Open to criticisms of my first tank

[mmeadows]

Originally Posted by MondoBongo

looking back at this other posts, this is simply a waste. his tank seems like a complete train wreck from day 1:

.

Well its my first tank so im not too butt hurt by your accusations.

[MondoBongo]

as i said previously, you have been advised, you have no interest in taking any of the previously offered advice.

best of luck.

[whosurcaddie]

I think the best line Ive ever heard in this hobby is "There's not many things that more water changes cant fix". I would live by that mantra on your next go round.

[mmeadows]

Originally Posted by MondoBongo

as i said previously, you have been advised, you have no interest in taking any of the previously offered advice.

best of luck.

MondoBongo, what symptoms did your firefish/seahorse have that they were not compatible so i can also look for signs?

I have been advised that it might work. you are strongly and confidently telling me it wont. so again ....

MondoBongo, what symptoms did your firefish/seahorse have that they were not compatible so i can also look for signs?

[nmotz]

Nmotz, my issue is less with getting water out, and more with getting water back in, that is of the right parameters. does everyone here have a separate tank that they use to mix saltwater, calcium, iodine etc and bring up to temp before adding to the tank?

I think a safe enough way is to just use a 5 gallon bucket. You'll want to try find the correct ratio of salt to water and just use that formula everytime you do a water change. This may vary by salt brand. For example, most people confirm that 3 cups of instant ocean salt mixes with 5 gallons of water to get to 1.026. You'll need to tinker around with it to be certain that you have the correct salinity and always use a refractometer to measure the SG.

Also, sent you a PM.

[tmz]

Originally Posted by mmeadows

nmotz, my issue is less with getting water out, and more with getting water back in, that is of the right parameters. Does everyone here have a separate tank that they use to mix saltwater, calcium, iodine etc and bring up to temp before adding to the tank?

i thought you didn't want to talk more about water changes here.
They do both: Remove excess and add elements pulling element ratios and levels toward th baseline. Some corals can be very sensitive to small accumulations or depletions. Fish less so.




mondomongo, my firefish and seahorses get along fine. I wouldnt add another fish or try another type. Both creatures are very shy and the tank is long enough if one gets bothered they can leave. A quarantine tank would be nice, do you have one running 24/7 or set it up when you expect to add new fish? I dont like small tanks or numerous tanks. Kind of what led to this set up now.

tank transfer can be used as a method for quarantine, preventative treatment for cryotocaryon irritans(marine ich) and acclimation without a standing qt tank . The 12 days for that process can be used to set up a cycled qt tank with some material seeded with naturally occurring ammonia oxidizing bacteria from your main tank for a period of further observation . Seahorses are fish and vulnerable to fish diseases,bacterial infections and parasites brought in by otyher species. If you want things to stop dieing in the tank, quarantine and preventative treatment for new fish specimens is necessary. There is more on this fish disease forum and here:

http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/sh...and+quarantine

cstrickland, i dont feed sometimes because i have a large copepods and amphipods populations. I also feel fish food companies (only dead food i use is frozen mysis by hikari) will encourage over feeding. I cant risk over feeding i dont do water changes.

once a day is not enough for seahorses ,ime. Mine,some of which are 5 have naturally occurring pods ,larvae etc and are fed twice a day with a mix of mysis, enriched brine, and a few blood worms.



tmz, id never thought about a small water change like that! Seems easy to maintain, not the end of the word if i miss a day or two, but still better than nothing. How hard can it be to make 2-3 gallons? I could even have a 5 gallon water jug in the closet ready to go for a pump and dump. Would i need to worry about 5 gallons swinging 150+ gallon tank?

a 3% change won't cause a significant swing in anything. Large changes can and do. Some have automated small water changes so the 1% or less is spread over 24/7. I do mine manually along with the am feeding routine.

[mmeadows]

sorry for any misunderstandings and I acknowledge that I could have worded things differently. Im not trying to jab at anyone who does water changes, i just thought someone might better understand how to successfully not do water changes ( i mean we dont all agree on deep sand beds but no one gets as upset when they see one :/ ) the reason i thought we should stop talking about water changes is b/c people were more set on being mad that my tank is still going than giving me advice.

Some people say and show some fish and seahorses can live together some say it cant. When you get conflicting information you have to pick one, its not a diss on the other side. sorry to eveyone who felt disrespected by not taking my firefish immediately out but its really not an option for me today.


