I have way too much to write in here than I am actually going to take the time to write, but I have so many miscellaneous questions, and I feel like I'm just all over the place on this forum right now.
A quick question I just had on my mind, that I didn't know where to post was:
I'm COMPLETELY allergic to sand fleas. The last time I went to the Cayman Islands, I almost went into anaphylactic shock (from what I hear). My body swelled up like crazy... so I read that amphipods are sand fleas... Are those the same little guys that I'm allergic to? If so, that terrifies me!
So anyhow, I inherited an 80-Gallon salt water tank, fish / invertebrates /
live rock when my roommate moved to Hawaii.
All that was living in it was one 3-striped damsel fish and one rock boring urchin. He hadn't cleaned his filter or changed his filter media in probably about 6 months when I got the tank, and he used to only test his water parameters when he saw the urchin's spikes beginning to droop.
It needed a lot of work, and I've never maintained a tank before... so I had a lot of learning that I needed to do, and fast. I mostly read things on the internet, and bought two books for beginners. I started using his water test kit, and got to work on lowering the
ammonia /
nitrites with additives and frequent canister filter cleaning / water changes. After I thought all was well (ammonia,
nitrites 0), I added some fish. The damsel fish had to be caught and taken to the
LFS - he wasn't havin' it. The urchin soon started dying. His spikes started falling off, and not long after he died. About that time I read that low DO was symbiotic to high
nitrates. I realized that he didn't have enough oxygen in the tank, so I set out to get a second air pump. I didn't know yet that the main source of gas exchange happened at the surface. When I was shopping for air pumps, I found that the air pump I
did have was for a 30-gallon aquarium, and the only other source of current was from the canister filter.
I immediately ordered and installed a protein
skimmer, which was a huge chore in itself, because the tank had to be moved forward by an inch and a half to make room for it on the back. The stand is completely unfit for a salt water tank, and there is no room for a
sump or
refugium under it. I emptied the tank to just above the substrate and moved it forward - it's a glass tank - still pretty damn heavy. After that, I installed 4 maxi jet 1200's and a wavemaker. My boyfriend is BEGGING me to find a better placement for the powerheads, because he thinks they look atrocious with two in the front of the tank. I currently have two in the bottom back corners, aimed up and towards eachother, and two in the front, about 1/3 down, aimed up and towards eachother. The wavemaker is set to alternate between the two left and the two right powerheads right now, but there are a lot of other options.
My
nitrates are still high. 80
ppm. I'm working on lowering them, and when I stirred up the sand and blew off the rocks with a turkey baster, there was an insane amount of
detritus coming up. There still appears to be a lot of
detritus in the sand. Speaking of the sand - I don't know what kind it is, but it's black. I don't know if it's a
detritus trap or what. I like the way the black sand looks, but I'm guessing it might not be the most functional sand.
There is also not enough
LR in the tank - my guess is it had about 25 - 30 lbs of
LR in it, and I've added 41 pounds since, with more to go. AND speaking of
LR, there is a little plant-like thing growing on my newest piece--it's kind of clear, and shaped like a small flower with tentacles that reach up towards the light. I saw someone else's aquarium today, and it looked like a smaller version of things that he had growing all over his rocks. (Aptasia maybe?) He told me to kill it immediately - that it's a nuisance. He said to inject it with
hot water.
Do I need to use DI water for that, or boil tap water, or... ?
I've seen some weird things living in my
LR already - some weird bright green slug thing that dropped from a rock I was holding in my hand into another and just sucked RIGHT into a hole so fast I couldn't really see what it looked like, and a rainbow colored worm. Also, there are a LOT of bristle worms... a LOT. Those were there before I added my
LR. I've gotten an arrow crab to eat them. I saw him eating one already. He munched on it all day.
I'm interested in buying lights for my tank (to support anemone / coral), and according to some calculations I found at one point I determined that I would need 2 x 250
MH (well,
MH by choice - just seems like a good light) and for the
actinics, I'm open to a couple different options, but I want a hood that also has nighttime LEDs, and I want it all hooked up to a timer to control them. Right now my lights are weak, though I do have them hooked up two two timers which slowly become out of sync.
The thing is - I'm not happy with the stand for my tank (dumb freshwater stand - water damaged, too), and I'm not even really happy with the size of my tank (it's standing against a 70" wall, so I think a 60" tank would look better than a 48" tank. Therefore, I'm reluctant to spend over a grand on lights when I should really just save up and get a whole new tank... but I'm still undecided and want the lights. I should focus on lowering the
nitrates, but I'm not sure what else I should do aside from the frequent water changes. I put some denitrate rocks in the canister filter... Doesn't seem to do much, but maybe they're keeping it at a stable level. Who knows?
Also, when I clean the canister filter, I take all of the media and rinse it out in water that was removed from the tank. Then I put it back... Is that not a good enough way to get the
detritus out? One guy told me he put a piece of sponge-like filter media in his washing machine with no soap on the gentle cycle... I don't know if I should do something like that (one media piece at a time, of course), or if rinsing it off in my used water is enough.
My tank is overstocked... especially when considering grown sizes of the fish, but maybe I'm just on the verge with the current sizes, so I should probably go ahead and work towards upgrading the tank and making it just how I like it anyway. I will list everything in my tank right now, as long as you don't yell at me for it being overstocked. :P
And everything has names, except for 15 of the hermit crabs, but I won't list those here.
Inverts:
Arrow Crab
~18 small hermit crabs
Skunk-striped cleaner shrimp
Scarlet cleaner shrimp (fire shrimp)
Fish:
(Also, I'm aware that I'm not supposed to have all these clowns together. I was told I may have good luck with them if I added them all on the same day, so I did, and they have coexisted pretty peacefully, except the tomato clown is starting to get out of hand and I'd like to catch him and bring him to the
LFS. If the hierarchy changes after he's gone, I'll do the same with the next until they're coexisting peacefully.)
1 Sebae Clown (I think)
1 Tomato Clown
1 False Percula Clown
1 Gold Striped Maroon Clown
2 Firefish Gobies
1 Purple Firefish Goby
1 Lawnmower Blenny
2 Banggai Cardinals
1 Royal Gramma
7 Green Chromis
And last but not least, here is a video of my little guys just after I added the powerheads:
Some things have changed since that video - most significantly the addition of a single 35-lb piece of
live rock, but that's still a general overview of my tank - also note the intrusive powerhead placement that my bf hates (I zoom in on them because the main purpose of me having those videos is to give tank updates to my roommate who's now in Hawaii).
Does anyone have any suggestions for the best places to put these 4 powerheads? 
