Since Hurricane Sandy wiped out my 4 tanks in 2012 (please see my other post),
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?570679-Leaking-eheim-2026-amp-2028
I thought I'd share what I've been doing now that I've recently decided to get back in it again, and what I'm doing differently this time around.
My old set up was a school of 3-4 beautiful monos, a school of 3-4 Columbian sharks (black-fin silver sharks), 1 of which was 12 years old before Sandy get her, and a solitary jade goby. Years before that, I had a school of mixed scats instead of the monos. The silvers were beautiful; the red looked great as a juvenile, but became a dull brown within a year or two; the green, interestingly, started with clear fins and tail, but they gradually were overtaken by the color and spots of the body. I know all these guys can get big - the one old shark was a foot long - but otherwise their size stayed reasonable. Both groupings worked great and lasted a long time. So what now?
I'm going with scats, simply because it's been a while, and they have more personality and visual variety than monos.
One annoying problem that I had with the old tank was algae. A lot of it. The back of the tank was especially tough to keep clean. I had previously investigated using Olive Nerites, bought a bunch for my 10 gal quarantine tank, but then the storm hit before I could move them up to the 75 gal.
A word on water conditions: both tanks have a crushed coral substrate, so the pH is around 8.3 with no other effort needed; I keep the 10 gal SG at 1.004, so when I get livestock from the LFS which is usually kept at a SG of 1.000, I only have to acclimate them a little bit over a couple of hours. After a few weeks in the quarantine tank, if all goes well, I move them up to the 75 gal, which I'm keeping at an SG of 1.008, so I can acclimate them the next step up in SG. After I have all the fish I want in the big tank, I'll bring the SG up to 1.010-1.012, about half of full marine. I also add some Kent SuperBuffer dKH to stabilize the pH. I try to have the KH around 12.
My 10 gal was always up and running during and after the storm with 1 indestructible molly, keeping the biological cycle intact. After getting all the filters, gravel and water all tuned up, my first purchase was a nice red scat. After a few weeks of his torturing the molly, the molly finally gave out.
Then I ordered 20 olive nerites from:
http://www.bobstropicalplants.com/shop/en/snails/74-olive-neirite.html
I used regular shipping with a 72 hour heating pack. I only lost 1 or 2 over the next few weeks. They scoured the tank of algae in just 3 days! After that, I would periodically add a few slices of zucchini that I nuked in some water for 2 minutes. The scat ate a lot of it, but the snails chomped on the zucchini happily. I tried blanched spinach, but the scat devoured that too quickly. Then I added 3 small sharks, but 1 died the next day, and another a week later. A note on food: both scats and sharks need plenty of veggies. I use sinking pellets, and when they get bigger, spirulina disc that I break up into smaller pieces.
To get the 75 ready, I stripped it down, cleaned (but kept) all the filter media, including the blue coarse filter, replaced the disposable fine filter, and I put one of the dirty, good-bacteria-filled hob filter pads from the 10 gal into one of the Eheims to seed the tank with good bacteria. I also added a bottle of Quick start, just for good measure. I didn't scrub the algae off the glass and filter pipes completely - I wanted to leave something for the snails. After letting the tank run for a couple of weeks, I moved half the snails, then a week later the scat and shark, into the 75. The snails have been doing a fantastic job. Caked-on algae that I couldn't budge with a scrubber pad is now all gone. I moved another 5 snails from the 10 gal to keep up with new algae. I think I have a good equilibrium between creating new algae with adequate lighting (it's on a timer, on from 2-11 pm) and having the snails keep up. I use a magnet cleaner on the front glass occasionally. The gravel, plumbing and rocks look great. I think my piece of brain coral has too many nooks and crannies to stay looking good. We'll see how that goes. The scat looks fantastic, and is actually pretty silvery with polka-dots and patches of red. Only when he gets stressed when I move things around for gravel cleaning does he turn brown. He ate dried tubifex out of my hand in the 10 gal, but not yet in the 75.
My next purchase was 3 healthier-looking sharks from a more reliable store. They're looking very happy these past 2 weeks in the 10 gal, and I'll move them up to the 75 very soon. As I see fish I want, I'll keep repeating these steps. This prevents introducing any disease into the big tank, and also prevents any sudden increases in the bioload of either tank.
My next steps are the remaining scats (they need a school to be happy), and the jade goby (only 1 per tank). That'll be it for the 75. For the 10, I might get a few chromides and a high-fin knight goby. They'll stay small.
