BobcatReefer

Thanks Reburn. My "Monday" is Thursday, just because of how the shipping worked out, and I did the dosing/change like you said. No carbon or skimming. I do have an HOB skimmer I can use come week 5. QT seems to be going rather well. I've been super nervous about another high dollar fish (Helfrichi), but he seems to be doing great. Very responsive to feeding - attentive and alert as soon as food is in the tank, eating well and showing no signs at all of stress or discomfort. Assuming the disease was Velvet or Brooklynella, I want to make sure it's not still in my tank when I re-introduce fish. Any suggestions on how to make sure it's gone from the DT?

Why is my Frogspawn grumpy and how do I make him happy again? Before: Now:

Oh, I also applied some ARC learning to my QT setup and made a nuxx condo so the fish would have some other places to hang out for the time they were there. Not needed so much now that there's only 3 of them in there instead of the 6 planned, but whatever....

Just a couple of weeks. She's a BEAST!

Current DT Livestock: Coral Banded Shrimp 5 (?) Emeral Crabs 1 Porcelain Crab 3 Nassarius Snails (1.5" bigguns), 5 or 6 little ones 3 or 4 Trochus Snails 1 Sea Hare 1 Big Arse Conch (willing to part with for $10) 2 Pincushion Urchins 1 Shortspine Urchin 1 Rainbow BTA 1 Branching Hammer (6/7 heads) 1 Wall Hammer 1 Pocillopora (+1 frag) 1 Bubble Coral (not placed) 1 GSP rock 1 Duncan (5/6 heads - not quite as happy as it was) 1 Trumpet (15+ heads) 1 Frogspawn (5 heads or so - been grumpy for a couple of weeks now) 1 Blue Fuzzy Mushroom 1 Open Brain 1 hurtin Torch. Last head is holding on like a champ - dude wants to survive. 1 Jason Fox purple tip Nana 4 Metallic Green (I think?) Shrooms 2 Chalice-like corals...can't remember their real names. 2 Red Montipora (only 1 placed where they'll live so far) 6 Acans (3 placed, 3 not) 1 Candy Apple Paly (want more cool Palys like this - PM me if you want to sell me some frag sized) 1 Alien Eye Chalice (not placed) 4 Superman Rhodactis Mushrooms (not placed) 4 med, 6 tiny Blue Mushrooms (not placed) 2 Zoa colonies (sm) QT livestock: 1 Helfrichi Firefish 2 Ocellaris Clowns (1.5")

Parameters: Salinity .026 pH: 7.84 Nitrate 2 Nitrite 0 Ammonia 0 Phosphate 0, .04, .13 over the last 7 or 8 days (rising) Alkalinity 7.28 Alkalinity has been fun...I have 2 Hanna checkers because I'm not smart enough to remember I bought one a couple of months before, nor was I smart enough to look at the expiration date on the reagent before buying the 1st one used. I've done two tests to see if the 2014 reagent was bad, but I think it's ok. Checkers - C1, C2 Reagents - R14, R16 Value in PPM Test 1 (4 or 5 days ago): C1, R14, 128 :: C1, R16, 141 C2, R14, 132 :: C2, R16, 126 Test 2 (tonight): C1, R14, 127 :: C1, R16, 129 C2, R14, 130 :: C2, R16, 130 I figure that's a pretty good grouping. 2 more like that and I'll sell one of the checkers.

Updates: Cyano/red slime algae: MUCH better, but not quite gone. Little annoyed that adding a ton of flow and reducing light fixed 80% immediately, but the other 20% refuses to go away. Water change coming up, so hopefully that helps knock it down the rest of the way. Ready to have the extra powerhead out - can't mount the monti frag I got from the last meeting because there's so much flow it acts like a wing and stresses the epoxy to the point of breaking. Whatever killed the Kole, likely killed all the other fish in the tank. Including the high dollar Anthia I should not have put in there. I need to start being overly cautious - it's not in my nature, but it's terrible in this hobby. Tank is now fallow. I'm sad and ashamed. 16 years of SW tanks and never killed all the fish. Solved several plumbing issues, but can't quite get to a point where the tank is silent, unless I get super lucky. Of course, tonight I'm working on a new theory/configuration/etc and think I'm on the right track. Again. I'm irate w/ LiveAquaria.com right now. Ordered fish, had my order cancelled w/o notification (after confirmation), re-ordered, had my shipment verbally verified, got 1/2 my order (2 fish out of 3 fish & 3 crabs) but one fish was dead (Royal Gramma) and the other looked rough (Green Canary Blenny) but is now dead (made it 5 days in QT). I've talked to 4 different people on 4 different calls and the last 3 have included lies and/or just flat being wrong. Anyone want a famous, award winning urchin? The algae issue is flat out gone! HUZZAH! Purple urchin up for $10. White one likely to follow. I think the sea hare can handle it, and she's much less...aggressive than those two lunks! Anyone have a better epoxy suggestion than the red/gray AquaStik? Not really a fan. Unless it's wedged into a hole, it's meh at best.

Questions here: 1) Wks 2,3,4, do you dose the Prazipro and Paraguard both on same day, or skip the Paragurad on that day? 2) On Day 7 do you do the water change first, then dose the Paraguard? I feel like that's kind of obvious, but might as well ask...

A fireman, you say?

Here's the loot scored for winning the Urchin Photo contest - thanks so much to Aaron at Just Reef and Jake at River City Aquatics! Now I just need to figure out what all this stuff does... Listed Out: Aquatop Mr-20 Media Reactor W/ Pump Seachem 5gal Collapsible Water Jug Seachem Reef Glue Seachem Reef Fusion1 1 Ltr (Raises Calcium) Seachem Reef Fusion2 1 Ltr (Raises Alkalinity) Aquavitro Fuel 350ml Aquavitro Vibrance 350ml Aquavitro Calcification 350ml Aquavitro Alpha 350ml Aquavitro Eight.four 350ml Aquavitro Balance 350ml Aquavitro Ions 350ml Aqua Tongs Fish Net Seaweed Clips

Woohoo! Starry Blenny successfully captured/rescued from the fuge and re-introduced to the display. Surprisingly easier than I thought it would be - just left the net underneath the overflow grill he kept napping on and only took me 3 or 4 times trying to sneak up on him.

Neeeded some more room on the frag rack, and since I wasn't quick enough on the draw to snag one of Dan's old ones the other day, I had to MacGyver an extension w/ what I had available... An unused twisty control stick from some venetian blinds, some leftover BRS netting, some superglue and zip ties, and wah lah:

Light on my display tank: http://www.aquaticlife.com/light-fixtures/four-lamp-t5-ho Light in my fuge: http://innovative-marine.com/auqa-gadget/magnafuge.html

So, there was some discussion in another thread about using hydrogen peroxide to fight algae, and because I have a bunch of algae, I figured I would do that. I also have a tendency to only read the first paragraph or so and assume I know the story, so true to form I didn't do more research to figure out how much to use. Just put some in a coffee mug (maybe 3/4c) and started squirting. The good news is that ish works like a champ! Most def kills the green stuff. However...the Palys and Candy Cane did not appreciate the generous dosing into their environment. Moral of the story is be careful about how much H2O2 you use or your corals will hate you. Here's the progression over the last two weeks: Day 1: Day 3: Day 6: Day 10: Day 14: I didn't get pics of the Palys over the timeframe, but it was like the little tentacles got burned off and the color gone - these are Candy Apple Palys, and the green just came back in the last 2 or 3 days (dosing was 12 days ago). Today:

lolz - that's just MSPaint!

That's the pipe from the #2 overflow. It goes into the fuge and I have the flow at about 25-33% (vs 75-66% on #1 that goes into the sump). Cap/holes is simply to keep flow gentle in the fuge. I have them set to alternate on 15s intervals. Both are brand new though (I just installed the 2nd one yesterday), so they run very smoothly - no noise whatsoever.

Here ya go Christy: All in all, everyone looks pretty happy and normal after last night's hoopla. Now to get going on the water change and carbon swap. Yaayyy, reefing!

Thanks for the offer Kim. I have some more carbon, but it will likely empty my tub and would have been much more convenient for me to screw all this up a couple of days ago before I made the order!

Man, I JUST put new carbon in this week. And I JUST made a BRS order for GFO, but not carbon on Wednesday.

Thanks Ty. I think Wally suffered when I cut back on feeding to control the algae. Dan gave me big wide eyes when he saw how much I was feeding! He was like...uh, no wonder you have GHA issues! Because I was feeding less, I started using the feeding mode on the powerhead to keep more food in the DT so at least the fish could get to it before it went over the falls. I didn't really account for the tiny guy not getting his share down in the sump. *fingers crossed* on what's going on in the tank when I get home. Hopefully any damage from the inking would have shown itself by this morning and everyone is back to being happy!

Everything looks pretty decent this morning. Sea Hare is moving around w/ no issues in the QT, so I'll put her back in the DT before I head to work. She's been a beast vs the algae! Skimmer is acting right now as well.

Had a heck of a night tonight. Needed to do an algae scrub and water change, was going to do a bit of extra cleaning as well (overflow boxes, back glass, sand line, light) and add another powerhead to the other side of the tank. Do 80% of the scrubbing, drain the water, and get to the last part of the scrubbing while at "low tide" and the light was off so I could get to the backside of the rock. Knowing darn well there's a well camouflaged sea hare somewhere nearby, I don't do a thorough check and make sure it's safely out of the way before scrubbing and sure enough...give it a solid poke. Enough that it starts squirting purple liquid - ink. Now I'm in frantic mode trying to get it out and into the QT in case I've killed it (I didn't) and put the dang tank back together so I can add the new water and dilute any poison badness. Somehow in that process, my Starry Blenny ends up in the small overflow (the one there's zero chance of getting my hand into), so I unscrew the union going into the fuge and put the catching net under the pipe exit, then flip the valve...but he holds his spot in the 1/2" of water, so I've got to try again. Close the valve, let the water fill back up in the oveflow, and grab a chopstick to chase him down the tube with. He's not having it so I'm working harder on the chasing and not the holding of the net, so once I get him down the pipe, he's in the fuge which is so hard to access. At least he's got algae to nibble on and plenty of room to swim. I'll worry about getting him out later this weekend. I've got another batch of water mixing so I can do another change tomorrow night to further mitigate the potential toxicity of the ink. Hopefully it doesn't kill everything in the tank by then. I'm already seeing some grumpiness. My skimmer is running too strong so it's just dumping back into the sump. Two weeks ago I couldn't get bubbles to breach the top of the neck, now I can't get them to slow down/thicken up. Wally passed away yesterday. I found him because I saw a shadow spinning in the body of the skimmer.

ugh. So sorry Kim.

There's not enough internet for me to answer this question.