JEN H

Thanks for the info. How long have you had it on your tank now?

My husband just have a small tank that we use on a needed basis. I think that it is possibly 15 gallons. We essentially have a small hang on the back filter, we have two plants that we suction cup to the bottom, and we have a heating element to ensure that the temp stays normal. We just use poly filter for the filter unit. Last time, we used an amonia filter. We fill the QT tank with water from our 210 gallon tank. From there, we treat it with the copper as instructed and test daily. We test the water parameters daily, and make small water changes either daily or every-other day. We make sure not to feed too much to the fish in the tank.... It's better to make multiple very small offerings to ensure everything is eaten. When we do the water changes, I use a hose to ensure that I am sucking up any dead food or pooh from the bottom of the tank. That's really it. It's a pretty simple set up. We also ensure that we use none of our items we are using in the QT tank with the copper in our big or other small tank. That would be bad for our inverts and corals. We just keep everything separate. Once we are done with it, we rinse it out and soak our filter, plants, etc in water with vinegar...rinse and store for the next time we nee it. Hope this helps!

Hi guys. Wondering if anyone has any experience with denitrators on their systems? I have been reading a little bit and trying to decide if this is a good idea for our 210 gallon. Our nitrates aren't really high, but I really want to get them as close to zero as possible before starting to add corals. We are currently around 20 ppm. Do these things actually work? Thanks!

Quick suggestion. If you are going to get more live rock...look into smaller pieces that you can put in the back where the bio balls seem to be. You can remove the bio balls, and put live rock in there instead. We removed all of our bio balls from our 29 gallon biocube as well as from our sump and are using just live rock. Patience....ahh... I know all to well of what you speak. The good news is that if the rocks don't look too cycled...you can always invest in a bag of fresh live sand (unless all of the sand you have is new and live) and that will get the cycle going rather quickly. For us we, we had an algae bloom in about 3 weeks. However, we waited 2 months before we put fish in. With bigger tanks, the set up time can take alot longer than with the smaller ones. I think it is better to wait vs rush everything and lose live stock to.

Popeye can be a bad deal.... My husband and I put a long fin heniochus in our tank prior to adopting our quarantine policy like we have now. It got popeye.... He was swimming around like normal, but we thought it would be best to get him out of our fish population in case he had something that would spread. We put it into QT with meds (I don't think anyone really knows what causes that, but we thought it could be a bacterial infection or quite possibly tuberculosis--yeah...fish can get that from what I have read). We put him in QT....he stopped eating after a few days. We tried everything even live brine. He would try to go for them, but would run into the side of the tank (I suppose because he couldn't see well). His popeye of one eye turned into both..... He died 1 week to the hour after we put him into quarantine. Luckily, whatever caused it did not spread to other fish in the tank. However, that was the day we decided to QT everything. QT can be stressful, but there are things you can do to help your fish through that. One would be to put some kind of rock and plastic plant in the bare tank to give them a place to hide. Another would be to keep the lights out as much as possible. Yet another would be to ensure that they are kept in a place without very much traffic. I hope your guys DO NOT have fin rot, because if they do, there is no curing that….and it can spread to other fish. Question…what did you treat them with in QT? Copper?

Thanks for the lighting advice. I will look into replacing the halides with a stronger version...and if that is even possible with the lighting we have in the 210 gallon tank. Do you have any experience with T5 lighting? I am just curious, because I haven't seen alot about those lights with corals. We are fine with taking our time in regards to buying and caring for our corals properly....so we are not in any rush. We have had the tank up for 9 months now without corals, but I would like to start adding some next year. However, I don't want to spend money only to have them die...that would be a waste.

Have you recently changed the lighting or the time you are leaving lights on in your tank? Are you noticing anything else with any other corals?

I would suggest getting the sick fish out and in QT asap. If it is a bad illness, then you don't want to infect your entire tank with it. You need to get these guys out and medicate them. In the mean time, do some water changes on your main tank and watch everyone else in there to see what is going on. It sounds like you might have a parasite. Did you recently add anything to the tank with out putting it in QT first?

