XM aren't too much money whats the difference between the bubls? I was also going to get the Natulius TE Turbo protien SKimmer with a mag7 for a pump, any advice on that skimmer?
 

wastememphis

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can someone please give imput on why PH would change from high to low, day to day... like one day it was real low in the sevens then its at the max on my tester the next day. i can tell its low in the morning becuase my fish are breathing heavy. i don't know what conditions in my tank are causing it. i've read articles but by reading what i posted earlier can anyone tell why i would have ph problems now, after 10months and no problems in nitrate, amonia or nitrite?
 

mogurnda

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When I hear pH swings and heavy fish breathing, I think CO2. In people, fish, cats, whatever, CO2 causes increased ventilation. It will also drop the pH.

CO2 will go up during the night if there is a lot of metabolism from fish, plants, corals, and bacteria (like those feeding on debris in areas with low circulation). It will go down during the day if there is sufficient photosynthesis from your corals and macroalgae.

I don't know what chromoplex/zoooplex are, but they sound like some kind of plankton substitute. Probably really good for feeding bacteria as well, which may be part of your problem. What are you using them for?

You can only drive one halide bulb from each ballast. XM bulbs are supposed to be quite good in terms of intensity and spectrum, although they had some production problems for a while. Joe Burger did an in-depth analysis of the photosynthetically available radiation (PAR) of 250 watt halide bulbs and ballasts, which can be found at http://www.cnidarianreef.com/. The analysis is found under his links.
 

Max

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Hey, so sorry to hear about your 29 it was really nice!! Congrats on the bigger tank and good luck.
Sorry :(
Chris
 

wastememphis

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happy 3,000 dave. i use zooplex and chromaplex by Kent Marineits a filter feeding, inverterbrate diet for reef type marine aquariums (taken from the front of the bottle). I used it sparingly, sometimes not at all on a weekely basis. Its main ingredent is phytoplankton, i used it incase some of my corals weren't getting all they could out of my powercompacts and for my anemone to get a little more food. It made my softies and some hard (candy cane coral expecially) open larger after i put it in the tank. um... yeah i think i had dead spots before but now i have alot of current with the fluval outtake a rio and maxijet 600. I forgot I havn't posted the current conditon. My midas blenny looked like it was stressed out, with small dots, so we put him in a hospital tank... but we couldn't get him out of the rock, he was persistant for about an hour and a half. We got him in the tank with the rock (we had to lift the rock out and put him in the tank with him in it... which sucks but if i wanted to treat him, it had to be in another tank) I didn't want to loose the rock after putting meds in the water so i only treated him for a day and left him in there for three days and just fed him and he was swimming in the current all day. So we put him back in the tank last night, same way with him hiding in a rock... they are almost impossible to catch if there are alot of rocks in your tank... expecially if you don't want him to jump out (which i didn't want). He didn't look good this morning, i'm thinking becuase of how we just put him back in the tank (same water conditons it was just stressfull) but hes doing fine now, eating like he should (like a pig). I just need to think off all the usefull things to put in the sump which I don't know how to make on my new 65 tank. But I havn't checked PH in two days, with that much current would you recommend turing the venturi valve on for the maxi jet to let som O2 in to the tank?? I don't want my fish breathing heavy, it scares me....

65 gallon tank so far: I have it on the stand, no water, just the mega flow acessory kit on it... i have a 20gallon long sitting next to the tank, it'll be going in the stand once I knock out the center brace and put it in there, but I want to have everything thought through before i put the brace/tank back on the stand. I would like to use a Euro Reef, rated for 75gallons that they carry at my LFS, its like 220ish but it comes with a pump, the model slips my mind, but the impeller on the baby blow my mind!!!!! Also does anyone have any imput on putting baffles on the sump, i want to have a refugium with PC's on it but I dont want to have all the sand blowing into the skimmer and up into the main tank, but I dont know how big I can make the fuge, i want a large one.
 

wastememphis

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how about a Euro Reef ES5-2 rated for 75gallons? They sell it at my lfs, and are going to be putting them on their salt water tanks after they get new flooring... i also get a discount there, should i buy it?
 
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