Saint's 40 breeder

[stAlphonzo]

Almost forgot, it may not be cool to anyone but me, but .... I came home a few days ago and one of my hermits moved into a new shell. He def looks a lot cooler. I need to order more extra shells soon though so they don't try stealing from my snails!

Wish I could get a picture of it's new home, but he's been pretty obscured lately. Will try later.

 

[Johniejumbo]

I like that micromussa.

 

[Johniejumbo]

Lol it’s hilarious watching those little things “house shopping” in a pile of clean shells. Hermits are fun imo.

 

[stAlphonzo]

Lol it’s hilarious watching those little things “house shopping” in a pile of clean shells. Hermits are fun imo.

That's a riot, totally right. I keep all the extra shells on one side of the tank and I always see the crabs poking around them, testing it out. Even the new tiny crab today was looking at a big shell ... decided against though. I have a dozen or so shells of different sizes coming. Can't wait!

 

[stAlphonzo]

I like that micromussa.

Yeah, me too. It's looks really killer under the blue light, especially with the tentacles out. I need to learn how to use the camera better so I can get shots of that. I might get another piece of a different color and let them fuse on that rock. Seems like it might be cool, but I'm not really sure what they look like when they get bigger. I should probably look that up..

 

[stAlphonzo]

Here is a better angle of the algae. It almost looks like one of those Troll dolls my kids had.

 

[stAlphonzo]

Also, I'm pretty sure I just saw a bristle worm sliding out from under a piece of rock. It was hard to catch for an ID, but it was certainly it was a Polychaeta of some type. Have to keep an eye out, but hopefully it's a good one

 

[NY_Caveman]

Manual removal of the hair will help the snails. The Trochus and Turbos I had kept mine in line, but if it is too long they may not go at it. Supposedly Astrea will eat it but I never had them. I catch my hermits around it sometimes too.

 

[stAlphonzo]

Manual removal of the hair will help the snails. The Trochus and Turbos I had kept mine in line, but if it is too long they may not go at it. Supposedly Astrea will eat it but I never had them. I catch my hermits around it sometimes too.

Thanks for the tip. I will get a good sense when I get home about how far they've gotten and what they are eating, but that was kinda my concern, Figured that algae that long might be hard for the snails to eat. Maybe I can get some scissors on it or something. It's not super easy to pull off mostly because it's hard to get a hold of.

 

[stAlphonzo]

I just made this post because of a little critter that showed up late last night. I thought for a while it was a zoa eating spider, because it looks kinda like a little spider and my zoa looks closed and sad.

Looks like they are hydroid jellyfish instead. Dodged a small bullet, I guess. They probably came in on yesterday's CUC. I might have to start Qt'ing everything now for sure but I was a bit nervous about putting them in with the fish who are in Qt too. Oh well, at least these guys are harmless (I think, anyway)

https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/hydroid-spider-other.503796/

 

[stAlphonzo]

The GHA is receding a bit with the help of new snails and trimming and plucking it out. I was reading recently about Vibrant and all of the success stories. I figured for the price of the bottle it was worth a try. Thread is here:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/vibrant-liquid-aquarium-cleaner-discussion-thread.271428/page-252

I am getting close to getting my sump and skimmer set up too which I think will help a lot too. I just need to run some power. I'm taking a new 20 amp circuit to dedicate to the tank. I figured I would start adding the Vibrant now anyway just to see what 1 dose a week will do.I will export the dyoff nutrients with weekly water changes until the skimmer is running.

BTW, sump is made from a 20 gallong long I got from PetCo's $1 per gallon sale. Love that!

 

[stAlphonzo]

Oh yeah, almost forgot. I found a new hitchiker in my tank last week. I posted about that here:
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/strange-worm.509921/

Survey said Medusa worm so it's staying. I see it crawling around a lot now.

 

[stAlphonzo]

On final thing, I moved the new clown fish from Qt a bit prematurely. After a few days they stopped eating the things they were tearing into the day before. I tested the water and realized that it wasn't as cycled as well as I had thought and the ammonia and Nitrite was higher than I would like. I moved them to DT and they have adjusted very well and eat like little pigs. They are such hams too, every time I walk by the tank they start doing their swimming dance and follow me around. They don't bother me when I put my hand in the tank either. They are loving having the whole tank as their playground. I am going to give them some friends soon though. Not sure which I will do next, either a Firefish, Benghi Cardinal or a Blenny. Will probably depend on what's in stock when I go to the store. It doesn't really matter that much to me since they will all be there eventually.