I think that the tank probably needs time to be established before you add fish..... It's a good idea not to rush the fish addition part. Even when adding fish, we have found that adding them slowly vs. quickly is better for our tank and the health of our fish. It is IMPERATIVE that you quarantine fish first prior to putting them in your tank. We learned this the hard way through some ill fish getting in our tank and having a scare that other fish were going to have the same issues. Ever since then, we have quarantined everything prior to going in. It has been worth it, as we have caught quite a few fish with illnesses that we were either able to treat and then put into the tank or return to the LFS. It's easy to set up a QT tank, but you have to really be diligent on water changes and ensure water quality is good....especially if you have a sick fish in there! As for ick, I think that while not 100% good, it is some-what of a natural part of the fish environment...especially when dealing with salt water. We had one outbreak, but that was due to stress. If you keep the stress in your tank low, I would venture to guess that ick outbreaks will probably disappear. HOWEVER, we also feed our fish garlic with all food. In addition, we have been subsidizing their food with liquid Centrum multi-vitamins. When we started the vitamins, we saw a huge improvement in fish activity as well as health etc. We essentially use an eye dropper to add it to food prior to feeding. Since the vitamin is strong enough for a human, you don't need to give them too much. We usually use a drop of vitamin per frozen cube, and that has seemed to work well. If that doesn't work.... try ick attack. There is a type of this product that is safe for fish, corals, and inverts. You have to treat for 2 weeks, remove any carbon in your filtration, and then do a 20% water change at the end of treatment. We used it when we had the outbreak, and it worked very well. We were pleased. Good luck!

I want to say that majano is a type of aptasia. However, the stuff my hubby and I had looked different than what Bill has pictures of......either one is no good though. NOT something you want in your tank! My husband and I used a combo of Joe's Juice and peppermint shrimp. I honestly think that getting rid of our aptasia had to do more with the shrimp and less with the Joe's Juice. I read an article somewhere that you can actually inject these things with lemon juice and that will do the job too (I haven't tried it). You have to get a syringe from the pharmacy (you can buy them....just ask for one at the counter) and use concentrated lemon juice. You have to inject it directly into the object (I think in the lower part...or the "stem" is where you want to inject it).

Thanks for the advice all. I thought that it had to do with the lighting for the mushrooms not working out. I have a small one now that is in a shaded area of our small tank, and it is doing well. I am always checking calcium, and we are always fine on that. I have found an additive that I like to use, and our calcium honestly stays pretty consistent making it unnecessary to add additional calcium every other day....but more like once a week. Our Ph, ammonia, nitrates, and nitrites are all in line. We typically do water changes once per month. I am thinking that in the larger tank, mushrooms might be o.k. at the bottom, because it is a much deeper tank vs. the small bio cube that we have. The light we currently have on the big tank has the following: Three 150 watt 10,000K HQI, double-ended, metal halide lamps Four 96 watt True Actinic 03 Blue square-pin compact fluorescent lamps Four 1 watt Lunar Blue-Moon-Glow 470nm LED lamps I honestly don't know if that is enough light for coral or not. I also don't know about the exposure time with the halide vs. actinic lights. I have bought a coral book for my husband for Christmas, so I am hoping this helps us decipher some of these things after the new year.

We brought rock with us from Ohio when we moved down here. We kept it in a garbage can with salt water as well. However, we ended up having to re-cure alot of it. I think that my husband didn't have the salinity high enough. However, we got some live sand and a few new live rocks from the LFS and we were able to put in our cleaning crew after 4 weeks.

