250 Gallon room-divider project log

[ufchristyb]

Originally posted by jthnhale

those isopods are scary! be glad you tried to trap that crab and discovered them before your fish went into the tank. seeing them stuck to your little clowns that your doing such a good job QT-ing would have made me sick.

I would put a whole bunch of shot glasses in there and see how many you continue to catch. you could nuke the tank with interceptor as Mark suggested, but that would kill all the crabs in the tank, good and bad. I'd use that as a last resort. [/B]

I am glad we found the little buggers ahead of time. Although, I seriously wonder if they are the nasty blood sucking variety or the carion scavenging variety. I am thinking/hoping the latter, since they have managed to survive for 6 months without any fish to feed on. Also, they don't seem interested in my hand/fingers at all.

We definitely agree that Interceptor will be the last resort. We did another trap tonight and got 8 more isopods out along with a large nasty crab that has been feeding on snails. If need be, we will run to Walmart tomorrow and get some more "traps." They sell tall shot glasses there as bud vases in the craft department for 99 cents.

In the meantime, the fish are happily residing in their QTs, so we still have lots of time to fix this problem.

--Christy (Jeff's wife)

[GrndHog]

They will survive months without a host. Do a search on google and you'll find all the info you need.

[nyvp]

As a fellow s florida resident ( Hollywood ) I just wanted to stop in and say hello. I'm about to buy my dream tank 450 ( 96x36x30 ) 3 side starfire (viewable ) GLASS and 1 side for my overflow. I was wondering if you feel your getting enough flow on your far side of your tank and that there is no dead area on your far side top not going to your overflow. I was thinking of going more with a closed loop with 4 bottom flows (with rock covering them ) and 6 or 8 in a manifold on the top of the tank. My wall is 14' long so the tank will be 8' and 6' to build out a closet to make my life easy. Tell me what you guys think.
Joe

[jeffbrig]

nyvp, I actually have better flow at the far end of the tank than at the base of the overflow. The massive output from the streams does a great job at the far end of the tank. I'm debating what to add/change to get more flow near the overflow, as detritus tends to collect there on the bottom. Possibly another stream (or 2), or I might split the return and drop something to the bottom there.

[nyvp]

what do you think about putting the four flows in bottom of the tank. I guess 1 every 2 foot in my case to help push flow up?

[jthnhale]

Originally posted by nyvp
As a fellow s florida resident ( Hollywood ) I just wanted to stop in and say hello. I'm about to buy my dream tank 450 ( 96x36x30 ) 3 side starfire (viewable ) GLASS and 1 side for my overflow. I was wondering if you feel your getting enough flow on your far side of your tank and that there is no dead area on your far side top not going to your overflow. I was thinking of going more with a closed loop with 4 bottom flows (with rock covering them ) and 6 or 8 in a manifold on the top of the tank. My wall is 14' long so the tank will be 8' and 6' to build out a closet to make my life easy. Tell me what you guys think.
Joe

I think that soundds like an awesome tank

I found I needed to add some flow to the bottom of my tank to get the detitous buildup from out behind the rock work, once I did that there were no dead spots on the bottom.
I hid some power heads on the bottom disguised as rocks and hooked them up to a wave timer so they are not all on at once.

[jthnhale]

Originally posted by ufchristyb
I am glad we found the little buggers ahead of time. Although, I seriously wonder if they are the nasty blood sucking variety or the carion scavenging variety. I am thinking/hoping the latter, since they have managed to survive for 6 months without any fish to feed on. Also, they don't seem interested in my hand/fingers at all.

--Christy (Jeff's wife)

I think they are the nasty ones, or at least their cousins,
anything that will attack shrimp like that you definitely don't want in the tank,
at least you gave them one nice last meal.

let me also say welcome to Reef Central, I've seen Jeff's tank thread from the start
You guys did an amazing job!

[jeffbrig]

Originally posted by nyvp
what do you think about putting the four flows in bottom of the tank. I guess 1 every 2 foot in my case to help push flow up?

