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desideria

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Posts posted by desideria

  1. thanks guys.. currently in a pail to recover in some peace and quiet... I will use the beta boxes when it has recovered and I think it can "handle" being put back into the tank again with the protection of the beta box. It's been eating well so far the last 2 days in the pail, and everday I will clean up the dirt and change some water. So for now, things are looking up. I am just crossing my fingers and hoping that it will recover the next 1month or so.

    :) Desi

  2. Hi all,

    I am in need of some suggestions of taking care of my poor maroon clown fish which over a time span of 48 hours got whacked by my tomato clown ( I suspect it's him cause I see the tomato chasing him round the tank) until the dorsal fin and tail is in shreds. luckily I managed to catch him out of the main tank last night and have kept him in a seperate pail now with an air stone so that he can recover from the ordeal. :(

    I got him only the past Sunday and he was fine the first 2 days but from Tuesday onwards, he seemed to be the target of the tomato clown. :( I suspect it's the tomato but my husband thinks it could be the boxer shrimp we have because we had other fish which was chased before by the tomato but NEVER this brutally whacked. THe maroon clown was trying to nest in the cat's eye bubble we have and not even going near the anamonea where our tomato clown is based. :P

    I am currently feeding the poor thing some Dr Basslers ###### food, and fish flakes as well as a variety of pellets. I am just trying to get him to eat and recover.. hopefully... :( Since there is no filtration system for the pail, I will be changing a portion of the water on a daily basis.

    Is there ANYTHING else I can do to help the little guy recover?

    any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!!

    thanks

    desi

  3. yeah I just went to Coral farm.. they have many BIG yellow tangs... if you want small ones, I think they have a few right at the back. I just got mine yesterday as well. They have BEAUTIFUL PBTS!!!!!!!! If only I had a bigger tank, I would have gotten one.

  4. with regards to nudis, I got suckered into buying them from AM and the people there told me they eat algae and sponge. But when I got home and did further research online, I found out to my horror that they eat ONLY sponge and a VERY Particular type of sponge for each species of nudi. One can't simply buy any old sponge throw it in and think they'd eat it.

    So even if you THINk you got the right sponge for your nudi, it may be the wrong one. you can't base on color to buy sponge but rather you need to be molecularly correct using a microscope to check whether you got the right sponge!

    So morale of story is DO NOT buy nudis and honestly in my personal opinion, LFS should NEVER sell nudis because they are doomed to die a slow death in anyone's tank. You don't see them in display tanks .. or at least i've never seem them in display tanks before.

    Of course if anyone can prove me wrong, do let me know cause that's what I read from every single website I could get my hands on with regards to nudis! :P

    Cheers,

    Desi.

  5. Hi,

    I personally have the ##### setup and it has lasted since Sept/Oct 2007 till now already and some of my original purchases are still there with the exception of 3 fish and 3 pieces of coral which I probably killed due to a one time major rescaping ( to catch a blasted crab which killed my starfish) as well some other incidents which I am too ashamed to mention.

    I don't have any chiller as I place the tank in an area where the temperature can fall to 24 in the night and rise to a max of 27.5-28 (this was during those REALLY hot months) during the day. Avg temp is 26-26.5 during the day. Neither do I have an ionizer but I do agree that the skimmer is VERY VERY basic which I am well aware of so in order to keep my water relatively clean, I do 15% -20% water changes every week. Change the sponge and the air stones monthly. So if you feel you are unable to do frequent water changes then don't get this system. NO way that this filtration system can work for anything bigger than a 2 feet.

    I am using the German made T5 lights that I got from Reef Depot as I decided that the original light they provided is not "good" enough. :P

    At the moment, what I have in my tank are pretty hardy stuff so which is probably why they can survive but I did have a Tomini Tang which lasted 8 months before succomding to stress/whatever the night I did the major rescaping

    - 2 Hawaiian Damsels ( 1 original and the other 2 months old with me)

    - 2 Percula clown ( about 2 months)

    - 1 Tomato clown (Original)

    - 1 Blenny (Original)

    - 1 shrimp (Original)

    - 1 anamonea ( Original, about the size of your open hand)

    - 1 super sun ( doing very well, got it 3 weeks ago and at the moment eating mysis daily)

    - 1 Octopi (got it the same time as my sunnies..opening up well)

    - 1 Jewel ( Original)

    My 2 gripes are that with the filtration system in the tank, it takes up like 20% of the space which leaves me less room to arrange my rocks and corals. :( My situation is made worse by my anamoea which completely dominated the tank when it opened up before I did a major rescape to shift it from the middle to the extreme corner of the tank.

    the other thing I am trying to resolve is all the dirt that gets trapped UNDER the filtration system because it doesn't sit on the floor of the tank so dirt tends to just stay there and pile up. EVery 6 months, I have to lift up the whole thing to clean it and clear the bottom and at the same time do a major water change.

    anyway... good luck with your purchase. I"m still learning too! :)

    cheers, desi.

