My first thread!!!

[axionjaxon]

Hey everybody! I can tell already I am going to love this message board, I have been getting lost following threads for hours! I want to toss out my info and ask a couple of questions. My dad has been doing saltwater tanks for years, and for my birthday this year I requested a tank! Best gift I ever got! I was able to avoid the nasty cycling issue (I am very impatient) as he gave me water, sand, and rocks from well established tanks. I let them run for a couple of weeks before I started adding stuff. Right now I have a couple of red mushrooms from his tank, green star polyps (covered in hair algae ) a couple of false percs, some snails and blue legged hermit crabs for cleanup, and lots of cool critters in the rock!!! Oh yea, and condylactus (just found out why my nemos dont like it...LFS told me the condy might eat them if it gets a chance, is this true??) I'm using a fluval 104 (seems like a great filter, any thoughts?? Having some lighting issues tho, excuse my ignorance while i try to describe it. We ordered a coralife (coralight??) 50/50 bulb from this very website (im pretty sure its 40W?) but it is VERY blue. My understanding is it shouldn't be. I guess there is another brand that fits in the same ballast, but we can't find the 18" bulb in the square pin (but they offer it in the straight pin....?) Thanks everybody!!!!!!!

 

[axionjaxon]

OK, so I have this hair algae problem. I want to get rid of stuff naturally, I want a cool lookin fish to eat it. I want a yellow tang (I know, tang police are knockin at my door). Asked LFS to get me one, they asked how big my tank is. Told them, he said "so you want an itty bitty one and in a couple months you are giving it to your dad, right?" Are you guys going to be after me? Dad has 85g reef tank. How big can I let tang get in my tank, or should I just get something else? What do you recommend? Lots of the other guys I have read that eat this stuff aren't too colorful, and I have such a small tank I don't really want to use precious fish space with boring guys (here we go, I have been in the hobby for a month and I want to go bigger.....)

 

[axionjaxon]

So I've mentioned dad got me started he has the reef tank (going to stick a pic on here if i can figure out how), has a 35 gallon tank for his octopus (assuming the little guy is still alive), and he had a 125g FOWLR that he spent months custom building stand and hood for. He had a bulb go out, and put in a replacement last sunday. Friday night on her way home from work, mom gets passed by a firetruck. According to fire marshall and insurance forensic dude a faulty ballast on the 125 started it (has anyone heard of this???) Fire got so hot it melted the tank (we all feel horrible for those guys....LARGE lionfish, med lion, 2 very cool eels all boiled to death.......) As soon as he was allowed in the house (which incurred a grip of damage) he did a massive water change on reef tank. It lives in the garage now (and will till at least august) but they all seem to be doing well (totally blows my mind with all the smoke and soot in the house). The octopus tank is a who knows right now. It, too, has been moved to the garage. The octopus is/was a tiny little guy, alive on thursday for sure, but we don't know. Anyway, here is a pic of the reef tank that is my inspiration! (hmmmm....i want to go bigger....perhaps i can adopt this tank.......) (hmmmm again.....pic attach thing doesnt seem to be working...could be operator error....if there are two attached, sorry all!!!!)