I think it's a great idea. Are you talking about closed loop returns through bulkheads on the bottom, or something coming over the top and down to the bottom? I'm somewhat reluctant to have bulkheads on the bottom of the display, it could be a disaster if there was ever a plumbing leak. I'm seriously thinking about elevating my main rock structure slightly, and putting a hidden 1 inch "spray bar" under it to get detritus up and out. I would simply T this off the return and run it down to the bottom by the overflow (using black PVC of course). The only thing stopping me from doing this so far is the pain of removing and replacing the LR.

[jeffbrig]

Originally posted by jthnhale
I think they are the nasty ones, or at least their cousins,
anything that will attack shrimp like that you definitely don't want in the tank,

From my reading, and talking with Dr. Ron, it sounds like there are many varieties of cirolanids. Some are harmless scavengers, others are obligate fish predators. A few can/will do both. Because we see these scavenging (plus the fact they've survived 6 months without fish), I do not believe they are obligate fish predators. This actually makes it easier for us, as we can use their scavenging behavior against them. There is still the possibility that they would prey on fish, so we'll do our best to eradicate them before we add our fish to the display.

I really want to avoid the Interceptor treatment. IMO, that's a treatment I would much rather perform on corals in a QT, rather than dose the main tank. The resulting dieoff from an interceptor treatment would be a significant setback for the tank's maturity.

[jeffbrig]

More pics:

Here is the crab trap we improvised. "The Big Shot". It's a novelty shot glass, approximately 6" tall and 1" wide. We simply throw in a piece of shrimp, lean it against a rock, and wait.




I actually watched this guy crawl into it last night. He went in the mouth of the glass more than once before he committed to letting go of the rim. Once he hit the bottom, there was nothing he could do to get out. This isn't the one I was originally targeting (same type, but this one is more of a brownish red).


He seems a bit agitated towards me.




Ugly little guy, eh?


And a better closeup of a cirolanid. As Christy said there were probably 8 more last night - 2 large and the rest smaller.

[Ah64av8tor]

sorry jeff your he is a she crab LOL

[nyvp]

I posted in another forum anyone ever see these?) Tunze Turbelle Stream Deco Rock Was thinking on puting one in each corner for the flow?
Yes jeffbrig I was thinking of 4 in a closed loop on bottom and another closed loop in a maifold around the tank on top with 4 or 6 jets aimed at the wall

[allen00se]

This might seem like a silly question, but for those of you guys that have really deep tanks , how do you position your live rock around. I would think that you would almost have to go swimming to get to the bottom.

[dgasmd]

Nice trick. I am ging to try it with a couple of emerald crabs I have that need to go. By the way, what is it going to take for you to come check out one of the local clubs??

www.pbmas.org

[JustOneMoreTank]

The tall shot glass is an excellent trap. I love it!
Hopefully all of the isopods will be hungry/stupid enough to make themselves extinct.

[jeffbrig]

Originally posted by Ah64av8tor
sorry jeff your he is a she crab LOL

Well then, allow me apologize to all the female crabs out there for my gender-insensitive comments!

BTW, how can you tell?

Originally posted by allen00se
This might seem like a silly question, but for those of you guys that have really deep tanks , how do you position your live rock around. I would think that you would almost have to go swimming to get to the bottom.

Almost. My tank measures 27" deep on the outside, but after you take away the acrylic thickness top and bottom, there's only about 25" of actual water. I can barely reach to the bottom without getting my armpit wet, so I was okay placing rock. If the tank were any deeper I probably would have to go swimming. Realistically, if I needed to remove the bigger pieces of LR (requiring 2 hands to pick up), I would either need to drop the water a few inches, or pull out my snorkel.

Fortunately, that's not something you need to do very often.

Originally posted by dgasmd
what is it going to take for you to come check out one of the local clubs??

How 'bout a couple of nice frags.

[Ah64av8tor]

You look between their legs silly but really the bottom plate on the female is round and wide with a small point (to hold the eggs) (^) and the male has a long and narrow one /\.