  6. Yeah I read about the angel food formula that last night when I was spending the entire evening researching on them however I Came to the conclusion that it's too much of a risk to put them in my tiny tank with a rather basic filtration system and feed them. My spare tank is also not exactly meant for long term usage. So I took the decision to return back to AM this evening and also enlighten them on what I had read up on to please not tell unsuspecting customers that they eat ALGAE.

    I don't know whether they would remember what i said cause I also mentioned that it is rather irresponsible to sell them or stock them in the first place because of the animal's pickiness with food as well as the supreme difficulty level of care. Every single website I found mentioned what you said that those beautiful animals would die a slow and starving death :( and that even EXPERTS have problems keeping them much less amateurs or worse, nubs like me!

    I really want to "peng san" when I think about it.

    sigh, lesson learnt.

    Cheers,

    Desi.

  7. I would like to but the thing is that there will be no one around to monitor them for 2 weeks come middle of september and mine is a small setup without the proper filtration system to filter out stuff if the shit hits the fan.. :P If they ate algae as per what i was originaly told, I would be happy but now I know they don't and I dont' want to risk killing the rest of my inhabitants.

    I have taken both out of the tank and put them in a seperate pail with an air pump to areate the water. I would rather someone who has far more experience adopt them from me than for me to kill such lovely creatures.

    Of course if noone expresses interest, I will either try to find an alternative tank (better than a pail) to keep them seperately OR worst case return them back to the shop.

    thanks,

    Desi.

  8. Hi all,

    I just made a serious boo boo which I now regret. Admitedly I had stupidly let my desire of having something colorful in my tank led me to buy 2 very colorful nudibranches to put in my little 2 feet tank. Although I recall reading some about them being rather a nunscience, I had no idea that they were that bad till I read some forumns in here and on the web AFTER i got them. sob.

    I got one bright purple and a pink one with orange "horns". I bought them from AM when the man who attended to me said that they eat algae and then I got confused when the lady who took my payment said I had to buy sponges to feed them. So I hesistated and asked both WHAT exactly do they eat? One said algae and the other sponge so since I have no sponge in my tank, but I definitely have algae, I thought ok, give it a try.

    And then I came back to find out more and I read allot of disheartening comments about them dying with no food to eat and then killing off the inhabitants in the tank because of their toxins ( much like an anamonea "exploding" I suppose...). Since I don't exactly have a good quality skimmer And more importantly since my husband and I will be away for work for 2 weeks soon, I don't want to come home to see my fish and corals dying or DEAD because of the nudibranches.

    Do see pics of both pink (can't get a proper pic of it as it was at the back so the pic is a reflection of it off the back wall) and the purple.

    post-12571-1220174425.jpg

    post-12571-1220174445.jpg

    If anybody wants to adopt them, do PM me or leave a msg on this thread and I will be happy to give them to you. I don't want them to die nor do I wish the surviving inhabitants of my tank to uplorry because of my ignorance! sigh.

    thanks all,

    Desi

  9. sigh mine is a 2 feet tank, kinda there's only one place or so to put them and I made sure they were no where NEAR the bubble and the octopi is placed way above it so it definitely can't reach the suns.. sigh .. now it seems even more closed up. :( Just now after I had dipped it in a seperate container and squirted zooplankton with msysis which I doubt it ate any, I put it back into the main tank and it seemed as though it was going to open.. and then my stupid shrimp went to disturb it and it closed up again... Previously even with the shrimp around, it would still open.. but since yesterday it's closed.. sigh.. praying hard it will not up lorry. :( almost 2 weeks in the same spot and all was well till thursday. :(

    thanks for the advice anyway.

    cheers, Desi

  10. Sigh... I just got sunnies too last Saturday so it's been with me almost 2 weeks.. it opens, closes, opens closes until I am very confused! :P I guess i'm confused more than the sunny is confused!

    It was opening very well the past 4-5 days during the day time but yesterday when I came back from work it was completely close and today it's still closed. I have been throwing in allot of food (rotifers, coral bloomer and zooplankton) in the tank and turning off my skimmer for 1 hour or so and yet it does not open. I even took out the whole sunny and put it in a seperate container to plonk mysis shrimp on it hoping it would reach out and grab it but nothing's happening..

    ARUGH... it's a lovely piece but I just don't want it to die.. any reefers out there who can enlighten me what's the signs I should look out for? DO sunnies close up if they feel "full" as I have been constantly feeding them everyday.... :P I tried to find answers those but I didn't see any.

    here's a picture I took on wednesday of the sunny when it was open.. now it's all tightly closed :(

    post-12571-1219990229.jpg

  11. Hi.. oops sorry for putting this in the wrong thread.. anyway, to answer the previous query, yeah here is some brown thing on it :(:cry2:

    Guess it ain't gonna last. Sigh, a lesson for me to always remember. i didn't expect the bubble to be so "powerful".

