Melev's new 280g Starfire tank thread

[Alaska_Phil]

Sorry...no time to talk...have to re-read this thread from the beginning...going to be up all night

Phil

[melev]

[njdevilsfan]

Originally posted by Alaska_Phil
Well, just tried to order an RO/DI unit from Marc. Got the following from paypal


"This account has been permanently locked with a $0.00 USD balance. All information associated with this account has been blocked from the PayPal system and cannot be registered with another account."

Won't let me use my credit card either, won't let me start a new account. I'll try it again tomorrow, if that doesn't work I'll call Marc and see if we can work something else out. I really don't understand this, I've only used paypal twice, and both transactions went through without a hitch. Grrr...

Phil

just call them and talk to a rep i did it
i also ordered a rodi from melv
my tds went from 140 to less than 2
it was super easy to install and he will help if your a tard like me
you will save enough money to buy hundreds of snails quick at the prices you are paying for water
i have and am fighting hair algea and a phos sponge plus snails plus purple up (i know half of the people reaing this are muttering under their breath) is how i have always beaten it


seems the snails mow it and the coraline covers it
good luck and stay warm m8

[melev]

No video - sorry.

Whilst I was feeding the aiptasia in my tank, the fish all swam around my hands hoping it was food and not Aiptsia Control. I noticed the Longnose Hawkfish was parking everywhere, including in the trap.

How easy is that? No bait - just capture the fool.

What I didn't realize was with my new bracket method, the door doesn't fit. Dumb, huh? I took the door and put it on the end of the trap while the fish watched me, and removed him from the reef.

He's nearly 5.5" long. I took a few pictures I'll post later.

[kau_cinta_ku]

dang, talk about an easy catch. wish all fish were that easy to get out of a tank. congrats

[jnarowe]

Funny that you mention that, because mine loves to perch right where I am working on the tank and check me out. The other fish split, but it will hang right under me while I am laying on top of the tank.

[Alaska_Phil]

Dang, wheres the fun in that! You didn't even have to tear your reef apart trying to net him

Congrats

Phil

[melev]

So this is what he looked like after being trapped.







The trap is roughly 5.5" wide internally; the fish was pretty long since it almost touches tip to tip. Once I had it, I had to figure out what to do with it. So, I called my LFS. No answer. Call his other number. No answer. Jumped into my car, drove down there and found him mixing saltwater in the backroom. Ran home, got the fish, and dropped him into one of the fish tanks there.

And before I left, I saw a tiny cute Longnose Hawkfish in the tank above mine. Awwww.

[Alaska_Phil]

So...um...after all that mucking about with the trap...did you ever consider just baiting a hook with a peppermint shrimp?

Phil

[melev]

You know, had I realized it would have been this easy, I would have just reached in the tank with my bare hand and fish'd him out.

[zibba]

Melev,

After my long post bragging how great my CBB was doing from Liveaquaria; how much frozen food it has been eating over the past 3 months and how all the aptasia seem to have just disappeared (even though I never saw it eat one). I woke up this morning to him upside-down wedged between a rock. It is still breathing, but clearly is in rough shape. I pulled him out and put him in my refugium so see if there was any chance. I have no idea what happened. Yesterday it was swimming great and ate a bunch of PE mysis and regular mysis. This morning when I pulled it out, it had some dark patchy spots and some spots where it looked like blood had come to the surface of the scales. My guess is that somehow it got sucked into the side of a tunze, but really I have no idea what happened. Currently, it isn't swimming around in the refugium, just lying halfway on its side and struggling to breath.

Sad news for me. It was my favorite fish to watch and I thought I was really lucky getting one to eat frozen mysis & aptasia.

R.I.P.

[Micki]

awww, I'm sorry.

Just another reason I refuse to have any equipment in my display tank...

[zibba]

dp

[jnarowe]

Try to hold it in front of a powerhead to force water over its gills. This can work. I have done it and seen it done.