[jeffbrig]

Weekend update:

Last night as we were eating dinner and watching the tank, we saw a red blur cross the gap between the 2 LR piles. We both jumped up, grabbed a flashlight, and surrounded the tank. We eventually found another mantis shrimp, this one probably 2.5". It was bright red with a few blue/green spots (the original one is more of a blue/green/grey coloring. This one was very cool looking, but shy enough that I didn't get any pictures.

I haven't reset the crab trap since the other night. We figured we'd give the remaining crab(s?) a few days to get their appetites up, then try again. Yesterday the large remaining crab was openly challenging me to a fight. He would wave his claws at me anytime I moved my head near the acrylic. I tried to use his aggressiveness against him, and almost caught him with the tongs, but he was too quick.

Earlier this week, we had a thunderstorm in the middle of the night and the power was out for a few minutes. As murphy's law dictates, this was an inopportune time. I had recently drained the refugium (and associated detritus), and had both drains set up to dump straight into the main sump compartment. With the power out, water spilled back into the refugium. When the power came back on, there wasn't enough water in the main and return sections to fill the overflow and get the return and drains back into equilibrium. I heard the sound and unplugged the pump, decided to deal with it the next day. (Note: this wasn't a big deal, the Tunze Streams provide PLENTY of water movement in the tank.)

Interestingly, the tank temperature had dropped from 84 to 81 by morning, and was reading 79.5 when I got home from work. That means my sequence return pump (<200w) and skimmer pumps (100w total) are pushing the tank temperatures up a good 4 degrees. Frankly, I was a little surprised by that, these were expected to be "cool" running pumps. Live and learn, I guess....

I'm off to Lowe's now for a few things to finish the chiller plumbing (how many times have I said that now?). I was going to run 3/4" vinyl hose, but I decided that's probably going to be too restrictive to get enough flow (600gph min). I have enough room for 1" plumbing, so why not go with the larger size? I really want to have the chiller up and running so I don't have to worry about temperatures if we lose power (and AC) due to Wilma.

We have everything we need (food, water, generator, gas, etc.) in case Wilma makes things ugly for us on Monday, but we're hoping it will stay north of us. I don't think the wind will be terribly bad over here near the east coast of FL, but losing power is always a possibility.

Fish are still looking good in QT. We were starting to think the larger clown wasn't eating much, but just realized that when we leave food on the bottom they eat it while we're away. The fish have been in hypo for 30 days now, it's been almost 3 weeks since the last of the "salt grains" disappeared off the tang.

[wastwage]

Jeff glad the fishies are doing better keep up the good work

[JustOneMoreTank]

Sorry double post.

[JustOneMoreTank]

Good update. Heres wishing you lots of luck catching that mantis.
Come on and get that chiller plumbed already!

[Lunchbucket]

catch that mantis and get some pics?

Lunchbucket

[jeffbrig]

Weekend update's update:

Ok, it might be the same mantis after all. We just saw him in the area where the old mantis used to hang out. Maybe he just grew and shifted color a little?

I'm still not convinced I need to get rid of the mantis. The worst thing he's ever done is attack a few cerith snails. IMO, he's less of a problem than the crabs. And I still don't believe that a basher poses any real risk to fish.

I just finished another round of Joe's Juice tonight. I think I had 6-7 tiny aiptasia, and I got a pretty good dose on each of them.

[Ah64av8tor]

Jeff:

I'm still not convinced I need to get rid of the mantis. The worst thing he's ever done is attack a few cerith snails. IMO, he's less of a problem than the crabs. And I still don't believe that a basher poses any real risk to fish.

It still has to eat....It would be a shame to have put all that time and work into QT and loose a fish! Is there any indication of what its eating or just a few missing ceriths.

How a bout a QT for the mantis and see if he will eat a fish? I say better safe than sorry.

Did Christy see the RBTA?

Greg

[Psyire]

I would ID the Mantis before making any speculation on it's behaviour. Try this site:

http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/arthrop...raca/royslist/