Nart

Here is my update. All my zoas are doing really well now. Especially so since I've been dumping in all sorts of food into the tank. Flakes, reef roids, pellets, mysis, and baby brine. I've been dosing phytoplankton and Coral Accel too. Seeing a little hair algae... but, whatever it takes! [emoji16] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So my frag has definitely made a come back. It looked like it was nearly dead at one point after my emerald crab got a hold of it. I am doing once a week Polyp-lab reef roids broadcast feeding as well as Kent's Coral accel. The second head that grew is growing very quickly, it's almost near the size of the first polyp. I will get a picture update soon for you all. It's very hard to take a picture because I placed the frag right in the middle of my sand bed, so I have to move the frag up near the glass to get a good picture. Glad to hear that lots of you are joining the second polyp club

Here is mine. It's not coloring up like it did the first week nor is it too happy, but it grew a second polyp in a matter of two weeks Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Darn. I was really looking forward to food haha.

I'm already having problems with my Zoa. Looks like something took a chunk out of it. I think it might be my emerald crab. Sigh [emoji24] Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Wow! Hacks! haha... I am going to start daily polyp-lab broadcast feeding in my tank just to catch up :P Whatever it takes!

here is my frag. I also just have a cellphone to take pics so not the best. I'll take a better one for the 1 month update. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

I think we should post tank parameters. It will be interesting to see how the zoa thrives under different conditions. Up to ya'll. I just don't have the best test kit for Phosphate and Mag... so I will have to go to one of the LFS's to get it done there.

IM 25 lagoon setup here. All in one system, no sump. AI Prime HD LED lighting, jebao SW-2, chaeto in the back, Smart Micro ATO. I feed mysis shrimp every other day. Broadcast feed polyp lab once a week. Weekly 20% water changes. No dosing. Stocking: 2x clowns, 1 starry blenny, 1 pistol shrimp, 2 Trochus, 2 nassarius, 1 emerald Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@mari.harutunian I know. I was just trying to make a funny

@mari.harutunian dang it! I was planning on daily feeding of polyp-lab. took away my cheating sauce kidding. sounds fun!

Thank you Mari. And the challenge is to see who can grow the most polyp heads at the end of 6 months? Are there any requirements? like, we have to leave it on the frag plug.

@sethsolomon awesome. I will send you a PM. And yes, I do know that the $20 is well worth it. That's what I am afraid of lol. My original budget of my tank set-up has been 3 times over haha. Mari - can you sign me up for the challenge! I will pick up the zoa directly from Seth.

I am down to join, but I am not a member of WAMAS. Where's the meeting this weekend? Can I swing by just to pick-up the zoa? Let me know. Benjamin

Did you move the tank already? I can help out this coming Sunday if needed.

@larryag59 I am a little obsessive with testing. I tested daily and saw the ammonia spike, then decrease --> Nitrite spike, then decrease --> Nitrate 10-20ppm. It was done cycling when my ammonia and nitrite was reading zero even after I dosed a bit more ammonia. It quickly converted over to Nitrate. Your Damsel will be fine without food for 2-3 days. I would feed right before you leave. What are your current water parameters by the way?

@zygote2 Also - these fishes were not purchased from Petco or Petsmart. As said by others and further researching on firefish in general. Lots of other people also lost their firefish usually under the 2 week time period due to stress of acclimating in a new tank. I wished I knew of all this before I went ahead to purchase the firefish. I thought I was doing the responsible thing purchasing a firefish as my first fish because they are listed as a beginners fish on every site. Little did I know... they aren't really good for a first tank fish. I think when most people mention cycle, they do mean nitrogen cycle. So yes, my nitrogen cycle completed in 10 days. I am going to disagree on the part about the "small amount of initial ammonia added". Typically to even yield a 4PPM ammonia level in this size tank... you would need a very fully stocked tank/overfeeding with all the fishes excreting at once in the same time for a 4ppm+ yield. When you say a complete and full cycle, "60-120 days" I think you are referring more towards the tank aging and being more stable. In theory, a tank is never complete and fully cycled.

