How to make a tank last over forty years with few problems

[TbyZ]

Liar liar pants on fire

Take a look here, Mate.

http://www.blackworms.com.au/

whoo,, $71 delivered for 250 grams of live ones! & a lot more for the freeze dried.

might get mussels instead.

 

[tyler1503]

"TbyZ (if that's your real name) If"


Thanks for the reply Paul.
I'v got lots of copepods & other critters in my tank from my scrubber. I don't use filter pads or socks.

We don't have blackworms down in Oz, so I feed the guys a garden worm that I broke in half. My vlamingi spat it out & the others weren't interested, but I left it in the tank.

What do you thing about using bloodworms, & whats your opinion of nori?

Regard
Steve

Check with a few different LFS's for blackworms.
My LFS has them most of the time. The old owners who use a different supplier also had them

 

[TbyZ]

Check with a few different LFS's for blackworms.
My LFS has them most of the time. The old owners who use a different supplier also had them

will do thanks

 

[Paul B]

I would not use bloodworms unless they were real worms, most bloodworms for sale are insect larvae, but there are real bloodworms.
I also don't like freeze dried anything.

 

[Rybren]

Do you know Rick Grange?

Umm, sure I do. I know every other Canadian. After all, there's only 3 of us. Who is he? Do you know Brian?

whoo,, $71 delivered for 250 grams of live ones! & a lot more for the freeze dried.

might get mussels instead.

I can get the live ones shipped in from California at ~$85 USD per pound. Factor in the exchange rate and customs brokerage fees, and we're up to ~$200 Cdn. Yours is still a better deal.

 

[Paul B]

I pay two bucks for a container that lasts me a week or so. But I built a worm keeper so I can keep a lot of them alive.

 

[Brew12]

I pay two bucks for a container that lasts me a week or so. But I built a worm keeper so I can keep a lot of them alive.

How important do you feel it is to keep the worm alive and not just the bacteria in the worm?

 

[Paul B]

It is just easier to keep the worms alive and if the worms are alive, so is the bacteria

 

[Be102]

It is just easier to keep the worms alive and if the worms are alive, so is the bacteria

Im sorry if you mentioned this before Paul, But if I was able to find black worms at my lfs, can I just start feeding my fish them? As opposed to my frozen mysis.. I am going to be attempting to make a homemade fish food soon as well. Just need to figure out what is and isn't a good thing to include in the food itself. I would love to start to make my fish healthier

 

[Paul B]

You can feed the blackworms as soon as you get them. At first, your fish may not recognize them, but they will shortly.
For your food, the best things are shellfish like clams, mussels, oysters etc. Don't use shrimp tails, squid tentacles, fish fillets etc. All you really need is clams and I would also add some Mysis. Nothing dried and nothing freeze dried.

 

[TbyZ]

Umm, sure I do. I know every other Canadian. After all, there's only 3 of us. Who is he? Do you know Brian?

Brian; Yeh, I know him. And Bryan too!

But seriously, Rick Grange is described as a 'Canadian' Aqua Farmer, He has a youtube link promoting blackworms on the blackworm site you pointed out to me.
And as you were from Ottawa I thought there may be a connection?

 

[Rybren]

Funny, after googling him, it seems that I actually bought some freeze dried blackworms from him once; he doesn't sell live. I didn't make the connection because there was no name associated with the website. I don't know him, and seeing as how he is 4,500 km away from me, I likely never will

As a side note, the fish readily eat the freeze dried worms, but I don't know how much, if any, nutritional value they have. I would soak mine in my home made mash of fresh and frozen foods.

 

[Paul B]

I don't think I mentioned sponges. I just remembered them because I washed my car today. I didn't really wash it, but I thought about it intently. Sponges should be in every tank and they should be all over the place. They filter the water and will remove any microscopic particles. Most of them like to grow in the dark and if you put them in the light, they croak or grow algae. Many of them are real nice looking, not as good as Angelina Jolie, but still nice looking. In the sea they can get huge, like Oldsmobile size. I have some 12" across and my water stays crystal clear even if I rinse out my car wash sponge in my tank like I sometimes mistakenly do.
My tank is still running nicely even though I have been pre occupied with other projects.
Oh and by the way, the VA found my papers and are processing my PTSD, ear ringing and Agent Orange issues. I put in for baldness but I doubt they can contribute that to my service time.

