BReefed's 14g Biocube

[BReefed]

BReefed's 14 G Biocube ~

Recent Tank Picture:

Fish:
1x Ocellaris Clown

CuC:
2x Blue Leg Hermit
4x Nerite Snails
8x Dwarf Cerith Snail
5x Nassarius Snail

Corals:
Colt
Button Polyps
"Green" Star Polyps

Hitchhikers:
2x Unidentified Shrimp
?x Bristlworms
?x Unidentified Clear Worms

Tank has been up and running since Jan. 10th. This is my first Saltwater tank so I am trying to do things slowly and carefully.

Problems I am currently dealing with:

Dinoflagellates - Quite a pain, but I am managing them so far. Unfortunately I saw my clown eat one of them yesterday. This is immensely concerning to me.

Messy Coral Frag - I recently purchased an immensely cheap coral from my LFS that had both GSP's and Button Polyps on it. Unfortunately the Buttons were bursting out of the GSP's mat, and the GSP had tunneled itself into a tube. I figured the button polyps would win, as they were literally growing out of, and off of the GSP's mat, so I cut an unaffected part of the GSP's mat off, now I'm not so sure!

Ugly, ugly situation but the price was right.

 

[Krish]

Looks good! Planning on getting that clown a bit of company??

 

[BReefed]

Yeah, I'll probably either get her another small ocellaris or a citron goby to hang out with next month. Haven't really decided yet. Also considering a possum wrasse, that'd work out well with my tank I think, but I need to research them more.

Also looking to add 2-3 micro porcelain crabs, and 3-4 sexy shrimp some day, but it will be a while!

 

[BReefed]

...and power outage.

AWESOME!

 

[Markee]

tank looks good i have a 29g biocube and i just love it. they are really awesome setups.

 

[Krish]

Yeah, I'll probably either get her another small ocellaris or a citron goby to hang out with next month. Haven't really decided yet. Also considering a possum wrasse, that'd work out well with my tank I think, but I need to research them more.

Also looking to add 2-3 micro porcelain crabs, and 3-4 sexy shrimp some day, but it will be a while!

Another clown may be cool so you could have a pair in there. Would look visually nice IMO. I don't know but for some strange reason a single clown looks odd to me. I'm a bit retarded though

 

[BReefed]

tank looks good i have a 29g biocube and i just love it. they are really awesome setups.

Absolutely!

I have the feeling that I'll end up regretting not springing for the 29 at some point in time, but I didn't have a whole lot of faith in getting everything right on my first go.

Plus I knew that when I did have a handle on it, I would end up being interested in something a little bigger as well.

 

[BReefed]

Another clown may be cool so you could have a pair in there. Would look visually nice IMO. I don't know but for some strange reason a single clown looks odd to me. I'm a bit retarded though

I hear you.

I actually inherited this clown for free because its original owner had another, larger clown that was beating on it a bit.

I'd love to pair it to another clown, but I have concerns about avoiding a similar situation. My assumption is that mine is female. The other clown its original owner had was a bit larger, but this one was younger as well which would explain why they didn't get along.

I'm pretty limited on options with a 14g, and it's a small space for a fued!

 

[BReefed]

3-4-11: Power outage... again. Seems to happen much more often now that I own a reef tank. Why is that? It was kind of fun to use a flashlight and see what wandered out of the back of my tank however. With no flow, and no light for my clownfish to prey on them, the unusual shrimp which live in my system returned and were perched on the glass.
3-5-11: Observed a small white snail moving across the glass. Not sure if it is a colonista or a nerite. My clown tried to pick him off several times, unsuccesfully.

I was very excited on this day because I had a 100.00$ gift certificate for Denny's pet world in Kirkland. That was enough to buy my water, additives, actinodiscus rock
and porcelain crab.

I had two porcelain crabs on my initial stocking list, and was not at all disappointed by their coloration in the store.

