[Papa Doug]

Geez, thanks guys. Now I also have large tank envy already. My 75 is barely set up.

My friend has a 6ft. by 30 by 30, 280g. It barely used, sitting empty and offered to me at a pretty decent price. I just have to go cut it apart and put it back together here.

I think I need serious help. {if you know what I mean}.

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Poseidon

I'm starting to get a serious case of TANK ENVY!!! Especially if you get that 300 Gallon tank going!!!

Yeah, me too!

I wish I was setting up a new 300-gal tank like Gene's.

I hope he keeps us all posted with lots of pictures. I'm getting excited already. How about you?

[Wrasse Man]

great job!!

[almostdiva]

Ninong,

How are your wrasses doing? Have the Scott's sorted out who's the boy and who's the girl yet? How about your gorgeous linneatus??

Rebecca

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Wrasse Man

great job!!

Thanks!

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by almostdiva

Ninong,

How are your wrasses doing? Have the Scott's sorted out who's the boy and who's the girl yet? How about your gorgeous linneatus??

Rebecca

Rebecca,

The wrasses are doing better, thanks!

The surviving "female" of the original "pair" is definitely the dominant male fairy wrasse in the tank. When I received the original pair, one fish was more than 5.25" long and the other was approximately an inch shorter. The larger fish did not survive the shipping stress and was dead the following morning. The surviving fish was not quite as colorful as the larger one that didn't make it but "she" may have been a male all along. Randy at The Marine Center thought she was a mature female and he certainly has a lot of experience with these fish.

The original fish was in my tank without a larger male companion for exactly five weeks before I received the new fish. When the new supermale Scott's arrived, he was about 1/4"-1/2" longer than the resident "female" Scott's and much more intensely colored. The resident "female" nearly killed him during the first 24 hours in the tank and then held him captive in a cave for the next ten days. The relationships have not changed at all since the new male was allowed to come out of the cave on the tenth day.

The thought-to-be female Scott's is the dominant male and the new supermale Scott's is definitely submissive. The situation is that the newly dominant male no longer inflicts any actual injuries on the newcomer supermale Scott's and he appears to be recovering nicely. His shredded fins seem to be improving and he does not appear to have any recent injuries. The female Lineatus was always too fast for the aggressive Scott's to ever catch up to her to do any damage. The dominant Scott's will display frequently during the course of the day and will pretend to chase both of the other fairy wrasses but the chases are strictly ritualistic, there is no follow through. At feeding times all three wrasses bump into each other, and everything else, in a feeding frenzy without any aggression.

It is difficult for me to estimate sizes while they are swimming in the tank but my best guess is that the dominant male is at least 1/4" shorter than the submissive supermale. Both appear to be between 4.5"-5" total length. I am still calling the new supermale a supermale because of his intense coloration and size. A friend in Australia emailed the pictures of my two Scott's fairy wrasses to Rudy Kuiter and it is his opinion that both are males. The newly dominant male is getting more and more dark blue coloration in his dorsal fin as time passes. I believe his dorsal fin will be mostly dark blue within the next few months. For some strange reason he is also picking up a lot of dark blue in his caudal fin. Those are the only changes in coloration that I have noticed so far. As far as size is concerned, he is at least 1/2" longer than he/she was when I first got him/her. The incoming supermale has not lost any of his coloration at all and is still slightly longer than the dominant male but he is entirely submissive to the other Scott's and he shows no aggression whatsoever to the female Lineatus like the dominant male Scott's does.

I believe that I presently have two male Scott's and one female Lineatus. I have been told by several people that a terminal phase male Scott's (supermale) is incapable of reverting to female. I have been told by one source (the vendor) that it is possible for a male Scott's to revert to female and I read the same thing in an online article. I contacted the author of that article and he told me that he was reporting anecdotal reports from other hobbyists, not something he had witnessed first hand. Aside from submissive behavior, I have not seen anything that would lead me to believe that my newest Scott's has reverted to female. I may change my mind if I witness any spawning behavior but I haven't seen any of that yet and I really don't expect it.

Fortunately my open top tank is well enclosed with eggcrate and black acrylic side shields because the Lineatus and the submissive Scott's have jumped several times. Water splash jumps are fairly common, happening at least two or three times a day. Jumps that result in something hitting the eggcrate or the light fixture have happened a total of about six or seven times and so far I don't think the metal halide fixture has been hit while it was lit but the fluorescent fixture has been hit at least once. All of the other noises were eggcrate collisions.

[almostdiva]

Cool...

