Popeye?

There's something up with Killer the wrasse. He was definitely fine yesterday, but today when we got back from work we noticed he has puffy, cloudy eyes. He seems quite distressed with it as he is darting about and it looks like he can't see very well. He has been a vary calm and nosy fish up to now and never seemed bothered by us looking at him. By having a wee look online we have found a few things it could be; gas behind the eyes, popeye, or a bacterial infection.

Whatever it is, we have a problem. Ian was moved into the main tank a week or so ago as he was getting chased by Jazmine and was choosing to hide up at the top of the tank rather than in the rocks or sand. We thought he would be happier in the main tank and it seems he is. However, we now have sickly Killer in the same tank as Jazmine. Jazmine can't go in the main tank incase she has any infections etc but now she is at risk of catching the same infection/ problem as Killer. All we can do it wait and hope Killer will get over it, and then keep our fingers crossed that Jazmine is tough enough not to be affected.

I will keep you posted....

The Coral Muncher

Our green star polyp has been unhappy for almost a week, not opening fully and on some days not opening at all. We read that it is quite common for it to do this for one or two days. In an attempt to cheer it up we moved it to the front of the tank and closer to the light. The following day we spotted the culprit of the upset; a coral munching sea-slug! He is from the Tritoniidae Nudibranch family and is very pretty, but also a little monster! We've fished him out and now he is in the sump. Since moving him to the sump the coral has perked up and is fully open today. If you can give him a new home we would be very grateful. Follow this link.

Jazzing it up

On Sunday we bought three new fish. Here's a quick introduction, and I promise to fill you in on all the technical details soon (just not tonight!).

From left to right, here is Ian, the Orangespotted Shrimp Goby EDIT - Actually he is a Blenny! It look us a good month or so to correct this as the fish shop told us he was a Goby... tut!, Jazmine, the African Flameback Angelfish, and Killer, the Sixline Wrasse.

The Big Clean-Up

I've been keeping a secret from you all... I suppose I was kind of hoping I would get away without having to tell you that we have a wee problem in the Nano tank, but now I can't really hide it anymore.

We have a plague. A plague of flatworms. They are tiny red and orange flatworms and don't seem to do any harm. It's just that our Nano tank is now full of them and they are not too easy to get rid of. Since Goldie and Harvey have moved to the main tank the flatworms have taken over and are all over the rocks, side of the tank and in the sand. Their natural predators are the fish, especially Wrasse like Goldie. We are not really wanting to get another fish at the moment so were looking for other options to eradicate them. We tried ordering a treatment called Flatworm Exit from the US but it is not available. We could abandon the tank, freshwater dip all the rocks and kill everything on them and get new sand and start again, but that all sounds a bit extreme!

So we have gone for another option in the meanwhile; The Cleaner Shrimps.

Today we got two Cleaner Shrimps or Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimps (Lysmata amboinensis) to be precise. They are meant to be really handy as they will actively clean the fish from parasites. We are hoping they have a taste for flatworms! They seem to love the Nano tank as it is currently full of wee white crawlie things. They have been chasing them all over the back wall and grabbing at them with their pincers which is lovely to see!

We've not named the Shrimps. So far it's just the fish that have names (Starting with letter A - Z). Do you think we should name them?

Impossible Photography?!

I wanted to show you a photo of our main tank now it has all the fish in it. I'm afraid this is the best shot of all/ most of the fish! Harvey is clear at the front, then Comet, Boomerang is further back behind Harvey, Darty is always up the far end but is not looking at the camera and Goldie has just missed the shot as he swims off the bottom of the photo!

 

 

 

Even just trying to capture one fish is not easy. Boomerang has developed some beautiful colouring and looks very grown up. If only we could get a good photo to show you! This is one of the best we have in the album (yes we have a fish album!). 

Corals

Our zoanthids, which we got free on a piece of live rock, are doing well and seem to be growing so we decided it was time to add our first corals to the tank.

There are so many to choose from in the fish shop. A lot of them are a kind of brownie peachy colour which neither of us are to keen on so we were mainly picking the bright coloured ones.

In the end we picked some orange and lime green zoanthids. I read that these brightly coloured ones mainly come from Fiji. They were the only ones in the shop so we think we have something special with them. We also picked a carpet coral called green star polyp coral. Its a lovely bright green colour and will cover the live rock like a carpet (hence the name!). The last one we picked is a mushroom coral. They had loads or brownie ones and a few red ones but only one purple and turquoise one. I'll let you guess what one we picked! Its really pretty and there is about 5 mushrooms on the piece we got.