I also have to acknowledge that I made a bit of an impulse buy. I'd researched the firefish goby and new it would survive well in my tank, but had been leaning much more towards an opposum wrasse, clown goby, or a second clown. I think the gorgeous cover of this months Foster and Smith catalogue swayed me.

Anyway, I brought the lot of them home and introduced them, then made lunch. I'm not quarunteening new arrivals because at the moment I'm really only planning on two fish. I'll be working on converting my 72 this summer.

Anyway, when I walked back to the tank after lunch I was greeted with the floating, deshelled corpse of one of my hermit crabs. Insert sinking feeling in my stomach. My eyes immediately strayed to my new porcelain, and I wondered if someone was about to get a ride back to the store. The position of the hermits empty shell didn't make a lot of sense for the crab to have done it. I thought about it for a little bit, figured out the (duh!) obvious fact that hermits probably molt just like other crabs and shrimp. I decided to leave everything be.

My freshwater dip of the actinodiscus mushroom resulted in little other than murdering a couple of poor reef-safe amphipods and a mysis that I would have just as soon introduced to my tank. In fact, as soon as I introduced that rock to the tank literally a dozen beautiful fan worms of varying sizes and species made an appearance. Now this is what live rock should be like, not the dead, bleached stuff I started with.

Also I observed one five legged seastar

a little larger than a dime walking across the top of my tank, and stranger still, one "W" shaped animal, that is probably another three legged seastar.

Probably asterinas. I've never seen an animal with a more mixed reputation among the hobby. I let them both live and remain. No clue if they came from the new rock, or were there all along.

3-6-11: Hermit was alive and moving this morning, dragging his over-sized shell along again. Looks like I owed my porcelain an apology for assuming the worst of him. I did however, see him pick up and throw a nassarius who got too close for comfort. A purely defensive reaction, however.

I was out of the house for most of the day, and by the time I came home everything had turned red. I had a bit of cyano growing that I was allowing to be there because I wanted it to outcompete the dinoflagelates for nutrients, but this was completely ridiculous. I don't know if because we opened the curtains the tank caught some direct sunlight, but this was obsene.

I did an immediate 20% water change, my second of the week ;p.
3-7-11: Firefish is incredibly skittish and spends a fair amount of time in hiding, but so far doesn't seem to be bothered by the clown. Does a lot of time pacing with his reflection in the glass. Starting to feel like I should have either not gotten it, or be prepared to add a second one later. Hopefully it will get over being solo.
Pulled out the toothbrush and scrubbed cyano. Took it down quite a bit.
Started dosing calcium and iodide in hopes to get my "living" rock to color up, and keep a nice color on my mushrooms.

3-8-11: Cyano still looking much better, still a couple spots of living dino, but it seems pretty well managed. I created a dead spot in my flow with the new rock however, and that seems to be a slime algae magnet for now.

Observed a couple of striped micro brittle stars that also rode in on the new rock. All of this even after the freshwater ro/di dip. Crazy.

3-9-11: Firefish is still being sulky. Worse his posterior fin may be a bit shredded and I believe (not to experienced with this species) that his dorsal fin might be clamped. Obviously a bit stressed, and I clearly added the fish in the wrong order. A more assertive tankmate like another clown or the aforementioned wrasse probably would have been a better choice.

However, I'm not observing much aggression from the clown.
3-10-11: Damage remains centralized to the firefish's posterior fin, but is a bit worse. Going to waterchange again tomorrow and consider treatment with melafix.
　

 

[estanoche]

wow!!! Great details on what you've got going on

Now - a few notes, er questions, if I may :couch2: haha

What's your plan for treating your firefish? I ask because I wouldn't dose melafix in your main display, so its best to move him to a QT to do the treatment. Do you have a QT setup and running?

On your cyano/diatoms - They are being fed by something.... What are you feeding your fish? What salt do you use? Do you use RO/DI water? If you can eliminate their feed source, and vacuum them out like you are already doing, they will go away lane: In a tank as new as yours, I would even just say "heck, these are supposed to be here, they are part of my tank's lifecycle as the beneficial bacteria continue to catch up".

