davelin315 October 5, 2007 Author Share October 5, 2007 Took some photos today after adding some corals the other day that were donated by Caribbean Jake from his tank breakdown. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 October 5, 2007 Author Share October 5, 2007 Combined all of the threads into one. It might be a bit confusing, but the other threads have disappeared into the past and this will at least give you a taste of all we are doing in school. From this point forward I'll indicate which tank it is in the heading. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zotzer October 5, 2007 Share October 5, 2007 Dave, It looks fantastic! Your students are lucky kids, and those are going to be some well-educated fish!! Tracy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jnguyen4007 October 5, 2007 Share October 5, 2007 gorgeous. The kids must be loving it. Why can't we have teacher like you back when I was in elementary school... Great job Dave. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sugar Magnolia October 5, 2007 Share October 5, 2007 Everything looks so healthy! Is that an orange shoulder tang? Very pretty fish! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
wreck October 5, 2007 Share October 5, 2007 Dave, Everything looks great, it must be fun to share your passion with the kids. I have been raising Tomato Clownfish fry for the past few months and would be more that happy to donate some baby clownfish if you're interested. Just let me know and keep up the great work. Rick "Wreck" Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 October 5, 2007 Author Share October 5, 2007 Thanks everyone, and for the offer for the fish, that would be great. If not in the tank in my class we can find a home for them in another class or in another school. Adrienne, that is in fact an orange shoulder tang. It was donated over the summer and it's a great fish (he comes up to the surface to feed - only problem is that when you go close to him he turns sideways and presents his tail spike...). I'm looking forward to what I can do with this tank and the kids, especially with the nice acropora. This is the best set up we've had so far and it really works well for fish and corals. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jason the filter freak October 8, 2007 Share October 8, 2007 thats an interesting tank, I'd be distracted as H-E-double hocky sticks in that room though Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 October 10, 2007 Author Share October 10, 2007 Aquarium field trip tomorrow! The 5th grade will be visiting the National Aquarium tomorrow and thanks to Andy Dehart of the NADC we'll be getting a brief behind the scenes tour of the Pacific Reef Exhibit by one of the aquarists there. I'm bringing a camera along to detail our trip so I'll take some pictures and post them here since it's part of our curriculum and will help us to learn more about the tanks we host at school. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sugar Magnolia October 10, 2007 Share October 10, 2007 You have the luckiest group of 5th graders. I bet the field trip will be awesome! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 November 2, 2007 Author Share November 2, 2007 Hmmm... something is in the water... I lost a coral in this tank today to RTN (it happened over night). It's the teal staghorn that was in there, although I think there's some flesh hanging on at the bottom of it still. Not sure what is going on, perhaps it has to do with stress from the orange shouldered tang picking at everything? I haven't had a free moment for a long time in order to do any water tests, but it also happened a couple of days after I put a skimmer back on the system. I wonder if that has anything to do with it. Anyway, may just be coincidence, but I also lost a coral at home to RTN last night as well, completely separate systems, only thing in common is the brand and lot of salt (I haven't done a water change in awhile) and the water supply that is feeding into the RO/DI systems (it's all Fairfax County Public Water). If I can, I'll try and get some water tests on the tank to see what's going on (if anything). I'm not inclined to think that there's a problem with water quality, though, as I'm using the Pacific blue tang as a barometer. He had a bit of ich after I added him to the tank but he has kicked it on his own over the past few days. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 November 22, 2007 Author Share November 22, 2007 A couple of kids were able to do some water testing on Monday - here's where we were at as far as the tests that actually worked out: pH 8.2 nitrates 5-10 ppm (time for a water change) calcium - no idea, the kit turned the water brown instead of matching any of the colors... time to get a new kit... ran out of time for more tests, but on Monday we'll hopefully have time to test alk and do a few more tests The biggest problem is teaching them to master titration with the test solutions. It's hard to get the kids to be able to allow the drop to fully form and then release itself without touching the sides of the test vials. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 November 27, 2007 Author Share November 27, 2007 Ugh. I have been using a float valve (not a switch) to keep the water level constant with kalk water and over break something went wrong and the flow of water did not stop. Walked into class today with a very wet floor after having about 30 gallons of water pour out onto the floor. I am not sure what happened, but the salinity in the tank was way down and I lost the acros and a monti is beginning to bleach, probably due to the higher pH and lower salinity combined. I am trying to slowly bring the salinity back up to where it should be, but it dropped from 1.026 down to 1.015... I haven't seen any of the shrimp so I'm assuming they are all dead as well. The only good thing right now is that the fish seem to be fine and I have some of the frags that were donated at the last meeting at my home still awaiting encrusting before I add them back so those are fine. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 December 1, 2007 Author Share December 1, 2007 Lost all of the sps with the exception of a single colony of... can't remember what it is... The only good thing is that I had some of the donations from the last meeting at my house still while I waited for them to encrust and so there will be some replacements coming in, and I also had some frags that I took from them in case anything happened so I can replace some of them as well. We are slowly bringing the tank back online and as we do, I'm finding that the shrimp are still in there (don't know about the banded coral shrimp or the lobster, but the peppermints have ventured out again as has the Royal Gramma which was MIA for a few days). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
treesprite December 7, 2007 Share December 7, 2007 Dave, I have this emerald crab that has a taste for corals.... if you have a tank to put it in where it won't cause damage, you can have it. When I catch it I'll put it in my fuge until there's a convenient time to give it to you, like maybe the winter meeting whenever that is (??). Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 January 24, 2008 Author Share January 24, 2008 Ugh... this tank has had some serious problems since the top off incident this year. The fish were doing fine, although the majority of corals did not survive the "flood", but they all caught a nasty case of ich... not sure how it survived the time in hyposalinity, but they managed to do it. It came in full bore (nothing has been introduced into the system since it went through a forced period of hyposalinity for 6 weeks) and the casualties are the orange shouldered tang, the pacific blue tang, the royal gramma, the yellow tail blue damsel, and it looks like the clowns are also going to get knocked off... very depressing to see, I'm trying to fight this off, but they're succumbing one by one. The male clown stopped eating today and the female clown is really starting to struggle. I'm going to run some kick ich on the tank, but I'm not sure if it will help. On the bright side, as I removed fish on Friday to try and treat them more aggressively in QT at my house, I did find that the purple lobster and at least one peppermint shrimp survived. Also, the psammacora is the lone sps to survive the onslaught. Glad I took some frags at the house and can replenish the system! Still have a couple of anemones and other things at the house as well that have been waiting to go in, so the tank will make a recovery, just with a very different look to it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
zotzer January 24, 2008 Share January 24, 2008 Hang in there, Dave. It's probably a good lesson for the kids to see how sensitive these systems can be. Chin up! Tracy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gmubeach January 24, 2008 Share January 24, 2008 Dave I am so sorry:( I love saltwater fish and all fish and it would be a shame to see them suffering but it is a good lesson on life without having the kids see dead people:( anyway I was always distubered when the class room teacher would replace the gerbil\ anyway see ya guys later Troy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 January 26, 2008 Author Share January 26, 2008 Lost Big Mama and Hot Stuff (the bonded clown pair - Cinammon and no barred cinammon or red saddleback... not sure what kind...). This ich came on very fast and hard and wiped out this tank in a matter of less than a week. Amazing how bad this case was. Now I am going to leave the tank fallow for 6 weeks to get this ich cycle out. Maybe it's time to bump up the water changes and bring the salinity back and stick a few anemones in there. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Antiguan January 26, 2008 Share January 26, 2008 You've had a few recent casualities at home and at school. I'm sorry about your loss and hope this tank recovers soon. Do you have a UV sterlizer on this tank, and if so, is it not a gaurantee at warding off ich. Trevor Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 January 26, 2008 Author Share January 26, 2008 No sterilizer at school (can't afford to add that piece of equipment). Also, it's not a guaranteed thing anyway, it can still be there regardless of the sterilizer, it just helps reduce it and protect against free-swimming parasites and bacteria, it won't remove it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
extreme_tooth_decay January 5, 2009 Share January 5, 2009 Has it really been almost a year since this thread was updated? I swear it was just a couple months ago. I must be especially senile this year. Anything happening with this tank? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
davelin315 January 7, 2009 Author Share January 7, 2009 Has it really been almost a year since this thread was updated? I swear it was just a couple months ago. I must be especially senile this year. Anything happening with this tank? I merged all of the Floris topics together and then realized I shouldn't have... I started a new thread - it's the Aggressive reef thread in this forum. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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