homer1475's 80 gallon build

[homer1475]

My original snowflake clown died during TTM as well as my starry blenny.

Down to 3 fish now. 1 male naked clown, Leopard wrasse, and Bangai cardinal.

[soulpatch]

My DT is disease free and yet I am currently missing my starry blenny which was a newer addition and my larger clown that has been in the tank for 2 years. Also have not seen my one goby in weeks but that is not totally abnormal for him.

Doesn't make your losses easier but know even a system supposedly running well still has losses from time to time.

[homer1475]

Cardinal fish, and naked clown have died in QT. Only have the new yellow eye kole, and leopard wrasse now.

Looks like I'll be focusing on the few corals I have left for the next few months. Once the tank settles in and stuff starts to grow again, I'll start to slowly restock it.

I'm to stubborn to quit, but this is a major blow to my ego as a reefer and my wallet.

[soulpatch]

Local guy just blew a seam on his 750 gallon tank if it makes you feel any better Homer....

Thankfully most of his fish and some of his corals were saved but 500 + gallons on the floor.....

[homer1475]

Eww thats not good.....

[homer1475]

Well since it was finally above 0 yesterday I didn't feel like sitting in the house. So we took a drive out to one of the "out of the way" LFS's I haven't been to in a long time.

I had no intentions of buying anything until my tank settles down, but I saw a nice 2 head frag of frogspawn, and thought, "meh why not? Whats the worst thats going to happen, it's going to die again?". 2 heads for 12$, why not.

So as I was paying for it, the wife saw a very nice small colony of lobo's for rather cheap(50$ for 8 heads). Of course she HAD to have it, and while I thought better of it, it came home with me.

When my lights come on I'll post a couple pics. Fingers crossed they survive.

Also after reading Soul's build thread I realized I'm coming up on 2 years with this tank as well. I think I'll have a read back through this thread to relive some of the horrors I've had to deal with.

[homer1475]

You want to talk about major loss.

This LFS I go to has a HUGE frag tank full to the brim with frags and smaller colonies, its a peninsula tank roughly 3 foot wide x 2 foot deep x 20 foot long. Last time I was in there they had it tore down due to something killing everything, they had no idea what caused it but suspected someone had dumped something into it(they had sent tests out to see).

Fast forward a year, I go in yesterday and they have the tank back up and running. While I was shooting the sh*t with the owner, I ask him if they ever found out what happened. Someone had dumped a whole lot of low foaming hand soap into the tank. At first I said "ooh someone put their hands in the tank?" He said "NO" with the amount of soap in the water column someone had to dump it into the tank. Needless to say they now have about 10 cameras pointed at the tank that are constantly recording.

[cincyjim]

Originally Posted by soulpatch

My DT is disease free and yet I am currently missing my starry blenny which was a newer addition and my larger clown that has been in the tank for 2 years. Also have not seen my one goby in weeks but that is not totally abnormal for him.

Doesn't make your losses easier but know even a system supposedly running well still has losses from time to time.

2 out of 3 are bottom night dwellers. Could you possibly have a mantis or something?

[soulpatch]

Originally Posted by homer1475

Also after reading Soul's build thread I realized I'm coming up on 2 years with this tank as well. I think I'll have a read back through this thread to relive some of the horrors I've had to deal with.

every hobby has its ups and downs. I wish you good luck on the new corals. From everything I have seen you post recently the DT seems to be doing well but the QT and fish are the current concern. So at least it sounds like you are going in the right direction

[homer1475]

Fish... lol

I only have a female leopard currently in QT, and the new yellow eye kole I got in last thursday.

Speaking of which, while I was calling around to "local" LFS's looking for the yellow eye kole the one I stopped in yesterday was the only one I didn't call. He has 2 of them for sale. Could have saved myself 15$ on the fish, and 40$ in S&H.

yeah tank has definitely turned around for the better and what few corals I have now seem to be growing and thriving. The fish loss is not a problem with the tank.

[homer1475]

Pics as promised.





