WishNewFish

Another interesting observation I made: My valentini puffer (carnivore) is munching on the lettuce I feed my tangs. Its been doing it since two days. Very interesting behavior swapping in my tank. My tangs harass corals and my puffer eat tang food

It could be a curious ripping or aggression or something. Its definitely not because of food landing on corals. I see my corals still surviving and opening up, so it may not be as damaging as killing the colony. Read online that Hippo tangs have been observed to do this.

Has anyone had experience with tangs and fox face harassing and trying to eat corals? I feed my fish heavy with NLS pellets and mysis shrimp every day. Make sure each of my 13 fish eat. (Except mandarin) First I feed pellets till they stop feeding on pellets and let one or two pellets drop floor., Then I feed a cube of mysis to make sure all fish ate latest a two bites of mysis. I feed nori or lettuce/spinach twice a week as well for tang/foxface/angelfish. Recently I observed my rowdy yellow tang and fox face eat the polyps of pulsing sinularia and clove polyp. Literally mowing down the polyps with their mouth colored with polyps. Never heard or read anything of this sort before. My flame angel, valentini puffer and midas don't bother any corals or other fish. Another thing I observed when I feed nori is that pretty much all fish except valentini puffer and mandarin eats nori. Tang, fox face, flame, royal gramma, chromis, midas and filefish, clowns. Has anyone see this behavior? All my fish are fat as super pigs! literally! they are so belly full they swim funny. But still act like they are starving if I don't feed them nori everyday. Could this be due to recent increase in water temperature to 77F? Im trying to be feed them a tad less so they don't act like spoiled rascals! and keep my water clean. (Thanks to cheatos and strong refugium lights, my nitrates are consistently around 2 ppm and phosphates are undetectable using multiple test kits)

I increased my temp from 74-75 to 77-78 and I see my corals extend polyps like fully!! Down side is my fish are heavily stocked, eats like pigs, active and chasing each other.

On a completely different note, Blue light is disruptive to human circadian rhythm. Looking at deep blue light at night can cause insomnia. https://www.health.harvard.edu/staying-healthy/blue-light-has-a-dark-side

My responses: I see my tank temperature between (74-76F) most of the time. there are times when is went low as 72 and high as 80. Although I have heater, I disconnected it and my tank is in sync with my home temperature. In summers my home is between (72-76) I might need to plugin in my heater in winter as temperatures begin to drop, but my home temperature never goes below 70 in winter.

I want to see what temperature other members are running their reef tank at: 1. what is the temperature you run your tank at? 2. Does any of you skip the heater all together? (There are always exceptions like large tanks needing chillers due to equipment/light transferring heat, and homes or surroundings of the tank may not support favorable temperatures.

Paul b! I wish I saw your feeder before. I lost my 2 purple queen anthias just because they don't want to eat anything except live food. Moreover they are not that good of a pod hunters either. Only live brine shrimp is what I saw them actively hunting at in my tank. I had my tank/refugium full of cope/amphipods but they could get enough.

Wow! First time I'm hearing about mandarin getting ich. I tried my wits out trying to see if my mandarin would eat anything except pods. Tried live bloodworms, sushi roe, had bristleworms in my tank it never touched. Except pods, live brine shrimp it didn't care about anything else. How big was your mandarin which ate bristleworms and bloodworms? Mine was about inch long female.

puffer fish can help reduce their population. Some had anecdotal success using bumblebee snails. Someone cited chemical treatment: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/here-it-is-fenbendazole-use-against-hydroids.214950/

wow, it still took 12 weeks even after you used Dr. Tims? Glad I took live rock from Tom "kyle&amy" - I didn't see any ammonia or nitrite reading after 3 days. Added food for couple of more days and started adding fish a week later.

Since you raised the point of anerobic bacteria converting Nitrate to Nitrogen gas. Is this nitrogen generating anerobic bacteria present in all fully cycled tanks or only in tanks with deep sand bend/large rock work tanks?

are you dosing anything into the tank? If you do such dosing, it could affect the cheato. I am dosing talk currently and using middle chamber for cheato and don't have any issues with it.

You didn't tell how much liverock and bio filtration you have and if your rockwork includes lots of hiding place for fish. Like someone already suggested - everyone has their opinion and it's very subjective. You already have two BTAs, and 5 chromis. Any new fish you add shouldn't be requiring live food like pods (mandarin) because chromis already hunt out pods and if you add mandarin it will surely starve. Unless mandarin is trained to eat frozen mysis or pellets, even if it does eat, it's difficult for it to get to food with all the active feeders like chromis/clownfish. I don't know much about Wrasse except that most of them will bully any fish in the tank if it's already well stocked. Flame angelfish could be a good candidate, royalgramma or aquaculture orchid (fridmani) dottyback could be a good candidate. Chromis do add bioload to the tank since they are active feeders and make sure you feed multiple times a day so everyone gets food. How long have you had 5 chromis for? As you add any other fish I mentioned, there is a good chance the chromis will start die. Not necessarily due to new tank syndrome but chromis keep fighting among themselves and as you add another semi aggressive fish like flame angel/gramma/orchid - this takes toll on the weakest chromis.

i personally think there are benefits of having autonomous systems manage themselves rather than relying on one controller to control everything to avoid single point of failure. There are definitely advantages of choosing which cycle you want to run on gyre and change the intensity. The newer gyre controller is some what capable of timed programming which mode you want to run and how long. (older 130, 150 are not capable of this).

it really depends on what type of fish you have and how is the state of your tank. I usually roll couple of sheets of nori onto a rock or small pvc tube with rubber bands and leave it for my tangs/angels. For other fish I use auto feeder once a day. Even with that I saw one of my chromis die in the 5 days. The chromis was perfectly healthy before I left (I had 5 chromis) If you have tangs and other herbivore and your tank has sufficient good algae on its rocks - you may be fine (Again if you don't have too many tangs which are already having some aggressive behavior). If your tank has lots of pods already, you may be ok not feeding other omnivore fish and carnivore like clowns, etc. If you have anthias, I will say no matter what your setup is ,you risk loosing your anthias eventually (may not be in the 5 days but they may end up loosing their appetite and end up starving).

I never had any issue of any inverts (hermits, snails, shrimps, sea hare, astern stars) die because of hair algae. I had hair algae literally like a forest but it didn't kill any livestock. I accidentally spilled a whole bottle of pellet food into the tank and by the time I remove most I can and siphon/water change a whole lot of pellets soaked themselves into rock caves etc. A month or 2 later I has a nice amazon forest of hair algae. Im sure I had tons of phosphate and nitrate in the tank but it didn't kill any inverts. Like others mentioned, it has to be something else like Ph, ammonia, copper, iodine or something else.

my experience with bare bottom: All the detritus, feces pile up and eventually spread on the bare bottom and stick to it. Even if you put high flow, this would form as a thin greenish/yellowish layer on the bare bottom. If you have a diatom bloom (which you do when you cycle it) it covers the bottom and doesn't look good at all. Lot of my audience gave be an instant feedback that the tank just doesn't look right without sand or other fillers which look like sand/rock. I ended up adding crush coral sand and loved its look.

Thanks all for your input, The difficult part is measurement calculations and double checking if the ceiling measurements align with how it hangs on the tank. Despite triple checking it the lights still came slightly angled. Attached are the picture. Used ceiling anchor hook and used photo frame wire and did a knot.