I'll keep you posted on my project. It feels great to get this moving again.
http://www.monsterfishkeepers.com/forums/showthread.php?570679-Leaking-eheim-2026-amp-2028
I thought I'd share what I've been doing now that I've recently decided to get back in it again, and what I'm doing differently this time around.
My old set up was a school of 3-4 beautiful monos, a school of 3-4 Columbian sharks (black-fin silver sharks), 1 of which was 12 years old before Sandy get her, and a solitary jade goby. Years before that, I had a school of mixed scats instead of the monos. The silvers were beautiful; the red looked great as a juvenile, but became a dull brown within a year or two; the green, interestingly, started with clear fins and tail, but they gradually were overtaken by the color and spots of the body. I know all these guys can get big - the one old shark was a foot long - but otherwise their size stayed reasonable. Both groupings worked great and lasted a long time. So what now?
I'm going with scats, simply because it's been a while, and they have more personality and visual variety than monos.
One annoying problem that I had with the old tank was algae. A lot of it. The back of the tank was especially tough to keep clean. I had previously investigated using Olive Nerites, bought a bunch for my 10 gal quarantine tank, but then the storm hit before I could move them up to the 75 gal.
A word on water conditions: both tanks have a crushed coral substrate, so the pH is around 8.3 with no other effort needed; I keep the 10 gal SG at 1.004, so when I get livestock from the LFS which is usually kept at a SG of 1.000, I only have to acclimate them a little bit over a couple of hours. After a few weeks in the quarantine tank, if all goes well, I move them up to the 75 gal, which I'm keeping at an SG of 1.008, so I can acclimate them the next step up in SG. After I have all the fish I want in the big tank, I'll bring the SG up to 1.010-1.012, about half of full marine. I also add some Kent SuperBuffer dKH to stabilize the pH. I try to have the KH around 12.
My 10 gal was always up and running during and after the storm with 1 indestructible molly, keeping the biological cycle intact. After getting all the filters, gravel and water all tuned up, my first purchase was a nice red scat. After a few weeks of his torturing the molly, the molly finally gave out.
Then I ordered 20 olive nerites from:
http://www.bobstropicalplants.com/shop/en/snails/74-olive-neirite.html
I used regular shipping with a 72 hour heating pack. I only lost 1 or 2 over the next few weeks. They scoured the tank of algae in just 3 days! After that, I would periodically add a few slices of zucchini that I nuked in some water for 2 minutes. The scat ate a lot of it, but the snails chomped on the zucchini happily. I tried blanched spinach, but the scat devoured that too quickly. Then I added 3 small sharks, but 1 died the next day, and another a week later. A note on food: both scats and sharks need plenty of veggies. I use sinking pellets, and when they get bigger, spirulina disc that I break up into smaller pieces.
To get the 75 ready, I stripped it down, cleaned (but kept) all the filter media, including the blue coarse filter, replaced the disposable fine filter, and I put one of the dirty, good-bacteria-filled hob filter pads from the 10 gal into one of the Eheims to seed the tank with good bacteria. I also added a bottle of Quick start, just for good measure. I didn't scrub the algae off the glass and filter pipes completely - I wanted to leave something for the snails. After letting the tank run for a couple of weeks, I moved half the snails, then a week later the scat and shark, into the 75. The snails have been doing a fantastic job. Caked-on algae that I couldn't budge with a scrubber pad is now all gone. I moved another 5 snails from the 10 gal to keep up with new algae. I think I have a good equilibrium between creating new algae with adequate lighting (it's on a timer, on from 2-11 pm) and having the snails keep up. I use a magnet cleaner on the front glass occasionally. The gravel, plumbing and rocks look great. I think my piece of brain coral has too many nooks and crannies to stay looking good. We'll see how that goes. The scat looks fantastic, and is actually pretty silvery with polka-dots and patches of red. Only when he gets stressed when I move things around for gravel cleaning does he turn brown. He ate dried tubifex out of my hand in the 10 gal, but not yet in the 75.
My next purchase was 3 healthier-looking sharks from a more reliable store. They're looking very happy these past 2 weeks in the 10 gal, and I'll move them up to the 75 very soon. As I see fish I want, I'll keep repeating these steps. This prevents introducing any disease into the big tank, and also prevents any sudden increases in the bioload of either tank.
My next steps are the remaining scats (they need a school to be happy), and the jade goby (only 1 per tank). That'll be it for the 75. For the 10, I might get a few chromides and a high-fin knight goby. They'll stay small.
I'll keep you posted on my project. It feels great to get this moving again.