Double Trouble

This weekend we moved Goldie and Harvey into the main tank. They have been in quarantine for a month now and Harvey's whitespot has all cleared up.  Goldie was quite easy to catch after removing some of the rocks. Harvey was a real pain in the bum tho! He jammed himself in a hole in the rock and wouldn't come out. We left him overnight and tried to catch him when we fed him but he wouldn't come out the rock far enough! Eventually we gave up on trying to catch him to transfer him to a bag and acclimatise him properly, we whipped the rock out that he was hiding in and popped it straight into the main tank. Within a couple of minutes he came out to see all the other fish, nosey fish that he is!

Harvey has made friends with the Clowns and Eddie and follows them about all day! He looks like he is annoying Boomerang at times but they all seem quite happy. He is still really tiny - much smaller than Boomerang. He loves eating the algae on the back wall and I noticed the Clownfish tried to copy him thinking it must be tasty, I don't think they were impressed!

Goldie has settled in well and is always out for feeding time. Yesterday I came to say Hi to them all before I fed them. When I came back with the food Goldie was out the tank! It looks like he jumped out the tiny cut-out corner of the glass lid as he landed on the sliding glass under the lights. I just opened the glass and pushed him back in the tank. He seems fine - no damage done. I've covered up the gap now! Troublesome fish! I can't quite believe he managed to get out that gap as it's pretty small, and to land on the glass where I would see him was just lucky. If he wasn't out swimming I would normally have just presumed he had gone hiding under the sand.

Hide and seek, anyone..?!

We have two new playful fish in the Nano. I say playful but maybe scardy-cat fish would be a better description! They both like to hide away either in the rocks or under the sand and are easily scared. Fortunately we get to see them everyday when they come out for tea!

Harvey is our Pacific Blue Tang, or Palatte Surgeonfish, Paracanthurus hepatus. He is tiny at the moment, about the size of a 50p piece and is very cute! He has shown us lots of his tricks already - he can wedge himself into tiny holes in the rocks and disappear and play dead by lying down on the rock or sand and lying very very still! He also sleeps like this! Its very entertaining to see and if I can get a photo I will definitely post it for you to see. He is known to be a very friendly fish once he has settled in. Blue tangs are prone to getting white spot and are easily stressed. Harvey has some white spot at the join of his body and his yellow tail. It doesn't seem to be bothering him so we're not treating it. He is a beautiful bright blue colour and will be a lovely friendly addition to our gang.

We also got a Golden Wrasse, also know as Canary Wrasse or Yellow "Coris", Halichoeres chrysus. His name is Goldfinger,  Goldie for short. The main reason we got Goldie is because he was in the same tank as Harvey in the fish shop meaning we can quarantine them together. Goldie is very shy at the moment and spends a lot of time buried under the sand. He will be very helpful as he is a cleaner fish and is knows to eat flatworms (which we have in the Nano tank) and also pick parasites off of other fish in the tank. That should help out Harvey and keep him well. Goldie is a brilliant almost luminous yellow fish with a pointy nose and three back 'eyes' on his dorsal fin.

 

Bring on the Clowns!

It was very exciting transferring Boomerang, Comet and Darty into the main tank. Not surprisingly I caught Boomerang first. She is definitly the tamest fish at the moment and will happily come up and nibble your fingers at feeding time. Comet was a bit more troublesome to catch as he is so quick. He was like that when we got him in the fish shop too! I left Darty for Stu to catch. We couldn't even find him at first, so removed all the rocks after realising he was wedged into a cave in the rock! He lived up to his name and darted about like mad before Stu finally caught him!

They have now settled nicely into the main tank and seem to be loving it. Interestingly Comet has always has one white spot on the tip of his dorsal fin and since moving him it has cleared up. I was going by the theory that white spot/ ick is ok as long as the fish is behaving normally and eating well. Comet's white spot never bothered him but I am pleased that it seems to have gone.

The clowns have made friends with Eddie (who seems to think he is a clownfish!). He always comes up to the corner with the clowns at 6pm for tea. Poor Freddie is getting bullied by Eddie tea time and always gets chased away. He looks good, a bit more see-through that Eddie, and seems to get plenty to eat by hanging out at the far end of the tank with Darty. Interestingly Eddie and Freddie sleep almost next to each other, so they do love each other really!

This photo is from tea time yesterday, just before I fed them!

