Tuesday, April 26, 2011
It's Officially a Reef
Just a quick post with some pics of the changes to the fish tank. Last week I added 15 lbs of live rock to the tank and then I added a few coral frags. So it's officially a small reef tank now, and it's so much nicer than it was before. :)
Friday, April 8, 2011
Turns Out That Sometimes I'm Just Not As Patient As I Should Be
Yes, this will be another blog post about my fish tank. So if you are like my wife, and think I am crazy because of the amount of time I spend doing things related to the aquarium, you may want to skip this one. ;)
I think of myself as a patient person, and in general I believe that I am right about that. However, it turns out that when it comes to keeping an aquarium sometimes I get too excited about things and then I make bad decisions.
Every little thing you do in an aquarium has to be well thought out and carefully planned. Especially in a small aquarium like my 16 gallon. When it comes to populating an aquarium it is very important to research every fish you want to add, and to know how it will affect any other fish you have/want, as well as whether the fish are compatible with each other and the type of tank you want to keep. For example, if you want to keep a reef tank, you have to plan to add only reef-safe fish that won't kill your corals. If you want to keep certain fish that require certain foods, then you have to be able to provide those foods. Many fish need lots of room to swim. Some are territorial. Some will not tolerate fish of the same species in the tank with them. Some are aggressive. Some are messy, and add a high bioload to your tank (bioload = the amount of ammonia a fish will introduce into an aquarium through its waste). All of this has to be taken into account if you are to have a successful aquarium.
Needless to say, when I decided one day to get an aquarium and by the next day that aquarium was populated with brackish fish, I was a bit too hasty. Also, it goes without saying that a week later when I decided that brackish fish were boring and I decided to get rid of those fish and turned the tank into a saltwater aquarium, I was rushing things once again. And a week later when I went to check out a new fish store and came home with 3 fish that I had not researched at all, I was not exactly taking the time to do things right. So, it should not have been a surprise to me when all 3 of those fish were dead in a matter of days.
Since then, however, I have learned some lessons from those experiences and from a lot of research into why what I did was so foolish, and how to avoid the same mistakes in the future. So, in order to move forward, I had to correct some of my mistakes. Most importantly, I had to change my thinking about what I am able to do in a 16 gallon tank. This meant accepting that I can only have a few fish in this tank. So my Green Spotted Puffers had to go, because they have an extremely high bioload and require much more space, and they are not compatible with the kind of tank I want to have in the future.
This left me with my current 3 residents: 1 azure damselfish, 1 ocellaris clownfish (there were 2, but one didn't survive the ammonia/nitrite levels caused by having too many fish before the gsp's were removed), and 1 diamond watchman goby. There is also a cuc (clean up crew) of about 5 dwarf red hermit crabs and 3 electric blue hermit crabs. This is about what I will consider the maximum occupancy for this tank from now on.
Plans for the tank include adding 15-20 lb. of live rock on which to begin a coral reef. 15 lb. of dried live rock is on it's way, and should arrive this weekend or early next week. When it arrives it will go into my empty 10 gallon tank with saltwater and 2 small filters for water movement for 2-4 weeks while the rock cures. Once that rock is cured (meaning that the ammonia -> nitrite -> nitrate cycle is established by the natural population of bacterial colonies that transform these poisonous chemicals into less toxic nitrate, which is then removed through regular water changes) then I will add a few lb. of live rock from the local fish store, which they keep in a tank with lots of water flow in order to keep it cured. This should "seed" the base rock with all the little critters that are beneficial to a reef system. Then when that is all stable it will be moved into my main tank and arranged into the base for my reef, and over then next few months I'll add a few corals to decorate and beautify the reef until eventually it looks something like this:
I think of myself as a patient person, and in general I believe that I am right about that. However, it turns out that when it comes to keeping an aquarium sometimes I get too excited about things and then I make bad decisions.
Every little thing you do in an aquarium has to be well thought out and carefully planned. Especially in a small aquarium like my 16 gallon. When it comes to populating an aquarium it is very important to research every fish you want to add, and to know how it will affect any other fish you have/want, as well as whether the fish are compatible with each other and the type of tank you want to keep. For example, if you want to keep a reef tank, you have to plan to add only reef-safe fish that won't kill your corals. If you want to keep certain fish that require certain foods, then you have to be able to provide those foods. Many fish need lots of room to swim. Some are territorial. Some will not tolerate fish of the same species in the tank with them. Some are aggressive. Some are messy, and add a high bioload to your tank (bioload = the amount of ammonia a fish will introduce into an aquarium through its waste). All of this has to be taken into account if you are to have a successful aquarium.
 |
| The 3 ill-fated additions to the saltwater tank. |
 |
| Brackish water and fish the day after the tank was set up. |
Since then, however, I have learned some lessons from those experiences and from a lot of research into why what I did was so foolish, and how to avoid the same mistakes in the future. So, in order to move forward, I had to correct some of my mistakes. Most importantly, I had to change my thinking about what I am able to do in a 16 gallon tank. This meant accepting that I can only have a few fish in this tank. So my Green Spotted Puffers had to go, because they have an extremely high bioload and require much more space, and they are not compatible with the kind of tank I want to have in the future.
This left me with my current 3 residents: 1 azure damselfish, 1 ocellaris clownfish (there were 2, but one didn't survive the ammonia/nitrite levels caused by having too many fish before the gsp's were removed), and 1 diamond watchman goby. There is also a cuc (clean up crew) of about 5 dwarf red hermit crabs and 3 electric blue hermit crabs. This is about what I will consider the maximum occupancy for this tank from now on.
Plans for the tank include adding 15-20 lb. of live rock on which to begin a coral reef. 15 lb. of dried live rock is on it's way, and should arrive this weekend or early next week. When it arrives it will go into my empty 10 gallon tank with saltwater and 2 small filters for water movement for 2-4 weeks while the rock cures. Once that rock is cured (meaning that the ammonia -> nitrite -> nitrate cycle is established by the natural population of bacterial colonies that transform these poisonous chemicals into less toxic nitrate, which is then removed through regular water changes) then I will add a few lb. of live rock from the local fish store, which they keep in a tank with lots of water flow in order to keep it cured. This should "seed" the base rock with all the little critters that are beneficial to a reef system. Then when that is all stable it will be moved into my main tank and arranged into the base for my reef, and over then next few months I'll add a few corals to decorate and beautify the reef until eventually it looks something like this:
Types of corals I plan to add:
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