[skey44]

i've seen this unexplained problem in cbb's before. a lady once brought one in after owning it for two years with similar sores that you describe and she didn't have tunzes. It also occurred very quickly. these fish are not the best shippers and have seen this happen many times- eating fine then developing the sores- I guess i'm not much help bc i really don't know what it is (i've heard internal injuries and possible cyanide side effect) or what to do, but they are not very viable in my opinion as an aquarium species- most places only carry them bc they are inexpensive wholesale wise (no matter where you get them from), but no one (that i know of) has really good survival rates with them. I'm sorry about this, they are beautiful fish.

[zibba]

The CBB didn't make it. I tried placing it in some decent flow to get some water movement over the gills but it never recovered.

I've read that a death like this can occur as a side effect of cyanide (if the death is w/in 3 months - which it was). I'm not sure why the fish appeared to be so healthy for 3 months. Strange.

Anyway, thanks for your condolences.

Melev - good to see that you got that long-nose out so easily!

[melev]

Zibba, I'm sorry to hear about your CBB loss. They really are a gorgeous fish, and I would have thought that it being healthy and eating for 3 months to be a good sign.

For cyanide-caught fish, I thought it was a 2 month window, not 3.

[melev]

So my nobilis frag has been declining for the past couple of weeks. I knew there was nothing I could do about it, and accepted that it wasn't going to last much longer.

Two nights ago I saw it was RTNing. As it was expected, I just let it occur.

Yesterday morning I noticed that the tiny red tabling frag next to it was completely gone as well. Argh.

And as the day progressed, I saw indications that it was heading for my purple milli. At that point, I cut out the middleman, so to speak and removed the dead red tabling frag so that there was a big gap between the dead nobilis that the purple milli.

And during the night I watched that milli closely. An area on the backside looked suspicious. I cut it away.

Today, the RTN had traveled through most of the milli. Good grief! I ripped of 80% of the colony and left mere twigs were it was. Will any bit of this survive?

The thing is, all of this is occuring in an area that is maybe 6 square inches of space. However, all three were nice corals I really liked and enjoyed viewing and taking pictures of. That whole spot is decimated, and it just grates on my nerves that I have something that has been growing for about a year that is gone overnight.

Here's what they looked like before.

[jnarowe]

I wonder what it was? What I find I have to do in cases like this is remove the entire colony, frag any good pieces and QT them. This worked quite well when I had the dino attack.

[Stile2]

I have had several colonies over the life of my tank do this. And the sequence of events while it is happening really, in my mind, points to a bacteria, bug, something.

I think that it happens too fast for it to be just a dying coral.

[melev]

So two days later, I retested Nitrate and Phosphate to see how they would read once the skimmer pulled out all the nonsense from the water.

11/29/07
PO4 - 1.0
NO3 - 15ppm

12/02/07
PO4 - .25
NO3 - 10ppm

The rest of the tests were good.

Salinity - 1.026
Temp - 79.9 to 80.1 F
pH - 8.03 to 8.21
ORP - 320 to 326
Alkalinity - 10.2 dKH
Calcium - 430
Magnesium - 1440

Water quality is excellent, and the skimmer pulled out very little in the past 24 hours. Carbon was replaced two days ago as well.

[kau_cinta_ku]

your po4 got up to 1.0 just in the 72 hours of using the chemiclean?

seems like it went down really well and hopefully will be at 0 in a couple of days. sorry to hear about the corals, they looked beautiful.

[mattb71]

nice pic of that CBB

[melev]

Originally posted by kau_cinta_ku
your po4 got up to 1.0 just in the 72 hours of using the chemiclean?

seems like it went down really well and hopefully will be at 0 in a couple of days. sorry to hear about the corals, they looked beautiful.

My guess would be a lack of skimming for three days, plus the die-off of cyano. Nutrients build up from feeding and fish waste. Glad it came down more.

I've not run any GFO in my tank for over 3 months now, so I'm going to have to to get the PO4 down again.

[Alaska_Phil]

Bummer about the RTN problems. I can't imagine how frustrating that is. I've lost a couple corals, but it was always within the first couple months. Not after a couple years.

What's GFO?

Phil