Why you should quarantine

When doing the switch to all natural filtration, we did not dip the rubble or the chaeto.  A couple days later I was looking at the rubble and debating on cleaning the fuge when I saw a nasty bristleworm swim by.

Gross.  I'll post my photos as soon as I feel like pulling it off the camera.

Now, let me be honest, there is a lot of debate on bristleworms.  Many people feel they are a valuable part of the clean up crew, others find them to be a nuisance.  Me, I think they are ugly and do not know enough about them to feel comfortable allowing them to live in the tank.

For three hours, we scrubbed and cleaned the rubble.  I figured if they live in warm saltwater, than cold freshwater should kill the buggers. Since the scrub, there has been no sign of them and from now on I will always dip my rubble.

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.

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!