Melev's new 280g Starfire tank thread

[Lunchbucket]

i ended up taking my clown goby out of my 20h for harassing my SPS. he would perch on them and go from frag to frag. this would cause them to retract their polyps and stress the corals out. i as soon as i took him out not 2 hrs later everything was polyped out ....as it wasn't before.

very very cool fish and fun but NOT and SPS fish

Travis - not sure what is up w/ the blue polyped dig. it looks greta in my tank and has nice blueish polyps. if you have anything looking bad or think it is on it's way out let me know....if i can save it in my tank then you can always get it back or a peice. i would just hate to loose the whole thing if someone might be able to save it. not sure why your tank isn't doing well fo rmontis

Lunchbucket

[outdoorandmore]

I saw my goby do the same thing to a purple robusta colony that a friend gave me. I was denial and left him in, but after reading this thread...I'm gonna siphon him out asap.
Thanks

[melev]

outdoorandmore, I was just looking at all the corals in the tank with a flashlight, and they are all furry and happy. I know this is normal at night, and if I had fewer fish I bet they'd do this all day long too. I look forward to seeing how the blue millepora looks in a couple of days now that Fang is out of the colony.

[antesco]

Dear Marc,

I see your problems with ORP reading and I thought you might be interested in the reply I got from with Red-Sea when I complained that my handheld Hanna ORP reader was giving so different readings than the Ozoniser's probe. Check Below:


============================

Dear Sir,

Here are the answer to your enquiry

Both units should give similar readings as the ORP / redox is an absolute reading.

Please check if you are getting the same reading on both our unit and the hanna unit when placed in the buffer, but our unit gives a different reading when it is placed in the aquarium.

Place the probe in a cup of water taken from the aquarium, and compare with Hanna.


If you are is now getting similar reading then the problem is due to a faulty piece of equipment, such as a pump or heater in the aquarium. Sometimes if the insulation is not perfect on these products a very small (and harmless) voltage is present in the aquarium water, that effects the readings on the probe. You should locate the fault equipment and replace it.

I hope that this helps

Sorry for the delay

Red Sea

==========================================

Plus: Try to clean the probe (I shouldn't do it but I use my finger) and you will experience an immediate drop of 200 which will slowly return back to 100 (in your case I guess somewhere 350). Let me know.

To be honest (don't get me wrong) from what I've read and experienced in ORP readings, it is almost impossible to maintain a 470 without an ozoniser. And as someone else wrote, it is equally important to monitor fluctuations not just end values.

[Micki]

Marc, my clown goby started liking one of my SPS but the acro crab chased him out. He mainly hangs in the LPS now. Hopefully it stays that way.

[melev]

antesco - thank you for your input. I'll have to check for lower voltage. I don't have any ORP solution or a hand held unit to run a comparison, but I can check for leaking power into the water.

[Mickey]

This has me very curious because my ORP readings run around 420-440 regularly. How do you check for leaking power in the water?

Mickey

[melev]

Well, an easy way is to unplug other stuff to limit what is feeding power into the tank. I have grounding probes as well that could be removed.

Then using a voltage meter, I can test to see if any current is in the water. My ORP has reached 490 last night. All the livestock looks great though, and the water looks clear.

[yourreeftank]

How much O3 are you introducing into the system?

[melev]

None.

[nolofinwe]

I have a milwaukee ORP controller, as it gets dirtier the ORP will climb. sometimes by 100 points over the course of a week. it will read 380, I'll take it out, clean it up, drop it back in and it will read 280

[siete77]

happy 15.000 post, Melev :P

[nolofinwe]

a week might be an exageration, probably more like 2 weeks.

[melev]

siete77 (nice username) - I didn't even notice. Thanks!

nolofinwe - I've only been using it for two weeks. It must be something else.

[selgado]

Originally posted by melev
siete77 (nice username) - I didn't even notice. Thanks!

Ahh... the modesty of a professional stripper, definitely a rare trait these days. I think I feel a tear welling up in my eye.

[melev]

Maybe I should go buy myself something pretty, eh?

[steve68]

yes u should!
i have an idea "Oak Wood"

get it done.
LMAO.
i coulnt resist!

[melev]

What a solid idea.

