Quote:
Originally Posted by
SnakeBlitz33 http:///t/397434/cleaning-hard-to-reach-areas-of-inside-glass#post_3542297
SeverelySalty,
Back in the day, that's all people ever did - was to grow coralline all over the back glass and even on the sides. It was considered a challenge and people loved to show it off. Now days, people say that it looks trashy and does everything to get rid of it. I personally like the look of the purple coralline background more than a black background... I feel like the coralline shows me when the tank is healthy and when it is not.
The only thing that I can think of as to why you may not want it growing on your back glass is because it does take alkalinity and calcium to grow it - and those people with largely dominate SPS tanks want the calcium and alkalinity to go into growing their frags instead of their coralline algae. But, like I said: to each his own.
Firstly I loved your four steps for salt water success, I just joined this forum last night but I was doing a lot of reading and I saw you had that on the bottom of your posts and couldn't agree more. I studied this whole process extensively when I was a junior in highschool (15 years ago) and once I'd felt I understood, and had saved up the money I managed to procure a used 55 gallon set up that was really complete for $200 on ebay (used to be much less of a rip off and more like craigslist at the time), set up this tank my parents insisted I was being ridiculous because even after listening to me explain all the chemistry (one of my better subjects at the time anyway), they were convinced no active 17 year old would keep up something like that. Well I got a good 2 years into the tank then had to leave for college, they refused to learn and I took my salty friends back to the fish store and converted the tank to freshwater for them, which they could still barely take care of.
For 15 years I literally kept telling people about my hobby that I'd one day get to have my tank again and start anew, I'd go to the fish store to just look at all the cool fish I hoped to one day have in my living room, and even my husband I've been with 10 years has had to deal with my plethora of small 15 gallon fresh water aquariums, lizards, and even two pet rats I've had while we lived together because it was never practical to bring a 55 gallon tank and deal with a salt setup when we moved every 3 years. We also could not have a dog or cat since we were renting.
So finally we got married, bought a house and the first thing I did was tell my parents to take their few pathetic little freshwater fish they hadn't killed back to the store and bring me my tank they'd been begging me to take back since I left. Of course everyone who had known me during this time expected me to have a fully functional version of finding Nemo up and running within a week of moving into my house, but I did my inspection of the poorly maintained equipment, trashed the filter, found a few scratches in the tank that I assume occurred during transport and gave the tank away for free to someone in need of new housing for their python on craigslist, not wanting to test out if it leaked on our new wood floors, filled it with live sand, live rock and 2 hermit crabs and let it sit running with the filter, heater, lights and nothing else for 3 months. People kept coming over to see our new house and going "what's up with your fish tank, you were so excited......?"
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And I simply said hey it's really hard to make the ocean in a box, and if you just think it all gets thrown together like on those tv shows and everything lives, that isn't how it works. I do want a full ecosystem with corals and polyps and the works, but while I could throw $1000 into the creatures that go in the tank and watch them all die off within the week, I'd rather be patient. My husband asked me to show him the chemistry portion and I did a bunch of tests while he watched the results all come up perfectly and he was like "the crabs are still alive (I tried to explain you could probably put them in the dishwasher and they'd be fine) but after just under 3 months I told him it wouldn't work to put $40 fish in there right now, there wasn't nearly enough algae and the tests aren't the whole story, you have to look at what's in the tank, I needed more live rock, etc. As a sad experiment, we bought a school of damsels which I figured, still too early but if anything can survive right now these can.....took about a month but as I predicted eventually all but one were dead.
So I really appreciate your statement to take things slowly and make small gradual changes. Even with my live rock I realize adding anything living changes the pH levels, keeping ocean fish in any size tank is hard and perhaps it's in my nature (going on 6 years of grad school for a doctorate) to take things that are important slowly if you want the final result to be great. I let a whole year go by with a few damsels here and there, mostly they fought each other and it wasn't my tank but I realized I just need a lot more live rock and so I had a tank of rocks for a long time, then after finally seeing that I was correct to not rush (and also realizing these salt water fish cost a pretty penny), husband agreed OK you can buy the $40 angel and the $35 clown, and if you keep them alive for a year you can do whatever you want after that because clearly you know this process a lot better than everyone else I've ever seen try to set up a salt water tank and give up 6 months in. I think there was also the matter of I spend all my time working on my doctorate and my world for many years has been a series of half completed art projects.....but I explained "hey if I don't finish my oil painting and come back to it in 6 months, nothing suffers except maybe the direction I was going with it......if you don't do the tank changes, check your chemistry and your filters and all your equipment it will all die. This system is entirely dependent on my vigilance." I even hesitated to add new fish to the tank after my tomato clown and coral beauty angel lived for over a year, but about a month ago I agreed the tank has so much beautiful algae growing, the live rocks all have healthy amounts of bristle worms and everything is always a perfect test so I added two scissor tail gobies to the mix with adequate housing......and yesterday my first sifting Goby, the diamondback watchman.
So I do want corals and all of that but I don't want to deal with those right now, I have zero experience with them other than reading how hard some of them are to care for, I do not have the appropriate lighting, but I'm glad you responded because I really enjoyed the splotches of purple growing impressionistically across the display aquarium in the store and decided why am I stressing out my fish by trying to clean that back side of the tank? I only clean the sides and front so I can enjoy the good work I've done but I know they hate the vibration of the magnets or my hand in the tank and I think I will take your advice and let the back go for now. I don't have the issue of needing the calcium or alkalinity for anything else at the moment so I will let it grow and see what happens. I'll post a picture once it develops into something interesting. If there is any "challenge" I certainly should get a trophy for that because I have to clean the glass weekly, it's a thriving system of beautiful (I assume coralline is the correct word you used to described that?) I found it quite lovely and I hate upsetting the fish trying to remove it, I know they don't care.
Sorry for the long post but you seem experienced with this.....I did just get the diamond watchman goby and although I have a really dirty 2 inch bed of 18 month old sand and no one else taking care of it (my two small hermit crabs have not had any visible impact on it), I was reading a lot about the species last night and am concerned about him not getting enough food. People complained about them jumping, I'm used to crabs escaping so my tank is fully covered, and I fed him sinking food and flakes and brine shrimp all of which he ate, but after only 24 hours half of my tank sand is practically brand new. Any advice of how to keep him from starving?