Soon I will have to smash some of my corals, especially the montipora as they grew too close to the front glass and I can't hardly clean it. The pieces I break off I will glue someplace.
Quite a few times people asked me why if my tank is so old, there are no large corals. They are correct, there are no old, large corals like you would expect in such an old tank. The tank should be over flowing with the things. Especially montipora and acropora as that stuff grows very fast.
What happens in my tank and I assume many tanks is that you have accidents. The acropora I had in very large pieces and the clown gobies spawned every few days on them and killed most of them.
Much of the montipora developed some sort of white patches and croaks in a few days. One of them has it now and I have never figured out what it is but it only effects one piece at a time. My largest piece died like that.
The rest of the corals died a few times while I was away. The last time I went to Germany, my tank sitter allowed the tank water to fall about 7". My tank is only 14" deep so everything above the middle of the tank was out of the water and died. Everything below that was subjected to very high salinity and some of them died. I did not say anything to my tank sitter because first of all, she is a Supermodel and secondly, she was doing me a favor and knows nothing about fish. I still let her take care of my tank but now I have a camera on the tank so I can tell her the ATO stopped and she needs to put water in the tank.
About every 3 weeks my ATO does that because it is a 1/4" hose that goes 30' above the ceiling into my work shop and it runs by gravity. Occasionally a tiny bubble gets stuck in it stopping the flow. It's not a big deal and I don't worry about such things. If the tan crashes tomorrow, it has had one heck of a run.
I also lost most of my fish 3 times. My 25 year old fireclown is one of the only ones to survive about 15 years ago when my town added zinc orthophosphate to the water. That also killed many corals eventhough I have a RO/DI. That system got overwhelmed. Now I have special resins made especially for that chemical.
You can see her eggs above her here. In a few months they will kill huge pieces of acropora. But I love her and just let her spawn.


You can see this piece here was near the top of the tank, it died when the water level went down below it.



You can see the beginnings of that montipora bleaching here. This piece recovered for some reason.


This huge round piece here bleached in a couple of days and died. I started all my montipora from one 1/2" piece.


You can see it here also.

 

[TbyZ]

Hi Paul;
Could you elaborate a bit on your

• 5x a year: add mud collected from local bay for bacterial benefits (removed a few days later)

If I was to, say, grab some dirty looking sand (has a blackish color) from the mangroves, in a river area about 400 yards or so, down stream from the river mouth, do you think this would be benificial?
What method do you use to place it in your system so you can remove it a few days later? A Stocking? I could borrow a stocking from the super-model that lives next door.

 

[Paul B]

I add the mud but if you keep a quarantined tank you may not want to do that because your fish have no immune system.
I put the mud in a shallow container and put it on my gravel. After a few days, I remove it as I just want the bacteria. I do squirt some behind the rocks and under my UG filter I just don't want a lot of mud swirling around.
You should only do this if you are going for a natural, immune tank. A quarantined tank IMO is not very natural and may not be able to cope with the bacteria from mud

 

[Paul B]

What method do you use to place it in your system so you can remove it a few days later? A Stocking? I could borrow a stocking from the super-model that lives next door.

You could borrow a stocking from a Supermodel but I met a lot of Supermodels and one of their stockings could be like seven feet long as Supermodels are very tall. Christie Brinkley once got out of Billy Joel's car in front of me and I almost had a heart attack and she is only 5'10"..
Her stocking would wrap all around my tank and I doubt she would lend me one. And if she did, I doubt she would want it back. I could ask as she doesn't live to far from me but she is probably busy getting married someplace because she spends a lot of time doing that.

 

[Shaun Sweeney]

I don't know any Supermodels but since I use my local seawater in my 1500 litre system, I'm wondering if maybe I shouldn't give some local mud a chance in one of my side tanks?

 

[Paul B]

I would

 

[Shaun Sweeney]

Just picked up some local seaweed and it seems pretty happy in the higher salinity / temp environment.

 

[2Wheelsonly]

My montipora colonies did the same thing...white patches one at a time. There was one time I was frustrated after seeing those ugly white patches and took the whole piece out. The next few days a perfectly healthy one started...I was going nuts. Someone told me I probably had nudibranches and boom, one night I saw them. I was relieved at first because I finally figured out why they would get hit one at a time but then I realized how difficult it was to remove. I ended up dosing my entire tank with Dr G's coral dip to get rid of red bugs since my vet wouldn't hook me up with interceptor. The side affect was no more nudi's to my amazement! I never want to deal with those again. The ONLY good thing to come from my recent tank crash is that my pests are gone!