PeeperKeeper

Thanks Marlin, same to you! I just popped over to your site yesterday. I guess we got started at the same time. happy2.gif

Having gotten tired of introducing new fish who turn out to be sick and get the rest of my tank sick, I decided to set up a very small (10 gallon) Q tank to put new fish in for a couple of weeks before introducing them to my main display. After cycling the QT, I got a firefish to put in it and he did fine. A week or so later, I bought a tank raised neon dottyback and put him in as well.

In less than 2 days it became obvious that the dottyback was becoming aggressive towards the firefish. So I made a barrier out of egg crate and screen material to divide the 10 gallon tank and keep them separated. Problem solved. Yesterday afternoon, I checked on them and all was fine. This morning I came in and the barrier had shifted so that the dottyback got in the firefish's side and the firefish is looking extremely ragged after only one night.

My question is will this be a problem when I put them in my 75 gallon display? I imagine the dottyback has been frustrated, only having less than 5 gallons worth of territory, so maybe he was just taking out that frustration on the firefish last night. I purposely gave him less than half the tank when I put the barrier in because I figured maybe that would get him used to only having a small territory and he wouldn't feel like he had to stake out a big area in my display as his own.

What do you guys think? Anyone have any experience with neon dottybacks and if so, are they bullies with other fish (besides other dottybacks, I know you can't have more than one dottyback in a tank my size) in general? I really like this guy because he's beautiful and has a lot of expression and personality, but if once I introduce him to my display I won't be able to add new fish, I don't know. I only have two PJ cards in the display now, and I eventually want to have them, the dottyback, a 6 line wrasse, the firefish, a clown or two and a sailfin tang. Oh, and a Mandarin when my pod population fills in. I'd say I could wait and add the dottyback last, but I hate to keep him in such a small area for so long. help.gif

Joe, I don't think the leather is actually what was causing the problem. I was just asking about it because I thought of it as one possibility. The orange zoas were new and I think they just didn't do well in my tank for whatever reason. They did end up dying, but the big rock covered in zoas that you gave me is thriving, as are the button polyps and the little leather you gave me.

When I went to check on the tank after the meeting today, I discovered something that really irritated me. As many of you know, my tank is in the waiting room of my office. Well, somebody (probably a little kid) stole the little pegs off of my light timer, so I think my lights have been on 24/7 lately. I think it's probably been going on for about a week, just because around that time I did notice that the corals didn't seem to be just opening up when I get there in the morning, and they open and close a lot during the day.

So I turned off the lights when I was down there at about 5:30pm today, and I need to get to Home Depot for a timer to put on tomorrow. I needed a second one so the actinics could act as moonlights anyway, and they always come with an extra set of pegs.

How's the anemone doing? I just got a rose BTA from Aquadoc yesterday that I'm really excited about.

You said you did a water change when you noticed the high salinity. You might just want to replace a little salt water with fresh water. Just do it a little at a time until you get to the salinity you want. Be careful with the swingarm hydrometers. They can be off sometimes, and you have to make sure there's not any bubbles stuck to the arm which can throw off the reading. I just bought a refractometer the other day. It's a lot easier to work with and I trust it more. Could be that when you mixed up your last batch of water change water (before you noticed the high salinity) the hydrometer made you add too much salt. dontknow.gif

Hi, welcome to ARC. Did I see you at the meeting at Clint's today? Seems like I heard someone introduce themselves as Nate, but I didn't get to talk to them. Was that you?

I saw one of those at Aquatek today. Beautiful, but pricey. I think the one at Aquatek was $100. I was tempted though.

Yours looks very good. I hope it does well for you.

You forgot to put an option of both in the poll. I've bought from Saltwaterfish.com, and gotten some dry goods and things that are hard to find locally from Drs. Foster & Smith, but I'm leaning more towards LFS's for livestock now.

As far as which LFS's, I like River City Aquatics best. Gallery of Pets is improving since Glenda and her husband bought it. The previous owner was mostly interested in the birds, but Glenda used to run a tank maintenance business so she's making the fish a bigger priority. I also like Aquatek.