Moving on

The plan this weekend is to move the the fish in the Nano tank; Boomerang, Comet and Darty, into the main tank. We've had the coral babies, Eddie and Freddie, in there for four weeks now and they are both lively and feeding so I don't think further quarantine time is necessary. I've just been to the fish shop to get a big barrel of water so will do a water change in the main tank tomorrow morning and then move the fish over. That will definitely be the fun bit as Boomerang and Comet are now quite territorial of their Nano tank and are not keen on us poking about in it. Darty will also be a challenge as he loves his cave. We may have to move the rocks to get him I think.

I've also reset the light sequence so that the blue lights come on for one hour before the white ones and go off one hour after the white lights. That way there is a more gradual light on and off sequence which should be better for the fish and the corals. We got some free Zoanthids with our live rock. They are small corals. Ours are purple and green and look pretty cool.

 

The coral babies will soon have to share their huge home with bossy Boomerang! That'll be a shock for them! I'll give both tanks some garlic tonight to try keep them calm for the big move tomorrow.

Coral Babies

Our first two fish in the main tank are Eddie and Freddie, the coral babies. They are yellow clown gobies, also know as coral gobies. They are really tiny fish, about one inch, and look quite lost in our big tank!

We got them on Sunday and they are feeding well. They are mainly carnivores and seem quite happy eating all the copepod and mysis shrimp you can see all over the glass walls of the tank. They also like the flake food and the oyster eggs. Freddie is a bit paler than Eddie but they are both lively wee things. They mostly do this thing where they freeze on the spot, either on the rock or glass but sometimes in the middle of the water. Its quite entertaining to watch!

The tank is amazingly clear, our Internet bought clean up crew (CUC) of 20 hermit crabs and 10 turbo snails have polished up the rocks a treat. Water tests are all normal, although water temperature has been up a bit due to the hot weather. Its great to have both tanks up and running at last.

The coral babies are in quarantine in the main tank now and after a few weeks we will start thinking of introducing Boomerang, Comet and Darty (if we can catch them!).

Nano Upgrades

We have done some alterations to the Nano tank to make everything run smoother. We added a skimmer into the back of the Nano tank. Its a TMC V2Skim 120 Nano Protein Skimmer. Its pretty neat and fits nicely into the 2nd chamber at the back of the Nano with the lid down. It has a wee collection cup which is easy to empty. It produced a soda stream effect for the first 24 or so hours but is working nicely now.

Before we added the Clownfish we added a small wall between the main tank at the front and the back sections. I've read on the forums that its not uncommon for fish to jump into the back section and get hurt or killed. We've not taken any chances and I got some 1mm plastic at work and we've superglued in a partition wall to prevent any accidents - better safe than sorry.

We've removed all the bioballs, carbon and ceramic rings and have used a small piece of the black sponge over the inlet to the 3rd chamber to kill the micro bubbles from the skimmer. I would have loved to move the heater to the back too but I've read about them shattering due to the variable water levels. We've not removed the sponge from chamber 1 as it does a nice job of filtering off the bigger floaters. I expect that's the best place to put the heater to prevent any likelihood of it shattering. At the moment we have a small sock of Rowaphos in the 2nd chamber but hope to remove that soon.

Proudly Presenting...

... our Main Tank.

Yes it arrived ages ago now,  but finally we've overcome all the hurdles and at last it's up and running.

This tank was supposed to be the easy option, ready-made marine tank, in my eyes. Oh how wrong I was! It seems there is nothing in this hobby that you can buy ready-made. Its all about how you fiddle about with it, trying this and that and sawing and drilling to make things work like you thought they should.

We though it would be easy enough, having done our research. Buy the tank with sump and cabinet, buy all the pumps and gadgets to make it run, fill it with water, turn it all on and hey presto! We had no idea we needed to be plumbing experts. With our amateurs plumbing the tank sounded like a flushing toilet - NO WAY NOT IN MY LIVING ROOM! It was to do with the weir, which is inbuilt into the tank. The water flows over the weir, splashes down the inside of the weir to the bottom of the tank and then gets sucked through into the sump. Nightmare. It seems there were a few options we could do - after phoning the fishman and reading more stuff on the fishy forums. 1. We could fill the weir with bioballs. 2. We could fit a tap as the water goes into the sump to back up the flow. 3. We could fit a Durso pipe. I was not so keep on the bioballs as wanted the tank to run as naturally as possible (I've never seen bioballs in the sea!), the tap and the Durso is where our next journey started....