    It's not directly being hit by the wave maker, the powerhead is behind some rock which is sheltering the octopi and the wave is hitting against the glass and not directly at the coral. Oh well.... thanks for enlightenment.

    :thanks:

    Desi

  12. HI all!! :upsidedown:

    My husband and I just bought this octopi ( at least that's what we were told it is) from AM about a week or so ago and it looked pretty alright in the shop. WE were told it doesn't like too much current but must sway "Gently". ;) too much no good, too little also no good. So ok we found a spot near our bubble to place it. HOwever after merely a week a part of it has begun to "die off". I somehow hope it will come back but as we have never had this coral before, it looks like the dead part is slowly spreading.. I have no idea what's wrong as the bubble and our anamonea is thriving in the tank.

    I just tested the water parameters and Nitrite, Phosphate and Ammonia are all ZERO, nitrate is close to zero, PH is 8.2, temp about 26 to 28 (depending on time of day), calcium is a bit on the high side of 520 but the one that our tank failed in was the GH and KH which is a bit low so now I"m trying to correct that. Could that be the reason why the octopi is slowly dying off from 1 side and spreading to the rest? We have a small 2 feet by 1 feet tank and it has about 5 fishes in it besides 1 shrimp so the bio load isn't exactly that heavy.... I hope! :unsure:

    anyway, I"ve uploaded 2 pics, one is the octopi and the other is the bubble which to me is thriving.. so any clues what could be wrong besides the GH and KH? Any advice of what I can do to recover it? :thanks: REally grateful for any help whatsoever. :paiseh:

    post-12571-1215796621.jpg

    post-12571-1215796240.jpg

  13. Hey there,

    I am using Reefmax too.. so far so good.. it's been 4 months since we started on our little tank and although we had 2 casulaties in the 1st week, right now it's doing fine. I had upgraded the lights I had from JM to T5 lights (reefdepot) which definitely made the corals stand out allot better.

    We didn't get the stand from JM but we bought a long cabinet from Vhive that doubled up as storage space for all the stuff as well as other barang barang we were throwing around our dining room! Of course if we upgrade to a bigger tank, we'd definitely get a customised stand to withstand the weight.

    how much of the reefmax Part A to F do you put into your tank? Every alternate day, I put aprox 1/4 of the spoon for the Calcium/Mg/trace and Bicarbonate and just do a quick squirt of the iodine and strotonium into the tank (aprox 60-70L). To control the nitrate level, fellow reefers here have advised me to use AZ NO3. I just started using AZ NO3 from Sunday and I can PM you if the stuff works bringing down my nitrate level as all other parameters are within acceptable range.

    To control Algae, I have a Tomini Tang which JM recommended to help eat the algae.. and I remember the first week we had him, he was having a feast eating up everything in sight. =P And best part.. this tang is "corner-trained"... as in he poops in a specific corner and not all over the tank. So it's VERY Easy for us to clear his poop!

    We have the same skimmer I think.. uses wooden blocks below right? How long does your blocks last? I realise that mine last only about 2 weeks before I have to change it already otherwise the skimmer is just not skimming at all.

    :) Desi

  14. Hi all,

    would like to some advice from you guys. My husband and I have been running a 2 feet by 1.5 feet tank the last 4 months and the water paramters are quite stable as in the weekly tests, we get :-

    Ammonia - 0

    Nitrite - 0

    Phosphate - 0

    The GH, KH and calcium are all within acceptable levels. PH is between 7.8 to 8.2 depending on time of day. Temperature is from 25 at night to about 27.5 during the day and we have no chiller.

    The only problem we have is our NITRATE levels are always very high.. we are using the API testing kit and it's always between the 3rd to 4th color band like 20-40. I understand that it could be because of over feeding or bioload. Our Tank has the following inhabitants :-

    - A Tomini ( not sure how it's spelt) Tang

    - A tomato clown

    - 2 Hawiian Damsels

    - 1 Boxer shrimp

    - 1 sand shifter star fish

    Corals -

    - 1 Jewel

    - 1 bubble

    - 1 freaking big Bubble Tip anamonea

    - 1 zoo

    - A small piece of leather coral

    Plus live rock.

    We feed twice a day, morning (flakes and pellets) and night ( just pellets).

    Water Change average about once a week about 5-10L.

    Can anyone recommend what we can add to our filtration system to help reduce the levels of nitrate? Any good brands of filter media that we can get that is tried and tested? :) Hope the info I had given above would help in any reefer providing any advice that could be useful to us!

    Thanks a bunch!

    Cheers

    Desi

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