FishProfiles.com Message Forums

Hey all...I have seen everyone do these and I think they are pretty cool...so I thought I would do one for my 29gall fowler in progres!

Yesterday I went to the LFS and got 40 pounds of aqualive (although its really really REALLY small grain and salt and hydromiter (got test kit already)

went home and re- cleaned(to maybe get anything I might have missed the first time) it and let it sit for a while...

Then added the sand and made salt water and added it to and it has now been set up for almost 24 hours (YAY LOL) and I ordered some live rock yesterday from liveaquaria and it should be here tommorow and I am SOOOOO EXITED! I might...(in maybe a year or so) get a new light so I can keep anemones and corals...(like shrooms and zoos,) and stuff...im still working on fish list...but here is the equipment (sp) I have so far... (and a list of possiability's of fish)

160gph power head- (already had)
PATHETIC flourecent light -(already had )
tank- (already had..but came with light..and was $70..but got it a year ago)
40 power hob filter -(already had..but about $25)
15 power hob filter -(already had but about $10)
wisper heater- (not sure of watt but its really really good and the tank is at 80 is that good?)
40 pounds-aqualive $44 (got a 25% discount AND $10 store credit )
salt-$13 (I NEED MORE)
hydromiter-$10

I have tested the salinity and it was like 1.018 (I think thats right) and so how do I get the salinity up???? just add pure salt?

and the fish list I think that we are going to "follow the guidlines" are

yellow tail damsel
2x clowns (my fav)
clown goby(s)
yellow headed jawfish (If I can FIND ONE..but another must!)
umm...purple pseudeo (fish mom wants)(SP sorry..im not good with scientific names but im not sure what the reall name is)
and I think thats it....could I put anything else in? (or should I take something out?)

also I was thinking snails, small hermits, and shrimp for clean up?

thanks everyone...I know I have asked some of these questions but that was when I was doing a 10gall now im doing 29 so ya...thanks

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta

I have tested the salinity and it was like 1.018 (I think thats right) and so how do I get the salinity up???? just add pure salt?

While there are no fish in the tank this is a perfectly acceptible thing to do. Once there are any live critters in the tank, you have to be careful not to raise the salinity quickly, so adding in higher salinity water during a water change is usually the acceptible format, though you can add salt water as your evap topup too. Anything as long as it's slow.

Personally I'd get the damsels and the pseudo out. They can be little devils, and the tank was overstocked with that list anyways. With the 2 clowns, the jawfish, and goby you are looking at a fully stocked 29. With the jawfish, make sure you have at the very least 4, preferably more, inches of mixed grade sand for him to burrow in.

---

Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

ok cool...thanks! ....another question..I bought my rock cured....but would I have to cure it again...cause the lady at the lfs said I should...but I dont know cause im new to this!

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta

hi
I was thinking about setting up a reef so i will be watching your log to see wat you need and how it all fits togeather. If u get the chance could u post some pics along the way. Good luck with it

There will be some die off while transporting the rock so you need to cycle or cure it again. In a tank that has no fish or inverts yet you just put the new rock in and let it cycle in the tank. If you end up adding more than just a very small amount of new rock to an already established tank you want to cure it seperately or the resulting ammonia and nitrite could kill things in your tank.

Yesterday I went to the LFS and got 40 pounds of aqualive (although its really really REALLY small grain and salt and hydromiter (got test kit already

Do you mean aragalive? Which one did you get? The only really fine sand they sell is the oolite which will still work. It might actually be preferred by your goby and jawfish. I used the indo-pacific and it's actually a bit larger grain size than most argonite I've seen.

hi
I was thinking about setting up a reef so i will be watching your log to see wat you need and how it all fits togeather. If u get the chance could u post some pics along the way. Good luck with it

sure thing

and yes...aragalive... /:'

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta

http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c333/blazeybird/IMG_0965.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c333/blazeybird/IMG_0965-1.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c333/blazeybird/IMG_0966.jpg
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c333/blazeybird/IMG_0968.jpg
This is after it was cleared....the decor is in their cause I litteraly THREW it in their LOL
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c333/blazeybird/IMG_0974.jpg
and can anyone tell me what these rocks are? they came in the sand!
http://i30.photobucket.com/albums/c333/blazeybird/IMG_0975.jpg
here they are! The rock should be here at 4:30 YAY /:'

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta

I assume that that is sand, just packed tightly. It probably dried out in the bag and any bacteria that was on it "solidified" it. You can probably break it apart, especially after it's soaked for a while.

