Tank Journal Archive

[jart]

Hello Everyone,

After a flurry of early activity in my tank journal I have been silent for almost 30 weeks!

My digital absence has been the result of a fish loss that hurt, a crazy busy end to my working year last year, plus being away on holidays, followed by a crazy busy start to the year!

Fish Loss
* sometime towards the end of last year, a few weeks after my last update, my beautiful royal gramma went missing. First place I checked - on the floor - not there. Nowhere visible in the tank, pulled apart the plumbing, checked sump and overflow - nada. A few days later dismantled my rock structure and looked under everything - nowhere to be seen. It is still a mystery what happened to her, but I was gutted for a couple of weeks and didn't feel like posting about it.

Extended Holiday
* we were away for almost 5 weeks in the middle of summer. Tank did pretty well. No water changes other than RODI topup in that time, no cleaning of the skimmer (had it set for a dry skim and cup was about 1/3 full, though neck sludge was VERY thick and stinky!). A little hazing of algae on one glass panel, slightly elevated levels in testing, but nothing alarming. All in all I was pleased. Think the nuking of all the LR prior to starting, the agonising 3+ month wait for it to cycle properly and the relatively low fish load are paying off.

* A friend and aunt tag teamed to come and feed at least every second day and top up the RODI water reservoir.

* Happy to report that all fish, my CBS and CUC survived our time away.

* Regrettably the corals weren't so lucky. Two frags of zoas were overturned by those pesky tangs (I am guessing) and apparently being upside down in the dark is not good for them. My long term favourite coral, a green cushion coral, was also a casualty - not extending when we came back and a few days later let go of its rock and floated away. And the last head on my hammer coral was nowhere to be seen. The couple of morphs I have and some palys were the only survivors.

* So for now I am running as essentially a FOWLR until I sort out a few other minor things and get some spare time.

Things I have learned/observed since the last update:
* would struggle with the tank without the ATO - highly recommend one on any size tank

* really need to get those 120 degree reflectors for my RAZR light before restock any of the corals

* fuge is starting to get humming again with a visible pod population once more and quite a few small snails that have been born and survived

* I do not run any filter socks (decision made early on partly so that my fish sitters wouldn't have to worry about any maintenance), so thinking of putting a new partition in my sump and moving the chamber that my skimmer is in. Want to experiment with a dedicated settling area now that I have 9+ months of experience with this tank's setup. Have been reading up on settling tanks and swirl separators. Happy for anyone with experience to chime in with things that worked for you.

Pics will come once I get some time.

Take care, J

 

[slin1977]

Good to hear from you.:poidh

 

[MagicJ]

Thanks for the update.

With any reasonable clean up crew any dead fish are quickly consumed, especially at night time - it's always sad to loose a fish but sometimes it just happens.

Isn't a 'settling area' in the sump going to be a pain to clean out on a regular basis? I would have thought that cleaning out some filter socks would have been easier.

 

[jart]

Thanks for the update.

With any reasonable clean up crew any dead fish are quickly consumed, especially at night time - it's always sad to loose a fish but sometimes it just happens.

Isn't a 'settling area' in the sump going to be a pain to clean out on a regular basis? I would have thought that cleaning out some filter socks would have been easier.

Hi MJ,

I am not sure whether my CUC would be deemed "reasonable" - it consists of 1 CBS, 1 Trochus snail (who stays 100% of the time grazing on the large table rock where I first sat him months ago), 4 medium nassarius snails, and that's it. :)

My system/sump, in its current config, has three "natural" settling areas.

* the overflow in the back corner of the DT collects about 30% of the detritus. Once or twice a week I just stir it up and open up a valve in the bottom of the overflow and 90% of what is in there gets easily sucked out.

* Minor amount of detritus collects over time around the base of the marine pure block I have my skimmer sitting on top of in the first chamber. I vacuum this chamber about once every 6-8 weeks.

* Most of the detritus collects in the second chamber which is currently used as a fuge (roughly 30 x 60cm chamber). I vacuum this chamber about once every 4 weeks. Fairly low flow in this chamber, that results in the settling effect, also means that my detritus is not constantly pummelled by flow (as it would be if I ran a filter sock) so I think (and I could be wrong) that the detritus is not being mechanically broken down as fast.

Now that my holiday is over I am not completely against running socks and changing regularly, but I want to try a different settling area idea first. Will try to keep the journal better updated in future.