New to aquariums ...loving saltwater

gunslingersgirl · Jul 8, 2015

Hi everyone!!! My fiancee has been keeping aquariums all of his life. When I first moved into his house, he had two freshwater aquariums ...a 29 gal and a 55. The 55 gal was home to only two cichlids since they decided to kill off all the others. I had always admired the beauty of saltwater fish so I proposed we turn it into a saltwater tank as a project together. This was my first honest to goodness aquarium experience and I LOVED it. It's also extraordinarily nice to share such an interesting hobby with him. He started following Reef2Reef on facebook and I followed soon after. We use this forum for most of our questions regarding our tank.

So a little about our tank...we started a few months ago....cycled it for about a month and started adding fish little by little. We loved our selection...LTA, decorator crab, 6 pajama cardinals (I actually like them more than the benghais ---not sure if I spelled that correctly), damsel, royal gramma (KIA), ocellaris, lawnmower, mandarin, and our last addition was a powder blue tang....
We also had plenty of different species of snails and a couple hermit crabs..
Oh and we had a fire shrimp that lasted 12 hours before our crab ate him....and then wore him.

Then the extinction level event occurred. The first to go was the tang..everything else was dead within a week with the exception of the LTA, crab, snails, and hermit crabs. We really are not sure what caused this to happen since all of the tests came out fine.
Anyway! That's old news. We have rebuilt and we just bought our first tester fish over this past weekend to see if we can start adding fish back to the tank. We'll see how it goes =)

kschweer · Jul 8, 2015

Welcome to R2R!!! Let's see some pictures

143MPCo · Jul 8, 2015

Welcome and yes please post up some pictures

KJ · Jul 8, 2015

Welcome to R2R.Pic Plz.

luxauterna · Jul 8, 2015

Welcome! Sorry about the tank crash! Did you notice any diseases on the fish prior to the losses? Also, what parameters do you typically test for in your tank?

SeahorseKeeper · Jul 8, 2015

Welcome to R2R!!

Reefing Madness · Jul 9, 2015

thegunslinger · Jul 9, 2015

Hey all, thanks for the welcome. I am the afore-mentioned fiance. We test NH3, NO2, NO3, pH, and Ca. Nothing was amiss, NO3 was at about 5 ppm but that's not really something to be concerned about. Everything pretty much died one at a time, no sign of disease. In a last ditch attempt to save the last two cardinals, we did a 100% water change and rinsed out the sandbed. The LTA also bleached out, but we're feeding him shrimp so he's still kicking. Except for the LTA bleaching, all our inverts made it through with no apparent trouble.
I'll post pics of what we had before the Great Extinction in a minute.

thegunslinger · Jul 9, 2015

I'm not as talented nor as well-equipped a photographer as some of the other folks on the forum, but here's what we used to have

:

The decorator's legs are visible in the last pic between the rocks.
Never got to take a picture of the tang or the gramma before they met their untimely end.
Below is a picture of our intrepid young damsel, Ham (named for the first chimpanzee the US sent into space). Five days and still going strong.

Our rocks are scattered haphazardly since the Great Extinction, but we have plans for the weekend to do some scaping and rearranging.
Side note: The decorator recently decided that he wanted to be hosted by the LTA. Not sure that the LTA is thrilled about this, but it's working out so far.

thegunslinger · Jul 9, 2015

For grins, here is our freshwater tank. Since this photo, we have added a java fern and some wisteria, and taken out some of the anacharis. Not visible is a leopard pleco behind the driftwood.

kevinsmixed90 · Jul 10, 2015

Welcome to R2R! Sorry to hear about your losses. it's strange how this happened. if everything died all at once I would say to much livestock to soon on a newly cycled tank. (ammonia spike) but your dragonette and snails and decorator crab are still alive. did you notice any signs of stress before the die off? or see any white spots on anything? damsels are very hardy and will survive almost anything! also, FWIW, cleaning all the live sand at the same time can remove too much beneficial bacteria. better to do it in thirds with your tank maintenance. anyway keep us up to speed on your progress.

thegunslinger · Jul 10, 2015

No signs of stress on the fish, unless their time was about to come, but none before the crash started. No ich either. We cycled the tank with only sand and rock for about a month, and all the livestock was added over the course of about 3 months, everything about a week apart (except the cardinals, we did those 3 at a time). We never noticed any change in NH3 throughout the process. The nem is still here, so I don't think it was a water quality issue. We only sift through about the top inch of sand during water changes, rinsing the sand out was a desperation move to try to keep the last few things alive.

kevinsmixed90 · Jul 10, 2015

o.k. just some things to think about but it sounds like you know what you are doing

. please keep us posted as to your findings, and best of luck! BTW love the cichlid tank I raised them years ago and they are great fish!

thegunslinger · Jul 11, 2015

I know a little bit, certainly not everything. That's partly why we're here.
I love the way African cichlids look, but they're too much trouble. I think we're done with them. If we do another freshwater tank, we've talked about discus.