 

[Johniejumbo]

I have tried vibrant myself. I used it on two tanks. On one it worked as advertised! Better than I had expected for sure. All that reading and I’m still not sure how or why it works but I guess I don’t need the details. On the other little tank I used it on, my 2 clownfish died within 2 hours. I went over it with a number of people and haven’t heard of anyone else who had a similar thing happen so I suppose it was simply a terrible coincidence. Still hacked off about it. That’s been over a year ago and I have just now been trying to talk myself into using the stuff on my 40b to help with my own hair algae problem. Dang arrow crab won’t leave enough clean up crew alive to do the job.

 

[stAlphonzo]

I have read a few other anecdotal reports of people's fish dying during treatment. All have said, 'it wasn't likely the Vibrant' and had pretty decent explanations as to why it happened. I was considering putting them back in Qt while I was using the stuff but now I think you sold it. I would be really bummed out if these clowns died. They are really cool little guys.

 

[stAlphonzo]

Vibrant update 24 hours. Here is what I posted on the long Vibrant Q&A thread.

What was long GHA with a nice healthy green sheen has started turning into long strands with a green base and brownish tops. Probably the last half (1-2 inches of hair) is brown. I don't have a skimmer yet and I am not doing a water change until this weekend so I did my usual pick and pull to get some of the algae out. The brown parts had a noticeably different texture it wasn't firm like before but resembled the feeling of severely rotten Romain lettuce. I really just turned to mush in my fingers. When I put the algae in the bucket to toss out, I noticed a pretty nasty smell, also something like the Romain that was left in a ziploc bag for a few months to fully rot, then you open it and take a deep nauseating whiff ... ;Vomit

I do consider that progress so we'll see what tomorrow brings. Given all the rotting going on and reduced ability to export except with daily WC or something like that, I moved my 2 clowns into the Qt tank along with my ball or Chaeto. I read enough random reports of nutrient spikes or toxins released from dieoff causing issues for fish and I don't want to take any chances.

 

[Johniejumbo]

How goes the battle with your algae? I’m currently trying to keep my tank from turning full on algae farm myself. Hair algae so lush my clownfish was wallowing in it like an anemone ;Hilarious I think I may finally be getting th upper hand on it and was curious if you were having any luck yourself.

 

[Scott Ulrich]

Following! That picture looks familiar my 40g is 9 months old and has been growing that same stuff. It binds to the sand so when I pull it out I feel like I'm throwing a lot of sand away. I've been rotating taking a piece of rock out once a month and leaving it in tap water for a few days to try and kill it off. I just had a pineapple sponge explosion in my sump so I'm hoping they absorb all the nutrients and then They both did off

Just curious to see what works for everyone. Good luck!

 

[Johniejumbo]

I use a 50/50 salt water/hydrogen peroxide dip to clean individual rocks. Mostly just the ones with my button polyps and gsp on them to keep them from getting choked out. My tank is about 9 or 10 months old too. Sure hope it turns a corner soon...

 

[stAlphonzo]

I have neglected this thread as much as I've neglected my tank over the last year. I had a few ups and several really big downs that made be want to forget about this hobby, but I guess that's not so easily done!

To answer @Johniejumbo .... the battle went great! The Vibrant melted all of the algae in one or two months. I have a dusting of Dinos now since I've gotten new fish and started experimenting with feeding them which is certainly leading me to overfeeding. But, I;m not too worried about it. The outbreak is small and controllable.

So, since I posted last, both of my clowns jumped I have a lid but for one of them, I changed the water and walked away to help my kids. I forgot to go back down and secure the lid and when I came back in the morning, there was a dead one on the floor. I'm not sure about the second one. I was good about keeping the lid on after that. I did have some gaps though, which I figured were too small. I had a little HOB equipment, filter, etc and didn't make cutouts in the top, instead resting them on top of the HOB stuff. That left a vertical gap of a few inches at the back of the tank, but I didn't really think the fish would get through there. I guess I was wrong. The other thing that happened was when I got some CUC locally to help with the algae. The LFS was kind enough to include some free Aptasia with my crabs and snails. Before I knew it, I was overrun. Basically that was enough for me to pause. The lights still came on and the pumps ran, but I didn't do anything else to the tank. No feeding, not water changes, nothing but occasionally scraping the glass. Surprisingly everything else that remained stayed alive and the didn't look completely terrible.

Recently I got sparked and excited again and I'm cleaning things up and basically picking up where I left off.