More Hitchhikers!

So a couple days after the Chaeto going in the tank, I noticed something that looked a flower petal floating at the surface of the fuge.  I said, "Hey, you look interesting." And scooped it out.  Upon further inspection, we realized it was a baby starfish!  

The new baby.

How I found him floating around.

At first, we weren't sure if it was alive or not, but we placed it in the display tank and decided to observe it over the next couple of hours.  Luckily, the little guy was alive and now is making his home on our rocks.  Husband was very excited by all of this and has claimed the starfish as his.

Adult and juvenile Asterina gibbosa. Image from The Naked Scientists.

After some research, we've come to the determination that the starfish is an Asterina starfish who may or may not eat our Coraline algae.  Apparently, the internet jury is still out as to whether they are dangerous to reef tanks.  We figured we'll give him a chance and only get rid of him if he begins to harm  our Coraline algae we've been trying to grow.

Speaking of harmful critters, the hermits have seemed to developed a taste for feather dusters. :(  We have not seen our dusters out for a couple of days now.  We are still hopeful they were not eaten.

Making the Switch to All Natural Filtration

As I said in a previous post concerning my nitrate levels, some of the difficulty may be from artificial filter materials.  So, on Saturday hubby and I went to our favorite LFS, ReefCulture and bought some Chaeto algae (read more here on Chaeto Algae). 

A side from that, we also bought about a pound of live rock rubble.  The rubble will go into the bottom of the fuge to act as more biological filtration like its larger intact cousins in the display tank. 

Here you can see the rubble at the bottom. The squiggly stuff is the algae.

After coming home, I immediately chucked the old stuff since I already modded the AC70 for the purpose of housing algae (here). 

Chucking the old stuff.

And here is our new set up:

The bag is full of carbon and is the only artificial filtration in the tank. 

I'm going to let it go for a couple weeks before testing my nitrate levels.  We'll see how the Chaeto does.  My next challenge however, is lighting.

LIGHTING CHAETO ALGAE

Lighting the algae isn't too specialist.  However, I thought I'd make a quick little blurb about it. 
From what I have read, Chaeto algae needs to be on a reverse lighting schedule.  When you display tank's lights are off, your Chaeto needs to be on.  This ensures that your algae is working 24/7 sucking nitrates and all the nasty stuff out.  It'll still be growing during the day as well if it catches over flow lighting from the display like mine will.

Chaeto does not need specialized lighting, however my Rio Mini Suns may not be powerful enough to penetrate to the bottom.  So, we're toying with the idea of a compact reading lamp.  Like I said, it doesn't need any specialized lighting to grow so I'm not concerned with needing extra aquarium lighting.

Catch Up Post 5: Are we there yet?

I think this is the last catch up post for all of the events in the last month.  Essentially this is just a fun post.  So, we thought the fish were healthy and then on night the larger fish was nose down.  I though “Oh no, I’ve killed it” and then it started swimming normally again.  After some googling, my fish was sleeping.  Now please enjoy this video as they dream their fishy dreams.

Catch Up Post 4: Hitch Hikers! Hooray!

Shortly after getting the crabs, we noticed something odd on the shells.  It was a strange white wormy formation.  We kept it under close observation and finally the worm grew large enough to reveal it was in fact three feather dusters.

Shortly after that we found another one on a rock and yesterday (December 6^th) we have found yet another duster.  I am super excited.  They are supposedly good for the tank and filtering and will reproduce quickly.  I think they are really fun to watch.  You might too so you should watch.  He put himself in hard spot to video tape, but you can see him coming in and out of his tube to feed.

We’ve been dosing the tank with Elemental from Brightwell Aquatics to help with the growth of coralline algae.  We have spots all over the rocks, it looks like cotton candy exploded on them.  Elemental is essentially concentrated calcium and feather dusters build their casings out of calcium.  Since we started regularly dosing, one of the feather dusters has doubled in size.  Unfortunately, two riding on the hermit crab I believe have died due to hermit crabby activities.  I am hoping more pop up.   

Catch Up Post 3: Save the Snails! Research, Research, Research

A while back, my cleanup crew consisted of ten snails and three hermit crabs.  Now, they consist of five snails and maybe two hermit crabs.