Glad to hear that they have sort of sorted things out (at least your "male" isn't being attacked any more).... You have 3 gorgeous animals, and if nothing else, you'll enjoy watching the dominance order finalize over the next few weeks.

Rebecca

[Ninong]

I didn't realize it was so long since I last posted anything. I don't have the use of a digital camera right now, both of them that we have are in need of warranty repair and haven't even been sent off yet. Neither one actually belongs to me so I'm not in a position to yell too loudly.

I have not made any new additions to the tank since the addition of the fairy wrasses. Right now everything is on hold until I get my water temperature stabilized and under control. I have three 4" fans (I've had them for months) but they are still sitting in the closet. I've lost count of how many times they were scheduled to be installed. Right now they are supposed to be installed next week but I'll believe that when I see it. I'm hoping that the fans will allow me to operate without a chiller but there is a good possibility that a chiller will be a necessity.

Because the top of my tank is open -- and because my light fixtures are 11" above the water -- I have been able to get by without fans and without a chiller as long as I leave the doors to the cabinet open during the daytime while the metal halide lights are on. That usually results in a daily temperature range of 80-84 degrees Fahrenheit. If the temperature gets higher than that I simply turn off the halides. That procedure allowed me to get about 8 hours/day of halide lighting during the warmer months and as much as 10 hours/day during the winter months. That was just a temporary arrangement while waiting for my fans to be installed.

Unfortunately stuff happens! About a month ago the cleaning lady had her adult daughter along with her to help her finish the job faster. I usually leave the house for a few hours to get away from all the noise and commotion while they are doing their work. The cleaning lady knows that the doors to the cabinet are to remain open and the door to my room is to remain open -- at all times! It seems she forgot to explain that to her helper. The reason the door to the room has to remain open is because even though the house has central air-conditioning, my room gets three or four degrees warmer than the rest of the house when the halides are on if the door is closed.

I returned home around 4 p.m. and didn't really notice the fact that the door to my room was closed. I was sitting at my desk just a few feet from the tank and everything looked fine. It wasn't until about 6 p.m. that I realized that the doors to the cabinet were closed. That's when it hit me that the temperature was probably well over 85 degrees. Turns out it was already 89 degrees. I have two Little Giant pumps on this system, one for the main system return pump and one for the skimmer. Both of them heat up the water considerably. I immediately turned off the halides and added a couple of frozen plastic water bottles to the sump. I replaced the frozen bottles with fresh frozen bottles every 20 minutes or so until I got the water down to 86 degrees. That took me about two hours.

The fish were all fine and there were no noticeable signs of distress among any of the other animals at that time. In particular, all five of my Tridacna clams seemed perfectly happy and unaffected by the temperature spike. It took 24 to 48 hours for the damage to begin to show up. The two separate colonies of Ricordea florida are fine -- no problems there. About half of the SPS frags went downhill rapidly over the next few days and were removed several days later. Of a total of 10 Acropora spp. frags, five had to be removed and the other five seem to have survived. Of four Montipora capricornis frags, three are barely alive and one (orange) had to be removed. The green caps are still hanging on but they look terrible. The two different Fungia specimens both survived but the larger one was in pretty bad shape for a few weeks. My small pink open brain survived but most of it changed from bright pink to bright reddish-orange.

So temperature stability is at the top of my to-do list before I can add anything else to the tank. I'm going to California for a couple of weeks next month so I need to get this taken care of before I leave. Hopefully the person looking after my tank in my absence won't do anything dreadful while I'm gone.

I have had to move two of my clams a few times in the past several weeks because they refused to stay still and attach where I had them. I now have the steel blue ultra maxima at the right side of the tank on a perfectly flat piece of rock and it has finally attached there. The most recently added crocea is a few inches to the left of its previous position and blocked in with two pieces of live rock. It seems to be doing better there. It almost caused a rockslide in my tank a couple of weeks ago. It had managed to move off of the rock it was on and wedge itself between that rock and another heavy rock that weighs down the "roof" of the central cave. It was rocking itself violently back and forth moving both large pieces of rock. It's byssal opening was over open space at the top of the central cave when I caught it. It had moved both of those two really large, heavy pieces of live rock about 2" in opposite directions. That's one of the reasons that I may consider rearranging my live rock structure after I get back from my trip to California.

Strombus alatus (fighting conch) update: Both of these guys are still in there. I thought I had lost one but he was only "hibernating" under the sand bed for about two months!!! I have read that they sometimes do that but up until then mine had never stayed beneath the sand for more than two or three days at a time.

