First Fish!

We got our first first today!! 2 Green Chromis.  These fish are very hardy and are a great starter fish…however, they are one of the FASTEST fish so if you put them in your tank you are basically stuck with them because you will never ever catch them again.  They are doing great! just fed them and they ate it all up 🙂 plus the zombie snail came up out of the sand for once and ate the leftovers, so cool.  Now they are just zooming around the tank having fun swimming against the current of the power head.  They are really pretty looking, cant wait for the LEDs to kick on at 8pm to see how the glow under the moonlight.  Pics below.  Also added in 9 more sails over the last 2 days so we are up to 10.  I need about 10 more in this sized tank so adding them in slowly but surely.  Anyway, until next time, just keep swimming!

It’s Alive!

Sorry I have not posted in a few days to all of my (at most 3) readers.  The last post I put on was about our new inhabitants.  On Monday we added 3 banded trochus snails and 4 Mexican Red Tip Hermit crabs.  Well I am sad to say, that 2 of the sails passed away the following day (RIP).  I knew this was going to happen and actually did not mind if it since the bacteria they produce will help the tank cycle.  On Wednesday we got our first diatom bloom! exciting.  Diatom is a brown algae and the reason it is exciting is because it means that your tank is cycling correctly because there is enough nutrients for the algae to grow.  And since we finally got this bloom it means there is now enough food for a Narcissus snail which I have been waiting for.  These guys are really cool.  Then spend 90% of their lives under the sand and the cool part is that they have this little “periscope” they stick up out of the sand to see if there is any food and if there is, they pop up out of the sand to eat.   They are really interesting.  Well, I just brought our first one home to see how he does (eventually want 6 or so to eat all the diatom since its kind of unsightly).  Well, the second he got in the tank sure enough, gone into the sand.  Oh well, hope he comes up eventually so I can watch him move around.  He is white with a very cool looking shell.  The other 1 of the 3 that did not die on Tuesday is doing great! he is pretty fast and zips around the tank all day cleaning the glass and rock.  The red tip hermits are doing good as well, just doing their hermit thing.

I got some money for my birthday (which was yesterday) and used some of it to buy another strip of LEDs which are now installed in the tank.  They make it a little more shimmery and will help the coral glow when we finally get some.  Going to wait about another 2 week so or so to get our first first which will be a Nemo (Ocellated Clown fish)…tank is still cycling but I think after another 2 week it will be good to do.  Have to make sure the water stays in check as they are pretty pricey (about $30 each) and I want a pair of them.

Anyway, will update you soon.  Picture of the diatom bloom attached.  Until next time, just keep swimming!

p.s. you can see what inhabitants we have in our tank at any time by clicking here

 

Crystal Clear :)

The tank is crystal clear today!! just having a slight problem with pH and temp but working that out.  I think the temp will be fine, my biggest concern is swings in the temp.  Going to try to adjust my heater so that it wont get quite as cold tonight when we turn the a/c down to 73…haha. I turned the settings up on it a little so we will see…I just dont want it to turn on when it’s already 80 in there.  It has been running 80 since yesterday afternoon but went back down to about 76 when I got up this morning.  Also went and invested in a refractometer to measure the salinity and specific gravity of the water since that is one of the major things with salt water tanks.  You can test it with a little $10 hydrometer but most people think that they dont work at all.  One person on the forums said that when he finally upgraded to a refractometer he realized his hydrometer was way off and it was causing lots of problems.  It makes since, the hydrometer is just this little plastic thing with an arm that basically measures how buoyant the water is which can change depending on temperature.  The refractometer actually using light to measure how much refraction (light refracts off of salt) comes off a drop of salt water.  Fresh water would refract zero light and salt water refracts about 1.023 light.  Anyway, I am happy I have it now.  It also make it much easier to test water from other sources like the fish store so that you can slowly increase/decrease the water in the bag with your new fish/coral so they dont go into shock.  You only need about 1 drop of water with the refractometer and with the hydrometer you need about 1/4 a cup.

