hockeyhead's 55 gal SW

[Cliff]

Sounds good. Pretty cool to hear the claims are still doing well during the cycle.

You might want to start looking into how to deal with the aipstasia. From what I've have read, it can become a very big problem. I reallt don't know for sure, never had them myself

Any new pics ???

[ILuvMyGoldBarb]

Got Aiptasia? Here's the way to deal with them :D http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forums/...ectricity.html

[hockeyhead019]

Interesting vid GB lol... I think I'll look for something a little more natural though haha if it comes to it I'll take some more drastic steps but it's nothing serious right now haha

[ILuvMyGoldBarb]

That guy has a patent on those and builds them and sells them all the time. He builds and sells almost 100 of them a year out of his house. They work great and the Aiptasia never come back.

[hockeyhead019]

Wow that's impressive haha good to know but I'll kill two birds with one stone if I get to add a little livestock and get rid of them :)

[Cliff]

Any new pics ???

[hockeyhead019]

Ask and you shall receive lol:


FTS (lovin the color of my lights haha a little blue but I think it looks pretty cool haha)


Clam... one of the now 6. Two on the rocks and the rest in the sand or just below the rocks halfway below the sand line lol


IDK what this is haha I think it maybe some type of sponge? Tough to tell from the picture sorry about the quality they're from my phone haha. But I have a couple purple ones and a big orange one. Not really sure what they are if anybody has any ideas feel free to shout them out haha

My test results for today (a week and a day with the rock in the tank)

pH : 7.8 (I'll discuss in a second)
Ammonia : 0ppm
Trites : 2.0ppm
Trates : 40ppm

The reason my trates went down a decent amount is due to my evaporation and a small water change (only about 10% that I did yesterday)

So I think things are moving along nicely. Now for my pH issue lol. I was toying with the idea of getting some crushed coral substrate and adding it to my sump to try and stabilize the pH a little higher. I was reading that crushed coral will help keep your pH steady and slightly on the higher side.

Any comments/ideas are more than welcome! :)

EDIT: Wow just looked at my post and those pics aren't too shabby for a phone lol

[Cliff]

You got some pretty good pic from s cell phone

Not too sure if that is sponge or not, never had any pop up yet in the tank

[labnjab]

You ph will even out after a few months. I wouldn't try to change it until then.

I gotta get one of those zappers:) I've got hundreds of aptasia

[hockeyhead019]

Clams clams everywhere clams haha saw two new ones... one busted out from under some slime and shells on the rock? idk I've never seen him before and then I look today and bam there he is and there are the shells and junk on the sandbed lol... pretty awesome if you ask me haha

So I have a question, it seems like I have a lot of dying materieal (kinda pale stuff just waving in the current) are there any crabs which take care of detritus/dead stuff? I'd like to have a crab be the first inhabitant (or a couple maybe three tops) lol

I'm near the end of the cycle I believe (I'll test water again tomorrow) but I can also see some coraline algae!!:) woo I hadn't seen any originally but maybe it just needed to color back up from the trip. I have a patch of purple and pink and then another patch of just purple. So that looks pretty cool

I think I've killed the vast majority of my algae (bubble mainly but some macro too) by cycling with the lights off. Don't quote me on that cuz they could come back with insane numbers from what I hear, which is ok with me haha I wanna get an emerald crab anyways and they apparently eat the bubble algae so that's fine by me...

Anyways back to my main question what should I add to eat up the dead stuff? Anybody any ideas?