---

Critical Fertilator: The Micromanager of Macronutrients

hmmm...well its been in the tank for like....almost 48 hours.... ( )

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta

well I got my live rock...I was expecting a bunch of smaller rocks..but I just got 2 big rocks (one about 13 pounds..the other about 9) so ya...Im gonna get some more rock from the LFS! although I see all this stuff on it and dont know what to clean off and what NOT to clean off! any ideas?

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta

If you see material that's really brown and is obviously decaying, scrub it off. You'll notice bits and pieces of sessile inverts and macroalgae, and stuff that's still attached but dead. While you *could* leave all this junk on the rock, it will add to the smell and ammonia already being produced.

---

And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

Pull off gooey smell slimey crap and leave anything that doesn't look rotten. If in doubt I leave it since the worst it will do is increase ammonia in a new cycling tank that will already have ammonia anyway. For small tanks it's best to go to the store and pick out pieces yourself. Otherwise you just get a whole bunch of giant pieces you can't do anything with. There are also sites that sell nano rock and reef rubble which is usually dirt cheap. http://www.premiumaquatics.com/Merchant2/merchant.mvc?Screen=CTGY&Category_Code=Liverock Your tank might be a bit big for reef rubble(varies from tiny chips to slightly over golfball size pieces) but it's generallly full of life since it's often scraped from the bottom of the liverock tanks. Great for tossing in a sump, an extra section of an hob, or using larger pieces to fill in a gap in the tank. Half my 20g is premiumaquatics reef rubble.

ok...well I started to scrub it off in the tank and it just made a big ole mess...so tommorow im gona take in out and put it in some salt water and scrub them!

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta

Update on your "purple pseudo" ...

The fish you are referring to is the Magenta Dottyback, Pseudochromis porphyreus. LIke all Dottybacks, the fish is feisty and territorial, and will harass non-aggressive species such as Gobies and small Wrasses. Dottybacks vary in temperament from the Orchid Dottyback, Pseudochromis fridmani (which is capable of looking after itself among fishes such as Damselfishes but won't go berserk) all the way to Pseudochromis steenei, which is a serious psychopath in the aquarium.

The Magenta Dottyback is, despite its small size, a candidate for a 55 gallon or larger, especially in an integrated community of other fishes. It has territorial demands that are somewhat out of proportion to its size, and it will attack small ornamental shrimps and eat them. It will also harass some other fish species to death. It will live comfortably alongside some Centropyge Dwarf Angels and Clownfishes in such a setup, but Gobies, Blennies and other peaceful fishes are likely to be targets for serious assault.

This page should warn you about the likely compatibility issues surrounding Dottybacks. Which is a pity, because they are lovely fishes to look at, but some of them are as nasty as certain big Cichlids, and in the case of Pseudochromis steenei, MUST be given a species aquarium, because as the writer on that web page says, if you put it into a mixed aquarium, it'll soon turn it into a species aquarium by the simple but ruthless expedient of exterminating the other occupants. Scroll down the page until you reach the section on Pseudochromis steenei and be amazed as what the author tells you about its level of aggression!

For that matter, quite a few of the other Dottybacks can cut up rough, both with each other (the author describes putting two male Splendid Dottybacks in the same aquarium as "a lethal mistake" and with crustaceans, which the fishes deal with quite literally by battering them to death against the rocks. Even a one inch Magenta Dotyyback is perfectly capable of squaring up to a four inch ornamental shrimp, then dismantling it by using the aquarium rocks as an anvil to hammer the unfortunate shrimp against until it's broken up into bite sized pieces, and the bigger Dottybacks may even be capable of unleashing the same treatment upon small crabs.

Pretty, but very feisty.

To give you an idea HOW feisty, one species, Pseudochromis springeri, will hunt down small Mantis Shrimps and pound them to a pulp. Any creature capable of taking on a Mantis Shrimp and dismantling it is a fish to be reckoned with!