TMZ, i appreciate your advice. my lfs told me seahorses wont eat blood worms but im going to try them out now and see if they take. twice a day isnt much more than once a day. I will try throwing a mid day mysis cube in there and see if i notice a difference in a few days ( do seahorses get fat?) imo my horses aren't struggling but i'm open to making them happier when i can.

[tmz]

They don't eat a lot of bloodworms ( midge fly larvae) but do eat some. I use only a small amount in the mix. I think the cartenoids and proteins in them are benficial but not as the main diet. Mysis either Hikari or PE is the mainstay for mine.

A reputable breeder recommends a one day no feeding fast per month to burn off excess fats that may accumulate in internal organs mostly from the mysis diet.

[CStrickland]

Originally Posted by mmeadows

i mean we dont all agree on deep sand beds but no one gets as upset when they see one :/

lol

Originally Posted by mmeadows

people were more set on being mad that my tank is still going than giving me advice.

nobody's mad that your tank is still going, of course it will keep going if you keep buying mandarins when they starve. from the pics you posted i would not say that your tank is thriving, but if you are happy with it, that's all that matters. idk much about seahorses, perhaps yours is a success by those standards. you knew when you started this thread that no water changes is a fringe way to go, and basically invited people to advise you against it. they did that, not because anyone is mad at you (though it is depressing to watch someone blithely starve their fish) but because they want to see you succeed.

you are very new to this hobby. it might be better to get your feet wet so to speak by following the advice of folks who have been doing this a long time. you are going to make a lot of mistakes in the beginning, everyone does. you will make even more if you try to take shortcuts because a couple randos on youtube said they got away with it, and if you try to do really hard things like mix incompatible stock or raise difficult creatures. later, once you know what you're doing you can mess around with different practices because you will know the early symptoms of a failing experiment. in other words, your madarins fins wont have to be falling off before you realize that it is dying. basic things like keeping hardy fish and changing your water are recommended for us noobs because they work for a lot of people.

it is highly unlikely that you are the special snowflake reefer who can raise difficult and incompatible species in their first tank without performing basic husbandry.

[tmz]

BTW, Those seahorses( look like hiipocampus erectus) could benefit from more hitching posts as noted earlier . Artifical corals or plastic garden chains tied off with a zip tie at the bottom end work well. They also like height at least 18 inches as they like to swirl together from bottom to top in their mating dance and generally enjoy swimming up and down.

[Scubareefman]

This thread is painful, his tank is a train wreck in slow motion.

Feed your fish dude. You have folks with many years of experience telling you this and you refuse to take the asked for advice. hard headed!

Change out some @#$ water dude. You have folks with many years of experience telling you this and you refuse the asked for advice. hard head!

Do some research on the animals your hosting in a cube of water. you have folks with many years of experience telling you this and you refuse the asked for advice. hard headed!

Why would a admitted novice host Hippocampinae when any research at all tells you that they are advanced level animals avoided by keepers that do not have dedicated builds specifically built for pipefish/seahorse only housing. You sir are being inhumane to those creatures and deserve no advice or help in your actions. In the time spent posting this god awful thread you could have researched all you need to know regarding housing those animals and saved everyone here the pain of dealing with you.

So there is your wanted rant. I am done.

[REEFBUILDER1]

Originally Posted by snorvich

Exactly.

[mmeadows]

There is no doubt i have very little experience. for example ive never owned a reef tank. i would never give advice on how a polyp looks, or vinegar dosing because ive never done it. i'm assuming you guys are they same?

Tmz I have kuda seahorses. i have a very shallow sand bed to give my horses the most of there 21" tall, not much I can do to extend the tank, but im looking at 36 tall tanks for my seahorses. the seahorses cling to and hunt in all the little rock cravases, coral skeltons and the calpura going the full height of the tank. I can get more if you think they would like it. i just wasnt sure if you saw that from my crappy pictures. I have tons calpura i can add to the displace tank. Of the few seahorses I have see in nature have always been swimming along an open sand bed ( it might be too hard to spot them in grass or rocks.) so i went with a combo of both.

do you feed live or frozen blood worms? have you heard of live blood worms not being safe for seahorses? (disease wise)

yesterday as an experiment ( and with extra time) i thought i'd put in a mysis cube every 3 hours

9 normal feed -12 they ate it -3 picked at it- when i put a block in at 6 they didn't touch it. it sank down to be absorbed by my serpent star fish. I know you said you feed twice a day, do you know anyone who feeds more? im assuming 4 is to much as no one was hungry.