The addition of all the new livestock could have easily sparked the cyano outbreak too - more poop = more phosphates = more cyano... Everybody poops...

:director: Can't wait to see more updates and see how your firefish and cyano/diatoms work themselves out!

 

[BReefed]

By all means, question away. I'm not new to keeping fish as I've kept planted freshwater tanks for years, but I am new at reef setups. I appreciate any help I can get.

To illustrate that fact... I was err... planning to dose my display with melafix if things didn't clear up after a couple more water changes. I've always found it pretty harmless in the past. Thanks for the warning that I should do that. I'll have to work on a bath or quarantine tank then.

To your other question, I'm working on getting a 90 gallon system and this was actually going to be the qt tank for that. So I'm afraid I don't have one set up, although I have a spare 20 and plenty of equipment.

On to the water issue. I made a terrible error when setting up my tank do to getting some bad advise from a few articles and sources. When I did my initial set up, I used tap water. I happen to have some tap water here which is monsterously high in phosphates. I think that's why I think I got the dinoflagellates so early. I also had major issues with my lighting timers and had to return three of them during the early going, so my day night hours lacked a lot of consistency.

However, I am a religious water changer (once per week minimum 15%), and every water change has been done with at least "ro" water, which I purchased from Denny's Petworld in Kirkland. I don't think there's is deionized as well, but I could be wrong. Buying a RO/DI system is on my list at some point, however.

Feeding is about 1/8th of a cube of mysis, brine shrimp with spirulina, or bloodworms every three days. I don't think I am overfeeding, but please let me know if you think my feeding schedule needs to be adjusted.

I'm assuming that freeze dried spirulina isn't causing green slime algae to grow?

I'll keep you posted.

 

[estanoche]

I think you are right - your cyano/diatoms are likely just from your initial tap water, just keep sucking them out during your water changes and you will eventually get on top of the phosphate cycle.

Another way to reduce the phosphate introduction is to soak your frozen foods in RO water before you feed them... essentially rinsing them in RO. You don't put the water in your tank, just the food chunks after its all thawed out. The waste rinse water is packed with phosphates that you would have put into your system if you'd just dropped the food in.

Not sure if you are feeding too much or not - just be sure when you feed that most of the food is "eaten up" quickly, if you see extra food still floating around after 5-10 minutes, you are feeding to much :hungry:

At least with a biocube it isn't too much bother to get your RO/DI water at the LFS - When you go for the 90 though you are gonna want to have a RO/DI unit in house!!

It may be a good idea to take your extra water change water and setup your 20 gallon and just have it running (and test it for ammonia and whatnot), that way you have it ready as a QT if you do find you need to treat your firefish. Water changes work just about as well as melafix in FW tanks, just takes time, but they heal up really quickly with good food and water

 

[BReefed]

Firefish is starting to look a lot better and seems to be getting braver lately. His tail is healing, very slowly, but it is healing. I've noted almost no aggression from the clownfish toward him lately, which is nice for a change.

In the mean time, my porcelain crab seems to be loving his new home. Whenever I feed the tank he sprints over to overflow and sticks his fans out to catch any food that the goby and clown miss.

I am being overrun by a massive wave of green however.

Slimey green stuff about the color of the incredible hulk.

So lets see so far, first it was the diatoms (brown dust algae), then the dinos (stringy, bubbly gold algae), then the reddish maroon slime algae (cyano), now finally we've moved on to the green cyano. Booo for starting a fish tank with my ridiculously high in phosphates tap water.

Fortunately, I think I might have found an RO/DI so I can finally stop driving from Lynnwood to Kirkland weekly for my water changes.

 

[estanoche]

:first: yay!! Glad he is getting better!!!

Someday you will be rid of your algae woes - just keep trucking!!