If at some point you fancy keeping Dottybacks, wait until you have a 55 or larger, provide overhangs to provide them with the shade that they like (which need to be placed stragetically away from areas of coral or rock likely to be used by some other fishes such as Clownfishes to prevent fights breaking out), LOTS of caves for them to occupy (including several caves under the overhangs, which will be taken over by the Dottyback and defended vigorously against intruders), and above all, make sure that the Dottyback is the last fish to go in the aquarium, after other inmates such as Hawkfishes and Centropyge Angels have been added, otherwise you'll be treated to a fairly unpleasant display of internecine warfare breaking out in your aquarium. Above all, do NOT even THINK of keeping Pseudochromis steenei with any other fish unless you want to see them beaten to death by this utterly murderous species!




Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

oh wow thanks! I was actually planning on (if parrents permit) upgradeing to a 55...eventually..maybe after I get a "hang" of it..then I will put that down stairs and put the 29 upstairs and maybe do like a..reff or something...cool! thanks!

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta

If parental generosity runs to a 75 as your next marine tank, so much the better ...

In a 55, your options are still pretty limited because of the extra space that marine fishes require over and above frfeshwater fishes. Once you move up to a 75, however, you'll find that your options expand considerably. If you are able to move up to a 90 or even a 125, then you'll find that marine fishkeeping becomes MUCH easier, because in that volume, pollution is a LOT easier to control. In a 125, you can start thinking about a Yellow Tang as one of your occupants, or, if your experience runs to it by that point, one of the hardier Butterfly Fishes. However, I'd wait until you have at LEAST a year's solid marine keeping under your belt before trying even the hardier Butterfly Fishes, because with Butterfly Fishes, the term 'hardy' is ALWAYS a relative one ... the hardiest of them all, the Sunburst Butterfly Fish, is still going to need a good deal more attention to water cleanliness and pollution management (particularly keeping nitrates low) than many other marine fishes. As for things such as Chaetodon baronessa and other beauties of that ilk, well, be warned that fishes of that calibre give even veteran aquarists headaches at times, and so you're advised to steer WELL clear of the 'difficult' Butterflies until you've gained at least five years' solid experience with other species. Apart from the not inconsiderable matter of pollution management, which becomes critical with the difficult members of the Family, you have the additional problem that persuading some of the difficult species to feed is a challenge even for the veteran marine keepers, and there are some species such as Chaetodon trifasciatus that should be AVOIDED AT ALL COSTS unless you're seriously dedicated, because persuading that species to eat anything other than live coral polyps is going to be a stupendous uphill struggle, one that even now, thirty years after Graham Cox first tried his hand with the fish back in the 1970s, proves to be the downfall of most people who try it.

One idea you could try once you have a larger aquarium such as a 75 or upwards, is to use the 29 as a refugium coupled to the bigger aquarium. Then you will have additional water volume to ease your water quality management issues, and a place to cultivate Caulerpa macroalgae and amphipods. The Caulerpa will act as a nitrate sink, helping to keep nitrates down to a low level, which can be harvested periodically to remove the unwanted nitrogen (or even better, used as food for herbivorous fishes in the main aquarium) and the amphipods will allow you to keep specialised fishes that need amphipods in the diet, such as Mandarin Fishes, which, incidentally, should NEVER be kept until you have an amphipod culture going full time to keep the fishes fed. Mandarin Fishes that are deprived of regular amphipod food in the aquarium have a drastically shortened life span.

