Reefer's Dreams

The new tank is working great for me right now, and the plate coral I have is still surviving, but only barely. all of the fish that I had before, became infected with velvet and ich, and every fish died, but now that the disease has subsided, I have repurchased a clown to get things going again. He isnt showing any signs of velvet or ich so that is good. Right now, I am getting a rather large green hair algea bloom again. I think the only reason I didnt have it before was the foxface was eating it as it grew before, and now that he is dead, it is growing out of control. Maybe the LFS will get some small foxfaces in so I can get it under control once again.

I am participating in the Rona Ms150 bike tour again this year for the 3rd year. I am lagging kinda behind in my goal of 1,000 dollars that i have set for myself, so any support would be greatly appreciated. you can PM me or here is a link to donate online.
Donate Online

It has been a long time since I have updated this site, I apologize. Since last post, I purchased a brand new 38gal tank to replace the 33gal that I had, due to old silicone. I changed it before it started leaking, and I might get it re-sealed, and start up another tank, Never know. I dont really have room for another tank. After switching everything to the new tank, I only lost a few snails and potentially maybe the plate coral that had detached from the rock it was growing on before. It looks really bad right now, but hopefully in a few more weeks it will start regrowing. Other than that, nothing much has changed in my tank.

I need to change the bulbs in my PC hood soon, and I should probably get some more rock in the tank to make it look better, but that isnt on my prioroty list right now, unless someone has some that is really cheap. If anyone has one, I am looking for a fluval 204 or 304 for the tank to replace the hang on filter that I have. I have heard that they work alot better than hang on filters.

Sice the last post, the Montipora have died for unknown reasons.  Think it might be my lighting.  I have also recently added a Foxface tang to the tank to get rid of the green hair algea.  Within about 1 week after adding the tang, all my green hair algea has dissappeared.  He has done the best job of all options I have tried previously, including yellow tang, lots of snails and crabs, and manual scrubbing of the rocks.  I never tried a sea hare, but I have heard that sea hares are hard to keep because once they dispose of the algea, they die quickly.  The foxface I have is supposed to be an algea only eater, however I have seen him eating mysis shrimp and other food I feed my other fish with, so I do not think that he will starve, which is good, because he will keep tabs on the algea. 
 
I am still trying to find someone to take one of the pieces of colt coral from my tank, since it is outgrowing my tank.  If I dont find someone soon, I'll just have to trim them back a bit and throw out the extra.   

My broter is one of my favorite resources for new and exciting coral. Right now, he is building a 100 gal propogation tank in his basement for all of his corals. While he was cleaning his main tank, a piece of montipora digitata broke off and he has no room for it right now, so he gave it to me. It was so big, it wouldn't fit in the bag we had, so we broke it into 3 pieces. here is a picture of the coral.

Montipora

Here are some new pictures of the tank. Also The Red Chocolate Chip Starfish I had started losing all of his arms the other day, just slowly disintegrating. Not sure why, but he died, so I tried to get all of his leftover body out of the tank. Other than that, everything is going great.
overall picture of tank

I talked to the LFS about protein skimmers, and after educating me on them, I decided to go with a prizm skimmer for my tank. It was the one that he recommended, and it was also the smallest one, and even it goes up to 100 gal tank. I would say the hardest thing about setting it up is the water/air control valve. I is very finicky. Just the tiniest turn of the nob changes the amount of bubbles quite a bit, so it takes a while to get it at its sweet spot. Hooked it up and I have been quite surprised at how much stuff it takes out of the water.

I also picked up a few more pieces of live rock, to help give me more room for my corals. I haven't got any new corals, but the ones I have are growing quite nicely. the 2 colt corals are getting pretty huge, and the 2 green star polyps are growing fast as well. Right now, I am trying to get the one green star to grown on the glass on the back of the tank. I have also been thinking that I might pick up some ricordia frags soon, not sure though. So If anyone has any ricordia, let me know.