The thing is, there's no way they could actually have come in physical contact with each other. I was wondering if the leathers actually excrete a toxin that travels in the current to affect nearby organisms or drops it onto them.

Anyway, the zoas look if anything, worse since I moved them. I took a water sample in to be tested and it was all fine (0 Am, N'ite, N'ate and phos, 8.3 pH, 1.024 salinity, 79F temp, 11 degrees carbonate and even my calcium was up to 400, which I've been trying to get up for a while. Randy suggested that maybe they aren't used to the bright lighting in my tank (I have 4 54W T5's and 2 36" T5's on a std. 75g) so I just moved them into the shade. I hope that does it because I really like these zoas. They have super-bright orange skirts.

As I said, the other zoas are fine (and they're up in much brighter area, but they came out of someone else's reef tank so I guess they were used to the brightness) as is everything else. Any other ideas of what might be wrong with them? I can get a picture if that would help, but basically they just look like unhappy zoas. A few of them open unenthusiastically, others are closed and even some of the area of the rock that seemed like they were covering pretty well looks more bare. When I moved them, one polyp just came off and went free-floating from when I shook the detritus off the frag.

It seems like I've heard that some leather corals give off or "drop" a chemical which is toxic to other corals and that you shouldn't place certain other inverts below them in the tank.

This morning I had a panic moment when I came in and looked at the tank because my tube anemone was totally deflated and drawn into the tube, which it hadn't done in the month or so I've had it since I found it's "happy place" in the tank. Even before it was happy, it had never been THIS deflated. Then I looked and saw that the orange zoas I recently got were definitely looking worse than they had when I first put them in about 10 days ago.

At that point I started furiously testing all the parameters I had tests for and they were okay (I had run out of pH tests though). Then I remembered having heard that about leathers a LONG time ago, and the zoas were right below the small toadstool leather I have (who started out as a 1/2" piece of tissue a month ago and is just now finished forming a stalk). Not only that, but the part of the zoa frag that looked the worst was the righthand side, which is more "downstream" from the leather when I look at the direction my current seems to be going right there.

So am I remembering correctly that a leather gives off a toxin or is there something else wrong with these zoas? Everything else looks okay, zenia are pumping, other patch of zoas are growing onto the next rock, etc. The tube anemone was apparently just pulling a little joke because he re-inflated a half hour or so later. Now I remember that anemones do that occasionally.

It's been about 8 years since I was really into this hobby, so I'm kinda re-learning some of the stuff that I had forgotten.

You are absolutely right, John and in most cases I don't mind paying a little higher price at the LFS for exactly the reasons you stated. As an optometrist, I know first hand from the retailer's perspective just how brutal the competition can be from online stores. You're right in that we are the ones you will NEED in a time of emergency like an eye injury or infection, or just to be able to get a contact lens right away in a pinch when you tore your last one this morning. We try our best to be competitive with the online contact lens suppliers, but in many cases we can best compete with them from the service perspective rather than price.

However, there is a point where I have to listen to the wallet, and I expect my patients to do the same. It hurts to do all the work determining their contact prescription and then have them take a copy of it to the online stores, but I understand that loyalty can only take you so far. For me, that line is somewhere in the neighborhood of $20 or 30% of a purchase. :(/

Butt is not the pro.  That is where the money difference come in play I think.  Unless they had a bucket of just regular Tropic Marin.

I think I was comparing apples and apples. I believe I had asked the price of both at RCA (if they'd had it in stock) and it seems like it was $69 for regular and $79 or maybe even $89 for the Pro. I bought the regular Tropic Marin 200g bucket for $49 (plus $8 S&H) at DFS. I just checked and now they have it listed at $57 for regular and $64 for Pro. I could be wrong on what I'm remembering as the price at RCA. dontknow.gif

I feel badly posting this because RCA is my favorite LFS now, and Carlos has really treated me well when I've bought stuff there as well as when I just go in there for a "fish fix" or water tests. If I'm incorrect on the prices there, somebody please correct me because it's been a couple months since I looked into it.

Where are you buying your corals at?

From her post in the other thread, I think she gets her stuff at Horizon, over on Anderson Mill. I had been wondering how that store is. They're fairly new, I believe, but pretty close to where you live. Have any experience with them?

Awe, bummer. Good luck with the chromis.

How 'bout an update? How is the anemone doing? I'm about to get one for my tank, so I wanted to see if yours settled down.

I just got a bucket of the regular Tropic Marin online. I forgot where I got it, but it was almost $20 less than at Rivercity (sorry Carlos I had to say it, confused1.gif but I AM one of the ones telling Robert/Hammonegge to check out RCA ).

Wait! I think it was at Drs. Foster and Smith. They only charged about $8 shipping.

How do you guys run your carbon? In a canister or just a bag of it in a high flow area, or some other way?

Just an update, all of the sudden about a week ago, the skimmer started working REALLY well! I don't know what happened since we never got around to installing a ball valve to slow down the pump feeding it, but it just decided to work one day. I know they sometimes take a while to settle in, but 5 weeks? It's been pulling about 1/2 to 1 cup of brown smelly water a day from my 75 (with only 2 fish I'm feeding) for the past week! Woo Hoo! blob7.gif

Joe, thanks for the lockline. It went on my tank that Robert's been helping me with. I appreciate it.

Hey I just thought of somthing.  Have your friend step up and get a Euro reef or a Deltec.

Hey there... I'm the friend and I already blew my aquarium budget for the time being. sad5.gif Besides, we can't fit anything bigger under the tank!

I've heard these TF skimmers are good once you actually do get them tuned. We'll see.

Thanks John. I was told about the oxygen problem. I hope I have enough going on. I have an 802 powerhead pointed across the surface and two returns coming out of the sump on a SCWD which point more down. I'm letting my skimmer run with the cup completely removed so it's just bubbling into the sump (although I had to turn it all the way off when I first added the meds) and my sump and fuge take up almost the whole area under the tank so there's lots of surface area.

So my big concern was with the green star polyps closing so tight and not opening back up like everything else did. Do you have corals in the tank you treated with it and what was their reaction? In other words, is this stuff REALLY reef safe?

I posted this at MAAST and RC, but (yay!) now I've found a NEW forum to check out! Let me run this past you guys.

My flame angel has been having some problems that began with my shrimp goby picking on him and developed into an apparent fungal infection of his right pect. fin, then a little on his top fin and now his right eye has gotten cloudy. The goby has been out of the main tank since Thursday. I was hoping that with him gone, the decreased stress would help but the flame has continued to get worse.

Now I also see some discoloration on the orchid dottyback.

So yesterday I went to the LFS and they suggested a combination of Melafix ("antibacterial fish remedy") and Pimafix ("antifungal fish remedy"). They said it should be reef safe and that they'd had customers use it with corals with no problems. I don't have any SPS, just xenia, zoos, green star polyps and a tube anemone and a toadstool leather.

When I put the stuff in yesterday, everything immediately reacted by closing up, but a little while later everything but the GSP's were back open again. Now it's been almost 24 hours and all the inverts look happy except the GSP's, which are closed up tight.

I wouldn't really expect much improvement in the flame yet after just one day, but maybe his top fin is a little better. The eye is either the same or worse, and the same goes for the dottyback.

My concern is with the GSP's being closed. I'm kinda afraid to keep dosing it, but if it's going to save the flame and dottyback, I'd like to give it a try.

Does anyone have any experience with this stuff? It says to use 5mL's per 10 gallons once a day for 7 days. Active ingredient in Melafix is "Melaleuca", supposedly extracted from Tea Trees. It says it "rapidly repairs damaged fins, ulcers and open wounds and promotes regrowth of damaged tissue and fins".

Active ingredient in Pimafix is "pimenta recemosa" extracted from West Indian Bay Trees and it "rapidly treats fungal infections on body and fins. Safe for delicate fresh and saltwater fish".

I don't have a Q tank, and I tried to get the flame out earlier before I removed the goby and it was going to be imposible without totally breaking down the tank rock, and I think as much as I like the flame, I'd rather take a chance on losing him than take all the rock out at this point and still possibly lose him.