New picture below! until next time, just keep swimming!

Day 2! :)

Well, the tank looks much clearer today! just went to the store and got a cleaning magnet.  One magnet goes on the outside and one inside.  They both have cleaning pads on them so when you move the outside one the inside ones cleans the inside of the tank.  Looks so much better now that the inside surfaces are clean.  Also bought a bottle of bio fuel.  It is supposed to improve water quality and speed up the cycling progress.  Normally takes about 2 week before we can put any snails or crabs in the tank but hopefully the bio fuel will speed that up to only a week.  With any luck we will be able to get our first inhabitants next Thursday.  Gonna go down to Petsmart and buy a water test kit as well.  First test results coming later today! 🙂 updated picture below.

Until next time, just keep swimming!

Our tank!

Today was finally the day (well actually it was going to be tomorrow but since it was a holiday we got paid a day early :)) We finally got our tank! The tank came into the house yesterday and today we go the live sand, live rock, and water! now its complete.  It looks a little cloudy at the moment as the sand settles back to the bottom.  We are so excited to finally have it in the house.  The pumps are running and we have it on a timed light cycle already.  It was quite the event adding 30 gallons of salt water to it.  We also purchased a power strip complete with digital timers built-in.  Can’t wait until the water is actually clear enough to see through.

Until next time, just keep swimming!

Bio-B-A-L-L-S

About to head back up to World Wide Coral to see if they have anything new.  They get new stuff in every other day so it’s always fun to go and see the new arrivals.  We are getting very close to tank day! I have Wednesday and Thursday off work 🙂  We will be going to purchase the tank in the morning (Thursday), bringing it home, getting every thing set up and then we will have to go back to pick up the live rock and salt water.  We are going to get the tank and live rock at Sea in the City since they will give me a 10% if we write a positive review of them on google which I have no problem with since I love that place.  Decided to get the salt water at World Wide Coral since I am going to have to make multiple trips and its right down the street.

Have learned lots of stuff since my last post.  I joined Reef2Reef.com which is a forum for coral reef keepers.  Learned about dipping (which is dipping corals/fish/inverts in a solution to make sure they are free of disease before adding them to the tank) and also learned a lot about Bioballs.

Here is the run down.  The Biocube has 3 compartments in the back.  The first compartment is a water holding area (I will also modify this area to keep my water heater in), the second compartment has the filter floss and 2 other biological filters, and the third compartment has the water pump and Bioballs.  The purpose of the Bioballs is to grow beneficial bacterial.  The water trickles down them and is exposed to air, during this process bacterial builds up on the balls.  When the water gets to the bottom its pump back out by the water pump.  Without bacterial build up, you cannot have a successful Reef Aquarium.  Some people take these balls out and replace them with some other type of media because they say that if water were to stop flowing over the balls the bacteria could die and as it decays raise the nitrate level in the tank which could kill everything off.  I am looking into replacing them with ceramic balls, these balls have a much larger surface area (cause they have a porous surface).  Also, the ceramic stays moist even if water stops tickling which is the main benefit as a posed to the Bioballs.

Anyway, more to come as we get closer! until next time, just keep swimming!

Anniversary or Tailgate?

I just got back from World Wide Corals.  As I told you yesterday they are having their huge 5 year anniversary sale.  Well, you see, I thought it would be a few people hanging out in the store…not the case.  There were TONS of people there just sitting around in the parking lot eating food.  This wouldn’t have been so bad…EXCEPT…there were tons of people putting tickets in the raffle boxes.  Yesterday, there were hardly no tickets in the ones I entered in but I am guessing that after today my chances have been reduced quite drastically.  Oh well, at least I only spent $11 and not like $50 on tickets.  I was planning on staying and listening to one of the experts talk about fish behavior but I just felt unconfortable there, like I didnt belong.  Not really sure why…maybe because everyone else seemed like they belonged…just chit chatting and talking about tanks.  Maybe its because I dont know very much about this stuff yet.  Well, anyway…guess Ill just have to wait for the raffle drawing tomorrow at 6pm.