Since my last post, the yellow tang has died on me from unknown causes. Within about a 2 hour period he went from perfectly fine swiming around, to on the bottom of the tank, not caring if I poked, or grabbed him with my hand. Very strange.

Since last post, some stuff has happened. the candy coral died, and I have picked up a few new things. I got a yellow tang <-, 3 blue cheeck gobies, and a red firefish<-. they are all doing well, and are all getting along. Other than that, the green coral I have had for a while, which I was not sure what it was, I believe to be elegence coral,<- at a very early stage. <-
The lettuce nudibranches <-are doing a great job at eating the excess algea in the tank. Im hoping that once finish the small algeas, they will move to the rather large clumps of green hair algea. Here is a picture of a nice featherduster<- that came with one of my live rocks.

Here are the pictures I took of the new tank setup. you can see the new coralife pc lighting on top of the aquarium as well. very nice lights, I must say.

new anemone
my colt, candy and xenia
frags of a mushroom and a carpet I think
frags and the green star polyps I have had for a while
overall pitucre of the tank

The 33 gal tank is doing extremely well. I have given up on the metal halide idea, as it was going to be too costly, and just too bright. So I was going to buy a ballast for new lighting with reg flourescent lights, but when I was at the LFS they showed me a set of power compact lighting setup that is 2X96 watt system. I got a great deal on it since it was a display, and it was only a display for less than a week (score)
I also picked up some more live rock, and a nice sized anenome for the clowns to live in. Hopefully this one will live longer than the last one. Still havent had a chance to take pictures, but hopefully soon. Just need to find the battery charger for the camera.

Since I have just moved, we decided that instead of having 2 small salt tanks, we should just have 1 large one, so I combined both of the small tanks into the 33gallon fresh tank I had going, and it looks great. Everything has survived so far, we will see over the next couple of days. The plate coral that I thought had died on me, has miraculously recovered and is growing strong again. The Colt coral is doing ok, but it is slowly dying, not sure why, but hoping that placing a MH light over the tank instead of a bunch of t8's will help alot. will post new pictures once I have a chance to unpack the camera and get everything going again.

Here is the latest update in aquarium news. The plate coral has died, probably due to the relocation of the rock and the amount of light it was getting. But since then, the Colt coral i got from my brother has split in half, and has grown about twice as big. the cleaner shrimp have mysteriously vanished, and I got another clownfish for the other one to play with, since he looked lonely. Also got a few frags of pulsing xenia, a blue mushroom, and a piece of bright green coral. not sure what kind it is, but ill find out. I have also started another miniature 5gal salt tank for in my computer room. took some of the live rock from the big tank and put it in there to help it cycle, and also put one of the frags of colt coral in there, as well as a peppermint shrimp. everything is going good in it so far, we will see how it does in the room. the lighting for the small 5 gal is 3 t5 flourescent lights 2 white and 1 actinic. I think i might get together with my friend and build a custom hood for that one as well, not sure yet. I will post some updateed pictures of the tank as soon as I have a chance.

I finally figured out what kind of coral is growing on that rock. It is a Plate Coral, just on a small scale. here is a picture of one on a much larger scale.<--

The Colt Coral is doing alot better now, and I think it might be attached to the rock finally, but im going to keep the rubber band on it for at least another month, maybe more, just to be sure.

Funny story for all of you that have seen Finding Nemo. We Bought the DvD the other day, and watched it at home for the very first time. Now You know the part where Nemo has to block the filter with the gravel to stop it from turning so they coudl escape? well the next morning I woke up and went to feed the fish in my tank and my goby was stuck in the intake tube of my filter, dead. so a warning to all, remeber to block the end of the intake tube with something if it isnt.

Now for something on a lighter note. I needed to pick up a couple of cleaner shrimp, so I went to the LFS and got 2, and while I was there, I noticed that they got starfish in. They werent overly expensive, so I decided to get one and see how he does. Here is a picture of him ->

Coraline algea is growing extremely well in my tank all of a sudden, all over my filter, powerhead and the rocks, mostly purple and red. Hopefully it will make some of the rocks look a little nicer.