Pics are slightly cloudy from the diatom outbreak I'm currently going through. Clean the glass and 2 hours later it's all foggy again.

[Novice101]

Originally Posted by homer1475

Pics as promised.





Pics are slightly cloudy from the diatom outbreak I'm currently going through. Clean the glass and 2 hours later it's all foggy again.

Nice stuff and at a great price by me they really bend you over the barrel in terms of pricing it’s 40$ for something like that


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[nereefpat]

[QUOTE=homer1475;25327115] He said "NO" with the amount of soap in the water column someone had to dump it into the tank. QUOTE]

They aught to be shot

[homer1475]

Originally Posted by nereefpat

They aught to be shot

Totally agree, but let me give you some back story.....

There used to be a great LFS that was owned by 2 guys, the store thrived soo much they decided to open a second store on the other side of town. Both stores were going great(one store specialized in marine, the other in fresh, but both had a little of both) for years, then something happened between the owners and they split. Apparently from what I've been told it was not a very good breakup and their customers were alienated. There has been many occurrences were seemingly thriving tanks all of a sudden had a immediate death of all inhabitants. This has happened in both stores(I go to both and know both owners), and until the complete loss of the frag tank it was never proven what caused it. Both owners blamed the other, but there was never any evidence.

They have already caught 2 people trying to pollute the frag tank thanks to the cameras. Now these people would never say they did it for the other store but since these people are "loyal" to the "other" store, anyone could figure it out.


EDIT:
Just wanted to add that I had never gone into either store until long after this nasty breakup and neither owner knows I go into the others store.

[nereefpat]

Whoa. Scandalous. I hope they were prosecuted.

[homer1475]

Ok with only 2 fish left I still have the spare 40 setup to put the remaining fish in while my display remains fallow.

I bought some Dr. Tims threw that in with their ammonium chloride up to 2ppm. Been waiting about a week now with 0 change in ammonia levels. Their bacteria did nothing for cycling my tank.

Went and got some biospira dumped it in yesterday(ammonia was still 2ppm), tested today, and 0 ammonia and high nitrites. This stuff does work. I wont go as far as to say you can dump it in and dump fish in right behind it, but it does shorten the cycle considerably. This will be on my short list if I ever need to rapidly cycle a tank again.

In other news, the lobo colony I got last week has some sort of hitchhiker crab living it in. It's to small and the colony is to tightly packed to pick it out. I have a glass tilted on the colony with some mysis in, hopefully it will get the idea and crawl in so I can catch it.

Posted in the NTH section, but only got one viable response. "some xanthid species" which really did me no good as there is literally hundreds of xanthid species of crabs. It does have pointy claws, and a hairy body which are 2 red flags for being a bad crab. Unfortunately The only pics I have of it are within the colony and no top down shots.

[homer1475]

Forgot to add pics

[soulpatch]

did you do a peroxide dip for the lobo? A 50/50 mix normally gets a ton of critters jumping from my corals and rockwork when I dip...

[homer1475]

I did not as I was out of bayer and coralRx(actually thought I had a bottle of Bayer in my cupboard). My own fault for not dipping.

Peroxide for the coral as a dip?

[homer1475]

Last time I did peroxide on a coral for algae removal, it ate the remaining bits monti right off the rock.

[soulpatch]

I dip EVERY new coral in bayer, rinse, peroxide, rinse, tank. Have yet to have any issues...

[homer1475]

What ratio of tank water to peroxide?

Everything I'm digging up on various forums only mentions dipping zoas in 1:1 ratio?

peroxide I have on hand, bayer I have to drive an hour for and thats not happening anytime soon.

[soulpatch]

I do a 50/50 of peroxide and NSW

[homer1475]

Well I'll give it a shot. I'll post back in a few, hopefully I have that nasty crab!

[homer1475]

Ok that worked, forced the little bugger right out. The coral is not happy, its puking out is menstral filaments. is that normal? I didn't have it in the peroxide no longer then 30 seconds.



Think it might actually be a gorilla crab? Hairy and black pointy claws.