My Tank Photojournal

[kau_cinta_ku]

just so you know that the brix refractometer's do not measure salinity, they measure sugar

[Grunthor]

Actually, the way I understand it, a refractometer measures the refraction of light through a solution. Be it salt and water or sugar and water. The scale used does not matter as long as you can convert it to a usable figure. Brix is a measure of sugar in solution (I'm a homebrewer, I've been doing this for a few years now), but it crosses over to Specific Gravity (See http://www.brewrats.org/OG_BRIX.html).

Since I noticed my salinity was way low (by using the Brix Refractometer) and I've begun to bump up my salinity very slowly, the health of everything in my tank has improved. So I think I'm doing this right.

If I'm doing this wrong please someone tell me before I kill something. ;-)

[Grunthor]

I think I've solved the problem with the syphon on my U-tube. I got the idea from Marc's Hidden Treasures. I drilled a hole in the top part of the U-tube where air was collecting and breaking the syphon. Inserted an airline connector and hooked up an airline to the air intake of one of my powerheads. Now if air gets in there it gets sucked into the powerhead and the syphon re-starts automatically.

It's been running for a couple of hours and so far so good. I have a small air leak because it blows bubbles out of the powerhead every so often. So far no syphon problems. I'll seal up the leaks tomorrow with epoxy.

My Mythrax crabs really cleaned up the Zoanthid rock. No more algae at all on it.

[Grunthor]

Saturday, September 3rd, 2005

Noticed my first Aiptasia Anemone today. Grrrr. I'll have to take care of that.

Some kind of Red Feather Duster Tube Worm.


Tube Coral is growing


Zoas are poppin

[goalieman92]

tube worm looks like coco.

[Grunthor]

They (There are 5 of them total) are hitchhikers on the rubble that I got from Premium Aquatics. I hope they are coco worms. What a great surprise to find those when I was rearranging rocks. There's also another one on the back side of the Zoanthid rock.

[jdmhonda954]

Originally posted by goalieman92
tube worm looks like coco.

it sure does but that cant come as a hitchiker can it? if so you got very lucky i have paid 60 bucks for all of mine. about 4 of them. the zoas look good.good luck

[Grunthor]

Here's a question for you experts. I have a lot of red hair algae on my rocks. I'm thinking that it isn't cyano, it's in high flow areas and the antired that I used to get rid of cyano had no effect on it. It's a bear to scrub off too. Any ideas what it is and what to do to get rid of it? My cleanup crew wont touch it.

[H2OLUVSME]

Grunthor, ive read of a guy having a similar outbreak of the red macros from his TBS. you should check out the "Our TBS" thread as he just posted some pics today.

[Grunthor]

Mine is a much finer hair than that. I'll try to post a picture tomorrow.

[Grunthor]

And here we go...

[Grunthor]

I guess no one knows what kind of algae that is.

I got this frag from a buddy at our local club meeting last weekend. He called it a Green Star Polyp. But it doesn't look like the GSPs I'm familiar with. Anyone know what it is?



I shot this under actinics only because the polyps glow lime green under them and are a little easier to see. Under white light they are a pretty dull grey-brown.

Poking around I found another 7 or 8 of those red feather duster worms. I don't think they are coco's. they don't have multiple layers of dusters like the coco's I've seen in pictures. But they are very attractive and will look really good when they get bigger.

[ahill]

Be careful what you put that next too They are like weeds.

[H2OLUVSME]

Grunthor, your algae looks more like a bacteria to me. it may pass with time or you may have to manually remove it.

your polyps do look like start polyps, but i wouldnt call the "green" if they arent green

p.s. id take ahill's advice. they do spread and nothing can stop them. i keep mine on the sand bed so i can remove them before they get to the rock.

[Grunthor]

They are really easy to remove. You can peal the purple strips off with your fingers (gloved of course). But I'll put the rock on the sandbed just to be safe.

I'm only in month 3 of this tank, the red stuff will probably go away eventually.

[Grunthor]

Since the last water change (I switched to Tropic Marin salt) the red stuff is receding. So I'm thinking it may have been a PO4 problem. It used to be on just about everything, including the snails shells. Now all of the snails are clean and the stuff on the rocks is going away. Knock on wood.

I bought a few Salifert test kits which arrived last night.

Ca 440 ppm
Mg 1400 ppm
KH 8 dKH

The Magnesium looks a little high but I think that may have been my inexperience with the test. i.e. I may have put a few more drops in after the color had changed. I'll try it again tonight after work.

[Grunthor]

I got a few new things this week. Sally Lightfoot Crab and some Peppermint Shrimp to help out with Aiptasia Anemones. They haven't touched the Aiptasia yet. I've "killed" it twice with Joe's Juice and it keeps growing back. I'm starting to see a little coraline growth on the base rock now three months after the tank started cycling.



Here's a shot of one of my Green Chromis' look how fast the star polyps have grown.


My Zoanthids are doing well. I'm seeing a few buds.


Full Tank Sept 30, 2005.

[Break122704]

Cool, Good Luck, You should Post more pics on your Progress

[kingsord0]

Thats a cool tank. Are you planing on geting any other fish?

[Grunthor]

Probably a few more. But I'm trying to keep the bio load low until I can be home more often to keep an eye on things.

[Grunthor]

Found this snail today. Looks kind of like a conch but very tiny.

[rogerwells]

Can you post more pictures of the sally lightfoot? they look awesome

[Grunthor]

I'll try to get more pictures of the Sally Lightfoot. It's very shy and doesn't come out very often.

A couple of new arrivals.

Montipora Digitata (Lime Green)


Acropora Millepora (Suposedly Blue but it looks more Purple to me at lease under my lights)

[kau_cinta_ku]

just wanted to let you know about a few things i found out about the brix refractometer. sence you said it was ok to use for measuring sg i was still weary on it so i posted this to Randy Holmes and he and boomer did some answering on it and came up with a chart to measure the sg using a brix. and if you are still rasing the sg when it reads 5.2. you are actually at 1.030 sg at 5.2. we had found out that on a brix a sg of 1.026 should measure 4.4 on the brix. just a little info i thought you would like to know before something happends to your tank and can't figure out why. not tring to be a smart *** just tring to help cause i have a brix that i am wanting to use to measure sg with.

[Grunthor]

Yeah the trick is to measure a calibration solution. Then you know how much to compensate for. I bought an electronic salinity tester that I use now. It's even easier than a refractometer, but you still hve to check it once in a while against a known salinity.