SmallFry's first tank.. (27g FOWLR)

SmallFry · #1 02-19-2009, 09:53 PM

Thought I'd keep a log of how it's going - you never know, someone might be interested!

So after what seemed like ages, I finally got some water mixed up and in the tank, I also got my hands on a couple of pieces of live rock from the local LFS. It doesn't look like much (because it isn't!), but I plan to use mostly dry rock...

I chose these pieces because they had plenty of coralline algae on them, which I was hoping would spread. The rock had been in the LFS tank for a good while, so it was well cured, and only had a 10 minute trip home, so no die off to speak of - a brittle star, some polyps and a few fans made it through, the brittle star was wandering around the tank for a week or so, but has since mysteriously disappeared . I did try putting tiny bit of food in the bottom of the tank so he didn't starve, but he's just vanished - no body or anything, I suspect unless we get CSI fish tank I'll never know...

The rock was just left to do it's thing for a good while as I was waiting for the dry rock, the odd thing is, that right from the start, even before the rock went in, I've had ammonia (it was RO water), not that much - 0.5ppm, but still there. No nitrates, nitrites, just ammonia... The new live rock carried on getting greener and greener (I was letting it have light to try not to kill the coralline). I thought it was the nitrate that fueled the algae, but still no nitrate to speak of.

See how green/brown the rocks are now...

This went on for weeks.. In the end I added some "cycle", I know there are a lot of people who say it's rubbish, but I thought it was worth a try for the $8 from wal-mart..

Four days later, I have 3.0ppm Nitrite, 17ppm Nitrate, and STILL 0.5ppm ammonia. So something must be generating the ammonia, beats me what, unless it's the brittle star (how much ammonia do you get from a dead brittle star, I wonder)..

The dry rock arrived (South Seas), it has plenty of structure to provide hiding places for the inmates when I can get rid of the pesky ammonia..

Some of it was a little gritty, and there were some (not many) very fine roots in some of it. It was scrubbed in warm tap water, rinsed again, then thoroughly rinsed in RO water. Incidentally, it's quite rough stuff, so don't do this in your nice new bathtub...

Then I got to try my hand at aquascaping...

You may just be able to make out a partition in the back left corner of the tank, this is something I made out of acrylic from home depot to keep livestock away from intakes and heaters. Hopefully there'll be some growth over it to hide all the hardware eventually. All I can say is that bending acrylic with a camp stove is an interesting process, and I ended up drilling over 800 holes with a battery drill..

As of today, my ammonia is still at 0.5ppm (never seems to go higher), nitrite still at 3ppm, and nitrate the far side of 20ppm. And the live rock is getting hairy... Still has live polyps and fans on it though.. What I'm wondering is should I do a big water change to get rid of some of that nitrate, or should I wait till the ammonia bottoms out (whenever that happens..)?

Any suggestions/comments?

Myka · #2 02-19-2009, 10:03 PM

Looks like a good start!! You should definately do a 50% waterchange to get rid of some nitrates. You will find you will probably fight nitrates for the first 8 months or so while the dry rock establishes a good bacteria colony. If you can add a few more pieces of live rock this will speed up the process. Take a sample of your water to your LFS and get them to test ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate. Maybe your kits are off. What brand are you using?

SmallFry · #3 02-19-2009, 10:20 PM

Hi,

Thanks for the advice on the water change. I'd read you weren't supposed to change the water while cycling unless the ammonia got high enough to kill your live rock, but this was looking a bit weird, so I didn't really know what to do..

Ammonia test is API, the rest are done off Mardel test strips - I'm beginning to think that maybe the latter were a mistake though...

I think taking a sample to the LFS is probably a good idea.

I think I get what you mean about the nitrates with mostly dry rock - takes a long time for the anaerobic bacteria that get rid of the nitrates to establish..

I know that the nitrate must be coming from the ammonia, but I'm at a bit of a loss to explain why the ammonia isn't dropping as the nitrate rises - no food in the tank for several weeks, and nothing I can see dying off apart (maybe) from a small brittle star. Could that create that much ammonia?

I'll get the water tested and set up for the water change and see what happens..

Myka · #4 02-19-2009, 10:59 PM

I don't think your source of ammonia is the starfish. If your tank is showing nitrates then the cycle is well on its way. A small amount of ammonia like you have can linger in the tank for a few weeks before it seems to "break", but I am not convinced as there is so little live rock in your tank. Even the 17 ppm of nitrates seems questionable to me. Let us know what the LFS says about your testings. The dip strips that you are using aren't very accurate, and I have never liked API, others do though. Hopefully your LFS will use high-quality test kits like Elos or Salifert.

