Jason the filter freak's 47 column reef tank

[bigJPDC]

I really like the way you set up that tank Jason - good luck with the feeding thing, I know you'll get it.

[Boret]

Good job Jason, it is looking great!!

 

When are you coming over my place to rearrange my tank!!

[davelin315]

Mollies are brackish and can also live in full saltwater. Just slowly convert them over and give their bodies ample time to adjust. I would do it over a few days. This is a lot easier than the weeks or months it can take with guppies. Also, if you want to get them breeding, just stress them out. Livebearers have babies when they are stressed out.

[jason the filter freak]

Mollies are brackish and can also live in full saltwater. Just slowly convert them over and give their bodies ample time to adjust. I would do it over a few days. This is a lot easier than the weeks or months it can take with guppies. Also, if you want to get them breeding, just stress them out. Livebearers have babies when they are stressed out.

 

Good I'll breed them in a blender. For now, it's been since he ate that damsel that he's eaten, do we have any suggestions?

[jason the filter freak]

Well here is the news

he ate mysis, problem is he'll only eat it if it's being blown about by the power heads, and then it's moving really fast so it's hard for him to eat, and i have to put a whole cube in the tank, so for every 1 piece he catches 4 or so get lost in the rock work which will eventually break down, so I think I'm going to skip the eel and use a clean up crew, though i watched him stalk for about 5 minutes and almost get ahold of an upside down scarlet hermit... poor fellow lost and eye but kept his life.

 

he ignores krill and silver sides... :(

Edited November 30, 2007 by jason the filter freak

[davelin315]

Jason, it's a matter of training it. If it's moving, it'll eat it. Once it eats it, it'll eat it regardless of movement. Try the dangling at the top of the water. It will take time, but it will work. If I could get a lionfish to eat spirulina sticks and flake food, you can get yours to eat krill and silversides.

[jason the filter freak]

Well I've run into some good news,

 

Last night about 12 am my halide was still one because I can't figure out how to use the timer yet, so I walked over to the tank and the lion was swimming around near the surface. I ran into the kitchen and defrosted a krill and put it on the end of my feeding stick (1/16" ridgid air line tubing) and moved the krill around the surface and he took it with in 15 seconds! WOO HOO!

 

I also did my very first water test for this tank

I'm using the IO Master Test Kit

http://www.fish.com/itemdy00.asp?T1=710176...rccode=FSHFRGLE

 

I'm pretty happy with the ease of use, an simple reagents and very happy with the color system

My reedings for the first time ever testing on this tank

 

 

Spec Grav 1.025 Refractometer Calibrated in Sept

Water Temp: 81 Glass Alchol thermometer

pH: 8.4 IO Master Test Kit

Ammonia:0

Nitrite:0

Nitrate: Less than 10 ppm

Alkalinity: 3.5 meq/L <-- whats the normal range for this?

 

Mushrooms are expanding great and look awesome! They grow at the top of the rock, and all the way down to the sand with out any seeming issues.

[jason the filter freak]

Added a large hatian pink tipped, pics to come later

[zotzer]

 

I'm using the IO Master Test Kit

 

Is it the reef version? I'd be interested to find out if you can make heads or tails of the calcium results in their test kit. I ended up giving up the ghost and just buying a salifert test. LOL

 

PICS!!!!!

 

T

[treesprite]

glad to hear of your success... wouldn't want to see any more damsels over Lion's house for dinner

[jason the filter freak]

Lion decided to be a shutter bug today, came up to about an inch under the surface of the water...

Does any one know if Gold stripe maroons would host in the Pink Tipped Anem??

 

Here's the pics

Which one would you enter in a TOP DOWN photo contest?

[discretekarma]

Should be between 8 and 12. I should for the middle, 10. I was under the impression that this mainly matters when you are growing SPS. I could be wrong but don't you only have mushrooms in there? Are you planning on adding more corals?

 

 

Alkalinity: 3.5 meq/L <-- whats the normal range for this?

[gastone]

Should be between 8 and 12. I should for the middle, 10. I was under the impression that this mainly matters when you are growing SPS. I could be wrong but don't you only have mushrooms in there? Are you planning on adding more corals?

 

 

3.5 meq/l = 9.8dkh

 

meq/l x 2.8 yields dkh.

 

I wouldn't be to concerned about alk in a fish only with softies set up. Natural sea water has a dkh around 7. Shoot for that and you'll be just fine IMO.

 

Condys aren't natural hosters of any clownfish. That being said, who knows what will happen. I've got a epicystis crucifer (carribean rock anemone) that my fire saddleback used to host in. Here's a pic of them when the anemone was spawning. (the white "stuff" is sperm btw).

 

 

 

Garrrett

Edited December 4, 2007 by gastone

[zotzer]

He's quite the looker! I like this one:

 

[jason the filter freak]

So he'll (lion fish) now eat krill out of my finger (I'm feeding every 2-3 days) and he'll eat bits of mysis if i drop a cube in the tank (problem is that creats a lot of waste and my current clean up crew is 2 hermits) he still won't touch silver sides. Can he eat krill the rest of his life or do I really need to vary the diet more? Can I just soak the krill in some sort of vitamin? Any suggestions to get him to eat a different fair aside from krill?

