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Dale · #1 07-07-2006, 06:27 AM

Hi slick fork.

Just some random thoughts:

Instead of using tap water try using R/O water for a water cooler till your unit is hooked up. I refill a 5G. container for $3 at my grocery store. It's a cheap alternative for a small tank.

I'm wondering about the temperature variations the fish (and corals) might experience from a LFS in Calgary to Olds to your tank. Depending on the weather they could go from LFS tank temp to car temp to your house temp to your tank temp. The water volume in a normal fish bag isn't very much. You could try using a small cooler (for a sixpack) for transport. It's not the highs and lows that's hard on marine species as much as it's the oscillations in between.

Welcome to nano land! Small tanks look cool and seem

to cost less but managing the water chemistry and temp variations is very difficult. There is so little water volume to act as a buffer. I've gone from a 33G. to a 75G.display/55G.sump softy tank and still find balancing water chemistry challenging.

Can you take a pic of your tank, and in particular, how your powerheads etc.. are situated? I'm trying to visualize that much flow without blowing substrate everywhere. Just curious.

I don't know why your fish died. Sometimes these things happen. We test the parameters and troubleshoot but there's a lot going on that we don't understand as well. I recently bought 5 Chromis for my tank. 4 took to the move happy as clams but one immediately separated itself from the school, hid in a corner and died 8 hrs later ?????

BTW: I've been to Olds before (used to live in Calgary). Had my choice of Hort. college there or in Langley (I chose Langley). I guess the grass is always greener on the B.C. side

Good luck with your tank.
________
herbal health shop

Moogled · #2 07-07-2006, 06:45 AM

Hi Slice_Fork, I'm sorry to hear about your loss and I know how frustrating it can be to come home to dead livestock.

Like Dale says, sometimes things just go wrong in the aquarium and stuff die.

Luckily for me, the 2 ocellaris I've placed into my tank were giddy as soon as I placed them in. As for the Corals, placement is extremely crucial and I experiment with different places. The amount of light the coral recieves is a large factor.

What do your Toadstool and Green Star Polyp look like at the moment? Are the tentacles on the toadstool shrunken? They are fairly sensitive to water quality. As for the GSP frag, they are very robust although the frags have just begun to open for Gold's too.

albert_dao · #3 07-07-2006, 06:51 AM

Will comment tommorow night. Last I checked, all my frags and clownfish were fine...

Slick Fork · #4 07-07-2006, 07:39 AM

The more I think about it.... it's too late to think.

The 2 culprits I can think of at the moment would be my pail that I used for acclimatising them or the powerhead. I wonder if one or the other got contaminated somewhere along the line.

I'm thinking the pail because if the powerhead was contaminated with something wouldn't it wipe out the whole tank? After reading and consideration I feel I owe the staff at gold's an apology for my earlier vent. A combination of a bad day at work and having both my new fish dead in under 24 hours doesn't make for a pleasant stress free evening but I shouldn't have targeted the store right off the bat. My profound apologies

The toadstool is coming back around, all the polyps are out. The GSP is all sucked in but it's done that every night. I guess I'll see in the morning how it's doing.

TheReefGeek · #5 07-07-2006, 03:29 PM

Did you observe an actual cycle of your tank? (ammonia up, then gone, nitrate up, then gone, then buildup of nitrates?)

1/2 hour is not very long for acclimation, I go for 1 hour, and slowly increase the drip rate, and empty 1/3rd of the container a few times as well.

Slick Fork · #6 07-07-2006, 06:03 PM

Free minute here at work, the toadstool looked fully recovered this morning but the jury is still out on the GSP (it was still dark when I left for work so I'll see this afternoon)! Now to answer some of the questions...

As far as actually recording a cycle, no I didn't. I test salinity, and check ph every night, but didn't bother with my Ammonia, nitrites, nitrates, etc. until 3 weeks had gone by. My thinking behind this was I change 15-20 percent of the water every week, the tank will cycle when it cycles and checking every day will just make me impatient. (I'm a big believer in just letting a tank cycle without panicking every time I see a spike)

There was very little die off from the rock I bought which I took as a good sign that it was decently cured. The clowns were actually acclimitising for about an hour and a half as I fiddled around with the new powerhead.

I did take them home in a 6 pack cooler, however it was an extremely hot day out, traffic was bad and it took me twice as long as usual to get home and I'm sure they got a little toasty despite the cooler.

Losing the fish was frustrating because I've never lost anything that quickly before (maybe I've just been lucky) and it was a shock to see the corals looking like they were on the edge of collapse as well. The odd time something dies in my FW tank it doesn't seem to have nearly the same impact.

I did a 50% water change late last night with RO water, the toadstool looks like it's coming around and hopefully the GSP will as well. I'm not going to worry about bothering anybody about the fish because I don't really think the store had anything to do with it and although I may be short tempered and tend to open my mouth wide enough to fit both feet in, I am an honest guy and big enough to admit when I was out of line.

Albert, if that was you that helped me out on either monday or wednesday I appreciate the time you took and I owe you an apology. I was going to PM you but i figured if I'm apologizing for something I said in public, I should make the apology public as well.

What I really want to do right now is figure out where I went wrong, and avoid making the same mistake again. Thanks again for all the replies and keep 'em coming

TheReefGeek · #7 07-07-2006, 06:17 PM

Quote:

(I'm a big believer in just letting a tank cycle without panicking every time I see a spike)

Seeing the spikes is not a panick, its great, because you know you are building up the quanitties of bacteria you need to break down waste. Without "seeing" the cycle, you don't know your tank can break down wastes effectively.

Also, why did you do water changes during the cycle? You were removing waste that should have gone towards building up bacteria levels.

If you have very little die off, and did water changes, and didn't record any spikes, I wouldn't be confident that your system actually cycled properly.