FrugalReef Blog

Well, It’s been a long time since I’ve written about my corner tank!  The reason is, I’ve finally taken the leap and coughed up the money for a 150W Metal Halide light.  I purchased a frogspawn, a new clam, a feather star, and a beautifull pink hard coral I’ve never seen before.

Now that I’m going to make a serious attempt to keep corals I decided to start paying closer attention to my water parameters.   My calcium was about 280mg/L about a week ago.  I’ve been dosing with Kent’s Calcium Chloride mix and purple up.  I discontinued use of purple up after I read a bunch of nasty comments about it on the internet, as I decided that calcium supplimentation was probably all I need.

My KH has dropped from 13dkh to 11dkh in the last week or so.  I assume this is because of the calcium chloride as I’ve read that it will have this effect.

My nitrate has risen from 20 to about 40.  I hope this is just temporary because of the new livestock.  I discovered that the water source I was using contained nitrate at about 60.  I’ve switched over to the very high quality DI water provided by my LFS and hopefully will see my Nitrate levels fall to 0 over the next few months.

I’m happy to say my little dragonet is still kicking it around the tank.  I do see lots of pods at night, but he’s still very thin and I’d like to get him in a bigger tank as soon as I can afford it.  I lost my blue linkia and my emerald crab, but my orange starfish appears to be doing fine.  I’ve read that these starfish don’t often do well in captivity, had I known, I probably wouldn’t have purchased them.

My hippo tang, clown fish, and my little yellow goby are all fat and happy.  I’ve been alternating their diet between algae pellets, frozen mysis shrimp and frozen algae gut loaded brine shrimp.  I still dose my tank with a capfull of microalgae every other day or so.  I can tell when it needs it based on if my christmas tree worm is out or contracted.   If he’s not out I toss a in a splash.

Nitrate still high. The Mandarin Dragonet is still active, but belly is very sunken. 400 Pods will arrive wednesday or thursday, lets hope we’ll get them soon.

The Nitrate levels in this tank are starting to bother me. I know the fluval is a nitrate factory, but I expect the denitrification process in the rock to kick in eventually. It’s very hard to read my test kit at this level of nitrate, so I take my results with a grain of salt. One thing is clear though, the nitrate is way too high.

On another note, I think I made a mistake when I purchased my Mandarin Dragonet, I hope I can keep him going. I think he’s eaten the tank clean of pods, and I can’t order any until later this week. If I can manage to catch him and get him into isolation I think I might try to feed him some roe or some frozen brine. Easier said than done however, getting him out of the rocks is no easy task.

Added a blue linkia starfish and some more Hermit Crabs and Snails. Did a 5 gallon water change, but Nitrate levels are still beyond my test kits ability to measure.

Ammonia and Nitrite have been 0 for a while, so I’ve decided to add some fish today just for fun. Nitrate levels are still sky high, hopefully time and a little macroalgae will improve things.

I added second anemone, 6 snails, 2 Clown Fish, a ball of wire macroalgae, and a Mandarin Dragonet. I removed the air stones, and hooked the fluval back up without the overflow. It’s sucking water out near the bottom, and pumping it back in at the top, so I’m sure there will be enough turnover for aeration.

The mandarin dragonet is very thin, I hope he does ok.

I noticed a thick dusting of diatoms appeared in top of the rocks today. Probably related to the reduced water flow.

The fluval stopped again today and I couldn’t get it started. I’m done tinkering with that. I’ve turned it off. I’ll just have to build a sump and buy a pump.Becky added another air line and another power head to keep the water flowing.

The cucumber was hanging out at the top of the tank sticking his head out of the water. The crabs have just sitting around and not doing much. I decided to put an air stone in the tank and after a few hours the changes where dramatic. The emerald crab and hermits where scurring looking for food. The cucumber is still hanging around the top but he’s not a fast mover. I was actually kind of surprised that it helped.

I can see my nitrogen cycle is in full swing. I’m guessing at a week or two before everything starts to calm down. I’m just going to leave it alone for a while.

I went up to the marine store to purchase some silica sand, but they didn’t have any. I ended up with some expensive “live sand” instead. I wonder if this stuff works? One of these days I’ll have to put a sample under the microscope and see if there’s really anything still living in there.I bought Becky a pretty piece of coral and traded it for one of her live rocks to put in my tank on top of the new sand. I also picked up cheap rock fragment with 4 coral polyps on it, a emerald crab, and half dozen or so Scarlet Reef Hermits, I wanted mexican’s, but they bagged the wrong ones! I’ll be feeding them algae pellets until the rocks start to develop.

I moved my cucumber over from becky’s tank as well, I know he won’t have much to eat for a while, but they can go a long time without much to eat. And then again… maybe there will be plenty of dead stuff on this “live sand” for him to eat.