trble81

Oh, ok, well that's good then.

OK so that's a no to the Flame Angel, which really isn't a surprise to me. As for the jumpers, we have a hood on the tank so I don't think that they would be going anywhere. Good to know about the Purple Firefish and the Royal Gramma. I didn't think about that.

OK, so here are the fish I would like to have. I know that I can not have them all, but if you could give an opinion as to whether they would be a good choice or what order to get them in, it would be much appriciated. Hopefully, we will be getting our first fishies this weekend at the Scales open house! The List: False Perc (I really want a pair) Smith's Fang Blenny Striped Fang Blenny Goldtail Demoiselle (also would like a pair) Lubbock's Fairy Wrasse Longfinned Fairy Wrasse Carpenter's Flasher Wrasse Yellow Clown Goby Wheeler's Shrimp Goby Spinecheek Goby Purple Firefish Royal Gramma Flame Angel Again, I know we can't have all of those, but they are the ones I would like to chose from. Our book said that they are all pretty docile (except the angel), but they are all OK to put in under 40gallons. Any opinions/experience about the list are welcome. Thanks, Heather

We have ~ 40 lbs of live rock in the tank. About 23 lbs of it came from a fellow WAMAS member's tank. That LR is about a year old and is nice and purple. We have pics in the member gallery that we took after setting up the rock. The rock has been in the tank for a hair over 3 weeks and and I haven't seen any Ammonia and the Nitrites and Nitrates are in check (I'll see if that's still true when I test everything again in a day). The polyps that were hitching a ride to our house are still enjoying life, new ones are coming out, I see little worms hanging out on the rock and making their little white tubes and sticking out their little white feathers, and we got a few little starfish that entertain us by just hanging out. We have posed the question of whether or not we would see a classic "cycle" in the tank, and generally people said with well established LR that we drove and got from someone's house, we may see mini cycles happen or none at all; but the main point was to allow it go through the process of "cycling" for 2-4 weeks anyway before adding fish. We were reading about the false Percs in our reference book that we picked up the other day and we were thinking of getting those to start (because of them being hardier than the true ones and they hopefully will be easier to feed if we can find tank bred ones). -Mike

As a reminder from our other posts, we have a 35g hex tank. We were hoping to get a couple clowns when we go to the open house at Scales this Sunday. We know we can't keep any large fish and everyone has said not to add damsels first since they won't let anyone else move in afterwards. Are clowns ok as our first move-ins? ~Heather

OK, so I know we won't put any LFS water in our tank. I think that has been made pretty clear. Is there any certain rule as to how many fish at one time? We have no fish in our tank now. Just live rock/sand and some starfish that hitchhiked with the LR. Can we get two fish at once the first time or should we only get one? Thanks, Heather

Hello All, It sounds like people had fun during the Winter Meeting. My wife and I were unable to attend but we plan on coming to the Scales TFW social thingy on the 28th. We hope to meet the nice folks who have been helping us out with our questions and check out some fish at the same time. Any way, back to the topic. I like being prepared. Now, when we had tropical freshwater fish, we used to float the bag for like 15 min, add some tank water, wait some more, etc, etc. I've seen on the forums that that method is crap and one should do something called "drip acclimating". My wife and I are not in the business of freaking out our new fish so bad that they hop out of the tank, cursing our names. So what we want to know is what is the best method to do? I ask that you please describe what exactly is the drip method, if you suggest it, and how to do it. We've been looking at some of the tanks online and all of the electrical work and plumbing that goes into them. FYI, totally can't do that. So if you think your description is too "simplistic", it's probably good for us. Again, we don't want to botch things up. Thanks very much! --Mike

Just as an FYI...our SG did change after ~24 hours so when you dilute or add salt, give it time to really mix in because it could affect the level enough to change what you were going to do next (either add more water or salt). Oh yeah...I'm not trying to talk down or anything but remember that salt doesn't evaporate so watch that water level to maintain the SG. We keep our house a little cooler than probably most people do (which is a result of us coming from the Buffalo area) so the temp difference between our tank and our air temp probably increases our evap rate so I watch the level like a hawk.