What happened to the others?

We are assuming starvation.  When we went to the LFS and read various articles, all states one snail per 1 gallon of water.  This seemed high to use we went the safer route with ten instead of twenty snails.  Here is the important thing:  RESEARCH YOUR SPECIES.  I have turbo snails in the tank which are a larger variety.  The reason I am out ten dollars now is because after doing research when the deaths began, I have learned only one turbo snail per ten gallons of water. 

This may seem cruel, but I decided to let the tank balance itself out despite husband’s idea to just remove snails.  The tank seems to have stabilized at five snails.  I am happy to report there have been no deaths in the last two weeks.  Yay!

Catch Up Post 2: Nitrates, the bane of my fish keeping.

Fear not! All two of my fish are still alive.  Shortly after the shrimp’s death, I noticed a disturbing skyrocket in nitrate levels.  They shot up to 100 ppm.  FYI, that is not good.

The fastest way to reduce nitrate levels are water changes.  The first day I did a 60% water change and brought the levels down to 40 ppm.  The next day I decided to be proactive about my nitrate levels since I had been a little lax.  I did an 80% water change.  Still, the nitrates were and are holding at 40 ppm.  I really, really, really want them below 20.  I want the tanks I see on nano-reef so I need to have this under control.

Once again, I went to Nano-Reef to seek advice on this problem.  The members were helpful in their suggestions and I will list them here in case someone wants a list of things to eliminate in their nitrate problems:

1 Nitrates in the new water.

For me, I know this is not the case.  When I first started my tank, I had no nitrates.  I also checked my new water just in case.

2 Artificial Filter Media.

Artificial filter media, like sponges, can be a magnet for housing debris that in turn creates nitrates.  This can be a possible cause for me.  I am currently using a sponge in my AC70.  Within the next couple weeks, I am hoping to replace my artificial media with Chaeto algae which should drastically reduce nitrates since that is what it intakes to grow.

3  Faulty test kits.

API test kits, like the one I use, do not have the best reviews.  I have been advised to possible use Salifert for more accurate results.  This is another possible cause for me.  However, since I was planning on using Chaeto algae in my filter, I am going to try that first.

Catch Up Post Number 1: The Tail of Two Fish and a Suicidal Shrimp

Fwah… Have I gotten behind!  So we will do this in a series of catch-up posts.

The weekend before Halloween, hubby and I were looking for something to do and had the idea to go up to Reef Culture just to look at stuff.  Luckily, or unfortunately, they were having a 20% off all black and orange livestock sale for Halloween.  And can you guess what black and orange fish is a great beginner fish?

Clownfish!

While also investigating, my husband being the deal hunter* he is, decided we should get a fire shrimp since he would be 18% off.  

After spending an amount I’d rather mention, we set off home with our precious cargo.  An hour later, we were in the process of drip acclimating our first interesting inhabitants that did not live in a shell.  We acclimated the fish for about forty-five minutes at a rate of one drip per second, the shrimp we acclimated for one hour also at one drip per second.

All of our animals were well behaved and doing well for the first two weeks.  Then we noticed something odd.  First, the shrimp’s whisker was shorter.  Then, his claw went missing.  Next, his other whisker was shorter.  

On closer observation, we realized he was getting well acquainted with our circulation pumps.  I posted my concerns on Nano-Reef and someone suggested putting panty hose around the pump.  We tried that and all was well for a few days until it looked the panty hose was disintegrating in the tank.  I assumed that was probably not healthy.  So we did some rearranging, took the pantyhose off, and closely monitored the shrimp for the following days.  All seemed well.  He molted and all of his missing appendages came back.  

Poor deceased Shrimp.

 On November 5^th, my mother in law went by the house to drop off some chairs while we were at work.  She said our shrimp looked nice.  She thought it was normal behavior for the shrimp to hug the pump… The shrimp got to friendly with it, and apparently the pump did not reciprocate the feeling.  So now we have no shrimp.  We are brainstorming anti-shrimp eating pump tactics for any future purchases.

*= I say deal hunter because I frequently feel we never would have bought what we buy if there was no sale.  Therefore, we would have saved money on an item we didn't need if it wasn't on sale. lol