[davelin315]

Trick him. Dangle the krill and the silverside together and when he snarfs up the krill, he'll also snarf up the silversides. It's all about habituating him to what you want him to do.

[zotzer]

So he'll (lion fish) now eat krill out of my finger

 

Cool! Get Javafish to take a pic for us to see it!

Tracy

[MOT]

That is a beautiful lion fish! and congratulations on successfully feeding him. Very cool setup man. I am amazed by the pill bugs!! I am thinking about maybe setting up a pill bug tank now

[mexicanjavafish]

I am thinking about maybe setting up a pill bug tank now

 

 

haha..i think the pill bugs have all died off finally, but the lion and the anemone seem to be doing amazingly

 

zotzer: good idea, it'll be somewhat difficult though--mr lionfishy is pretty quick

[dschflier]

Hey Jason,

 

Just noticed this thread. I have been a bit busy lately so hadn't noticed it earlier. I am so happy to see that after your tank disaster you didn't quit. so many people would have quit for lesser reasons. I think your creativity shows. The tank is not the standard of what everyone else is trying for and it really looks nice. The lion is beautiful and if I would have seen the post ealrier I would have warned you about the damsel. Such is life.

 

I have had a bunch of lions over the years and I never worried at all about them eating. From my experience they aren't like many other fish which are so specialized in what they eat. When they get hungry enough they eat. If you want them to eat the silver sides I would just stop feeding the other stuff for a little while. I could be wrong but I think in a week or two the lion would eat the silver sides. Getting mollies to live in salt is very easy but if your space is limited I wouldn't waste the space. I used to cycle my tanks with mollies.

 

I gotta go but I will write more later.

 

David

[jason the filter freak]

I added a feather duster tonight, one out of my old 55, seems to be going great, nearly matches the coloration of the lion to the T.

 

Now for problems. I'll get pics of both asap.

 

I have all over my rock, overflow box, tank walls, bubbles! Lots and lots and lots of bubbles, from micro all the way up to the size of a pencil eraser. I blow them off ocasionally with a turkey baster but they keep comming back. I assume they're from some sort of cellular respiration, becuase they cling to the rock like they're surrounded by a capsule of high surface tension and I also see them trapped under patches of cayno in the tank here and there. Will this go away eventaully? I have quite a bit of flow, no clean up crew to speak of yet though.

 

Cyano, this brings me to my second problem, my tank has great flow! Every thing is waving about in the tank, including the cyano... which is weird. It grows in dark purple patches, on the rock and the sand bed like you'd expect, but it's also becomming super filamentous, stretching out in long strands about a hair thick but up to 8" in lenght. Is this just standard cyano in high flow or something completely diffrent. I have good water quality. No amonia, no nitrite, nitrates less than 20 ppm, pH is around 8.3 and I skipped the alk test. I have not yet tested for phosphates but I run both carbon and phospate removing media. So whats up?

[davelin315]

It's called dinoflagellates. The giveaway is the bubbles. These are part of the cycle that a new tank will go through and yours definitely qualifies as a new tank given its age and the age of the rock (all began as dry rock). You will also probably have a diatom bloom and a cyano bloom as well, if you're not already going through those. The only solution that I'm aware of is to heavily filter the water and siphon off as much as possible. Dinoflagellates are Protoctists, basically a completely different kingdom than cyano (Monera) but in the same kingdom as diatoms. What does this mean? Cyano can be controlled via chemicals (antibiotics) but dinoflagellates and diatoms need to have their food source eliminated before you can control them. I would think that a UV would also help to bring them under control as well.

 

As you say in your signature, speed kills! You rushed this one a bit and will have to sacrifice a bit of beauty, but I don't think that it will kill off any of your fish, it'll just present a somewhat ugly tank appearance until the dinoflagellates use up their food sources in your water. I would suggest cutting back on feedings and lighting cycle, perhaps even remove lighting altogether for the time being and just use ambient lighting. It won't bother the fish and the mushrooms can easily be removed or at least subsist on meager lighting.

[jason the filter freak]

Yea I don't care much about looks in terms of the tank as long as it's not going to be killing things, I'll cut back on the lighting as much as it's going to kill me to do so.

 

I'll keep up with my once every two week water changes.

 

The other way I've cheated the system is using cycle (bacterial supplement) around twice weekly, there is a lot of debate on whether or not the stuff works but I did an expirement a while back with two buckets, identical HOB filters, adding cycle to one, and food to both and watching the buckets cycle, and cycle made a significant impact on test figures. When I have the time and room I'd like to do a more objective test.

 

I just put in an order for a controller and and ATO the next piece of equipment for the tank will be an intank uv sterilizer... which will add heat to the tank but I can't have much more hanging off the tank. A fuge and thats it.

 

I don't care about the stuff in the tank in terms of looks worse comes to worse it will look ugly for another month month and a half? I can add another cannister filter with just floss and do some gravel vaccuming?

[jason the filter freak]

Updates!!! Did a water chage 2nd since the tank has been up. Everything is doing great. Added this guys

Mated pair of Gold Stripped Maroon Clowns

And and unknown anem

"

 

 

And the fish the tank is based around

[treesprite]

looking good Jason