My Saltwater Journey: a diary

[AnnetteG]

oh and one more thing I noticed that I hadn't included in the story. I have now added 120 pounds total of LIVE rock, so quite a bit of the base rock that I first had in there had to come out. Mst of what I kept, is at the bottom, buried in the sand for support.

So with base rock and live rock, I think we're at anywhere from around 150-170 pounds of rock total! In a few weeks, I'm going to order about 20-30 pounds of live rocks from Tampa Bay Saltwater to top it all off! I don't think I have room for much more!

 

[AnnetteG]

Little Updates!

No pictures yet, but we've added some fish and critters recently! For our 11th anniversary, hubby brought me home a Blue Linckia Starfish, a Coral Beauty Angel and several hermits and snails. Then today, for Valentine's Day, he brought me home 2 new Live Rocks from a LFS we hadn't been to yet and a Diadem Pseudochromis, which I'd kindof decided I didn't want, but he didn't know that yet, so oh well. It's a pretty little thing. Only about an inch right now. Oh and yesterday, I was in Petco and couldn't help myself. I bought the one little Scooter Blenny they had in a tank with a poor dying yellow tang. Now, I know, they need pods and all. But I won't feel bad about buying him. I mean, everything that comes from PetCo's saltwater tanks is a rescue mission. If I hadn't bought him, some other idiot would have and who knows, they might not have even known about pods or bothered to read anything about the fish. So there. I do have pods in the tank, due to having bought my first live rocks and live sand from from a tank that was a year old and being broken down. I consider my tank to be aged more than it would if I'd started with new Live Rock that hadn't already been in an established tank. I just need to get them multiplying more, I think.

Okay, so along with the other new additions today, the hubby brought me home a bottle of Tigger Pods! I put about 1/3 of them into the rocks in my main tank via turkey baster. Then I put the rest in a 10 gallon with some rocks I stole from the main tank, a bubbler, and some Hikari Fry Food and crushed algae tablet (the kind for saltwater fish). I mean, they're detritivores, so why not try it, right?

Right now, I'm not ready to take the sump apart and convert the wet/dry into a fuge, and I can't get an answer to my question about whether it would benefit me to put some pods in the live rock rubble down in the sump, so I'm just going to try to culture my pods in a separate tank for now. Here's a pic!

Sorry for the wonky angle, it's sitting by my desk here and I was leaning to the side. I'm mostly following directions for setup that I found online. I plan to add some macro algaes and live sand and a few other little worms and things in a few weeks, when I can spend money again! But for right now, I think this will get me started! I'll probably pick up some plankton food of some sort for the pods this weekend, but I have a good feeling about the fry food and algae tablets!

I know what you're thinking now. That's a lot of fish! Well, yes, and I don't want ALL the ones I've gotten from the established tanks I've bought rocks from, but I got sick last weekend right after buying the last batch and couldn't take the ones I didn't want in, so they're in there now. I plan to TRY to catch them out this weekend. The ones up for eviction are the 2 sebae clowns, the six spot goby, and possibly the Foxface. I like him, but he's taking up valuable real estate and he wasn't in my original PLAN for my reef.

I'm absolutely in LOVE with the Coral Beauty. She's still pretty small and so far seems really sweet and doesn't bother a soul. Unlike the snotty clowns who bully everyone and the six spot goby who is nasty to my gold heads and my orange diamond goby.

You know, it's interesting to note here that I also just LOVE bottom feeding FW fish. Loaches, cats, etc. So I guess it's a natural thing that the fish I find myself drawn to in SW are the gobies, blennies, mandarins and such. If my pod culturing works out, I will be getting my psychedelic mandarin soon! My LFS guy actually has one he's holding for me, waiting to make sure it starts to do well in his tank. He just got it in. He's coaching me on my pods and on (eventually) setting up a true refugium. He rocks. If you're in Houston, he's at T&T Fish & Reptile and his name is Paul. He's the owner.

Thanks for listening! As always comments are welcome and expected! But please be nice! I may be new but I'm a big researcher and everything is going well, and water parameters are doing great.
SG: 1.024 (trying to push this to 1.025)
Temp: 80 degrees
PH: 8.2
Ammonia: 0
Nitrites: 0
Nitrates 5-10ppm after a BIG water change (that was a PITA, my skimmer went nutso and I flooded the carpet a little before I noticed it, still don't know why it did that.)