It looks like the Green Star Polyps have attached to the rock, and I have taken the rubber band off of it, however the other 2 are still struggling, especially the colt coral.

I got my new digital camera, a canon SD-10. Awesome 4megapixel camera that takes great pictures especially up close. So here are some of the pictures I took of the new stuff in my tank
One of the new corals
The new zooanthid
Either pineapple coral, or a brain coral not sure which
Another view of pineapple coral
The new Zooanthid
A better picture of my older zooanthid
Not sure if this is another coral I got for foree from the live rock
The Green Star Polyp I got as well

My brother's reef tank is getting quite large now, and he is starting to cut the corals back to keep them at a desirable size. So he offered me some of the cuttings. He gave me a frag of Colt Coral, Green Star Polyp, and a frag of a Zooanthid. They are being secured to the live rock in my tank with rubber bands, and hopefully they will secure themselves to the rock quickly and grow so I can start fragging it as well. The Green Chromis that I bought also died, of unknown causes.

The green algea bloom has almost been completely removed, leaving only a few small patches left to deal with. I lost one of my shaving brush algeas, and the other one is slowly grwing back. Everything else seems to be doing great, especially my coral. Still not completely sure what kind of coral it is but I believe it is a pineapple coral which is supposedly quite rare

For the last week or so, I have had a hufe algea bloom. The first kind of algea was red slime algea, which was solved with a red slmie algea remover. I used the product and it was completely gone within 2 days. After that algea was gone, green hair algea started to appear in my tank and has almost completely covered everything in a very fine hair of green algea, even my coral has some on it. I have talked to the LFS about it, and they say to use a phosphate remover and a nitrate remover as that is what it uses to spread, as well as doing frequent water changes with R/O water, but im not sure I want to use that cuz that could get a bit expensive.

Since the anemone died, my clownfish has been using the larger shaing brush algea's for a bed, quite weird since they normally use anemones. oh well, it looks like he like it in there so no point in ruining it.

The anemone died today, of unknown causes. The clownfish wasnt using it as a host anyways so its not such a big deal, but i think im going to refrain from buying anything new for at least another 6 months, unless I need some crabs or snails.

Went to the local LFS and picked up a small frag of pulsing xenia for 10buks, and securly attached it to a rock using soft wax. hopefully it will propogate and get really big so i can start fraggin it myself.

Returned the Blue Damsel yesterday, and they didnt get any peppermint shrimp in their shipment, so I guess I'm out of luck. While I was there though, I noticed they got alot of new stuff in, including some shaving brush algea, which does a great job of cleaning the nitrates and phosphates out of your tank. So I got 2 of those instead of the shrimp.

The Torch Coral I bought died completely, and the coral on the live rock is still doing really well. I have absolutely no idea why that coral is doing so good but not the other one. I also went to the LFS and got some replacement snails,crabs,and I also got a Green Chromis. I forgot to pick up replacement peppermint shrimp, so I might go back tomorow to give them the damsel and get the shrimp.

Well, today I woke up to find both of my shrimps dead. My main suspect, the Blue Damsel. He is very territorial and I have seen him attacking the shrimps and the clown quite a few times. so I am almost sure it is him. I talked to the guy at the LFS about it, and he said he would take it off me for a store credit, which is awfully nice of him since they normally do not take salt fish back at all, because of the risk of disease. So I think I'll do that in the next couple days before someone else dies.

Went to the LFS today on my day off to see what they got in their shipment, and I noticed they got a couple of anemone, which would be good for my clown to live in. So I picked one out seeing the size of it in their tank, being about the same size as a closed fist, thinking that was the approximate size it would be. Got it home, put it in my tank, and turned the lights on. About 3 hours later, the anemone has at least tripled in size, almost overtaking the tank. I am not sure wether or not it is going to get any bigger, but it is freakin huge. The LFS sold it as a long tentacled anemone, so if anyone knows what it actually is called, please tell me. Here are a couple of pictures of it.
anemone
tank with anemone in it

It seems as though the stilts for the canopy are working very well, the only problem I could foresee is that the light now has a chance to escape before it has a chance to hit the aquarium. So I think we might put a panel of metal over the front, so there is more lighting going into the aquarium.

