250 Gallon room-divider project log - Page 8

Ah64av8tor · #**176** 04/01/2007, 06:34 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jeffbrig
Tired from carrying buckets of water. Maybe later.

Jeff, a pump and hose works great.

I have about 200 gallons to move today.

jeffbrig · #**177** 04/01/2007, 10:17 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by gkarshens
Aren't you worried about a Tomini being in a 10g tank for that long?

Yes, a little, but he's very tiny - only about two inches, and was not moving or swimming around much when he was in the bigger tank, so we are going to give this a go, and if he seems distressed, we will upgrade him.

--Christy

jeffbrig · #**178** 04/01/2007, 10:21 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by zemuron114
jeff/christy - sorry to hear about the ich (its a PITA!)

Do you know what brought it on? If your tank temp. fluctuates more then 4 degrees in a 12 hour period it causes enough "stress" to cause an outbreak (assuming ich is present)
Temp fluctuations is probably the main reason for outbreaks (and the most overlooked)

good luck in the QT process!

Definitely not a temp fluctuation, the most we ever change is about a degree in 24 hours. We qtd all our fish when they were new and our tank was ich free until recently, when we think the parasite hitchiked in on a coral colony attached to rock.

The achilles tang and powder blue just seem really susceptible to it. The purple is holding his own with only a few spots, and the yellow tang is clean. The clowns, mandarin, fridmani, anthia, and flamehawk all seem unaffected.

-Jeff

jeffbrig · #**179** 04/01/2007, 10:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Ah64av8tor
Jeff, a pump and hose works great. I have about 200 gallons to move today.

The QT tank is in the office. We don't have a hose big enough. So, buckets for Jeff.

--Christy

jeffbrig · #**180** 04/01/2007, 11:44 AM

One down, eight to go.

Achilles bit on the trap, so he is happily swimming in the hospital tank.

We decided not to tear down the tank unless we absolutely had to. We figured chasing the fish around with nets would cause lots of unneeded stress.

--christy

jeffbrig · #**181** 04/01/2007, 12:43 PM

Got purple.

--Christy

jeffbrig · #**182** 04/01/2007, 01:08 PM

Flame Hawk was successfully netted.

Time to go rebait the fish trap for the rest of the tangs.

jeffbrig · #**183** 04/01/2007, 04:01 PM

With one of us on each side of the tank, two nets, and an algae scraper, we managed to wrangle both clowns, the PBT, and the mandarin in the last several minutes. Now we're just waiting on the yellow tang, anthia, and fridmani. Our yellow tank is very skittish, which makes trapping or netting her difficult. The other two are very small fish who love hiding in the rockwork. We're going to head out and see what other styles of fish traps are available locally, hopefully one with a sliding door. The one we're using right now is a tall narrow trap with a rotating door in the middle of the opening.

jeffbrig · #**184** 04/01/2007, 09:04 PM

10pm update: no luck finding a different fish trap locally. As a backup, we've created a partition wall from egg crate and gutter guard. We plan to get the 3 remaining fish on the end of the tank with the small rock pile, place the divider, then remove the rocks in that area (I've already relocated the corals). Then we should be able to net the fish pretty easily.

Oooh!! Just corraled the fish and put in the divider. Hopefully we'll have them out in a few...

jeffbrig · #**185** 04/01/2007, 10:10 PM

SON OF A . . .

The fridmani somehow made it through the divider and is now hiding in the rocks. The rest of the fish have been caught and transferred over to the QT.

At this point, I have no idea how we are going to catch him.

--Christy

King Nine · #**186** 04/02/2007, 01:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by jeffbrig
Like those Phoenix 14k bulbs. Wow, wish I'd bought these a while back. I don't know what happned with the Ushios, but they seemed downright yellow lately - perhaps from age. I had some concerns that the Phoenix might be too blue, but running on our icecaps it's just a nice cool blue. We'll see if that changes any as the bulbs burn in.

Been up all night reading this interesting thread. I too just put in phoenix 14k bulbs on my 6 week old tank. They are sooo much better than the yellow looking 10k bulbs I had for a couple of weeks.

zemuron114 · #**187** 04/02/2007, 04:10 AM

If the fish were healthy prior to the intro of the coral (which they seem to be - the achilles looked perfect!) I dont see how healthy fish could get it... especially if just a few cysts came on the rock/coral. Ich is so annoying. lol Im always weary of holding achilles in my system, but im about 20 for 20 with ich free achilles! And the best part is i always get them to eat right away.

Your fish seem to be very healthy, so they will most likely fight it off. Im routing for you! Its always a pain to QT, but it is for the best!

jeffbrig · #**188** 04/03/2007, 11:16 PM

GOT HIM!!! Fridmani has been caught.

April 4, 2007, 12:13 a.m. The tank is fallow.

Of course, the tank is also in pieces in rubbermaid bins on my living room floor, but that's another issue entirely.

Must go do some aquascaping now.

--Christy

jeffbrig · #**189** 04/04/2007, 09:33 AM

Well, here's the tank divider that we used to avoid dismantling the entire tank.

Worked great, except for that tiny fridmani.

As Christy said, we pulled everything last night and finally caught the fridmani. Everyone is chilling in the 55g right now, and I started dropping the salinity last night.