Doug · #5 02-20-2009, 01:48 PM

Hi. Good to see another from around here on the board.

Welcome
to Canreef

BlueAbyss · #6 02-20-2009, 08:01 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug

Hi. Good to see another from around here on the board.

+1

You guys are all in the south though, where a LFS is actually local.

SmallFry · #7 02-20-2009, 10:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Doug

Hi. Good to see another from around here on the board.

Welcome
to Canreef

Quote:

Originally Posted by BlueAbyss

+1

You guys are all in the south though, where a LFS is actually local.

Thanks for the welcome - does it ever strike you as ironic that we're keeping saltwater fish about as far away from the sea as you can get?

SmallFry · #8 05-23-2009, 05:31 AM

So it's been a good while since I updated this, mainly because until recently not a lot's been happening - I've been deliberately going slowly, especially as I've started off with very little live rock.

Oh, and the computer kind of temporarily died too...

After talking to the people at the LFS, I bought a couple of Mollys to give the biological filter a bit of a kick (the tank had cycled at this point, I just wanted to get the bacteria colonies growing a bit). In hindsight this might not have been the best idea, but they have been eating some of that darn algae, though feeding them has probably been fuelling it too.
Thinking about it I also should've had a clean up crew before any fish, but hadn't found a source of these that didn't involve a lot of money for shipping a few snails.. I have now found somewhere that has them, so not a mistake I'll be making again!

The nitrates have bottomed out, though I think that may have something to do with the hair algae eating them all, ditto phosphates..

A while back I had an outbreak of cyanobacteria which was unpleasant to say the least. I think that basically I water changed my way out of trouble on this one - sucking off as much of it as possible each time and then running some phosphate media in an effort to mop up the phosphate before the cyanobacteria got to it. I now have some still, but much, much less than before..
I also now have a skimmer which is helping to keep things a little more under control too.

Having got that sorted I felt confident enough to get my first real saltwater fish, a tomato clown. He's a bit of a character, and gave the Mollys a bit of a run for their money in the beginning (both got small chunks taken out of their tails), but after a couple of days peace broke out and tails are almost back to normal.. The clown is quite a character, but does have one odd habit that I've no explanation for. He'll put his nose against a rock (usually the one in the corner of the tank below his lurking/sleeping spot and swim really hard for a second or so, sending sand just about everywhere and digging himself a hole in the process. There's now a heap of sand you may be able to see on the bottom right of the tank which is the result of his excavations. Any ideas what on earth he's up to??

I also managed to get my hands on some critters for a clean up crew. I now have a couple of bumblebee snails, three zebra turbo snails and two blue legged hermits, though on closer inspection one turns out not to have blue legs. Oh well! I can see why hermits can be a problem if you get too many, they are just plain crazy. Entertaining, but crazy.

The turbo snails are putting in some hard work eating all that algae - it's going to take them a while to catch up as there are only three, but I prefer that than to have more of them and them run out of food and starve. In any case I'm pretty impressed with their work, all those clean patches on the rocks are the result of just under a weeks work.. I think given a few more weeks they'll be pretty near caught up.. Hopefully without that hair algae the corralline which is just starting to colonise will get a bit more light and make some more progress..

I'll try to update this a little more often in future..

fishytime · #9 05-23-2009, 01:35 PM

Looking good!.....just a heads up.....bumblebee snails arent reef-safe....they are predatory to other snails....dont know why lfs sell them as reef-safe?

SmallFry · #10 05-23-2009, 03:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by fishytime

Looking good!.....just a heads up.....bumblebee snails arent reef-safe....they are predatory to other snails....dont know why lfs sell them as reef-safe?

Uh-oh.. Will they go after the turbo snails (who are twice their size)? I was under the impression that they ate detritus from the sandbed when I bought them, though I heard afterwards that they went for worms and things like that, but not about the snails. Maybe I should evict them before they get too hungry i.e. while I still have all three zebra turbo snails?

I'm only FOWLR at the moment, but I plan to go reef when I upgrade - yes, only running for 5 months with a few fish, and I'm already sort of planning my upgrade (won't happen for a good while though)! This hobby is addictive - they should have warning stickers on all the tanks so you know before you buy one...