During this long heat wave we have been having, I have noticed that the temperature in the tank is getting way to high, especially when the lights are on. The heat from the tank was actually warping the plexiglass splash shield we installed, so we decided to raise the lights a bit more and place the canopy on some wooden legs. At the 2 front corners, we used a "L" shaped piece of wood and made corners for the canopy, so it wouldnt fall off the sides, and on each side towards the back of the tank another piece of wood like that to help hold it in place. Over the next couple of days, I will keep an eye on it and see if that helps any.

I went looking for an anenome at the LFS for my clownfish, but there were no good ones, but while I was there I noticed a really good price on a zooanthid rock, so I got that, and an emerald crab. I also forgot to mention that when I bought the peppermint shrimp before, that one of them was pregnant, and it has now released all its babies, so hopefully they will survive. here are some more pictures stuff in my tank.
new pic of growing coral
emerald crab
overall tank
overall tank1
urchin
zooanthid rock

The coral that I bought from the LFS is almost completely dead now, except for one branch which looks like it might make it through. However, the coral that I got with the piece of live rock that I was talking about earlier is doing extremely well. Before, when I just noticed it, the ribs of the coral were extremely white and looked exactly like the dead branches of the other coral. Now, the coral is more flesh colored, and the green arms of it have probably quadrupled in amount, and about doubled in size. I am now also manually feeding the coral so it will grow quicker. Today I fed it a whole piece of shrimp from the frozen food I bought. Hopefully if I keep fedding it manually, it will grow quick and will maybe replace the dying one. Tried taking a picture of it, but the camera wouldnt focus for me, so I will try again later.

Got a few really good pictures of that worm I have in one of my rocks. I still have not seen exactly how long he is, as the pictures I just posted show the longest I have him yet, and there was still more of him in the rock. I would venture top say that the worm is about 7-10 inches long.
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4
5

Do you know what kind of worm this is? is it a bristle worm?

This summer heat is sure stressin the fish. I got home from work today and the tank was at 87.3 so I quickly added some ice to a bag and put that into the tank to lower the temp. Got it down to 80.3, so that is much better.

I have absolutely no idea what this creature is. I got him with the same piece of live rock that has the coral on it. He is a very dark red, maybe even bordering on purple, and he has little light spots on the end of his antenna or whatever they are. He almost looks like a snail that has no shell. If anyone knows what this is please let me know.
pic of the animal
pic 2
pic 3
pic 4

please looks at all the pictures to get an understanding of what it is.

I have finally figured out how to add pictures to the site,so please check em out. I also added a counter to the site.

This is a Canadian site that sells coral frags, here are a few that I would like to get from them.


Hard Frags
Brown Acropora
Red Stylophora Pistillata
Pink Birdsnest
Pink Acropora

July 8
After talking to the people at the LFS about the problems with the coral, he suggested to test the calcium amount in the tank, and if it was low, add a calcium supplement. So I bought the calcium test ( btw I purchased the ph/alkalinity,ammonia,nitrate, and nitrite test already) and tested the water. The calcium level was at 300ppm and it should be 400-450 when there are corals in the tank. So I added what is called Aragmilk, which is a calcium buffer, and I will test the water again in a couple of days since it takes about 1-3 days for the calcium supplement to finally level out in the aquarium. I also purchased a digital thermometer for the tank because the ones that you just stick to the side of the tank are not very accurate at all. I compared the temperatures of 3 different types of thermometers. one was the floating type, and it was almost 4 degrees off the actual temp. the stick on kind was about 1-2 degrees off. So depending on how accurate you need to be, go for the digital one.This is my tank now

