It's Official: I have a reef tank.

temperature acclimating the coral

A few days ago I found a Craigs List post for coral.  It looked pretty cheap with zoas starting at around five dollars and going up to thirty.  I made a phone call and hubby plus some friends who were in town and I drove about 15 minutes to the location.  There I was stunned at the quality of the coral.

my zoanthids

They had four tanks.  One frag tank, two display tanks with frag shelves and one new tank still cycling.  I have never been to any LFS that matched the beauty and health of these corals.  ReefCulture is the best Phoenix LFS for coral.  By far they have the healthiest, but these two brothers on Craigs List put them to shame.  We will definitely continue to buy from them.

The most awesome part is they have only been doing it for two years.  They said their dad has been doing salt tanks his whole life but reefs are new for all of them and they are awesome at it. 

my pulsing xenia

Here's the more awesome part, I bought a rock with about 100+ zoa polyps for $20, two stalks of Pulsing Xenia for $20 and about a 2 inch mat of Green Star Polyps for $10.  Total spent was $50 which is less than what the zoa rock would have been sold for at our LFS.  Now, I don't think I picked a good piece of GSP, I think I accidentally chose the brown star polyps, however next time I go I'll just look harder and have two varieties of GSP growing in the tank.

my possible not so green green star polyps

After acclimating and dipping in Coral RX, they were all pretty angry and stayed closed up for the night.  But this morning all of the zoas are open and the GSP is starting to peek out.   The Pulsing Xenia may be in too much flow, but I am finding too much conflicting information on how to keep these guys.  Some sites say they do better in low to moderate flow, others say they do better right up next to the power head.  So far, they look they're getting beaten pretty hard but the polyps are still open which by all my research indicates they aren't too pissed off.   I'm pretty excited since now I can officially say I have a reef tank! :D




About Coral RX

Coral RX is a preventative dip to remove parasites from corals before adding them to your tank.  We decided to go ahead and invest in it despite the fact we had no coral that were at risk.  Our reasoning is if we got a bad first batch, we didn't want to risk an infestation of the tank.

What I wanted to say though is that Amazon has terrible pricing for the product so instead we made the drive to ReefCulture since Coral RX has an exclusive contract with them in Arizona.  Amazon was selling it for $27.99 we bought it for $19.99 so once again, look around before you buy. 

Tank Shots

Quick post.  Some friends came to visit and one has an amazing cameras.  Enjoy the feeshies! 

the regular clown

PS I found a fantastic Craigs Listing for coral.  If I hear back from the seller, I may have a good stroke of luck.

the little misbar clown

Feather Duster hitch hiker

the hermit

king of the mountain

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.

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 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

Check out this tank!

Ack, I hope we can be so successful after only a year.  This tank is about the same size as ours, just a titch shallower and longer.

This awesome tank is Nano-Reef's tank of the month.  Read more about d9hp's amazing tank here!


All images belong to d9hp at Nano-Reef.com

Help us choose: Shrimp

Which shrimp do you think should go into our tank?

Our tank is almost done cycling.  So here are the fun posts!  Tell us what you think should go into our tank.  Anyone can comment without registering, so have at it!

The CUC (clean up crew) is the first thing to go into a freshly cycled tank.  These are animals that clean poo, algae, and uneaten food.  Examples of these critters are shrimp, snails, and crabs.  We will have all three.  

There are many varieties of shrimp and here are photos and profiles of a few that we think would be interesting to go into our tank.  We can’t have them all, so tell us what your favorites are!

PEPPERMINT SHRIMP

Image from Blue Zoo Aquatics

These little dudes are must.  They are non-negotiable. Not pretty critters, but our tank will have at least one of them.  They eat Aipstasia which is a nasty little pest that’s pretty until it takes over your tank. So, we think one of these little guys would be good to have on hand.

You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria.

BUMBLE BEE SHRIMP

Image from Scuba Board

 These are some awesome looking shrimp.  That's mainly why we're looking at them.  Most of the fun of a reef tank is having variety of species and a variety of looks.  Some of these shrimp lend themselves very well to that.

These are small shrimp reaching a max length of 1" and we would probably buy them in a pair.

You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria.

SEXY SHRIMP

Image from Reef Sanctuary

 Why is the Sexy Shrimp sexy?  Because it dances!  It sways it's lower abdomen back and forth when it walks like a sexy women.  These shrimp usually host anemones in the wild or home aquarium but will also host coral and rocks when anemones are not available.  These too are small shrimp at about 1" to 1 1/2".

You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria and here's a video of the sexy dance!

FIRE SHRIMP

Image from Rate My Fishtank

Now, this is a type of shrimp we want.  The Fire Shrimp is a cleaner shrimp.  What is a cleaner shrimp?  Think of Jacque from Finding Nemo.  The shrimp will perch on a piece of a live rock and fish will come to be cleaned.  Large species of fish will even open their mouths for it.

You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria and here's a video of a Fire Shrimp in cleaning mode.

BANDED CORAL SHRIMP

Image from Reef Delivered

 The Banded Coral Shrimp is another cleaner.  They are also a bit larger than the Fire Shrimp.

You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria.

SKUNK CLEANER SHRIMP

I hope to have an eel one day.  Just not as big... Image from About Fish Online

The Skunk Cleaner Shrimp is another cleaner.  They are also usually a bit cheaper than their more flashy cousins.




You can view their full profile here at Live Aquaria.

So tell us what you think! We're in the market for one Peppermint, one cleaner, and one "decorative" shrimp.  Which ones are your favorite?