My husband and I are about to start on the adventure of turning our 210 gallon tank into a coral tank. We do not have it stocked to the gills with fish, and I am honestly ready to add some more color to the tank. The thing is that we really don't have alot of experience with corals, clams, etc. and so I am looking for some advice on how to tackle this. The fish and inverts we have chosen are all reef safe critters...so we are good on that point. We have a 29 gallon biocube that has some soft corals in it. They do well in there, but we have tried mushroom corals, and I think that the lighting is just too much in there, because they don't last. We have put the lighting on timers, but still not alot of luck. The soft corals we have are doing well. We have one leather coral that keeps distributing itself all over the place. I have a feeling that we will have to frag some of these pieces off of some of the rock and move it into our big tank at some point. W have a small bubble tip in here that we originally bought for our clowns, but they never took to it. As for the 210 gallon. We have a 72" Coral Life halide light with the antic and moon lights. I have the timer set up currently for day light 9 hours and the antic for 5 hours after that. At the end of the day, obviously moonlight. The entire cycle starts at 7:30am and ends at 9:30pm/ I do this so we have time to feed them in the morning and then enjoy the tank some after we get home at night from work. I don't know if this lighting is going to be ideal for corals, or if we will need to make some adjustments. Our calcium levels in this tank have been quite high, but since we weren't keeping corals, we haven't really monitored this factor as of late. We will do so later this week, but we have a product to dose with Calcium if needed. We have been getting a nice Coralline covering over our rocks, and are starting to get it on the glass...so I think that's a good sign for adding some corals. I really want to have some corals with nice color...oranges, yellows, greens, blues, etc. I am disappointed with the colors we have in the biocube, as they all seem to be more purple and red...which then starts to blend with the live rock. I just get nervous spending so much on corals and not having the right parameters.... aka I don't want to lose them once I get them. I would rather not have it be a trial and error situation, but an educated decision to purchase and then nurture. Any suggestions would help! We will get some pictures of our tank up at some point soon as well.

We used a product called ich attack. It's all natural and you can use with inverts, corals, and fish. It really did the number on the ich outbreak we had in our tank!! I would recommend it to anyone, just make sure you get enough to dose the tank for a couple of weeks. You also need to remove any carbon for that 2 week time like any other meds.

This looks like majano for sure. If you look at the attached link, at the bottom of the page they have a picture of a mature version as well as one that looks like yours. You need to get rid of this, or you will be sorry! We had aptasia in our tank, got some pepermint shrimp, and they really took care of it. However, we let it go for a while not really knowing what it was and my husband is like your wife...not wanting to kill it if not necessary.... I'm glad we were able to get rid of it. http://www.seahorse-nw.com/Predators.html

My husband and I set up a 210 gallon tank when we moved down to Austin earlier this year. It has been interesting, but I found that setting up a large tank like this is alot of work compared to our 29 gallon biocube that we started out with! We have a sump, which we really like. We also got a large Fluval for the additional filtration of the water to ensure parameters stay where they need to. When we had our first algae bloom, we put the Fluval on and within 24 hours the water was crystal clear. We have a Coralife protein skimmer, which I'm not 100% happy with, but it is doing the job. We were actually able to fit it under our tank in the cabinet and in the sump. I would certainly recommend looking for a skimmer that you can fit in your sump under the tank...if you can't find one like that, be sure you leave enough room behind your tank and just hang it on the tank itself (I don't think that this is a very nice option personally). Other than that, we have put a ton of live rock in the tank (that was the most expensive part...you are lucky you got it all included) and put about 1/3 of it in the sump and the rest in the tank. We have gotten our fish population going and have a Sailfin Tang (not the Hawaiian one, but these guys are great. Not too aggressive, reef safe, and beautiful), a male Square Anthias (he hid for a week after we got him, but that's normal), a blue chin trigger fish (one of the few reef safe triggers you can get -- he also hid for about 3 days after we got him), 11 blue green chromis, a pair of tomato clowns, and a blue streak wrasse (these guys aren't easy to keep, but ours eats plenty of mysis so we are able to keep him alive without problems). We tried a couple of long fin heniochus, because my hubby has always wanted a Morish Idol which you just can't keep in captivity.... No luck with these guys. We had one get popeye, and after a week in quarantine with meds he died. The second we got contracted some kind of parasite while in quarantine prior to putting into the main tank. We took him back to our LFS, and found out that he just didn't make it.... Butterfly fish our tough ones to keep, but I think if you can keep their stress down and get them acclimated o.k. they are great fish to have. We will try another at some point. My one word of advice in regards to adding fish to the big tank.... QUARANTINE first. We have found that this is the best way to catch any diseased fish prior to putting them into our healthy tank. If you don't do this, and you get an infected fish in there....it could really cause problems. Next, we are moving on to corals. Yeah!

My husband and I tried fire fish in our nano earlier this year....they lasted a total of 4 days....so we have never gotten that fish again. I know people like them, but we personally don't care for them after our experience. I would shoot for something else. We had awesome luck with our PJ Cardinals, infact....these type of fish are pretty much bullet proof. They are cool too, and just hang around. Not aggressive at all.