Fenrir's 14g BioCube Tank Diary

[fenrir]

Well Im a little bored and I think I will go ahead and give you guys an update on my tank. I lost y Clown goby back in the summer(I have no idea what happened to him) so my tank has only had my false perc, and my cleaner shrimp. Well two weeks ago my giant hermit killed off my whole cleaner crew, except one cerith snail!

So two weeks ago I went out to get a new cleaner crew and came home with some extra's!
1-New red emerald crab
1-Purple FireFish
2-Astrea snails
1-Mushroom Frag(Died in two days!

)
Here are some pics

Here is a pic of my departed clown goby

He was the coolest little fish

I would love to add some more color with some coral, but I litteraly can't keep coral alive what so ever. The only low light coral I haven't tried is Ricordia which i will get this weekend. I will post pics when I get it in my tank. I also think I will get one more mid sized lr to fill up the left side of my tank.

 

[new2salt1]

Where do you get your water?
How long did you wait to add fish?
I never heard of someone killing a mushroom before. I didn't think it was possible. I have a mushroom growing on a piece of live rock in a vase in my office with nothing but an airstone. I have had it for a month and it is doing well. I change 25% of the water (12 oz) 2x a week.
Im willing to bet you either have a bad water source, your tank never cycled, or your nitrates are through the roof.
I'd bet one or all of those things is the problem.

 

[paintballer768]

Cool stuff, I just brought home a firefish for my tank and he's just Mr. Personality. Dont add anything else until you figure out the problem! Just today I realized I had a phosphate problem (fueling the red slime), and I use LFS ocean water.
Come back with some answers to New2Salt1's questions and we should be able to point it out for ya. Along with where you get the water, what are your current parameters?

 

[fenrir]

Originally Posted by New2Salt1
Where do you get your water?
How long did you wait to add fish?
I never heard of someone killing a mushroom before. I didn't think it was possible. I have a mushroom growing on a piece of live rock in a vase in my office with nothing but an airstone. I have had it for a month and it is doing well. I change 25% of the water (12 oz) 2x a week.
Im willing to bet you either have a bad water source, your tank never cycled, or your nitrates are through the roof.
I'd bet one or all of those things is the problem.
Well my tank is a little over a year old so it has cylced a long time ago. The clown has been in there the entire year. I get gallon jugs of RO water from wallmart every week and do a gallon water change.
I went to a really good lfs that I trust alot, and the owners know what there talking about. I told them my problem and they asked me to bring in a sample of my water so he could test it. Checked everything, and it turns out I have two things that are wrong.
First off I thought I was keeping my tank at 1.026, but apparently my water is at 1.034!!!! He had a refactometer, and I was using a swimg arm, needless to say I bought one today!
Second thing which he says isn't to big of a deal but probably didn't help my coral problem. I have very low Nitrates, but said it isn't near dangerous.
So he told me that my fish are doing fine beacuse they acclimated to the high salt level, and so did all my inverts.(Since none of them are having any trouble)
So now I am going to feed once every other day instead of once every day.
I have 2 gallons of salt water going, and for the enxt 2 weeks I am going to lower my salinity to 1,026

 

[flricordia]

Personally I wouldn't haev but maybe 2 small fish in a 14gl. I actually have one (14gl biocube modified) and wouldn't think of it unless I was doing daily water changes. But I like corals over fish and don't always know what I am talking about. And even large clean up crew expells waste=organics=ammonia=nitrates=...

 

[fenrir]

I have never had anymore than two fish in my tank. And as clean up crew I only have 2 astrea snails, 2 Blue legged hermits, and one cleaner shrimp.

 

[matt b]

is ur alk dkh and cal in check???

 

[fenrir]

Nice tank by the way.

 

[fenrir]

Originally Posted by MaTT B
is ur alk dkh and cal in check???
Yes he said both are in normal ranges. I didn't ask the exact numbers, but he said the two things I posted earlier were the only things out of wack.

 

[matt b]

well i dont no i would say go to that coral farm and try getting ur coral from him and take water to test

 

[fenrir]

I will try my first lfs store fist here in a couple of weeks once I get my salinity right and my nitrates completly gone. I'm pretty sure my salinity was killing my corals that I tried regardless how long I acclimated them.

 

[fenrir]

Alright well I am sitting in my programing class(yeah I know a programming class from 8am to 12 on a saturday it sucks

) and I decided to update this. I finally got my salinity back down to .025 and I went out and got a ricordia polyp yesterday. I will post pictures when I get home, l also added some more lr so my tank looks more "full". I will posy more details when I get the pics added as soon as I get home.

 

[fenrir]

Here are the pics, tell me what you think. My Ric seems to be doing fine.

Close up of the ric, sorry the pic sucks but my camera is begging to age.