Mystery snails: Several weeks back I ordered a few things online (some frags, a nice 8" reddish banded serpent star) and at the same time I had the vendor include three small flat pieces of live rock so that I would have something really flat for my wandering clams. One of those pieces is the happy home of my steel blue ultra max and the other two pieces are sort of on standby in the tank. Anyway, I think there were some hitchhikers that came in on those three pieces of rock. I hadn't been checking my tank at night for some time and was shocked around 1 a.m. one night to see that virtually every available surface in the tank was carpeted with these tiny (5mm) snails. There were literally hundreds and hundreds of them. They were all over the live rock and all over the tank glass. My best estimate was that there were about 800 of them total. Research and questions to the snail gods have convinced me that they are trochids of the genus Colonista. They are quite pretty under magnification but too much of anything is too much! One of the other board members told me that he experienced the same population explosion in his tank but that they eventually died off. It has been about a month or so since I first noticed them and they are probably down to about 200 or so at this time. They are everywhere. Their shells litter the sump. They are into everything. They are strictly nocturnal and appear to be algal grazers. I wish they would eat my nuisance red algae but no dice. Primus, my Foxface Rabbitfish, is the only thing in my tank that will eat that stuff and he just keeps in mowed down neatly.

One of my concerns with these hordes of tiny trochids is that they will eat stuff that would otherwise nourish my other snails. I am having a hard time finding any Stomatella varia now and previously I had at least three dozen of those from the original three specimens. I still have some Nerite snails but I'm not sure how many. And I think I still have several of the so-called Strombus maculatus from IPSF (they're not Strombids at all, probably Columbellids) but not nearly as many as I once had. They reproduced in my tank, too. I'm not sure how many Trochus intectus I have left but I may have lost some of those, too, since the appearance of the swarm of little Trochids. My Star Snails (Astraea sp.) are still there but I haven't tried to count them. I'm supposed to have seven of those left from the original order of ten.

Fairy wrasse update: Nothing new to report on that front. There is no question about the gender of my two Scott's fairy wrasses -- both are males. The original thought-to-be female Scott's is the dominant male fairy wrasse in the tank. In spite of the fact that the newer Scott's is slightly larger and more intensely colored than the fish that had already established its territory in the tank, the residing fish established dominance over the newcomer. So I now have two male Scott's and one wannabe male Lineatus. The routine is that the dominant Scott's will pretend to chase the other two fairy wrasses just to keep them in line. All three fairy wrasses will display from time to time but this just infuriates the dominant Scott's. The beta Scott's has never chased the Lineatus. There is never any followup to any of these "chases" and no one gets hurt as long as my tank is completely covered. The only two fish who ever break the surface are the two newer fairy wrasses. The alpha Scott's has never jumped. There are about half a dozen water splash jumps every day and probably two or three impact jumps per week. An impact jump is when they hit the light fixture (11" above the surface) or the white eggcrate. I'm not sure if they have ever hit the metal halide fixture while it was on yet. I know they have hit the PC fluorescent fixture a few times but I'm not sure about the halide fixture. The tempered glass UV shield on the bottom of the halide fixture gets extremely hot and I worry that it could injure anything that hits it.

The strange thing about these three wrasses is that they bump into each other like maniacs at feeding time without the dominant one paying any attention whatsoever to the other two as long as there is something to eat.

Visible changes in coloration of the dominant Scott's: The dominant Scott's is picking up a lot more dark blue coloration in his dorsal fin and even a considerable amount of dark blue coloration in his caudal fin. His body coloration is pretty much unchanged and not as intense as the newer male Scott's. I am surprised that it is taking this long for the blue coloration to fill in the dorsal fin. I thought that would happen within three to five weeks. Looks like it's going to take several months before it is completely dark blue. I will try to get some new pictures of this fish as soon as the cameras get fixed.

[Poseidon]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Unfortunately stuff happens!

Turns out it was already 89 degrees. I have two Little Giant pumps on this system, one for the main system return pump and one for the skimmer. Both of them heat up the water considerably. I immediately turned off the halides and added a couple of frozen plastic water bottles to the sump. I replaced the frozen bottles with fresh frozen bottles every 20 minutes or so until I got the water down to 86 degrees. That took me about two hours.

OUCH, glad you got it under control quickly, I'm sorry you lost so many pieces!! I know that had to be frustrating. I am fortunate enough to have a window I can leave open throughout the winter to keep my fish room nice and COOL!!!

[reefhead]

Hey Ninong,

Its been quite awhile since I have conversed with you, looks like you have been very busy!

Tank looks great!

Joe

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by reefhead

Hey Ninong,

Its been quite awhile since I have conversed with you, looks like you have been very busy!

Tank looks great!