July 8
On one of the pieces of live rock that I purchased, I have noticed that there is a part on the rock that looks like someone ripped off a coral before the live rock was sold to me. it is round and has the same interior ribs that my piece of torch coral has. I think the coral is still alive because there are minute green arms growing all over where the coral use to be, and right in the middle of it, there looks to be like a mouth on it. And when I fed the fish tonite, the ripped coral captured a piece of food that was floating by and moved it to the mouth, and the mouth ate it. now my friend thinks its a dead piece of coral with algea or something growing on it, but since I saw it eat with my own eyes, I think im going to disbelieve him and hope that I got a free coral from the LFS :PHere it is

This is my brothers web site, and his battle with BRYOPSIS

BRYOPSIS BATTLE

Jul 06
here are a couple of sites that I have found while surfing that are very informative and have a great selection of products. A couple of people I know have purchased some stuff from JL aquatics and absolutly love the stuff they received, from live rock to fish.

Reef Central Online Community
About Saltwater Aquariums
Welcome - Aquarium supplies, Fish food, Saltwater aquarium fish and aquarium filters from JLAquatics.com

Jul 05
The torch coral I was talking about earlier is doing ok, not the greatest, but I think it will survive. there are 4 branches on the coral in total and 2 of them are thriving in the new lighting, and 2 of them are struggling, have absolutly no idea why, but im hoping that it will change now that the lighting is on a timer and everything can get used to a schedule. As for the polyps, almost all of them have died, except for a select few on the either end of the piece of rock it is on, however with the new lighting, I am seeing more of the blue sponge that makes more polyps growing quite rapidly, so hopefully they will make a full recovery. There are also some polyps on some of the live rock which seems to be doing great, even though it isn't directly in the light. Coral

Jul 01
While we were building the hood I purchased a nice flame scallop. I very interesting creature indeed. his lips light up with an electrical current in a pulsing manner, very cool to watch. Until one day, I woke up and he was all shriveled up and dead. I have absolutly no idea what killed him, probably either the no light for a couple of days, or there wasnt the proper type of food for him to eat. either way I scooped him out of his shell and kept the shell in the tank for the fish and other animals to play with.

Now that I have the new lighting installed and painted, I decided to go ahead and buy a few more things. I bought another piece of live rock nice and covered in growth, and lots of holes for stuff to live and grow. Also picked up a red urchin, and 2 peppermint shrimp, 10 Hermit crabs, and 10 turbo snails. So now I have a nice rounded aquarium and hopefully everything survives.

June 25
This project was quite complicated, so I will try to get into as much detail for you as possible for the people that want to do the same thing, instead of shelling out hundreds or sometimes thousands of dollars on a premade hood.

We started out with 1/4 inch poplar making the basic box shape to fit the tank snugly, with the back panel slightly higher than the rest of the box, as the box wont be covering the entire tank, because you need to leave room for the filter and the heater on the back. then, on the inside of the box you install a length of square wooden dowling, for the box to sit on the tank. then you need to put in about 2-3 pieces of larger lumber like a 1x2 for the ballasts. I went to home depot to pick up the ballasts, and the end caps, as well as a piece of 3/8 plexiglass to cover the tank, so that is anything happens to the lights accidently, the glass wont go into the tank. Next thing to do is get a piece of metal, the shinier the better, since you are putting that above the lights later on to reflect the light into the tank. now you want to bend the metal to the shapre of the box so it fits snugly but not too tight as it might warp the box you build as it did with mine at the beginning. if that happens, use some screws to hold the box together. after you have bent the metal to the right shape, you ned to cut notches out of the side of the metal for the end caps. here is a diagram of how to do that

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the x's are the part that you cut out
the 0 is where you place the screw when you install the end caps.
hopefully you get the basic idea here. there are notches in the end-caps for the metal to slide into, and you slide the end-cap into the slot, then when the ballast is in, you just place a screw at the back of the ballast so it cant move when it is installed.