TTFN!

 

[WoodRight]

Now I have that song from that old movie about the band and it was all creepy and so long ago and I have mommy brain and can't remember the name, but the song is in my head. "to the darrkkk siide...ohhhh yeahhh". Anyone with me? The lead singer was hot and troubled and wore a black leather jacket and I think he died and then haunted his girlfriend or something like that. Okay, maybe I should take a pill and go to bed now.

I tell you what, I am a bargain hunter supreme. Next dealio, in two weeks, we're getting about 80 pounds of live rock, plus a multitude of critters and fish (see my post in marine newbies) for guess how much? No, not free. :grinno: But only $250! And no, I won't show you the link to his CL ad. :lol2:

ETA: okay, wow, you can tell I live in TX.

Eddy and the Crousers

 

[H3D]

Nice tank.

 

[AnnetteG]

Updating

Wow, it's been too long since I updated!

Let's see, since the last post, I've converted the wet/dry to a refugium:

Here's what it looked like when I first did it:

Here it is after getting in rocks from tampabaysaltwater.com yesterday!

I put in 3 of the midsize rocks from TBS and 2 pounds of live sand from them as well. This stuff is covered in pods and I don't know what all and new critters keep making appearances! There is also a Mantis in here for the time being. He was an extra - they actually bagged him separately for me. He's ugly but interesting. He (TBS Richard) also included a bunch of extra macros for me, which you can see more of here:

and here is the mantis:

can you see him?

Back to the updates. I ended up taking all the rocks out so I could evict the 2 sebae clowns, the white sleeper goby and the foxface. I think the 2 sebaes were guilty of eating my yellow clown goby and the white sleeper was harassing my orange diamond goby and he's my favorite. I decided to get rid of the foxface because he gets bigger than I want and I want to have other types of fish and he was taking up space. It's nice now too, whenever I reach in the tank to feed with the turkey baster or to move a rock or something, I don't have to worry about getting a nasty accidental sting. Particularly during feeding time - he was getting so used to me, he would rush up at me to get to the food. Eek!:eek3:

Anyway, they all went to the LFS and helped me buy a few more corals and a Citron Goby and a tank raised Ocellaris Clown. The Citron goby was picky at first, but he's eating really good now and rushes my hand and turkey baster at feeding time. He even nibbles on my hand! Friendly little fish! Weirdo perches on the glass though, not on a rock or anything. Here he is:

More coming!

 

[AnnetteG]

I've been doing good with the water parameters since converting to a refugium and adding in macros. 0's across the board, PH 8.2, SG 1.025. I'm not testing for anything else yet, so not dosing anything else yet.

I acquired a few corals and little frags here and there. I'm partial to zoas and polyps and I'm just dying to get some ricordias, but they're so darned expensive! Maybe someone in my local reef club will swap me some for that mantis shrimp?

Finally, bonus time came on Friday! We picked me up a used Odyssea light fixture that had been rebuilt by the guy I bought it from. New ballasts, new everything. So it's basically an Odyssea shell with all new goodies. 2x 150 MHs and 4 39w HO T5s. Unfortunately, it came with 20k halides and all actinic T5s, so right now the tank's a bit blue. The fish and corals seem to dig it and at night, it looks great. It's only during the day time that it looks blue. We'll get some new bulbs soon, but I had to stop spending money somewhere.

Here is the tank with the new light!

It's a whole new world now! I'd have liked to have been able to get 250 MHs instead of 150s, but this light was what we could spend right now. My sand bed is about 4" deep, so there is actually only about 22" or so from the light to the bottom. I'll just put higher light corals midway and up to the top and lower light stuff midway and down to the bottom.

I'm really pleased with how the light ended up looking once my hubby hung it up. He's quite handy. :grinyes: As you can see, we removed the lid of the canopy and kept the top frame on and suspended the light so that it basically hovers just above the top of the frame.