We decided to take this opportunity to clean/swish our rocks well, and restack with more ledges for mounting corals. I'm also planning to drill mounting holes all over each piece of rock, so I can use acrylic pegs to mount corals in place.

Wanna see my new 6' growout tank?

Our living room has 3 giant rubbermaid bins filled with rock right now (and powerheads). They'll go back in tonight, and we'll play with the aquascaping a bit. Another goal I'd like to accomplish is keeping the anemones separate from the rest of the rock pile. In our previous arrangement, they took up too much space, since I gave them a pretty wide berth to avoid stinging corals.

While I had the camera out, I took a few quick shots of three acros that I bought at Reef's Edge a couple of weeks ago. All three came in a Bali aquaculture shipment, and have done great. I love this type of colony, they always seem to do so well. They looked good in the store, but colors have deepened since I brought them home.

That's all for now, lots of work to be done.

jeffbrig · #**190** 04/04/2007, 10:57 PM

Just finished the 3rd water change with RO/DI for the QT - doing them every 12 hours. We're down to 1.0145 in the QT. Two more water changes and we'll be at 1.009 by this time tomorrow. Fish are looking good, active, and eating well. Purple tang seems pale occasionally, likely color blanching when he fells stressed.

Got home late and we were too tired tonight to mess with the LR today, so it will sit in the bins again overnight. We'll tackle it tomorrow.

zemuron114 · #**191** 04/05/2007, 07:37 PM

Jeff,

You can lower the salinity to hypo at one shot. Its raising it that takes time. I lower the salinity quickly all time with no effects.

Your grow out tank is fantastic. So many corals already!

jeffbrig · #**192** 04/06/2007, 10:57 AM

4/6/07

Fish are in hypo.

r00onmac · #**193** 04/06/2007, 11:05 AM

damn jeff... down to the minute... thanks again for the BTA... the tank looks great even without rocks and fish... be sure to put up some pics of the drilling and re-aquascaping process for us... you know how we love pics...

jeffbrig · #**194** 04/10/2007, 11:10 AM

Matt, we do have some pictures to share, just a matter of time getting to them.

The large rock pile was finished last Friday. The new structure significantly more mounting area on top for acros. Almost every rock was drilled in multiple places to allow for easy coral mounting. I made up a good number of frag plugs with acrylic rods last night, and I'll put some of those to use tonight mounting some loose frags.

The smaller rock pile on the end still needs a few pieces drilled and restacked. The RBTAs have been moved to this end of the tank, which I think I'm going to like a LOT more, since that gives back a lot of room on the acro structure. Let's hope they are happy and stay put.

One piece of bad news....our purple tang died over the weekend. No visible sign of injury or disease, water quality is fine, so I can only assume it was stress due to the tank move.

jeffbrig · #**195** 04/10/2007, 12:28 PM

One more thing

Happy Birthday Christy!!

Fishboy1230 · #**196** 04/14/2007, 12:00 PM

Sorry to hear of the death, probably was stress and shock. What are you drilling?

Steeltowndubber · #**197** 04/14/2007, 01:29 PM

sorry to hear about the loss...

JustOneMoreTank · #**198** 04/14/2007, 01:33 PM

Happy B day (late) !!!
Sorry about the Purple Tang.

Lunchbucket · #**199** 04/14/2007, 08:09 PM

Dang you are crazy! What a task!

I love that BTA. I want a clone of it!

Sorry to hear about getting older...umm...I mean the Purple tang.

Happy B-day and hope everyone else makes it through just fine.

Lunchbucket

jeffbrig · #**200** 04/19/2007, 08:12 AM

Hi everyone! Another week, and here's where we stand.

No further losses in QT, but the achilles has looked a bit off the past few days. There as another bout of ich in QT late last week, apparently our salnity was just slightly higher than it should have been, so we adjusted it down a bit. The achilles is a faded gray when you walk into the room, but he colors up and swims when you want up to the tank. Also, he's been breathing a bit faster than normal. I did a battery of tests the other day and found very slight amounts of ammonia (well under .25ppm), and about 5ppm nitrate. Did a 50% water change (that was Tuesday night). Yesterday, he looked about the same, but he's eating, so that's good. Not sure if the rapid breathing is related to ich in the gills, ammonia, or simply stress. Time will tell...

Had a minor event in the display yesterday. Another snail found its way into the drain pipe and lodged against the gate valve inside the primary drain. The backup drain did its job as designed (no spills), but the elevated water level increased the flow into the skimmer and it overflowed its collection cup back into the sump. The xenia and the chili coral never looked better, lol.

Fortunately, the big ER did a great job of reskimming after I dumped the cup and fixed the partially clogged drain.

I did something else pretty dumb the other day. I was messing with the return pump, so I had the chiller turned off. When I finished, I apparently forgot to turn the chiller back on. I noticed when I reached in the tank the next day. The water was 86 degrees! I never saw it go above 83-84 before we installed the chiller, so I'm going to blame the extra pump and UV that we're currently running. Fortunately, a couple of hours of high temps didn't seem to affect anything in the tank.

I also took full advantage of Dr. Foster's discounted shipping, and ordered 6 buckets of Reef Crystals last week. I'm interested to compare this to the IO I've been using in the tank since day 1.

Edit: not to jinx anything, but the lights just turned on and achilles' color seems to be much improved today.