Matt LeBaron

A month in now but I churned through two full sets of blades until I built covers to keep the small snails out. Excellent performance but the design needs a bit of work.

Me not wanting to keep the tank setup in my workshop using power when I don't need it will though. Do people keep quarentine tanks up 24/7/365 normally? i'm a bit confused on the insistence of keeping a cycled quarentine tank ready to go when there are some medications out there that will wipe out all of the bacteria the first time you use it, not to mention that I bleach the tank after every use to make sure no pathogens get passed on.

I just do water changes to keep the ammonia down when I'm using the tank as a quarantine or hospital tank, at 10G it's small enough for that to be easy and I don't even fill it all the way up. The tank gets torn down when it's not in use and it has seen so many varieties of medication over the course of it's 7+ year life that it would be a waste of rock to keep putting in new rock only to have to toss it once some type of nasty medication was used on the tank. I just keep it around for emergency purposes for the most part. The last fish I got were two seahorses about 2 years ago so it hasn't been setup since then because I haven't had any sick fish during that period either. I only set it back up now because I am getting some new live stock since my 90G has some room now.

So emptied it, cleaned it out again and set it back up. Kept the door to my fish room closed and so far ammonia is staying at 0. So maybe the cats were using it for a litter box but the whole thing was really odd because of the low level, if the cat was peeing in it I would expect a higher level of ammonia. This may just remain a mystery honestly... Gmerek2: I'm on well water but I did test the newly mixed salt water I used for the tank and it was fine. Sen5241b: The tank is a quarentine tank so it will likely never cycle since I don't keep any sand or rock in it and I normally tear it down unless I need it. Just some plastic plants to make the fish feel like they have some protection. I just have it set up now because I'm doing a bit of restocking in my 90G after my seahorses moved into their new home in the 29G cube I set up for them.

I tested the water in my mixing station. The cat thing is a possibility though. Maybe try cleaning the tank out again and keeping the door to my fiah room closed.

So my quarantine tank has a constant low ammonia level for a reason I cannot identify so thought I'd let all the smart people here take a stab at the mystery. Background: 10 gallon tank last used for some Chromis that had uronema/brooklynella, treated with anti bacterials (neoplex) at first and then with metronidazole. Lost half of the Chromis but two made it into the DT after three healthy weeks. Emptied the 10 gallon filled it with fresh water and a bit of bleach and then let it run for a day or two with all equipment. Emptied it again refilled with fresh water and added water conditioner to absorb any bleach still there. Let it run for another couple of days. Emptied it again and set it back up with just the heater and a new HOB filter. Nothing else besides those two items. This is when I got one of those ammonia alert tabs that hang in the tank. It immediately turned green when I put it in, which means 0.02 free ammonia or .25 mg/l. This confused me so I put the tab in both my DT and mixing station and it reported no ammonia in either. So drained the 10G to about 1/2 inch water and refilled it from my mixing station. Let the tab sit and it still reported the same 0.02 free ammonia. So the only two things in the tank right now are an aqueon HOB filter and an old Rena heater but ammonia is coming from some where. I also picked up a normal ammonia test and it just about agrees with the tab but the level of ammonia is so low it's tough to know for sure but I think the test is reporting more than 0. So any ideas where the ammonia is coming from?

Welcome to the club. Always a used tank or three floating around for sale.

So bought a 150 gyre for use on my 90G tank. The timing ended up working well when it arrived on Wednesday. I was doing some tank maintenance that evening when I noticed that my MP40 wasn't running. I pulled the wetside to check it out and found a snail sitting in the cage, it was apparently large enough to mess it up, so I pulled the snail, tried again but no go. Closer inspection of the wetside showed that it's likely done, it looks like it may have bent something, I'll have to disassemble it to really know. But since I had the new 150 Gyre, I grabbed it and installed it on my tank. The flow is amazing, at 60% is was moving a bunch of my sand bed around at the other side of the tank. Could not have been happier with it, until this morning. Went down and checked my tank out real quick and the Gyre sounded terrible. Turned it off and took it apart to figure out why it was making so much noise now because it was silent after I initially installed it. I found one dwarf cerith stuck between two blades on one side and a missing blade on the other, that I have to assume was because of another cerith. Reassembled it and it began running just as well as before, even with the one missing blade. So I think this weekend I'm going to have to glue some of the mesh covering I used to use with my MP40 over the intake vents for the gyre to prevent snails from making it inside. I have somewhere around 60 of those dwarf ceriths in my tank so I can't get rid of them all. I'll post again once I hopefully snail proof the gyre with how it performs after but I'm a bit unhappy about this obvious design flaw. I read in several places how people have had this happen but my gyre hadn't been running for more than 2 days before it happened to me.

Leaning towards a wrasse right now just because of the size of my tank. I would love a foxface or yellow tang but my tank at 90G is right on the edge for keeping those fish and I'd be a bit concerned about their long term health. I'm going to do some more research and reading on that though. God forbid the Tang police show up at my door. Assuming I believe I can keep them happy and healthy the choice may fall to my daughter and wife though. As for an Angel fish, I think they require a larger tank than my 90G don't they? Kind of fun to be doing research on fish again after so many years with the seahorses limiting my choices.

Good suggestions, I hadn't considered a foxface since I assumed they would need a larger tank but it appears that a One Spot Foxface (Siganus unimaculatus) may work as it is a bit smaller. I have small hermits but wouldn't be heart broken if a few got eaten, so a melanarus may be a possibility. Thanks folks, keep the suggestions coming if there are any that have not been mentioned yet.