That looks great! I can only hope that we have a tank that looks that nice someday. ~Heather

We've got a 36 gallon hex and we use a Cascade canister filter (which is cheap and works pretty well for us), live sand, ~40 lbs of nice and "purple-y" LR, and protein skimmer. If you get nice LR from someone on the forum, you'll be better off because it'll be pretty established and will help you start off on the right foot.

Yeah, so we came home today and looked at the tank and were all like, "ooh, there's the starfish again...hello little squishy!!" And then we were all like, "hey there's another one...and look.....there's another one..." We may not have any fish just yet but we've got a starfish farm going on in here. I'd take pictures and add it to the gallery but I've got this feeling that I would have a snowball's chance in H-E-double hocky sticks that I'd be able to get a picture that actually looked like what I wanted it to.

We are trying to do the research, just hoping for ideas on good resorces to use. Feel free to be specific . Remember, we don't know very much. Thanks, Heather

OK so another question for everyone. We are starting to put together what fish we would like to put in the tank (when we are able to). I know that we should look at clowns, blennies, gobies and damsels. Are there any other suggestions on types to look for? (keep in mind it is a 35g hex tank) Also, are there any good web sites for finding pictures of different fish? It's one thing to say we can keep a goby, but to be able to see what the different type gobies there are would be great. Thanks, Heather

An update: I guess our protein skimmer just needed to be turned off for a bit. When I got home from work I plugged it back in and adjusted the air intake and it started working just fine. So, I guess it just needed more air to be let in to it. At least now we know for next time what to look at first. Thanks for the advice! ~Heather

Welcome! Having just joined in December, I know my husband and I have found the people on WAMAS and the help they have provided us invaluable. Hope you find the same! ~Heather

We will have to check on the airline when we get home from work today. We thought that it might be clogged and that was causing the problem. We didn't have it open very far because it was just blowing a lot of micro bubbles into the tank before we got the rest of our LR in the tank. I guess it is doing what it is supposed to now and we should turn it up. ~Heather

So I walk down this morning and notice that my protein skimmer isn't working as it should. We have a visi-jet skimmer and by "not working" I mean there are no bubbles in the tube and air is not mixing in the flow chamber thing. Water is still moving through the unit. Any ideas?

We have had a good trip to Scales in Silver Spring/Cloverly. They just expanded on the inside and they have a lot of nice looking, clean tanks and the staff is really friendly. Andrew, one of the owners, helped us out and he posts on WAMAS as AndrewB. If you don't mind taking a drive on the weekend, it's worth checking it out. There are some pics in the gallery (I think members gallery...not too sure) if you want to check them out and there's a WAMAS members after hours thingy coming up soon (I think it's next week but the date is on the home page for sure)

I just checked...our canister filter (cascade) is rated at 115 gallons per hour and it came with a "custom flow kit" of sorts which included a pole with holes in it that we set up that it would hit the glass and have water flow around the tank back to the filter intake. Our protein skimmer is right next to the out-put so all that happy oxygenated water gets pushed around the tank. As my wife said, we were looking at power heads but we were told that it would be unnecessary for our size tank, especially because we were only doing a fish only, live rock tank.

Well sure, that makes sense.

Where is Congressional Aquarium?

We have a pole coming out of our visijet filter return that has like 10 holes in it that pushes the water around the whole tank. We were told that we don't really need any powerheads because our tank isn't that big. I think anything stronger and we would have a whirlpool starting.

It has a pretty steady flow going in a circular motion around the tank. I am not sure how to quantify the speed or anything, but all of the water is moving all the time.

Just wanted to post some pics of our tank to show folks the live rock we had going on in there. It's in the member albums but here's the url: http://www.wamas.org/forums/index.php?act=...m&album=126