Until then, just keep swimming!

p.s. only 12 days till we purchase our aquarium!

Fingers crossed!

World Wide Corals is having their 5 year anniversary celebration this weekend.  I just went up there and purchase 11 raffle tickets at $1 each.  They are having 7 different raffles which drastically improves our chances of winning.  I placed 6 tickets in the raffle for a $200 marine animal gift card which would be great! will be a great start to add some fish and corals after we get the new tank set up.  I placed the other 5 tickets in the Clown Fish raffle for a pair of Clown Fish which would be great as well since I was planning on adding an anemone to the tank first.  I think we all know that clown fish love sea anemones 🙂

Keep your fingers crossed! and of course I will let you know if we win.  The drawing will be Sunday night at 6pm.

Also for their anniversary celebration they are having 3 people who are rather known for their scientific work and books on marine aquariums.  I am going to try to make it to all 3 of these over the next two days.  Should be rather beneficial to the Reef Aquarium virgins like us.

Will let you know what I learn.  Until then, just keep swimming!

You wont believe how many choices there are!

Hey Everyone,

This will be aquarium blog number 1.  So far in our journey we have visited World Wide Corals (http://www.worldwidecorals.com/) on South OBT.  Over the past week we have visited 3-4 times.  This store’s selection is awesome! they have about 10 tank set ups for sale and lots of large fully stocked reef aquariums plus a very large selection of marine fish and corals.  At first glance, I was very impressed with the selection at this store.  After visiting a few times I realized that although there selection is great, the staff is hit or miss.  They are all very friendly but some of them seem to be lacking knowledge and just seem like they are more interested in the sale than anything else (well who isn’t).  For Reef Aquarium virgins this is the worst thing possible.  We all have tons of questions about tank set up, which tanks are better than other, etc.  Lets just say I know we will not be able to rely on their staff for our important questions.  I quickly decided that we would need a “reference” book if we were going to even contemplate setting up a Marine Aquarium.

I went to BAM and purchased The Saltwater Aquarium Handbook by George Blasiola.  You can view the book on amazon here.  This is a really good book! I like it because it doesn’t just tell you what to do and in what order, it actually teaches you the why behind the what.  So far I am about 30 pages in (don’t have tons of time to read) and I have learned about the 3 mandatory types of filtration, good and bad bacteria, nitrates, and other very interesting stuff.  I really wish I had not purchased the book only because now it is making me anxious about actually purchasing an aquarium.

Anyway, back to World Wide Corals.  Overall, it’s a really fantastic store and the coral displays up front are astounding.  After going there so often (I went again today since its only 5 mins from our house)  I decided that I wanted to visit at least one other store to see how it stacked up.  After some quick googling I came up with Sea in the City (http://seainthecity.com/) which is about a 20 min drive (by Orlando Executive Airport just East of Downtown).  Let me just say, the reviews online were very positive and they were very right! this store is great (from the outside it looks like an old burnt out building).  Although much smaller than World Wide Corals (they didn’t even have empty tanks for purchase) the reef displays are astounding. They have 3 very large but shallow reef tanks with way too many species to count. The real jewel of this much smaller store is the staff.  When we entered the only other person in there was the manager, Jessica.  She was by far more help than anyone on our journey so far! she took a very friendly approach to telling us exactly how we need to go about starting our Reef Aquarium.  How was I supposed to know that the first additions to our tank had to be snails and crabs?? (apparently these gross snails are essential to keep algae under control)  Because of Jessica I will definitely be back to Sea in the City for most, if not all, of my aquarium needs even though it’s an extra 15 mins out-of-the-way.  Next step in this journey, the purchase of the tank! I will fill you in on what we know so far tomorrow.  Till then, just keep swimming!

p.s. I absolutely fell in love with these pulsing xenia corals at Sea in the City…the little flowers actually open and close a few times a second…soooo cool!

~~Ricky