For some completely unknown reason all our pipes turned out to be imperial... and impossible to buy in any fishshop, as most people nowadays use metric. We have wasted a lot of time, pipework and money on sourcing the correct pipework to construct our Durso pipe. Stu eventually sourced the pipework on the internet and has redone all the pipework with weld and tape on the screw fittings. It has made an amazing difference, less leaks and much much less noise :-)

I've taken it a few steps on this weekend after salting, adding the sand (TMC in the main and live sand plus miracle mud in the sump) and adding the best pieces of Live Rock from our local fish shop. We'll need much more LR but I want it to be good stuff so will keep hunting it out.

One Hunnnndred an' Eeeeightyyyy

We have two new additions to the Nano Tank. A new partner Clownfish for Boomerang, and a Firefish. We have named the new Clownfish Comet and the Firefish is called Darty, or 180 as Stu likes to call him!

Comet is exactly the same as Boomerang was when we first got him from the shop (I think he was from the same batch as he was the last one left). He's a mad one and they had trouble catching him! He's great in the tank and zooms about happily. Boomerang is a much darker orange and a wee bit bigger and is definitely the boss. He does these clicks when Comet gets too near to show he is more dominant. Its worked and we've not had any fights, although in the first week I did see Comet doing clicks back at Boomerang...

Darty (or 180) is a Fire Goby, or Magnificant Dartfish. He is long and slim and has a beautiful tail like a fire. They are meant to have a long yellow dorsal fin which they stick up to look big and dominant, but Darty only has a short one at the moment. The fish shop promised us that it will grow back soon. He has made home in a cave in the rocks and darts in and out. Dartfish have a habit of leaping out of open tanks, luckily ours has a lid! He gets on well with the Clowns and we seem to have a happy family now.

Here's a wee piccy from my mobile of our happy family. Darty at the top, Boomerang left and Comet on the right.

 

Sad News

Yesterday one of our wee Clownfish, Amber, died. Amber never seemed to eat much and hadn't grown at all since we got him. Boomerang is now much larger and a much brighter tangerine orange and has got darker bolder fins and stripes. So its not a huge surprise but its still sad and I feel sorry for wee Boomerang who kept trying to nudge Amber back to life, and is now swimming about the tank all alone.

Maybe this is also the time to tell you that the sea slug is also not with us anymore. I think it was near the end of its life after laying its eggs. Unfortunately it managed to squeeze through the tiny hole in the back wall and into the filter sponge in the back compartment. When I went in to rescue it it has turned into an unrecognisable slime. Not the nicest way to go. I heard that once they die the sea slugs emit toxins so cleaned up thoroughly after that one.

Fingers crossed I don't have to write another post like this for a while.

Our First Fishes

We now have our very first fish in the Nano tank!! They are two wild caught Ocellaris Anemonefish, or False Percula Clownfish.

Both are approximately 1 inch long, one is slightly bigger and bolder than the other. I've called the smaller of the two Amber and the larger one Boomerang. They have found a wee corner behind the rocks where Amber mostly stayed yesterday, Boomerang kept darting out and back and that's how he got his name! Clownfish all start off as males and if they find a pair one will turn into a female. The female is usually the larger, more dominant one. Our two seem to get along well at the moment although Boomerang is definitely the boss! I'm hoping they pair and then we might get some baby Nemos!

There's a bit of a thing on the marine fish forums about the name Nemo.... it's a bit like 'he who shall not be named' in Harry Potter! I'm going to ignore it, but just for the record we've not called any of our Clownfish 'Nemo'. We've got a naming system like the American hurricanes. We'll start as A with the 1st fish and work through to Z as best we can.

I've not taken any photos of Amber and Boomerang yet, so here's one off the internet.

 

Sea Slugs

I've been reading a bit into our slug that we bought last week. In the shop it was called a frilly slug, more commonly known as a lettuce sea slug. There's quite a few types and by looking at some pictures ours looks most like the Elysia clarki. It is commonly confused with the Elysia crispata.

The Elysia clarki eats algae (Penicillus capitatus, P. lamourouxii, Halimeda incrassata and H. monile) and absorbs chloroplasts from the algae into its body which continue to photosynthesis and give the slug its green colour. This allows the slug to produce sugars for its own nutrition.

Sounds pretty complex for a wee sea slug, and unfortunately I've not a clue if we have any of the algae it like to eat in our tank. It has been slithering about the tank happily enough but I've not seen it eat anything and it doesn't look very green (does that mean its not eating?). It has an annoying habit of slithering into the weir and getting stuck due to the high flow. I had to rescue it three times yesterday! I think once we have the big tank up and running it might be happier and safer in there.

Its very pretty for a slug and I hope it settles down. I'm going to do everything I can to find something it wants to eat. Will keep you posted on its progress.

