New to saltwater - The story of a recycled tank

[taricha]

Last but not least, a few stills. Anyone know what the first one is?

This is likely a ciliate.

Your other critters in the video are another flagellate - not one of our problem dinos.
Cryptomonas / rhodomonas are the best match I can find for these guys that show up in my system occasionally.

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Thanks, @taricha , and Merry Christmas (if you celebrate) / happy holidays! I do appreciate it!

Any idea if it's common to have swarms of these types of flagellates show up? I'll do a bit of reading on the subject, and thanks again for pointing me in the right direction.

On the bright side, I think I've got the amphidinium beat, or close to it!

 

[Arthur_Dent]

12/25
11am
Phosphate 70ppb hanna (0.215 ppm)
Nitrate 25+ppm

No dosing (yay!)

6pm
20ml clean and mb7

11pm
Po4 - 0.5ppm (salifert - probably I just suck at measuring, and it's closer to 0.25 which the hanna measured earlier in the day)
No3 - 25ppm

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Full tank shot for Christmas:

 

[taricha]

Any idea if it's common to have swarms of these types of flagellates show up?

Hard to say. I haven't seen many of them. They take a good scope to image, and the identification isn't very certain.
And a merry Christmas to you.

 

[Arthur_Dent]

12/26
12pm
0.5ppm phosphate (accurate? Check with Hana tonight)
10-25ppm nitrate (closer to 25)

6pm
dosed 20ml MB7 and MB Clean

11pm
Po4 - 75ppb (hanna)

 

[Emptyness]

12/26
12pm
0.5ppm phosphate (accurate? Check with Hana tonight)
10-25ppm nitrate (closer to 25)

Still no dosing? Good job.
I guess you will need a big CUC and manual remove those algae turfs now .
What NO3 and PO4 values are you going for?

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Still no dosing? Good job.
I guess you will need a big CUC and manual remove those algae turfs now .
What NO3 and PO4 values are you going for?

I think I'm over the hump! Still no dosing. Not out of the woods yet, though.

I am going to shoot at 0.1phos and 10nitrate in the near term and then reassess. Going to give it another week or three to stabilize before trying to chase numbers at all, though. I brought the white lights back online yesterday, and by the end of the light cycle, there was some dino growing on the power heads. Will probably do a large water change next week to see how that goes.

I am planning on letting the tank mature a bit, probably another month or two at least before adding any corals, so numbers aren't particularly important to me at this moment, as long as they aren't zero.

I did dump in about 20 hermits, 20 nerites, 20 ceriths, 75 dwarf ceriths, and 20 nausarius. I had about 10-15 hermits, and a dozen or so trochus snails, plus a few ceriths before. Hopefully they are hungry!

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Pulled a mat of what I think is hair algae off the sand. Anyone able to confirm that this is actually GHA? It came off in a matt and held onto the sand.

Got a few shots of the unidentified flagellates, and didn't really see any amphi dinos at all. Maybe one or two in the three slides of crap I looked through.

I'm also curious to know what the "seed pod" looking things are. I believe they are.......seed pods. lol

 

[taricha]

I'm also curious to know what the "seed pod" looking things are. I believe they are.......seed pods.

Fantastic shots. Your shots of the little flagellate are the best I've seen. looks very much like cryptomonas or rhodomonas.
The 2nd and 3rd pics do indeed show the spore forming structures of derbesia (GHA).
great scope work.

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Fantastic shots. Your shots of the little flagellate are the best I've seen. looks very much like cryptomonas or rhodomonas.
The 2nd and 3rd pics do indeed show the spore forming structures of derbesia (GHA).
great scope work.

Thanks! I do appreciate it!

 

[Arthur_Dent]

12/27
6pm
Phos 85ppb (0.26ppm) (trending up)
Nitrate 10-25 (trending down)
7.8 dkh
MG - 1230 (1.85ml on the syringe)
Cal - 420 (1.4ml on the syringe)

Dosed 20ml mb7 and mb clean.
Fed phyto

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Exciting stuff tonight! Witnessed our nem attempt seppuku, or split, whichever makes the most sense. Ripping yourself in half to reproduce is metal af. Also, spotted what I think are barnacles that came in on the backs of some new snails. Managed to get some pictures and video using a macro lens. Pretty neat!

12/28
6pm
PO4 - 0.3ppm (100ppb hanna)
NO3 - about 20ppm

Dosed 20ml MB7 and clean

 

[Arthur_Dent]

12/29
12:30pm
Po4 - 0.25-0.5ppm (salifert) 72ppb (0.221ppm) hanna
No3 - 10-25ppm

note - didn't feed as heavily last night and ran skimmer a bit wetter than usual. In conjunction with ramping lights up a bit each day, and uptake from the green stuff, this is probably the reason for the decreased PO4. Going to start testing every other day since levels are staying above zero.

Full tank shots - 12/29:

 

[Arthur_Dent]

12/30
Po4 0.25ppm (salifert)
No3 10ppm (salifert)


1/1
Did a water change.

Po4 0.25ppm (salifert) (58ppb hanna (0.177ppm))
No3 - 25ppm (salifert)
Ph 8
Temp 78
Dkh - 8.3
Mg - 1200 (2 on syringe - salifert)
Cal - 445 (1.1 on syringe - salifert)

 

[Arthur_Dent]

So, last night, I went to our fish tank after lights out, and shined in a flashlight, as one does when one is bored and obsessed. A bunch of tiny creatures were swimming around.

I thought the clownfish hatched out eggs, but this morning, I sucked some gunk out of the filter sock, and found a bunch of this guy swimming around in there. Appears to be a tiny shrimp, but the odd thing is, I only have one shrimp in the tank.

Did we have immaculate shrimp conception? Is this a Jesus shrimp? The world may never know.

Anyone have any insight into what I witnessed?

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Video won't upload. Here are a few stills:

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Mystery solved! These are hermit crab larvae, for anyone who is curious. Found a discussion here, and a link to a vid on youtube that is a hard match on my microscope image: http://www.mbisite.org/Forums/tm.aspx?m=62162&mpage=1

 

[Emptyness]

Nice! So you are breeding your own CUC .

How is your anemone doing? Any losses on the live stock cuz the dinos?

 

[Arthur_Dent]

Nice! So you are breeding your own CUC .

How is your anemone doing? Any losses on the live stock cuz the dinos?

Free fish food and CUC!

There are two anemones now. It split the other day, and both copies are doing well.

No loss of livestock, although a few of the new CUC didn't make it. I may have lost 3-4 of the snails that were in there from the start, but not 100% on that. No loss of fish, but the little pink streaked wrasse seems to act funny every few days. Unsure if it's related. Otherwise, tank is 99% dino free right now.