If you're planning in the future to go with a larger community, then 125 gllons is a good size to settle on - it provides sudfficient options for you to expand your species repertoire without being TOO big to manage. The general consensus here among the saltwater keepers seems to be that anything above a 180 gallon setup is going to provide logistical issues that make it difficult - principally the physical labour involved in implementing water changes on a system of such a size. However, it can be done - as an extreme example, take a look at David Saxby's monster aquarium, which is an engineering enterprise on an industrial scale - the main aquarium itself is a whopping one thousand two hundred UK gallons, with a 100 UK gallon refugium (yes, his refugium is bigger than most other people's full-blown reefs!) and this is coupled to a seawater reservoir to facilitate water changes that is a stupendous two thousand four hundred UK gallons in size. So David Saxby has close on four thousand gallons of seawater to play with ... the filtration system involves so much pipework that there's 80 gallons of seawater in the pipework alone. His protein skimmers hold more water on their own than some people's full-sized aquaria, and his pumping system circulates four thousand litres per hour. To give you an idea of the scale of this system, he has three hundred fish in his aquarium - including a shoal of eighteen Yellow Tangs and several shoals of Anthias - and to keep his enormous array of corals growing, he has twenty thousand watts of lighting. Put that into perspective, his lighting system chews up as much power as the transmitters for some UK local radio stations ... needless to say, he must have a lot of money to keep this system going, because his electricity bill for an aquarium with 20,000 watts of lighting must be the stuff of bank managers' heart attacks ... by the time you're into this level of setup, you're looking at a special ring main in the house designed to take a 250 amp current load, because at the UK mains voltage of 240 volts, his lighting system is drawing 84 amps of current ... truly a system to gaze at in awe and wonder, but his water change regime is illustrative of why most people place a 180 gallon limit on 'manageable' aquaria - to make enough water for a partial water change, he has to run his RO unit non stop for a week because he can only make 280 gallons per day! Then he has to switch that water in and out of the aquarium ... fancy a 2,000 gallon water change? Not even remotely possible unless, like him, you have a special system of pipework designed to do the job. Bad enough doing a 50% water change on a 180 gallon setup, let alone that colossus! Yes, he does a 50% water change on that system once every three months, and when he does, he flushes 2,000 gallons of waste sea water down the drain.

Admittedly David Saxby's ystem is extreme - and I MEAN extreme, let's face it, he's in the realm where he needs engineering solutions to perform simple tasks like water changes - but anything in the realm of 125 to 180 gallons, though big, is a lot more manageable. Above 180 gallons, you start to reach the point where maintenance requires you to plan the task using operational analysis beforehand, and the sheer physical labour involved becomes impractical for one human being to bear alone. Which is why David Saxby's behemoth of an aquarium has several kilometres of pipework associated with it to ease the tasks ...

On a more realistic level, a 125 will provide enough space to open up options for a wider range of fish species considerably, while remaining manageable using relatively simple means of performing maintenance chores.

Meanwhile, here's something to dream about ... a good pictorial rendition of the monster Saxby reef setup. You can tell how huge that setup is quite easliy - look at the size of the Yellow Tangs in those photos. Those are adult Yellow Tangs. They are 15 cm fishes. And they look like Neon Tetras size wise in that utterly VAST aquarium. Which, in addition, boasts around a ton of live rock. Yes, that's right, 2,400 lbs of live rock. If that lot ever decides to take a tumble, it's going to be a serious calamity ...

Enjoy the pics by the way.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

Not that I'd put one in a twenty-nine gallon, but there is a Pseudochromis which is supposed to be quite mild-mannered. The orange peel pseudo was recently discovered, is hard to get, quite beautiful, and has a great personality. We had one at work for months and it never bothered its tankmates, even those introduced after it. I'd like to someday get one myself.

---

And when he gets to Heaven, to Saint Peter he will tell: "One more Marine reporting, Sir! I've served my time in Hell."

WOW a lot of amazing info their! well I guess I can forget about having a bigger tank huh? LOL cause I know my parrents wont let me get a 75+ as they arent animal/fish lovers as us... oh well

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta

Well you can adopt a two point strategy here.

Step one: get your 29 up and running and looking nice.

Step two: once your parents see that you've made a good job of that, drop some of those pics of David Saxby's monster reef in their laps, along with a not so subtle hint that they too could have a spectacle like that in the home if they let you loose on a 125.

I'd be a bit circumspect about some of the details though. With a 125, you won't need any major ajdustments to the household electrics, they'll cope with whatever equipment you'll set up t keep a 125 ticking over, but if your parents get wind of the fun and games surrounding the Saxby reef and think they'll need the same engineering solutions, that'll torpedo your plans below the waterline before you start

That's the thing about parents. If you do the job right, you can educate them in no time.


Panda Catfish fan and keeper/breeder since Christmas 2002

HAHAHA yep! I have th 29 up and running and almost at the end of the cycle...but my parrents have "talked" about having a big reef tank...so maybe I can show them some 75 gallon tanks or so at the LFS and see what they think

29gall-2 bolivian rams, 6 neon tetra, 4 lemon tetra, 2 lamp eye tetra, 6 black skirt tetra(which are rescues...long story, but finding good home soon), 4 zebra danio 10gall, pretty much nothing but plants....2gall-female betta
1gall-female betta