Hi. No, they were bagged separately. If it matters, the tank was dosed up to 4ppm of ammonium chloride and 2ppm after it was cycled. And as for the chemicals, those were added after the cycle. I never cycle any of my tanks with chemical bags. And yes I keep a journal of all my results. Thank you for your inputs. I am looking into a better test kit in the near future. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

So I just checked my water parameters. pH 8.4, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5, phosphate 0.25, KH 8, salinity 1.023. The yasha goby is alive! Took me about 45min to find him. My gosh they are little hiding experts. I target fed him mysis shrimp. Zoas doing about the same. I am running the tank with the lid open and the strongest setting with the LEDs and the opened polyps seem to be opening even more. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

@Rob A it is very similar except the lights in that article does not have the blue LEDS, but I am going to assume as a whole it is the same and I have insufficient lighting. SOB! Does anyone have lights that they would recommend that's relatively low cost and can grow some low light corals? Preferably on amazon. @GOSKN5 Ah. Thank you for the insight. I just didn't want to chalk it up to a mysterious death and wanted to make sure I am doing/going to do everything right.

@wheresthereef thank you for your concern. It is very demoralizing losing any fishes for me. Thank you for your acclimation guide. I did not check the SG prior to acclimating. Usually I am very thorough, but I was rushing to get things done (for reasons I will not mention. Cough, wife.) I will make note of all this and be sure to do this next time. I am a preacher of QT'ing as well in the freshwater world. I just don't have the resources or space to setup a secondary saltwater tank. Thus, the reason I am willing to pay for higher quality fishes from reputable LFS's. Thank you for everyone's help. Someone did advise me to check my "stray current" as well. I thought to myself huh? So I did some researching and found that Aqueon had discontinued their Pro line (not sure why). Also, found that some folks electrocuted themselves with faulty Aqueon Pro or plastic sheath heaters. Not sure if the Purple Firefish died to this, but he was found dead right besides my heater. I am going to switch out the heater to my Fluval heater just in case and continue to monitor my water parameters and the yasha/zoas. Lastly, I think I read my KH wrong. Someone else advised me that for the API KH test kits, the reading is determined when the color turns lime. If this is the case, all my KH readings are subtracted by 1. So prior to the fishes going into my tank my KH was 7 and upon returning on Sunday to find the dead firefish, my KH was 6.

@khh27 I will not add anything and continue to monitor the yasha and zoa that's in there already. Though it is very hard to monitor the yasha. He is literally inside the rock where there's a hole big enough just for his body to sneak in. The only way I was able to even check on if he was alive was use a small airline hose and blew some bubbles and he stuck his mouth out thinking it was food. @ann arbor hokie Reponse to your three questions below: 1) I am testing my water parameters all with the API test tube/dropper test kit. My final confirmation results with BRK (my LFS) was just for salinity, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate and it matched what I tested. I should've asked them to test for pH, kh, and phosphate too. I do not use Petco whatsoever for any of my tests or purchases. As for my testing, I am very thorough and use exact measurements. 2) The live sand was from Amazon. I had bought the CaribSea Aragonite bimni pink 20lbs bag. The live rock was from APurpleReef.com, it is man made live rock. I tested my phosphates through out the cycle and after the cycle, the highest was 0.25, currently it is at 0.0. I did however, add a 1.9lbs Fiji live rock that I bought from BRK to help with my cycle. It is covered in just a little of coralline, phosphates continued to test 0.0. 3) I do not think my lights are intense at all, but experts please do chime in. These lights actually came from my freshwater tank from my low-tech plants that worked very well for that application. I will dial back down the intensity and move it away from the zoas. It was directly above them before. Here are the specs for the light that I bought from Amazon: Current USA Satellite Freshwater LED Light for Aquarium 24-36", super bright 6500k white LEDS and rich 445Nm Blue LEDS. (I do not plan on keeping hard to keep corals at all. Just the very easy and low-tech light corals) @mari.harutunian Hmm... it might've been frying under the light while I was gone? I have it on a timer for 4 hours on in the AM and then turns off and comes back on for 5 hours in the afternoon. I can try to shift it under my rock some.

