finaddict

Has anybody taken a bag full of actual beach sand and used it in your aquarium? It seems like a cool idea to bring 10 or 15 lbs of sand home from our favorite beach and put it in the DT. Any drawbacks?

I ran home at lunch time and checked the tank and everything is looking much better. Something more than a crab caused everything to close up because I have zoas in all corners of my tank and they were all reacting badly along with the birdsnest and the trumpets and my acans even looked a little contracted. Almost all of the zoas are back to normal and the trumpet looks great. A few zoas are till hiding but I think whatever caused the disruption seems to have dissipated.

Also, I think the black dots I was seeing on the bottom of the birdsnest were just closed up polyps. My birdsnest always has great polyp extension and for some reason I think the polyps on the bottom of the branches were just closed up which look like specs of black.

I looked at the tank this am and everything was closed up tight which is pretty normal since my lights dont come on this early. I do keep up very regular (weekly) with testing and water changes and I will run the tests again when I get home. The only thing I have been adjusting is salinity because I always left it around 1.026 but with evaporation it would creep up slightly and my Duncans hate it over 1.026 so I have been adding more fresh water during water changes and right now my salinity is steady at 1.024 to 1.025. I also dropped the temp in the tank over the last few weeks from 78-79 down to 76-77 because I read that turbo snails don't do well over 78. I cant imagine a change like those would have any impact on the tank. I suspect something I did over the weekend with the new corals is causing my problem. I bought the corals at Fintastic in Frederick and everything they had looked great and I dipped the corals before adding them. However with the Star fish I diluted the store water that it came in with my water over the course of an hour or two and then put the star in my tank along with the water in its container. The star is doing fine in my tank right now.

I came home this evening and all my zoas were closed up. I noticed my birdsnest had black dots all over the bottom of the branches. My trumpets were much more closed than normal. Temp is normal 76.8, salinity is steady at 1.025. I have not done all the other tests yet. I have made a bunch of changes since Saturday. I added a pink linchia star, a big open brain coral and a smalll branching monti I think. I dipped the brain and monti and slowly acclimated the star. I also bought reef chili so after the corals were in I fed reef chili and the Corals seemed to react well. That all happened on Saturday. Last night I added 8 drops of phosrx which I do about once a month even though my phosphates always read low. I have a small amount of hair algae that I m trying to get rid of. Oh yeah one other change.. about 1 week Go I added new sand.. about 5 lbs of dry dead sand. I do 6 gallons of water changes every week and my tank is 36 gals. I have a skimmer and a hob filter that I have gfo in a bag and carbon in a bag... Any ideas what could be going on.

Thanks Tom, I just left the LFS with some hermits and turbos to try and get my hair algae problem under control. I have tested very low for phosphates and nitrates so I am hoping a bigger CUC will get it done. Dave

I have an Eshoppes PSK-75H HOB skimmer on my 36 Gallon bowfront tank. I only have four small fish and about 30 pounds of live rock and bunch of coral. I also run a small bag of GFO in a HOB Aquaclear 50 filter but no sponge or carbon just a bag of GFO, Twice in the last 3 weeks my skimmer has gone haywire for no reason. I usually get a pretty dry skimate and have to clean the cup about once every 5-6 days and not because it is full but the inside tube gets caked and I clean it. I know yesterday evening when I went to bed the cup had about 1/4 of an inch of dark water in the bottom of the collection cup. I did not feed or touch my tank yesterday and this morning I wake up and it is overflowing back into my tank. It hacked me off because I have been fighting hair algae and I just put all that skimate that was concentrated nutrient and waste back into my tank! Second identical failure in the last 3 weeks. Anybody know whats up? I am really starting to get bummed about this hobby. Dave

The trap worked for this one. It took overnight but he was in there this morning. My acan had 2 of 4 polyps heavily damaged. Do acans heal up or is it hopeless for that frag?

Well that is actually concerning. The acans looked incredible and were opening good but I have never owned them before. I did dip them as well. I wonder if I should hold off buying the replacements?

I bought a pair that were labeled as peppermint shrimp at the lfs laser fall. I took the first one out because I saw him eating my favia. He was easy catch in a net. I recently saw a different favia getting picked at but I let it slide. Then the acan feast began this week. Good news is that as of 6am this morning my tank is shrimp free. Downside was my tank temp dropped from 77 to. 75 since I turned off the circulation while the shrimp trap has bait in it.

I bought a great rainbow Acan frag at incredible corals last weekend and my idiot "reef safe" shrimp has devoured 2 of the 5 polyps. I am frustrated. I set a shrimp trap for him and he has gotten very close but hasn't gone in yet. I hope I wake up to him caught in the water bottle. $75 bucks out the window and my son already asked when we are getting new acans!!! Rant over......

Thought I had a reef safe peppermint shrimp but he is eating my favorite favia. He is also all over a plate coral I bought at MDRC last week. The plate has not recovered yet from the move and now the shrimp is just tearing it apart. I have read about traps for them but what is the best way to get him? Does anyone have a link to a shrimp trap? Also what is the best bait? I have four fish also that I hope to leave in the tank. I have a small 36 gallon and not much area on the sand bed without rocks. This picture is before I have the plate, a new trumpet colony and other zoa colonies in the sand in the front of my tank. Any ideas?

