Byron & Reneé's 465g reef - 700g+ total

[pickupman66]

7 or 8 may be too long. The life cycle of ick is 4 weeks and you will see signs of it prior to that.

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[Degener8]

Is there really such a thing as to long for QT if your water parameters are in check in the QT tank?

I just read the entire thread and its been a great read so far. I hope everything keep working well for you and I hope you get your overflows working how you want them to.
Great read, great plans, and awesome start to the tank. Congratulations!

 

[chort55]

7 or 8 may be too long. The life cycle of ick is 4 weeks and you will see signs of it prior to that.

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4 weeks?? I've always heard it was 8.........

 

[kingfisherfleshy]

This depends on who you ask...that being said, I know people that have QT'ed and left their tank without fish for 9 weeks - and still had ich.

I dont believe that there is any way to completely remove the risk of these guys. Just methods to help...good for you to QT everything, in a tank like this with what will undoubtedly be a long stock list, it is worth protecting the investment.

You should buy more BGC - they will school tighter if there are more...and 9 is way too few. My brother has 52 in his 180g, and it is a sight. (That coming from a guy who hates BGC)

Having a larger fish such as a tang will do fine to keep them tightly schooled. Nutramar ova is a great food to feed to your large school, once you get it.

Also having more BGC will prevent them from picking on each other. Most people that even get numbers almost up to twenty end up with, 1, 2, or 3 BGC. They pick on each other and just wither away till you have a few, or one, big one.

 

[Kbra]

Did you take any filter media from your dt to the qt to help emulate the water in the reef?

 

[Reef Breeders]

This depends on who you ask...that being said, I know people that have QT'ed and left their tank without fish for 9 weeks - and still had ich.

I dont believe that there is any way to completely remove the risk of these guys. Just methods to help...good for you to QT everything, in a tank like this with what will undoubtedly be a long stock list, it is worth protecting the investment.

You should buy more BGC - they will school tighter if there are more...and 9 is way too few. My brother has 52 in his 180g, and it is a sight. (That coming from a guy who hates BGC)

Having a larger fish such as a tang will do fine to keep them tightly schooled. Nutramar ova is a great food to feed to your large school, once you get it.

Also having more BGC will prevent them from picking on each other. Most people that even get numbers almost up to twenty end up with, 1, 2, or 3 BGC. They pick on each other and just wither away till you have a few, or one, big one.

I agree, however I also believe that anthias schools are much better looking. Whenever I see nat geo, there are giant schools of them. I will be rplacing my chromis with anthias.

 

[byron]

Did you take any filter media from your dt to the qt to help emulate the water in the reef?

no... running it bare & doing daily water changes... not trying to emulate the DT. Why?

 

[byron]

my QT plan:
- week 1: let them go for a couple of days then treat with PraziPro
- week 2-4: treat with Cupramine
- week 5-7: watch'em and react if required

 

[byron]

I agree, however I also believe that anthias schools are much better looking. Whenever I see nat geo, there are giant schools of them. I will be rplacing my chromis with anthias.

we do intend to eventually have a school of anthias as well... probably tangs next, then anthias... schools of both BGC & anthias together should be interesting. But again, I'm not sure they will continue to school as the tank matures, but hope so...

 

[byron]

Very awesome setup, wow, just read through 12 pages of a thread! Can't wait to see some inhabitants in there, your patience is admirable!

thanks for the kudos...

 

[byron]

OK, related to QT:

I am seriously thinking through the cupramine treatment phase and am now leaning to hyposalinity... the more I research, the more I believe that hyposalintiy is a better treatment method and essentially stress free on the animals, done correctly. I will decide by Monday when its time to start.

 

[chort55]

Yeah I think hypo is the better choice, but can still be tricky and you have to be careful. I want to say water parameters can get sketchy sometimes with the changes as well.... Ive never done either tho.... I am bad at that kinda stuff lol

 

[byron]

an update on our salilinity upward creep:
the Apex probe in the salt mix reservoir is reading considerably low. When it says 34.6, it should probably be reading 35.5 based on readings from the Milwaukee refractometer. So when I thought I was puttng in water during the water change at 35 ppt, it may have been considerly higher than I thought.

One interesting point here is that prior to the "digital" age, we were reading with less "precision" then today. But are we really reading with more precision today or are our digital readings just giving us false data???

When you multiply .211 x .022 in a digital calculator, the result is .004642, but that is mathematically inaccurate. The result can have no greaer resolution than the lowest resolution of one of input values. So that is just mathematically inacurate taken to 6 decimal places.

My point is this: the Milwaukee only reads PPT to whole numbers, i.e. 34, 35, etc. Does the Apex probe offering a readout of 35.3 mean anything really or is it just software reportintg garbage in the digital age... idk... I will ping Apex to get the actual accuracy of their probe.

 

[byron]

since we added the nerite snails, small white dots have been appearing all over the side and back glass. Are these snails eggs? Or?

These images are from an iPhone so they may be be clear enough to get a good look:

 

[Degener8]

Yuppers looks like u can make an omletes soon!

 

[byron]

decided to go with the hypo cycle... got the QT down to 1.009 this evening. This is the first time I have done hypo so I am following the write-ups very closely. Took 2 days slowly bring the salintiy down from 1.026 to 1.009

The 9 BGC are still eating like pigs, so they don't seem to mind it so far...

 

[byron]

Well it's looking like we will have a chance to test out our emergency backup system for real later today... local warnings are for a large scale storm begining in several hours and sustaining through tomorrow sometime that has a good chance of knocking out electrical power in the area.

If there is a good time to see if we are setup correctly, it's probably now. The tank is still mostly empty with several hundred snails, around 50 various crabs, an urchin, a serpent star and a cleaner shrimp (or 2). We haven't see the other cleaner shrimp or the coral banded shrimp in about 4 days, so who knows on them. The serpent star won't come out, but his tenticles show up inside a few of the caves from time to time - I just feed the rocks where he is burined, hopefully he will come out someday.

The 4 Vortechs are on battery backup to sustain the tank for 4-8 hours. The QT is not. And I can't just move the BGC on over to the DT because they are in hypo at 1.009 and the move itself would do them in...

However, I do have a 13KW generator that I can connect and bring the necessary parts of the house back on line, mentioned it in an earlier post. It only takes me about 20min to handle the manual switchover.

So, we'll see how it goes... keeping our fingers crossed...

 

[MattyO]

I am looking at battery back ups for my QT's as I have the vortech back up on my DT. I actually found two, one on dr.f&s and one on eBay, they both plug into an outlet and turn on when the power goes out.. Good for the late night power outages. I also have a regular battery powered aerator which is always good to have I case of transporting fish or what not.

 

[byron]

I am looking at battery back ups for my QT's as I have the vortech back up on my DT. I actually found two, one on dr.f&s and one on eBay, they both plug into an outlet and turn on when the power goes out.. Good for the late night power outages. I also have a regular battery powered aerator which is always good to have I case of transporting fish or what not.

thanks for the tips...

Looks like we may have side stepped this one. I believe the brunt of the storm has moved on through quicker than expected -- and we've had power flicker off and on about 5 times, but so far it has stayed on.

 

[coffee1stlife2nd]

WoW Very nice...read and reread.. i couldnt take my eyes away... i was very disappointed when there was no more to read or pics to see...so get on it..More More More... JK.. your whole setup is amazing. and here i am stressing about my little 180 and how to set it up...LOL... looking forward to seeing more.. sorry to say but i was kinda hoping your power would go out so we could see if backup works correctly..