Joe

Thanks, Joe!

[Elmo18]

Nice tank there George!

I'm sure the frags will get bigger. I'm hoping mine will, too

- Elmo

[Minh Nguyen]

George,
Sorry for the large bumb on your tank. I am sure the tank will recover and so will the corals.
Minh

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Yeah, me too!

I wish I was setting up a new 300-gal tank like Gene's.

I hope he keeps us all posted with lots of pictures. I'm getting excited already. How about you?

Were you talking about me,George?
I don't know how I missed this, 300g tank is only in my dreams becouse I'd have to move out of my house in order to fit it in. I think you stand a better chance to have it before me...

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by zhenya

Were you talking about me,George?
I don't know how I missed this, 300g tank is only in my dreams becouse I'd have to move out of my house in order to fit it in. I think you stand a better chance to have it before me...

Good grief! Are you just now reading that?

My tank is on hold right now until I get back from my trip to California next month. I need to make it as fool-proof as possible for my brother-in-law while I'm gone. Hmmm...

[Ninong]

Originally Posted by Minh Nguyen

George,
Sorry for the large bumb on your tank. I am sure the tank will recover and so will the corals.
Minh

At least it seems to have stabilized finally. I may have to eventually remove my remaining green Montipora capricornis pieces but all of the other stuff that didn't go-to-Iraq on me seem OK now. I still have that miserable nuisance red alga but it seems to have stopped its expansion lately. I have no idea why because the only thing eating it is Primus, my Foxface Rabbitfish, and he just keeps it neatly trimmed.

[zhenya]

Originally Posted by Ninong

Good grief! Are you just now reading that?

My tank is on hold right now until I get back from my trip to California next month. I need to make it as fool-proof as possible for my brother-in-law while I'm gone. Hmmm...

George,

Believe it or not, I never got any notices of replies to this thread untill today Must of been some sort of a blimp with the software

Good luck with the fool-proofing and I hope that everything works out just fine. Reefkeeping is a major pain in the butt sometimes.

[Minh Nguyen]

Originally Posted by zhenya

George,

Believe it or not, I never got any notices of replies to this thread untill today Must of been some sort of a blimp with the software

Good luck with the fool-proofing and I hope that everything works out just fine. Reefkeeping is a major pain in the butt sometimes.

Me too. I was clueless about your heat spike until now.
Minh

[Ninong]

I get the email notifications several days/weeks late almost as often as I get them in a timely fashion. I thought I was the only one with this problem. I used to cut-and-paste the details for Scott in the Admin Forum but I finally gave up. I just check the board from time to time to see what's up because I know I can't rely on the email notifications. Sometime I get 'em, other times I don't. Sometimes I get 'em within minutes and other times they take three weeks.

You guys should keep those tardy email notifications if you haven't already erased them because Scott will want to see them so that he can show them to the server gods who think that everything is honkydory all the time.

[Ninong]

Someone on Reef Central asked me for an update on my tank over there so I figured I may as well post the same thing here while I was at it.

Here is a quick rundown on the various problems:

Pumps: I removed both Little Giant pumps and cleaned them thoroughly. Both intakes were clogged with shells of Nassarius snails and those tiny Colonista trochids. When replacing the system return pump, I was careful to use a lot more teflon tape and make sure both the inlet and outlet connections were very tight. I still suffer from a certain amount of tiny microbubbles in the tank that varies from time to time. I have not yet been able to determine the source of this problem except that it has to be prior to the point where the three plumbing lines split and go their separate ways. It is almost certainly in the Little Giant return pump but I have never been able to see any air bubbles going from the sump to the pump and I am confident that the inlet and outlet connections are as secure as I can make them. I have never seen any air bubbles in the sump other than the first intake chamber.

Snails: I am still plagued with an unwelcome horde of these pesky Colonista sp. snails. They are very tiny, 3-6mm, and rather attractive under a magnifying glass but they are a nuisance as far as I am concerned. They are strictly nocturnal, coming out onto all exposed surfaces in the aquarium (rock, glass, etc.) around dusk and retiring to their hiding places well before dawn. They appear to be herbivores grazing on algal films. Unfortunately, there are so many of them (several hundred) that they deny needed nutrition to other more desirable trochids in my tank. Their numbers seem to fluctuate between about 800 at the high end and 300 at the low end. They are impossible to completely remove because they are so small and because they are in every nook and cranny in the tank.