Ok now that you are done bending and cutting the metal ( I forgot to mention that we used sheet metal for ours) you should install the metal into the wood box. make sure it fits correctly and install the end-caps into the slots. once you are done that, you need to install the ballasts. Now for me this was difficult, becuase i have absolutly zero expeerience in wiring anything, unless you count I.A. class in junior high experience :P so I got my friend to do that part, but basically you just follow the diagram on the top of the ballast and connect it appropriately. once you have that finished, you are basically ready to test the hood. It took us a couple of tries, because some of the end caps broke, so we had to take the back cardboard part of the endcap and fix it. it is very easy to do if your endcap isn't working. once you get everything working, all you have to do is paint it. I painted my hood black, since everything is for my aquarium is black. Now for the paint itself I would recommend a latex based paint since you want a water-resistant coat, if not waterproof. The only other thing I would like to mention is that if you do not want to use a plexiglass cover for your tank for whatever reason, make sure you use all waterproof items, especially the end-caps, and also make sure you buy the plastic sleeves for the lights themselves, because if for some reason your light decides to explode, you dont want the glass to go into the tank. I will try to post pictures for you so you can understand everything i have talked about.

The ballasts I purchased at Home Depot (model # RL-2SP20-TPC)
The metal cutout you need to make for the endcaps
another view of the metal cutouts
A clearer view of what I mean
These are the endcaps I purchased form Home Depot as well
another view of the encaps
This picture will give you a better understanding of what did with the actual hood, and how it is offset
This is a general overview of the lighting side of the hood
This is how the hood fits onto the back of the tank. you can also see the plexiglass I used as well
This is how the tank looks with the hood on
hopefully with these pics I have provided you will give a better idea of what I am talking about. I'm using 2 ocean sun bulbs and 2 actinic bulbs. Also in the "lighting" picture you can see a yellow piece of plastic. We used that plastic to cover the part of metal that was exposed so that we wouldnt get cut by it. The square dowling that you install will cover the other side of the metal, so don't worry about that.

June 25
Hi there everyone. I thought I would post this blog to share my experiences with setting up a 10 gallon salt water aqarium. I purchased a brand new tank for the setup since i only had a tiny 5gal or my huge 33gal, which are both being used for a freshwater tanks. After buying the hardware and getting everything set up for the tank, I took a trip to the LFS and purchased some fine aragonite sand, and a friend of my gave me 2 small pieces of live rock.

talking with my friend who gave me the live rock, he told me that the cycling process will probably take about 1-2 weeks at most. so i waited patiently, seeing what kind of life I got on the rock. the rock was covered in little tiny white brittle stars, probly about 15 of em.

After about a week, there was still no signs of even the beginning of the cycling, so i decided to add a little bit of bio-zyme to the water to help it get started. Also I went to the LFS and picked up a few fish and a piece of new live rock as well. I got a blue damsel, a goby, and a clownfish. The live rock I got was covered in what looks like red and green growth all over it. there are also plant looking things as well, but they only have 1 "leaf" and they are very short baout 1/8" long. After putting everything into my tank, I noticed I had a really cool looking worm in the new piece of live rock. it is approximatly 4-5 inches long, green, and has was looks like legs, but they are more like tiny pipe cleaners, very fine and fuzzy. he is really cool, and after some looking all i could find on it is a picture on a site. and now the picture has been replaced by a fish. If anyone knows what it is, message me.
this is the worm im talking about except mine is blue/grey

Another week and a half has gone by and still no signs of the cycling being started. now this is really weird because almost everyone I have talked to has said within a 2 week period. so I am starting to think this cycle isnt going to happen. so I decide to add a little bit of bio-zyme to help kick start the cycle process. And since it still hadnt started, I thought it might be safe to get a tiny bit of pollups and a piece of torch coral and see how they do. So I went to the LFS and got a small piece of star pollups and the coral and put that into my tank.
My tank in the beginning

At this point in the tank, there is a tiny bit of algea growing on the back panel of glass and bit on my powerhead. so it has finally started. Now my friend says that the light fixture that came with the tank probably wont be enough for the tank, so we decide to custom build a lighting hood.