[siete77]

Melev:
I know this question is not related to the 280g itself, but stiff a reef-related, so I'll go on :P
How's your 29g? I have to say its quite inspirational to look at it in your webpage. Any updates or FTS?
Walter

btw, thanks for the nickname compliment

[melev]

The 29g and my 55g were both transferred into the 280g reef a year ago.

My son has a 29g in his room, but it is nothing exciting to look at.

I do have a smaller tank that helps keep me busy: http://www.melevsreef.com/pico.html

[Herbert T. Kornfeld]

Those Clown Gobies are a no-no in my book for any stony corals tank. They like to nip at SPS, and sit in them, as well as LPS. Their body secretes a mild poison that kills the coral tissue that they perch on so well. They are part of a growing list of critters I have kept that are on my no-no list yet many wouldnt believe. My bicolor blenny was nipping at clams so much that they all retracted. My 6-line wrasse likes to eat peppermint and skunk cleaners. My emerald crab kills all other crabs. Hermits rip out snails every day for shells that they dont end up wanting.

Im never keeping any of them again.

[kwl1763]

Originally posted by Herbert T. Kornfeld
Those Clown Gobies are a no-no in my book for any stony corals tank. They like to nip at SPS, and sit in them, as well as LPS. Their body secretes a mild poison that kills the coral tissue that they perch on so well. They are part of a growing list of critters I have kept that are on my no-no list yet many wouldnt believe. My bicolor blenny was nipping at clams so much that they all retracted. My 6-line wrasse likes to eat peppermint and skunk cleaners. My emerald crab kills all other crabs. Hermits rip out snails every day for shells that they dont end up wanting.

Im never keeping any of them again.

While this is the first really bad I've heard about the clowns I agree completely with all the others you list and will add peppermint shrimp to my list as they like to munch on zos and polyps if you don't have aptaisia.

[Herbert T. Kornfeld]

Well, maybe a good solution is to keep peppermints for the first few months of break-in, then when all the aptaisia are gone and you want to add zoos, put a wrasse in there!

[melev]

Last night, before I finally went to sleep, I wanted to get a bunch of water changed in a few tanks.

My son's 29g was looking really sad lately, and the female maroon clownfish was looking rather tattered. To be honest, I think the eels have been nipping at her. What do you guys feed your eels? I have a snowflake and a golden eel, and I was feeding the large silversides (smelt from the Asian foodstore). However, water quality has declined in that tank quite a bit a few months ago, and one day I discovered that these feeder fish were being coughed back up in a pile in the back of the tank where they rot. I didn't know the eels were doing this, and I don't know if they eat them a second time later. After all, I wasn't checking to see if they were being properly digested. Since then, I stopped feeding the eels this food as they didn't like it and gave them meaty substitutes like squid tentacles.

Regardless, last night I siphoned all the CC substrate, pulling out all kinds of vile stuff that was amassed there. I moved every piece of LR out, and then put in an eggcrate partitian to keep the eels away from the clownfish. Hopefully that will work out better. I changed about 75% of the water in the process, so hopefully the inhabitants will be happy with nice clean water. Big water changes never scare me, and I've never lost any livestock doing it this way.

The frag tank had a good water change done as well, and a good amount of detritus was siphoned out of that tank also. I don't feed that tank at all, and there are no fish. Just corals and snails and a little LR.

On the 280g, I still had 30g of new saltwater available, so I decided I would pull out the macro algae in the refugium and shake it out well in a barrel of used reef water to get rid of all the detritus. To my amazement, the macro was more dense than I thought and pretty much was a brick shape within the refugium. So instead I peeled this back, and waved my hand swiftly over the substrate to get all the detritus in suspension, and pumped all of this nasty water out and into a collection barrel nearby. Then I culled about 25% of the macro, which a couple of club members will probably take in the next day or so. 30g of new saltwater was pumped back into the sump, and the system restarted. A lot of muck pumped up to the main tank, and the fish and corals probably snacked on this for the next hour, until the skimmer removed it from the water.

I'm mixing up another 55g of water now to do a larger waterchange on the reef. 30g isn't enough.

[melev]

I need a little help here. Electronics isn't my specialty.

Below is a picture of my voltage meter. As far as I know, it is pointed to the right setting. Now someone tell me which wire goes in the water, and which wire goes in the outlet. I want to test my tank for stray electricity since my ORP reading reads close to 500. Which hole in the outlet gets the probe too, please. I need this spelled out clearly so I don't arc myself into the garage.