How and what do you feed the shrimp? My fish didn't let any of those poor shrimp live more than about 5 seconds!! My kids enjoyed watching the feeding. My corals kept the ones I fed them too.

I bought a bag of live brine shrimp on an impulse today. I didnt think think it through and now I am wondering if my fish will go right back to eating pellets and frozen food after I give them live shrimp. I will skip feeding them live shrimp if it is going to screw up their routine and spoil them! Any issue with feeding live shrimp occasionally?

I have a small Favia frag on a one inch ceramic disc (plug with the stem cut off). I glued the disk to my rock about 2 months ago and the favia is just about the size of the disc. Two or three days ago with the lights fully on I notice the favia had expanded and was actually curving up to start encrusting my rock. It was about 1mm onto my rock. Then I looked the next morning and the edge of the favia was back on the disc. I looked again in the full light and low and behold it was curved up again and looking like it was going to begin encrusting the same spot on the rock. I looked this morning and it is back to the size of the frag disc. Do Favia expand and contract like hammer and duncans and zoas do?

Where is the best place to get the calibration fluid? I see the prices vary a lot and I need a small bottle. I did not see it at Centerville Aquarium last week.

Thankfully I think I am out of the woods so to speak. I never had symptoms last night or today so I am no longer worried about the toxin. I will keep an eye out for an infection though.

This is all great information. I used to rinse my sponge once a week and replace it about every 3 weeks. I am now running a HOB filter with just the carbon which I change out every two days. In my mind, if something requires daily cleaning that is more of an obligation that I am willing to do. I am happy to clean my tank and do water changes every week but daily maintenance changes it form a hobby to a chore for me.

How were you exposed? I read boiling rock with Zoas is one way but what else do I need to be aware of?

Not so worried about infection (wont end up in ICU for that) but I read an article about 3 people who went to the hospital in 2014 in Anchorage because some zoas fell off the rock they were transferring and landed on the floor. The zoas were never picked up and the guy fell asleep in the same room and ended up bad off in the ICU! I thought you had to boil the rocks with zoas or eat the zoas or suck them up directly starting a siphon to be effected but the same article I read said an open cut is a direct pathway for a blood infection.... I feel like I am being way paranoid but man that stuff sounds wicked! Here is the link: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm6431a4.htm

SO...I was cleaning my tank a little while ago and using a brush, I was cleaning up and down on the glass. I did not wear gloves and once I removed my hand I had a small cut on my knuckle. I am assuming I hit it on the rock when I was cleaning the glass. It is a very shallow cut but it bled for awhile. I rinsed it in freshwater but I was wondering if I could have been exposed to Palytoxin? I have a few zoa colonies with probably a total of 75-125 polyps in my tank. I dont think I touched any zoas but I dont know what I cut my knuckle on for sure (or exactly whne I cut it) and there was a zoa colony close to where I was working. I hope I am being overly paranoid but I am new to this and have been warned about this toxin. Any advice?

I do keep a cuc including snails (nesarius and another type) hermit crabs and a shrimp. Mostly I am concerned about clarity when I take the filter off the tank. I will try running the filter with only carbon this week and see how it looks. Thanks for the advice

Sorry forgot to mention how I top off. I only lose about 1 gal of water per week. I have been mixing the RODI Salt with some RODI fresh that I have to make a mixture around 1.023 that ends up keeping my tank about 1.025 or 1.026 when I do water changes. Tonight I added 1.25 gallons of RODI fresh water and my tank is right at 1.025. I will do a water change tomorrow with 5 gallons of full salt at 1.026.

I have been plucking each bubble every week as I siphon off water. It has been good fun trying to release them from the rock without breaking and sucking them up the tube. Some have broken and I think that is why they are still around. I haven't cleaned my tank in a week and I probably have 3-5 bubbles right now. I have 4 fish (2 clowns, 1- four stripe damsel and one purple dart) and I feed them 1/8 cube of mysis every other day. About once a week I will substitute the shrimp with flake food or pellets but I have noticed that a lot of those foods just end up on the bottom. About once every other week I feed some mysis to my hammer and my duncan. I was feeding the fish daily and a bit more each feeding but I think that was contributing to the algae problem. I have been getting RODI at various LFS in NOva. Centerville Aquarium and Vienna Aqurium in Leesburg mostly. I had a second bad experience at Vienna today (not related to water) so I am probably done with that store. I am headed to Winchester Aquarium tomorrow and will see if they have a smaller RODI unit otherwise I will be ordering one soon. I have been told that is not a unit that is good to buy used. Any opinion on that?

I have been changing the water with store bought RODI salt water. I have finally convinced myself that at 7 or 8 bucks a week (plus the required trip to the LFS each week) it wouldnt take terribly long to payoff an RODI unit of my own so I might be doing that soon. The algae problem is almost gone. I have a couple of bubbles of bubble algae and some hair algae but not much. I think I will try to run the HOB filter but just with the carbon. I also like that it adds flow since I only use the skimmer and one powerhead in my tank.