240 Gallon "Rectangle of Life" Tank Diary

xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
Quote:
Originally Posted by Mr. Limpid http:///t/391220/240-gallon-rectangle-of-life-tank-diary/40#post_3474752
Great looking fish, but way out of line on price. We need pictures!
Price was steep, even from my friend. 130$.... However, when the wifey starts to invest in the tank, it makes it a lot easier...
Usually she gets puffy about me spending 3 hours cleaning the tank. Today she wanted me to wipe the glass clean so she could watch her fish... LOL!
I was going to order it, but sometimes they come looking more blue than purple. This one is deep rich purple.
I promise, I will get around to taking some pictures.
 
mr. limpid

mr. limpid

Active Member
LOL My wife is the same about me spending money on my tank, but she never offers up a dime. Time I could spend that on my tank all I want, no value to her on that. Good friend $130 from stores around here about he same price. I should talk spent $200 on a chevron tang.
 
xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
Well, it's been a while since I last updated this thread. I just have not been happy with my tank lately. There have been a lot of loses, and invasions of my piece of the ocean.
I have been battling a hair algae outbreak, which I won about a month ago with the assistance of 40 Mexican Turbos, for people who don't think they work, I have seen it personally. I of course assisted by pulling the bigger patches out by hand daily.
As soon as the hair algae was gone it seemed like I got hit with another tank invasion, cyanobacteria. No matter what I did it would not go away, weekly 20 percent water changes, siphoning, etc. Well I was not going to add chemi-clean to my tank. So I looked into the best setups to keep your tank clean. Well I found it. Running GFO, Carbon, & Purigen in reactors.
For those who don't know what they are, GFO basically removes phosphates and its damn good at it. Pulled my phosphates from 1.7 to .07 in less than 2 days. Carbon everyone knows, no need to explain. Last is Purigen, this material removes nitrates, and nitrites out the water and again it is very good at it.
With these medias in reactors, my tank went from cyano invasion to crystal clear in 3 days. I am now a firm believer in ALWAYS running these chemicals. GFO is good for about a month, Carbon about two weeks, and Purigen changes from blonde to black when exhausted.
Dealing with a couple heads of Aptasia, added some Berghia Nudibranches to take care of them a week ago, we will see how that goes.
Also im currently battling Astheria starfish, which most say are harmless, however, I have heard that they will become predatory when starving. My options are slim because I don't have the luxury of adding harliquin shrimp due to my wrasse. So My options right now are manual removal and hopefully starvation. I have to closely monitor my zoas until they are gone to see if they go predatory.
Unfortunately, this battle claimed the lives of several of my livestock.
I lost:
3 Purple Anthias
2 Blue/Green Chromis
Seahare
Crocea Clam (Blue)
1 x Cleaner Shrimp
Long Tentacle Pearl Plate Coral
Golden Torch
Blue Agave People Eater Zoas
Utter Chaos Zoas
Ponape Birdsnest
Trumpet Candy Canes
Pink Acans
Rainbow Acans
 
snakeblitz33

snakeblitz33

Well-Known Member
I hate that you lost so much livestock in your battles against cyano and hair algae. Do you think it's because of the changes that you made to your aquarium or a different outside factor?
I know it's pretty easy to get lax on maintenance during the Summer. I know I do for sure. I'm glad that you got everything taken care of and can now get back on track. When you have a minute, post a new pic of the tank so that we can praise you for it.
 
xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
I think basically that the tank went through a "new tank" syndrome along with the moving the old rock over stirring up gunk and it just created a firestorm. I also think that since I can't locate dead fish in my system the decay added to it. It just seemed to be a endless battle.
I will post pics soon.
I didn't slack on the tank at all. This was actually the first year in 5 years that I didn't take a summer vacation. It kind of took the pleasure out of having such a large tank. I'm just glad the its getting better. I have to still get rid of the little stars and the last 2 or 3 stalks of aptasia and I think it should be good.
I don't know how stars got into my tank, I dip everything, it should have killed them off, and I didn't add any rock from any other system. The aptasia I later found was tucked inside a colony of candy canes and I didn't notice it until it was too late.
 
xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
Lost:
Lime Green Open Brain
Figured this one wouldn't last as it looked horrible and was covered in cyano at one time which exposed bone.
 
xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
Bought a few fish today. I need to add some size to the tank so I bought a hippo tang. He's so small right now maybe 1.5". I also bought 2 Snowflake Clowns. I swore that I would never get another clownfish but when I saw these I loved the paint job.
They are currently in QT and will probably be there for the next 2 months. Going to do a proactive ich treatment so I will be lowering the salinity to 1.009 for a month and bring it back up over a couple weeks.
 
xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
Looks like QT was a good idea. The Hippo Tang I purchased a few days ago has a few spots on him and one on his eye that has resulted in bubble eye. :(
 
sweatervest13

sweatervest13

Active Member
Sorry about the issues you had. Seems like you have a great plan. I definitely need to buy more turbos.
I love the look of the snowflakes. They should go real nice with your setup. Good catch with the Hippo. Hypo is always a good thing.
 
xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
Update: So I have been lowering the salinity it is now 1.009 I took a cup of water out every couple hours and added a cup of RO water back until it got down. I have also been dosing metronidazole. There are only 3-4 tiny spots left on him and the pop eye is gone now and his eye looks healthy. He is no longer scratching also. With it being only a 20 gallon tank, it makes it soooo easy and cheap to treat.
Here are some pictures that I took with my iPhone of the 3 fish in the QT. They are very small and hopefully over the next 2-3 months I can get the hippo to get some size on him, before he goes into the rectangle. At that size he may think he actually is in the ocean.





 
xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
And some of the livestock.















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xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
Added:
Copperband Butterfly
purchased this fish as a frag swap. He is small 3-4" but he joins the others in QT, did a long 6 hour acclimation since the tank is down to 1.009. No signs of ICH on the fish in QT, but I will be restarting my QT time. So looks like another 2 months until they are moved over.
 
xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member

ill take the zoos! are those darth maul and rasta zoas i see?^
Traded a friend for some corals. It's long gone.
Those are Rastas. However the Darth Maul looking ones are actually LE Nightmares.
 
xcali1985

xcali1985

Active Member
LOL! Not really. Those are not cheap zoas.
Added:
Bloodshot Acans
Red/Green Blastos
Orange Ricordia
Pink Ricordia
Little bit of an update also.
Finally got the copperband to eat mysis yesterday. Pretty exciting. Im going to see if I can get him to eat pellets. The challenge awaits.
 
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