So I recently bought a 29G biocube that my seahorses and firefish got moved into freeing up space in my 90G. In the past I was limited in my choices for tank mates due to the seahorses but now that they are gone my only limitation now is something that won't chow down on my SPS. Right now I have a pair of gobies, 3 pajama cardinals, one dot dash Cardinal, and a single Chromis. So I am looking for some good center piece fish that will be happy and healthy in my 90G. I've looked around a bit and considered maybe a carpenter wrasse but I was wondering about other people's favorites that may fit the bill for my tank. Any ideas?

I got my two gobies and the shrimp as a Divers Den combo years ago so they all hung out together. Sometimes I wouldn't see them for days if they were all hanging out in the tunnel system the pistol shrimp dug. While I was sad when the shrimp passed away, I do see my gobies a lot more often now.

My tank is a 90G too and my shrimp and gobies would pop up all over the tank from one side to the other.

In my experience, the Pistol Shrimp is your likely culprit. Before mine passed away I had to buy more small hermits every 4-6 months because he slowly killed off my population. I always found the poor guys dead outside one of his holes, I believe that they got to close and he didn't appreciate their presence. Every morning is a bit extreme but maybe you have a very angry shrimp.

I feed my fish a mix of frozen and live food, nothing freeze dried that can't be identified by sight. Frozen Mysis are a favorite that my fish love and has kept them healthy and happy for years. I've started trying a bit of the LRS Reef Frenzy, which the fish seem to love as much as the mysis. I feed brine shrimp that have had some time in a Selcon mixture that act as a mobile vitamin that all fish love. (They also make an awesome way to get medication into your fish if they're sick, BTW) I've started feeding black worms recently because all of the good things I have heard about them, but I'm holding out on an opinion there until I've been doing it for a while. In generally I'm just really not a fan of the more typical freeze dried or flake foods. Having said that though, I do have a small amount of pellet food that I keep around to make sure that my two steinitz gobies get fed. They hang out at the bottom of the tank and are very shy so I sometimes worry that they may not get any food before the other fish demolish it all. I usually drop in a couple of pellets every other day or so near their hole to make sure they're getting fed. Oh and L8 2 Rise, my wife and I call our pajama cardinals "Ugly Cute".

I have 3 pajama cardinals and one dot-dash cardinal that are fully grown now and quite large. They are not nocturnal in my tank, when the lights are off they normally find places near the bottom of the tank to hang out solo during the day they hang out around the tank sometimes schooling. As to losing coloration, I think that has more to do with diet than age. My cardinals are as large as I've seen them get anywhere and are just as bright as when they were babies.

Can you find the driver? That is likely the issue rather than the circuit board. If you can find it you may be able to find the info on it that you'd need to get a replacement.

Couple of my favorites. Still looking for a picture I have of my two gobies with their pistol shrimp, will keep looking but for now: Lyr, one of my first seahorses.

Welcome to the club, check out Pacificeast Aquaculture if you haven't, that place is like a candy store for reefers.

Yeah, HoT has phyto and pods I believe.

Since I wasn't 100% sure what it could have been I also treated with Metronidazole, as I read that it would treat brookynella and uronema. The last Chromis has not shown any signs of infection of any type and is eating well. I'm trying to find some more Chromis so that I can have a group of them and I'll probably just proactively treat them and the tank with Metronidazole as whatever this ailment is the time from signs showing to dead fish is less than 24 hours. This incident is really putting a dent into my fish medicine cabinet, will have to restock after this.

I moved my 90G 3 years ago when we moved without any losses but it was a massive task. I had enough 5 gallon buckets full of pre mixed salt water to refill my 90 gallon and about 6-8 large plastic totes that when full of live rock or water I could just barely lift. I also had about 4 different people and rented a moving van large enough to move it all. I was able to get I to my new house to move it all in ahead of time, which was the only way it was possible since I could have never done it the day I was moving the rest of my stuff. So it is possible but is really a Herculean task, but it can be done with a whole lot of planning, lots of help, and a bit of luck.

That post should be pinned somewhere, excellent explanation.

Yeah, pictures of Uronema marinum look exactly like what my Chromis had. Down to one of the three now. Looks like formalin is the treatment of choice for this, will have to check my fish medicine cabinet in the morning. Seems to be a bit of uncertainty on how to deal with Uronema marinum though. Can anyone shed some light on it? Do I need to quarantine for longer than my normal 3-4 weeks? Does formalin really work? If not what does?

I've so rarely bought fish over the years that I'm actually not terribly familiar with the illnesses that can affect them.. (Very familiar with seahorses though after having those for 5+ years now) I recently moved my seahorses to my new 29G Cube, which freed up a whole lot of room in my 90G for new fish. My daughter thought Chromis were the greatest thing ever so I purchased 3 on Monday. Into my 10G quarantine they go. On Tuesday one of them has what looks like a red line about half way down their body. Thinking some type of infection being the likely culprit I began treating with Furan-II. Tuesday evening that Chromis had passed away. I continue the treatment because I'm just asking for trouble stopping early. Wednesday morning a second Chromis was showing similar symptoms but this time I noticed that the red spot was more of a vertical line and was present on both sides. I was hoping that since I had begun treatmnet maybe this one would recover but when I got back from work today it was dead too. Last Chromis seems fine but doing a little bit of googling didn't really make any disease stand out as for what could be doing this. Can anyone point me in the right direction about what this may be so that I can maybe see about treating it properly because apparently anti-biotics are not covering it.