Water temp: The person who warned me that it was impossible to keep a reef tank down here in southeast Louisiana without a chiller was correct. I thought that since I would be content to allow the water temperature to reach a daily high of 83-84F and since I was placing my light fixture 11" above the water and since I was running an open top tank, that I could get by without a chiller. I was wrong! This was not a problem in the fall or winter but once warmer weather got here in the early spring, things got out of hand. The tank experienced a temperature spike for several hours one day while I was away from the house and the cleaning lady accidentally closed the doors to the stand and the door to my room. The house has central A/C but I have to leave the cabinet doors open and the door to my room open when the halides are running or the water temperature will climb too high. The water temperature hit 89F that day for several hours. During the following days/weeks I lost virtually all of the SPS frags in the tank. I am barely managing the situation right now with an 8" fan on top of the tank blowing across the water. I can only run the halides for 7.5 hrs/day even with the fan or the water temp will hit 86F. Right now the water temp drops to about 83F at night and rises to about 85F during the afternoon. One of the unpleasant side effects of adding the fan is that my evaporation has just about doubled to two gallons per day. My room runs about 3-4 degrees warmer than the rest of the house when the halides are on and it is incredibly humid.

Present situation: I cannot place a chiller in my room because of heat issues. I may or may not decide to locate a chiller outside my room on the front porch with the connections running through the wall. I contacted the manufacturer of a 1/2 hp chiller that I was considering and was advised that it would not be a good idea to locate a chiller in an area where the "environmental" temperature exceeded 35C (95F). I was told that the chiller would be very inefficient in such ambient temperatures. We regularly exceed 95F during the summer down here -- with high humidity.

I would rather start over with a larger, better equipped tank rather than deal with the nagging problems that I have now on this little tank. I do not have a chiller and need one, I do not have automatic topoff and can't possibly work that into the present setup, I do not have a calcium reactor and have no room for one, I am still using a portable D.I. cartridge thing to make source water because I can't fit my new 5-stage R.O./D.I. unit anywhere in the house -- I could install it about 75' away in the garage.

The tank is sort of "on hold" right now. The five clams and the five fish are all well. The Ricordea florida and a small pink open brain are doing OK and there are a couple of Acropora frags that are still hanging on. The sand bed is thriving and covered in life. Those expensive hair worms that I purchased from Inland Aquatics have finally multiplied all over the place. The Nassarius vibex snails are still popping up out of the sand bed whenever food hits the tank. There are still some Cerith snails in there and still quite a few of the cute little algal grazers that IPSF incorrectly calls Strombus maculatus. I may have lost all of the Stomatella varia and most of the Nerite snails to competition from the tiny Colonista trochids. The same may be true for my Star snails (Astraea sp.) and Trochus intextus. I seem to have lost about two-thirds of those guys. The two Strombus alatus are both fine but one of them buries in the sand for months at a time, the other one for weeks at a time. Both seem to have grown a little.

The fairy wrasse situation has calmed down but it is not something that I would want to do again in a tank this small. My original "female" Scott's fairy wrasse is the undisputed alpha male and his dorsal fin is now completely dark blue. He even has a lot of dark blue in his caudal fin. The newcomer male Scott's still retains his intense coloration, he is still a good 1/2" longer than the alpha male but he is totally submissive to the more aggressive fish. They sleep at opposite ends of the tank at night, both in caverns in the sand bed that they have excavated under the live rock -- fortunately my rock structure won't shift thanks to the supports in the sand bed. The female Lineatus wrasse has grown a little larger and is getting more intense coloration. I think she wants to be a boy because she constantly displays to the dominant Scott's male in the tank which drives him crazy because he can't catch her. The alpha Scott's does not harm either of the other two fairy wrasses but he does keep them in their place. There is not nearly as much jumping out of the water by the other two as there was a few months ago. Fortunately the acrylic shields at the top of the tank have prevented anybody from leaving the playground.

The Foxface Rabbitfish is getting bigger and is as healthy as can be. He keeps the tank completely free of any nuisance hair algae. At least I assume he does because I have never had any. He munches on the mysterious red turf algae and keeps it mowed down but it is still in there, although not as big a problem as it once was. The Orchid Dottyback is a model citizen. Maybe that's because all of the other fish are much larger than he is? He seems to leave the hair worms alone except for occasionally giving them a haircut. For better or worse he does keep the population of bristleworms in check or at least out of sight. I believe he has eaten all of the really large bristleworms but I still see smaller ones from time to time so I know there is still a healthy population of them in there.

Water parameters are stable with calcium running 450 ppm and alkalinity around 10 dKH. Nitrates usually run around 3 ppm. Kalkwasser (Mrs. Wages' Pickling Lime) is the only additive except for occasional magnesium chloride to keep the magnesium up.