So the tank is almost a year old (May 20thish). So, I figured I'd post all the stuff that has happened. I bought: a purple firefish, cleaner wrasse, neon dottyback, and a lubbock's wrasse (2 weeks ago), and countless CUC all snails and such. The emerald crabs died a molly miller and the purple firefish disappeared after about 8 months (I think a brittle star that was really large did them in [I got rid of it]). I have purchased a few corals: magician palys, armor of god palys, a favia, a moon brain, a trachyphyllia, birdsnest, favites, war coral, blasto mussa, and acan lord. I also have a rose bubble tip anemone as of this last Wednesday.
The current stock list is Lubbock's wrasse, cleaner wrasse, orchid dottyback, red firefish, blasto, trachy, moon, favite, acan lord, AoG paly, Magi paly, RBTA and technically a blue velvet damsel but i dont count sump fish (more on this later). My list of KIA corals are: Favia(poor ph or something it STN), War Coral (same STN), and Birdsnest (Nitrates in excess of 200 lack of good water changes/RODI water, I was uneducated about SPS, it was cheap 15 bucks and pretty so I tried and failed also STN though it died over 1 month time period).
After a year of the same aquascape and my massive frustration at my inability to place any more coralseffectively teamed with getting tired of a few fish, I decided to redo my tank and remove some fish. I took out almost all my rocks and put them in buckets. Then I caught the fish: two engineers, neon dottyback, molly miller, and that darn Blue Velvet Damsel.
When I got my RBTA from LA. My friend bought stuff too to get us free shipping. So she was giving away a blue velvet damsel that I didn't want. It was nice though and had lived in a small tank for a while with corals (5g then 3g). So I decided to put it in my tank on Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday I noticed my trachyphyllia was not opening at all. So I asked Dr. Google and I came upon a really old forum thread that mentioned a trachy that got nipped at and closed up all day after that. So I sat back Friday and watched my tank for some time. Finally, I saw the Blue Velvet Damsel nip it and spit out chunks then eat them. I got up and started taking out rocks immediately and caught the fish I was sick of keeping. Blue Velvet Damsel was for nipping, Molly Miller and Engineer Gobies got removed because I rarely saw them and excess poop, the Neon Dottyback was a butt to my Red Firefish so he too was removed. Actually he may have killed my Purple Firefish. So yeah I learned that damsels are either mean (knew that from before) or nice and nip corals.
As far as tank parameters go, I recently have been reading
@prsnlty and tried her Air hose out the wall to the skimmer deal and my PH has gone right up. I put up with low PH for a year and now my PH is 8.1Night-8.3Day. You are a life saver Jackie.
Old params:
Salinity:1.025(refractometer)
PH:7.6N-7.9D(Digital PH Pen and API Drops)
Alk: 7.8-8.0(Red Sea)
Cal:450-460(Red Sea)
MG:1200-1250(red sea)
NO3:20-40(strip)
NO2:0(strip)
NH3:0(strip)
PO4:0-5 ppm (API drop kit)
New params:
Salinity: 1.025 (refractometer)
PH:8.1N-8.3D(Digital PH Pen and API Drops)
Alk: 12.6(Red Sea)
Cal:400-410(Red Sea)
MG:1230-1250(red sea)
NO3:20-40(strip) This has not changed much since the sale of fish yet.
NO2:0(strip)
NH3:0(strip)
PO4:0-5 ppm (API drop kit)
I will post pics tomorrow.
Thanks,
Alex
Just remember when your skimmer is down so will your PH be. When I shut it down for cleaning and other work I always make sure it'll be back online before sundown so that night-time ph doesn't get too low.
