Boxxr

At first I thought that it was something growing on them since I was only able to see their claws sine they were hiding under the rocks, but last night they were out in the open. They are completely black. I am doing a water change today and I will re-check my water parms before and after to see if anything is out of whack. I doubt it since everything else is doing very well. thanks davelin

I have about 5 emerald crabs in my 120. Two of them have changed color to black; while the others stay their normal green. Any idea why? I really don't care why, but I am curious.

Opps, that is a new one. Forget my comments as they do not apply to this new unit.

I had one in my aquapod 24g for awhile and it didn't work. I was constantly adjusting its position. It was either completely saturated or too dry to produce any bubbles. I ended up swapping it out with a CPR backpack that a friend of mine let me have. I would not recommend the skinner. Fortunately it was not that expensive.

Thanks; I will use your method and see if I can get it out of there.

I have a RBTA that is in the back of my 24G aquapod. He has mounted himself to the black plastic back there. I would like to remove him from that spot and get him into my 120G display tank. How do you remove an anemone without damaging the foot?

I removed my remaining fish from the main display tank 5 weeks ago after a outbreak of Ich. Those fish are doing well in their hospital tank, but I would like to return them to the main tank. The blond naso tank is really not too happy in such a small tank. What do you guys say? Is 5 weeks without any fish hosts in the infected tank long enough to rid it of the Ich organisms? I have read 4 weeks is about right, but I really don't want to go through this again. Should I wait until six weeks? What are your thoughts? Karl

I recently had velvet and/or Ich introduced into my main display tank. As I posted earlier, I lost several fish. Since then I have set up a 20g hospital tank and have dosed with copper. I was wondering what the general consensuses was on how long I should keep my fish in the hospital tank? In addition to the 120G display, I have another tank, that I can place the fish in while I am waiting six weeks for the velvet/ich cycle to conclude. I know that the fish are not happy in the 20, but I don't want to potentially introduce the problem into the 'clean' tank. The 4 remaining fish look great. All spots, cloudy eyes, etc has disappeared. And they are eating very well. Thanks, Karl

Vatbrew, I am sorry to hear about your fish. You are not alone. I am battling the same thing, but with the addition of velvet. I removed my remaining five fish into a hospital tank last night and treated with copper. I took about 2 hours to capture all of mine. Getting them out is the best option. It could be only a matter time before the other ones have it. My remaining fish already show signs of improvement.

First an update. All the remaining fish are in the 20g hospital tank that has been treated with Mardel Coppersafe. True to form, the six line took the longest to catch - over an hour. The fish are not as stressed as I thought they would be. We will see in the morning. I did find the Ebili Angel, but there wasn't much left of him to determine what killed him. I know that the Ich/velvet have about a 6 week cycle and I know that I need to leave the fish out of the infected tank for that time period. Howver, how long should I leave the copper in the hospital tank? I haven't seen anyting that talks that much about it. Don't want to over treat them if I don't need to. It's bad enough that the naso, which is about 6 inches lone, is in a 20G. So how do you plumb this in to the tank? I will read the pdf that James posted in the AM. I am beat and I still have to top off the display before going to bed. Thanks guys.

Folta - thanks for the reply. So far the Naso, Bicolor Angel, six line, and my three firefish are still okay. When I talked to Sean today at F & F his thoughts were I had more than one type of outbreak in the tank. The clowns appeared to have velvet from my description. But the powder blue look like it had ich. Maybe when I try and capture the remaining fish, I will find the remains of eibli angel. I have a 20G that I will be using as the hospital tank. I am making some more water as I type this so I can replace what I will be taking out of the main tank. I really hate to put the Naso in such a small tank. The algae, hmmm. Well it looks like I have multiple types of that too (figures that nothing would be easy). Well it appears that I have cyano (I know a bacteria not an algae) on the sand and some other areas. And there is short greenish (with a little brown) on the rocks. It was starting before the death of the fishes. I thought about putting some phosban in the area of my return, but since my phosphate was low, I decided against it. Maybe I still will do that. I don't know that much about UV sterilizers.

This has not been a good week. I lost my Powder Blue (who I think was the carrier), my 2 false percs that I had for some time, and my Ebili Angel. I haven't found my ebili but it was always active in the tank and I haven't seen him for about 3 days. I also think my Bi Color Angel and Blonde Naso tang are not doing well. Please do not berate me on the need for quarantine tank - the loss of 4 fish, and maybe more, is enough. I plan on setting up a hospital tank today, but I fear that it is too late for the current occupants. My 3 firefish and six line wrasse don't seem to be affected by it. In addition to that I am suffering from a algae outbreak that I cannot seem to get down. I set up blinds in the fish room to block the natural light that I have, my nitrates and phosphate are at 0. My skimmer is working well and has lots of skimmate. So my questions: - What size tank should I get for a Naso tang, bicolor Angel, and three firefish as a hospital tank? I plan on getting a copper based solution for them today. - What do I do with my display tank to get ride of that darn protozoan that has killed everything? Do I just not put anything in there for a month which should break the cycle of the Ich organism? - Any other ideas about the algae? I will include my chemistry numbers at the bottom. The most frustrating thing is my 24G aquapod looks great right next to my main tank. I have a royal gramma in there that has 'issues' with the six line. The gramma was easier to catch than the six line. I am so frustrated right now, I am inclined to give the fish away and tear the darn tank down and just keep the 24. All tests are using salifert Nitrite = 0 Nitrate = 0 Ammonia = 0 Ca = 380 KH = 9.9/3.54 Phos= 0 PH = 8.4 temp = 78.5 Thanks,