A very dirty tank

Its been a week or so on since we took out the prawn, which went all fluffy! Disgusting! Since then we have added some hermit crabs, 6 blue legged and 2 red legged... I think. I only asked to buy 5 blue legged hermits and some empty shells - I'll let you guess how we ended up with 8 crabs and only one empty shell! We have also bought 2 sandsifting snails and a frilly slug, or lettuce slug as Stu keeps telling me. We also got another bit of Live Rock (about 2kg).

The tank has turned brown with algae and the crabs and snails are kept busy keeping it clean. They're doing a really good job, even if we have helped them with the glass scraper a few times :-) I noticed the glass scraper only works on the side walls of the tank and not the front glass as it it curved. We'll need to find something a bit more flexible to keep it clean and clear.

Stu has taken up the job of top marine chemist and has been regularly testing the water. Our ammonia levels have been a constant clear 0, nitrites rose to 1.5 mg/l and fell within 2 days to 0 mg/l. Our nitrate levels rose slowly to a max of 100 mg/l and are now falling. All good stuff. Time for our first water change I think.

I got a wee video of our hermit crabs when I first put them in the tank. If you watch close you can see one switching shells. How cool is that!

Click here to view our hermit crab video.

The Rock and the Prawn

We picked 2 pieces of LR (Live Rock) down at the LFS. Stu picked a lovely purple bubbly bit and I picked a flatter piece with some wee things growing on it. Both pieces of LR have come from Fiji, picked up as broken rubble from the reefs out there. The LFS receives it dry and has to ‘cure’ the rock and let the microorganisms re-grow. This takes several weeks and requires lots of water changes and it a pretty smelly job!

Once home, we popped the rock straight into our Nano and arranged it nicely with a wee cave in the middle. We did some tests and got a blue colour on the pH test and clear 0 for Ammonia. We think our pH tests are a bit cheap so will aim get something more accurate.

To start our tank cycling we added a lovely raw king prawn. He is on a slow cook and is slowly turning pink! He’ll stay in there for 3 days , then I’ll take him out and we can do some more tests.

Salty and Sandy

It took us a few weeks to get onto this stage. We had tried to order all these wee bits online but in the end Stu cancelled the order.

We got some Red Sea Coral salt for RO water and some natural reef aggregate down at the LFS. Sanded the tank, put the heater on and then after the cloudy water had cleared we added the salt. We got a refractometer which is amazingly accurate. Salt is now 1.025 with the temperature at 26°C.

The tank looks much better now, with the reef base in. I had a good look at it and its made up of wee porous balls of coral and rock and some shells. It looks good and is not sharp which will be good for the sand sifting fish we plan to add later. I would like to add some live sand to it too but the LFS only had a huge bag in stock. Maybe I can add some when I'm filling the main tank with sand...?

RO or not RO

Our water here in Surrey isn’t ideal for marine fish, in fact it not even that great as drinking water and it does some horrible things to the kettle!

It was more of a fact of life that we filled our Nano with Reverse Osmosis (RO) water. You can buy it from the LFS in big containers which makes it easy. With the Nano full we put the pump on and watched the tank spring into action. The Nano’s filtration system is hidden in the back part of the tank in 3 sections; 1. Sponge 2. Ceramic rings, carbon bag, sponge 3. Return pump. We’ll be using Live Rock as a natural filtration system in addition to this.

Diving in at the Deep End

There is an amazing volume of instruction and advice in the whats’ and hows’ of marine fish keeping. We did our own research and found some good books; ‘ Marine Fish Keeping for Dummies’ and a beautiful colour photo book ‘ Marine Fish’. It’s been like studying for a course, and we’ve both compiled our own ‘Fish Notes’ with everything we have learnt! Even with all the studying I expect we will learn most of our lessons on the way.... the first wave taking us the fish shop.

LFS, or Live Fish Stockist to us newbies here. (There’s so much lingo to learn in this hobby! You’ll see what I mean as this blog progresses.) We spent a small gold mine at the LFS in Coventry. Some of the stuff we had planned to buy and for the rest we made some snap decisions with the advice of the reputable Fishman.

Here’s a list of our buys:

Quarantine Tank

· 24Gallon Nano Tank with cabinet stand

· Tetratec HT 50 Heater

Main Tank

· Godiva Deluxe Tank 48” x 24” x 18”

· Sump 4/5 partitioned

· Arcadia overtank Luminaire T5 lighting; 2 white, 2 blue 90cm Actinic bulbs

· Instant Ocean Skimmer 800

· Eheim Compact + 3000 Pump

· Marea 2400 Wave Powerhead

· Tetratec HT 300 Heater