Tank Journal Archive

[dimitri]

So the 350 had an up and down week.

• my flame hawk went floorboard surfing and that was a gigantic bummer, he was looking so good and tubby, got home and found him on the floor, that is the 3rd jumper and the only fish lost have been because of this... as of next week I am getting a lid made from a carpenter friend, really ******* over it.

• out of sheer frustration I then went on a shopping spree at the LFS.

• 1 Royal Gramma - settling well, found himself a perch in the rocks, eating well, yellow coral goby chases him away if he gets to close to his leather coral perch

• 1 twin spotted goby - started sifting right away and accepting food, although I do have to turkey baste it and let if float right past him on the sand, he does reach out and grab it

• 1 ruby red dragonnette (this one was bought with a lot of hesitation) the shop had 3 of them and I know from research they are very tricky to get eating - the only reason I did pick him up was because the tank at 5months has had another enormous C'pod Breakout they are all over the glass and I am not cleaning them off with the scraper - the 2spot goby has been picking a few of them off however the mandarin has not, and he is letting prep food go right past his nose as well - tried live worms yesterday to try and prompt him, no luck - I think if he isn't eating in a couple of more days I will take him back.

• 2 new gonies, one blue and one green/blue went into the goni garden

• 1 new fungai white plate

• 1 new white leather finger coral
• 
  
• found a small Chiton Cruising around, originally I thought it was a bit of the LR until i noticed it was actually moving... and I think i found an abalone, albeit really small, as in 4mm x 1mm, it wasn't easy to photo so I didn't bother and now it's vanished from the glass.

• I've changed the feeding the last 2 days, I am being much more aggressive with type, variety and frequency - one reason is to try get the new fish and corals to eat more, as well as the ref and white finger sponge after the other users post and the links given, he seems to be responding to it, great colouration all polyps open, the other is to test the phosphates every day and make sure the reactor is working, food feeding types at bottom of post.

• One of the clams isn't opening up today, not sure what it could be.

Anyway on to zee testing

Seneye: ammonia 0.006
Seneye: PH 8.09 (the start point and end point has been slowly dropping over the last 4 days, the hunch was due to the phosphate reactor doing its thaaang)
Seneye: temp 25.8c

NYOS test kits

Nitrate 8 this went up to 20 earlier in the week and has now come back down, I did fiddle with the Hydra setup a bit so that might have messed with it, going to keep monitoring it to see if it stays a little bit elevated, it shouldn't but I wont be unhappy if it does.

Phos 0.4 down from 1.0 a week or two again
Mag 1230 low
Calc 360 low
dKH 5 low

Salifert test kits
Cal 385
Stront 0.8 ??? off the charts low
iodine 0.03

time to start dosing by the looks of those numbers or the corals will start having issues.

how long between each element do people wait? the container says minimum 30mins but preferably 24hrs.

Food going into the tank: I mix the following into a cup in the morning and then feed sporadically throughout the day.

Ocean Nutrition fish eggs & red plankton
Hikari baby brine
Hikari spirilina mysis
Ocean Free cyclopodi sp (this might be why I have pods again? DUH just read the name properly, but didn't realise they are alive in the can)
Ocean Free Artemia brine shrimp

Continuum Garlic Juice 4 drops

Reef roids every 4 days
2LF Maine Snow every 2 days

 

[daveH]

Wow . . That's quite the depression buying spree.
That certainly is a sad lose of your flame hawk, they are such characters.
Hope your dragonette starts eating soon, I know the pain of losing one through starvation.

 

[daveH]

Oh, and the hangover problem - don't stop drinking, that's when you get hangovers.

 

[potatocouch]

My red ruby dragonet went dry meat. It jumped. I don't know how but it did. Too late to save it. At first, was looking everywhere and finally found it few days later. No chance of revival.

 

[dimitri]

Dragonnett eating! picking at pods and frozen on the sand that drifts past.

happy days