I have the Finnex 300W Deluxe Titanium, like dhoch recommended or at least provided the link. Granted I have not had it as long; three months. It has end caps that allow it to be placed horizontal without the metal touching anything. I have it sitting in my sump and it is has kept my 120 G between 78-80 degrees for the last three months. I really like it. Johnny (BRK) recommended it for my system when I was initialing setting the 120g up.

Thanks YB. I try to 'slip under the radar' when it comes to my birthday now. Oh, and to start off this birthday, I discover that both of my new tangs appear to have Ich. Great.

I agree with you on using a neighbor. But I was looking for something when I am at home. I have some strange work hours and I am attempting to get the fish on a schedule. I do like your idea of pre-filling containers since no matter how much education, folks that don't have fish tend to over feed them.

I am looking for an auto feeder. What do you folks have, and do you recommend one over another? Thanks,

As of December, no, it was not. I went to about a dozen places in Prince William, Fairfax, and Loudon County and all of them had silica based sand. I wanted the fine sand for my 120, but settled with the reef floor (?) argonite sand sold at many of the LFS.

I am using the Salifert KH/Alk test and when I made the original post; I had it wrong. Alkalinity in meg/L it should have read 3.43. When using KH in dKH; mine is 9.9. According to the enclosed directions; natural sea-water is 2.9 meg/l and 8dKH. So yes, mine is a little high. This area confuses me just a tad.

No I have purchased about 40 snails and about the same number of hermits. I think I will be getting some more snails soon. One thing of note; I read the readings wrong for my Alkalinity. I am actually a tad high on that. 9.2 is the actual number. Note to self: don't do readings late at night I moved the power heads to hit more of the sand and when I did my water change after posting this note, I did suck up as much as I could. I don't have a refugium at the moment. I intend to plump my 24G in to be my refugium, but I am having difficulties as to how I am going to do that. I think I just need to wait it out ...

I have brown algae, or maybe diatoms on the sand and I also have green algae or more accurately a color change to green on some of the broken edges of the live rock. The sand has really gotten browner over the last day or so. There is a lot of bubbles attached to the brown algae also. My few pieces of coral are not extending (my hammers and frogspawn). Well, my leather is extending its polyps. I have cut my lightint to about 5 hours the last two days, but the algae/diatoms return. The tank has been up for about 2 and

As of 5:30a she is okay. She was even swimming around the tank. I wanted to put her in a little tank, like Troll suggested, but I don't have one. I was not prepared to move anything into the new tank yet. I was hoping to start the move this weekend. I needed to do something last night and just placed him in the new tank. I looked for eggs last night before I posed the note, but forgot that piece from the note. I haven't seen anything looking like eggs. No not really. I got the yashia about a month after the clowns. I haven't even seen the pistol shimp. I know he's down under the rocks somewhere since I heard him last night. I did discover a rather large bristle worm though. I will keep my eyes on the yashia. Thanks for the help guys.

I have had my false percs since March of last year and have had 0 problems with them in my 24G nano. This evening, just after I feed them, my yashia goby comes out from under her rock. The female clown goes right after her and had the yashia in her mouth. I intervened, but then the male perc goes after her too. I manage to capture the yashia and have moved her to the new 120 that I am setting up. (I still don't have a light but not a big deal for the fish). She is certainly breathing hard and does not look well. The perc had her mid section just behind her gills. Is there something that can cause these normal clown fish to get aggressive? Now if it was my bicolor angel, I would understand. She has always picked on the yashia. I also am unable to get the yashia pistol shrimp. I will need to remove all the rocks out of the nano to get him out of there. Is that a problem? The yashia is my favorite fish and I would hate to loose her. Thanks

I was going to mention Super Pets. I haven't seen anyone that has that many large tanks displayed other than them.

The grain is not as big as I thought (which is a good thing). Too late to change my mind - tank is about 1/2 full.

I was there yesterday. gsedlack is correct. It is the silica based stuff. Says so right on the top of the bag :( I did find some sand at the HD in Manasass (the one closest to 66). It was labeled play sand. It was more brown than what I was looking for, however, it did not say that it was silica based. I didn't have my bottle of vinegar around to check. I almost bought some, but declined. I opted for CaribSea reef floor.