The tank cycled in 10 days. It was a fishless cycle, using Fretz ammonium chloride. I continued to test the water parameters daily for a week and everything held up okay. I have a glass lid on this tank so my evaporation has been very minimal. When I do top off, I use RODI water from BRK (my LFS). It was completely my fault for not closely inspecting the purple firefish. I highly doubt the fish was ill, perhaps just a bit weak and my KH dipped a little, from 8 to 7. I have no idea how much of an KH change can affect the fish. Just my thought.

Hello All, I am in need of some help as I am a beginner in the SW world. I will provide as much details as possible and hopefully someone is able to help me. I have a newly cycled 15 gallon tank running with 20lbs of CaribSea live sand and 20lbs of live rock. Total working volume of water: 11 gallons. Equipment: AquaClear 70 (with AQ50 impeller, to lower flow rate down to 150gph'ish), Koralia 425 powerhead, 50W heater, Current Satellte LEDs (white's and blues, with dimmers) API dropper test kit. Thursday Water tests before fish on Thursday: pH 8.4, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5, KH 8 drops, phosphate 0, salinity 1.023, temp 78.4 F. Things in my AQ70: sponge, Matrix bio-media, purgien, chemipure blue, phosguard, and floss I purchased a purple firefish, yasha goby, and 2 small zoa frags (with about 20-30 polyps on each frag) on Thursday. BRK tested my salinity, ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate and all was good as well. I forgot to ask them to test the rest of my other water parameters, but I did double check my KH and it was at 8 drops. I floated the bag for about 45mins then proceeded to put about 1/4 cup of water in every 10-15mins for about 1 hour. Put in the purple firefish and yasha goby, and coral dipped/turkey baster blasted the zoas with Coral RX dipping solution. Zoas started to slowly open up within 45mins. Yasha goby went and hid in a crevice and the purple firefish was in a corner. I did notice the purple firefish fin's were damaged, like it was nipped at by other fishes in the store. Friday Water test on Friday AM: pH 8.4, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5, KH 8 drops, phosphate 0, salinity 1.023, temp 78.4F Zoas opened up the same when the lights were turned on. I did notice some of the polyps did not open on the red/green zoa. Target fed in the morning: Mysis shrimp - the purple firefish ate as well as the yasha goby. Left for a weekend trip Friday noon... came back on Sunday afternoon. Sunday Afternoon Found the purple firefish dead and green/blue zoas that were opened nicely were closed and only a few polyps from the red/green zoa were open. See pic of the zoa. I quickly removed the purple firefish and searched for the yasha goby, luckily he is still alive. Began to warm up 2.5G of saltwater for a water change. Water test before water change: pH 8.4, ammonia 0, nitrite 0, nitrate 5, KH 7 drops, phosphate 0, salinity 1.023, temp 78.4F Proceeded to change out 2.5G of water. A concern I had was too much water flow, about 150gph from the AQ70 and 425 GPH from the powerhead (aimed to the surface) so I had ordered a Koralia 240gph powerhead that arrived on Sunday. So I changed out the 425gph powerhead to the 240gph. Another concern I had was my KH. BRK had tested my KH 4-5 days prior and they said it was low, in the 6-7 range. So I picked up the Reef Code B during the initial test. I doubled tested my KH and it was 6 drops to turn green'ish yellow and 7 drops to turn it completely yellow. So I dosed 5ml of Reef Code B. I tried messing with the intensity of the white/blue lights later in the evening and the zoas are still not opening up. Monday Morning I have my lights on a timer to go on @ 4:30AM I checked it at 6:30AM and my zoas are still the same as Sunday, mostly all the polyps are still closed. Tested my KH and it was now at 8 drops. --- Does anyone have any advice on what to do? I am not sure what caused the purple firefish to die and why my zoas are not opening up. I have attached a full front view of my tank so you can see the placement of zoas (it is in the middle, bottom floor). The AQ70 HOB filter is all the way to the left, and the powerhead is on the right pointed to the left/surface of the tank. I would go to BRK and ask for advice but they don't open till Wednesday. Any help would greatly be appreciated. Thank you. Benjamin

I can speak to a true live rock helping the cycle. I too was cycling with live sand, sea water, and man-made live rock thinking it would be a quick 1 week cycle. I ended up stalling on just Nitrites for a week. I got a Fiji live rock from my LFS and next day my cycle was almost done. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk