new 65gallon tank.

[Reefbaby]

hmmmmm.....I'm stumped....not sure what to tell you buddy.

[pvtdonut]

ah, no one does....idk...

one day when im home and have adequate time, ill try to acclimate them for like 45 minutes...ill try it out on some hermit crabs or a couple snails or something.....idk

[pvtdonut]

hello all. it has been about a week or so since ive showed myself around here... all is going well i suppose. havnt really made too many minor changes to my tank since i bought the copperband. one major change was this.

firstly, herm-zilla has gotten a new home. by home, i mean shell...not tank. he is out of my sump and back in my display tank though. my sand needed to be cleaned. lol =]



heres my copperband. who pretends he's a clownfish and hosts in my corner and powerhead. o_O





and i also found this lil guy this morning when i woke up. i added him a while back, but i had no idea he was still alive.




thats all the news on my tank so far. i also moved my eel back into my display a couple nights ago. it took me like 20 minutes to try to catch him. i woke up the next morning...and where was he? back in the sump.

as for (near) future plans...(hopefully near anyway. )

.5: i added this one last...but i might go buy it today or tomorrow. but i realllllly need a magfloat. a strong one. my glass is gettting encrusted with coralline algae. on the back and side...so i want to get rid of it....the teensy one i have isnt performing well enough...i have to sit there for like 10 minutes and try to rub it off with a magnet that barely has a hold on it...lol and i want to clean off all of the glass that is going to be under the sand bed when i make the dsb. cause imo, i think the purple on the glass looks ugly when it is under the surface of the sand bed.

1: deep sand bed. i was pricing around last night for aragonite sand. found out my lfs can get me 40# for 40$. which is the best price i found. everywhere else it was like 40# for 50-55$. so ill have them order me that as soon as i have the money.

2: coralife needlewheel skimmer 125. my gf is going to get me this for our one year anniversary. cant wait. =] im giving her my old 16g bowfront in return. she really wants it for her tropical tank.

3: canopy. evaporation rate in my tank is bananas. i probably add about a gallon of fresh water a day. lol hopefully getting one of these will keep water (and fish) in my tank.

4: the Koralia powerhead. model 2. i saw one of those in a 55g tank. and it was blowing throughout the whole length of the tank. so i think ill go with that one instead of the model 3. its like 20$ cheaper also.

5: purple or red firefish: once i have my canopy of course. lol i dont want it jumping out. as i have heard many stories of this one jumping. so i been holding off for now. =]

6: i have plans of re-arranging my tank once i get my dsb. that will be a suprize for all of you though. i will not reveal that one. until its done. so dont expect any full tank shots for a while....

so anyway...thats it for now. thanks for taking the time to listen..haha

ttfn!

[PhotoJohn]

I think I might know why your ccb is only in one corner, you have a ccb and a powder blue in a 29g. When I knew little about tangs other than "oh pretty" I bought a yellow tang, a baby hippo, and a ccb, for my 46g. It was the worst buy I ever made, or close. The yellow tang beat the hell out of the ccb and the smaller hippo. All the fish died eventually due to the small tank size. A tang should never be kept in a tank that is less than 6ft long. They are open water swimmers and need the room. These butterflys and tangs are not clown fish happy to swim around in a tiny cube, they need room and lots of it. I would take them both back before they either kill one another or contract ick. Responsible buying is the reefers job.

[pvtdonut]

omg. its not a 29....read my posts..not just the title.... its a 65g..... and believe me...i wish i could change the title to say 65....

[PhotoJohn]

oh lol thats great...i bet you have heard all that before then. a 65 is still small for tangs and ccb though

[Reefbaby]

hey donut - I just changed your title for you....it now reads "new 65gallon tank". Any more changes?

[pvtdonut]

YAY! THANK YOU VERY MUCH!!!!!!!

i think that was the only change that needed to be done...


and yes photojon....im aware that a 65 is small for a tang, but hees not an adult yet...and when he is ill prob end up finding him a new home....but thats not anytime soon... and actually the 65 isnt small for the cbb...i researched it...most of the sites say they only need 55...including liveaquaria...which says 50...

so. nyeh =P

lol

i just bought my sand today. and my magfloat....i poured the sand in as careful as i could but my water got cloudy anyway....soooooooo now i have to wait for it to settle down..which could take a while...
i did some research on it and decided to go with playsand. i found that this kind "kolorskape" was the best to go with and a local landscaping place had it. i bought 2 bags of it. it was like 9$ for 2 20 or 25lb bags...im not sure...it didnt say on the bag. but it had no dangerous metals or anything in it..and it had very little silica...which is ok. ive read that everyone who uses this sand never had a problem with it. under the cloudy water, it looks really nice...its a fine grain. sugar-like. and my sandbed as now like 3" - 4". i took a small bucket of my sand and took it out of the tank and then when i poured the sand in there..i poured that bucketful on top of it. so my sandbed is livesand-playsand-livesand. when the water clear again, ill re-arrange my rock the way i want it and put the hermit crab on top to start diggin some holes in it and stir it up a bit. i also want to buy a bunch of littler hermits to get behind the rocks where herm-zilla cant get to. haha

and in the great words of forrest gump:
thats all i have to say about that. =)

oh. i also saw an octopus today at my lfs....i wish i had a tank i could put him in... he was awesome looking.

[pvtdonut]

=[ my copperband died this morning. my assumption is that it starved itself. it sucks. bt it happens. im not gonna try again anytime soon. im only getting 4 more fish for this tank, and then my stocking will be done..minus the cleanup crew that ill be slowly trying to build up......idk when ill get them though.

b/w henochius, firefish, blenny, and dragonet. ill most likely get them in that order.

but anyway, yea. theres the update.....and idk if i mentioned the deep sand bed in my tank yet....if i didnt...well..there ya go...haha =P

[Reefbaby]

several comments.....the firefish and blenny (as well as the mandarin for that matter) are all good jumpers. Make sure you have a screen over your tank, otherwise they'll end up as carpet sharks...I'm speaking from personal experience with all three fish.

What kind of blenny are you planning on getting. Some of them are very finicky eaters and can easily starve to death. Give us more info as to which kind you'd like to have.


The dragonets/mandarins need a very LARGE copepod/amphipod population in order to survive. Make sure your tank is VERY mature before buying one of these beautiful creatures. You can also stock up your population by ordering some pods - this will help to boost the population and you can do this periodically with the mandarin. This is crucial....they will starve if there isn't a decent pod population in a very mature tank.

[pvtdonut]

believe me, im not getting either of the blenny or mandarin before i get a canopy. im planning on getting a scooter blenny. i had one when i had my 16g set up, he did very well. he seemed to be the strongest fish going in that tank. even survived a major crash. but unfortunatley he died a couple days later when i transferred him to my new tank. i was kinda upset about that. and my mom was really upset too. she's the one that wants to get it. she really enjoys watchin them scoot around the tank. lol

i bought copepods about a month and a half ago..and when i look all over my glass...u can see the white specks everywhere....im pretty sure that those are them. ill probably end up getting another bottle of them before i get any of them.

the first thing on my list is to get rid of a union that i have in my sump...connected to my return pump....its made out of metal...and i was stupid enough to buy that....and not a pvc one....so of course its rusted...aaand i think that may be what has been killing off my inverts. anyone have any experience with rust in a tank? or anything to say about that?

thanks

[pvtdonut]

wellllllll..today...well..technically yesterday..since its 130 in the AM here...lol i bought my pvc union. i had gotten rid of the rusty one and the pvc parts that had the rust on them due to dripping. it looks a whole lot better now. =]
i also added about an inch and a half of crushed coral into my tank. its in the sump. sitting under my return pump. hopefully this will help buff my pH. the bag said it would....hopefully its telling the truth...haha. anyway....im trying to make little progress with the amount of money that my tight budget allows so i can keep my fish somewhat happy.

=)

[Skurvey Dog]

Hey Lil Buddy
Whoa! Look at that new heading. That will curb some grief down the road as I know when I started following your post, I was confused also. Thanks Reefbaby!!!!!!

Always good to see you making progress. Good idea on changing that metal piece out of your plumbing. Silica, now there's something you need to keep an eye on my friend. I would test for phosphates once a week from now on, if you aren't already doing so. I also used a mix of aragonite and play sand in my nano and have found that I have to monitor it and here and there add a Seachem Phosguard medium to a water filter for about a week at a time to pull the build up out of the water. Other than that, I've had no major problems. I bet you like the new DSB look. I love a DSB myself. I'm glad your purchase of copods are showing up nicely in your tank. I had a pod explosion in my fuge and I guess the little buggers got pulled out and pumped into my DT. Theres hundreds of them crawling all over my LR, sand, and glass. It's awesome.

[pvtdonut]

well..i did have a pod outbreak...im not sure if any of them lived though...cause when i put them in my tank, they did covre my glass...but all of a sudden they all managed to disappear....im thinking that when the metal union was in the water, it was sending out high traces of iron into my water..and it was killing every invert i was putting into my water....except for herm-zilla...but the starfish....all the shrimp...snails...i think their deaths were associated with that iron in the tank.... i bought a poly pad and put it in my sump. its pulling out everything thats left over.. at the moment...my water is crystal clear...its amazing. and yes, the deep sand bed makes it look a whoooole lot better.

ill look into getting a phosphate tester. what brand of playsand did u get? i read online that many people went with this brand called kolorskape...i managed to find that one aand got 2 bags of it..i have a nice 4 inch sandbed now. and it only costed me about 10$ i was exited about that. =] the only thing i wasnt exited about was me just pouring the sand in....it took like...5 days to get back to nice clear water..and everything has dust on it now.... the powerheads idc about being dusty...but my live rock looks like its covered in snow...lol and so does my poor hermie. =(

[PhotoJohn]

glad you discovered the invert killer