Picked up a few little frags on Friday and another Koralia 4! The tank is moving now! We're also about to put a black background on - FINALLY! I'll be so glad to get rid of the yellow cast from my wall behind the tank! Yellow is a lovely color for my living room, but not so much for my fish tank. :grinno:

Next I'll post my TBS rock story!

 

[AnnetteG]

Last week, I placed my order for 30 pounds of live rock and 2 pounds of live sand from tampabaysaltwater.com. I have been reading this website, the story of how it came to be, looking over pictures on his site and on RC that people post of what they get from him, and reading reviews for a couple of months now since I found the site. I've been DYING to get some of this reportedly wonderful Florida Aquacultured Live Rock! WooHoo! I finally got to place my order. I asked Richard to have it shipped to me on Saturday. He sends it air cargo and you go pick it up. So it got on a plane at 8:40 Saturday morning and was due here at 11:55! At 11:55, I started calling the airport cargo office to see if my packages were here yet. Nope. Kept calling them every 30 minutes until at about 1:30, I had a guy tell me he "thought" that "maybe" the packages got taken off the plane in New Orleans and we'd have to wait for someone there to realize they needed to go to Houston and they'd put them on the next flight to Houston. GAH! This was frustrating, but I expected something to happen. Not to worry, Richard packs these boxes to be good for days. I am just not a patient girl!

Finally got a call from the cargo office at 3:30 (I know, it wasn't really THAT long of a wait!) telling me that my boxes had indeed taken a little pit stop in Nawlins (maybe those decorator crabs needed some beads) and then had gotten back on another plane to come the rest of the way to me.

So we picked up the boxes, had a minor argument over directions and my lack of being able to follow them, and finally got back home by about 6:30 with my rocks! I immediately started unpacking and looking over my goodies! It was like Christmas! Inside the heavy duty bags EVERYTHING was completely submerged in water! No dry stuff or damp newspaper here! There were lots of little baggies to go through as well! None of these were things I ordered, they were Gifts With Purchase, I guess! :headbang2: I had a spider decorator crab:

a red decorator crab:

I had a little bitty goby of some kind. He's about an inch long and almost transparent with black bands and he disappeared as soon as I let him out into the tank and I haven't seen him since. Hopefully he's hiding out somewhere until he is big enough to keep from getting eaten. He'd have gone in the refugium, but since the mantis had to go there, I thought it best to let him in the tank.

Also got a couple of blue leg hermits in one bag with some of the above mentioned macro algaes.

Here is an orange turbo snail that was a GWP!

Here's another good one of the decorator and the snail:

Then I had to start going through the rocks! Well, all of them have various colors and varieties of sponges on them, so I basically hurried and put everything into the tank to try to give those a chance to live, so I didn't really spend any time looking for hitchhikers I might need to pluck out. It's all very exciting anyway. If I get any "bad" guys, I'll just have to ask you guys how the heck I get rid of them. :dance:

Last night, I stayed up really late because I couldn't tear myself away from staring into the tank and watching all the new life appear. So far, I've seen a brittle or serpent star, a sea slug of some variety - he's really bright red and is laying ribbons of pink curly stuff I presume are eggs here and there, a small mythrix crab or it might be a baby gorilla crab, which as I understand, would suck. I'll worry about that later. Lots of little snails. A crazy worm that swims like an eel and flips out and twists into a not when I shined a flashlight on it and it's got little colorful tentacles sticking out of one end. There is a big tube thing that breathes on one rock. It blends in till you see it breath and open and close it's little hole.

And besides critters, there are tons of different types of corals, sponges, barnacles, and just tons of color and life! I highly recommend anyone with a saltwater tank to at least get a few pounds of this rock to top off your tank and add some interest! Or add some to the fuge. Great stuff!

More pics to come!

 

[AnnetteG]

The BEST hitchhiker was a gorgeous coral pink rock/flower anemone!

I annoyed it a little today when I was trying to get that leaf off that was stuck up behind it. It reached around and tapped me and that is definitely a strange feeling! I won't fiddle with it again!

Here is what the tank looks like now:

The flash sortof hides it, but there is a branchy coral of some sort there. I also got that orange one you can see on the left and the orange one bottom left and up towards the right. Got to research these!

Household is falling apart without me! I'll be back later with more pics!

 

[Bnoble]

nice

 

[Coler]

great work !