Blog Comments

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Four More Years! Four More Years! Oh wait... wrong site. my bad.

Please disregard this momentary interruption. These aren't the droids you're looking for. Move along.

yeah take your time! and looks good man like the colors of the mushrooms. weird that you had problems with zoas they seem very easy to grow

tank is looking good. i hear ya about stalled upgrades, took me almost 6 months to get my upgrade done.. should have only been about 2. But you will be much happier taking your time and doing it right

I had three fish in a 29 at the "peak"...(1) 3"+/- Flameback Angle, (1) Ocellaris 2.5 - 3", and (1) Wheeler's watchman goby 2"...I fed a pinch (small pinch) of flake at noon (never sank deep enough in tank for the goby to get any) and maybe 10-15 pellets (formula #2) at around 7pm (sank quickly to bottom so goby got some)...

feeding a small squirt out of a dropper of Rod's now once a day...not a massive amount of food for an angel, even a dwarf angel, but he picks at the rock all day and I occasionally hold a small piece of seaweed in for him to pick at for 5 or 10 mins

I would never feed flake, haven't done so in years, I do believe it just rots out too quickly and dumps the funk out quick. Pellets on the other hand don't, and I love Spectrum.. so do the fish. I also don't feed a ton, literally it's just enough for the fish. How much were you feeding?

Thanks guys, I guess the "messy" solutions are the one's that work the best. I'll start trying to separate it.

Do mushroom and ricordias eat meaty foods...that all I've got in the way of corals in the tank...hate to waste the food.

Electrobes...I quit feeding pellets...I used to feed Sally's frozen foods and then when that ran out and my lfs was out I got some of the pellets and flakes...my tank turned to hair algae city within months of feeding flakes and pellets...just my experience...I know Melev feed's flakes from an automated feeder, pretty cool and his tanks usually look awesome, even when he doesn't think so...so it might have been something else, but since I quit feeding flakes and pellets my tank has cleaned up...granted, I changed my cleaning/waterchange schedule...and I'm sure that helped, but never had a problem with hair algae under the old cleaning regiment when I was feeding Sally's and don't have problems with Rod's so far.

I too woud avoid feeding the larger chunks as some fish might even choke to death. You can use a strainer or put a plastic knife across the opening of the thawing dish you use, limiting what can pour out. The bigger stuff can be minced and tossed in next.

It's either that, feed less and he'll be forced to hunt for the smaller pieces, or maybe change foods. I'll be honest with you, I feed spectrum pellets because I hate dealing with the mess that comes with those other types of food. I'm sure they are better in every way, but not at the cost of the tank. I do throw some freeze dried cyclopeez every now and then.

remove the larger pieces and don't even drop them into the tank. rod's has some food particles within that are going to be too small for your angel to even pay attention to as well so another option to solve this problem is to get more fish

sorry for your loss man, i personally haven't lost any fish "saltwater fish that is" but id be crushed if something happened to my clowns or any of my fish. i have however lost plenty of coral and a couple of cleaner shrimp and that always sucks. hopefully the odds will be in my favor when i go setting up my new build, that during the transfer i dont loose any fish. anyways best of luck.

Thanks Shawn. I've seen the diy versions (buying the parts separately from one of the big box stores) but never knew actual kits were available. BRS definitely makes it easy with these kits. Maybe I can get one ordered and put together before I have another jumper.

I'll definitely have one of these kits on the 75.

im sorry to hear about your clown, my fish enjoy hiding on me and inducing mild panic attacks lol losing a fish is never fun....

may i recomend a clear mesh top they sell the materials at BRS since i lost a cleaner wrasse 2 years ago ive always kept it on

I always feel badly when a clownfish dies. I don't know why that is, but when one of mine died about ten years ago, I bought the remaining clownfish an anemone and still have that anemone to this day. That clownfish lived 12.5 years before dying all of a sudden overnight, and that too really bothered me.

It sounds like you do a really good job caring for your fish. Hang in there.

I'm really sorry to hear that I can relate to how you feel. A couple of weeks ago one of my clowns disappeared into the overflow... lets just say I was heart broken because I thought he was gone gone... I'm so glad that in my desperation to find him I thought of using a mirror to look at the back of the tank. I was soooo happy and nervous to have found him... I was scared to stress him out with the net. It took me about 30 min to finally fish him out... Had I not found him or killed him from net stress I'd be devastated. Again I'm really sorry for your loss

Thanks Marc....here's hoping I've learned my lesson and can keep it this way, in the 29 until it gets moved to the 75 and ultimately in the 75.

It looks even better all cleaned up. Nice job.

Thanks Phil,
I honestly think the biggest difference came when I quit using the pellet and flake food and switched to Rod's Foods. That said, I've also increased my water changes from twice a month to once a week, completely disassemble and clean all the pumps and skimmer every week (also have ran the skimmer and other pumps in a 5 gallon bucket with vinegar water a couple of times in the last 3 months), beefed up the clean up crew (added a few snails and hermit crabs), and pulled out gobs of the stuff at every water change. (Haven't had to remove any the last couple of weeks. It finally just disappeared.)

A couple of other changes occurred in the tank which may have also helped, but I'm not sure if they were positive or negative changes. First the light over the hang on the back fuge went out and then the pump so I removed the hang on the back fuge. It had a deep sand bed and cheato, but it may have been a detritus trap???. Then both of the compact fluorescent lights over the main tank burned up. Those were replaced with a cheap t-5 unit. The lamps in this unit are more yellow (less of the blue tint than the last lights). Don't have any idea if this helped or hurt. The last thing, which I think probably helped (fewer fish equals fewer pollution) but I wasn't and still am not happy about, was my Fridmani Pseudochromis jump out of the tank and turned himself into fish jerky. While this means less pollution in the tank, I'm mad at myself for never fixing up one of those "bird netting" type screens that can be seen on several of the other forums.

Anyway, getting the hair algae out of the tank was a big concern of mine. First I didn't want to transfer an existing problem into the larger tank. Second, I didn't want to continue to spend lots of money on the larger tank if I couldn't figure out how to run a clean tank. 75 gallons of hair algae nastiness is that much bigger and uglier than 29 gallons of hair algae ugliness.

Looks great! How did you beat it?

Here's some pics from a few years ago. The light blue one's had already started to turn brown in these pics.