good to know breeders skip a day sometimes too,

CStrickland ive read some good advice from you. so i hope you just dont like me when you say "of course it will keep going if you keep buying mandarins when they starve" you should have a higher standard for "keeping it going"


I have not had a mandarin in over a year, i wish you were this obsessed with him when he was still alive.

but yes my mandarin's were a failure, so i stopped, what's the issue? I'm only allowed to try one mandarin? and the fact that i bought two ( they were both alive at once) makes you so upset you cant talk about how my seahorses and firefish are bffs? ( best friends forever) i don't think im special, i mean i rarely even use the "Shift" key, the only thing that might "make me a snowflake" on here is i'm willing to try things. isnt that how this hobby has advanced? im sure people were furious with the Germans trying to grow die Steinkorallen and killing them, but hey now we see them in every restaurant reef tank display.

[CStrickland]

Originally Posted by mmeadows

CStrickland ive read some good advice from you. so i hope you just dont like me when you say "of course it will keep going if you keep buying mandarins when they starve" you should have a higher standard for "keeping it going"


I have not had a mandarin in over a year, i wish you were this obsessed with him when he was still alive.

but yes my mandarin's were a failure, so i stopped, what's the issue? I'm only allowed to try one mandarin? and the fact that i bought two ( they were both alive at once) makes you so upset you cant talk about how my seahorses and firefish are bffs? ( best friends forever) i don't think im special, i mean i rarely even use the "Shift" key, the only thing that might "make me a snowflake" on here is i'm willing to try things. isnt that how this hobby has advanced? im sure people were furious with the Germans trying to grow die Steinkorallen and killing them, but hey now we see them in every restaurant reef tank display.

It isn't that I don't like you, you seem not to be getting the point when people say it gently, so I was trying to be a little blunter. "Tank still going" was a quote from your post, that is not the words I would choose but I think I know what you were trying to say, something like - what your doing isn't a total disaster. I guess it raises a good question though, what are you really trying to do here?

The point is you aren't really trying new things. You are making preventable mistakes that are likely diminishing the quality of your pets lives. It is not a noble thing to "try a mandarin" it is a run of the mill noob mistake. The takeaway lesson to learn there is that it is better to be humble and learn about their needs before you buy them and only keep what you can provide for.
You are not researching die Steinkorallen, you are a noob like me. I think that might be why people are taking your posts as arrogant, you haven't learned to crawl but your posting about training for the ny marathon.

[tmz]

Macro algae can be a useful for hitching posts and hunting areas. Caulerpa is however, single celled ;so, if it dies it all dies at once discharging everything inside it . It can leave a tank a milky mess.

I feed hikari frozen bloodworms ,again just small amounts in the mix ; Hikari notes they irradiate them for sterilization.

20 inches sounds fine for height. 36 sounds even better;if your reach is long enough to keep it clean.

[mmeadows]

TMZ do we know what kills caulerpa/ makes it go sexual is that just another upsetting debate? i know there are a lot of types. sometimes if i have a long string of it, i will rip it in half, the two parts will grow on their own with no negative effects. I've even seen small green dots of this stuff turn into entire plants.


is this typical of caulerpa? it is advisable to plant many short pieces instead of long pieces so only a patch can die off instead of death spreading throughout.

im not sure if this is what people refer to but I have had pieces of the caulerpa turn milky white but nothing spreads. Is it possible i have a different macro?

[tmz]

TMZ do we know what kills caulerpa/ makes it go sexual is that just another upsetting debate?

That depends on your intent. I'll assume you have serious questions if not I'll figure that out at some point.Serious debate doesn't upset me Your implication that it does is annoying.

That looks like caulerpa taxifolia; it's extremely invasive and hard to irradicate. It's illegal to posses it in California. It stores a toxin caulerpicin which is toxic to fish. One cell will encompass up to a foot of it.When trimmed it grows right back presumably it's able to generate a new nucleus. It releases gametes in milky fluid into the water when it reproduces. If I were keeping caulerpa, I'd probably try racemossa or prolifera even though even those species are not without risk. I've seen massive amounts of racemossa turn white overnight and turn the tank water into a milky fluid.Many keep racemossa it without that occurrence for long periods of time tough. It is also invasive and a favorite food source for herbivorous fish particularly tangs.


Keeping taxifolia should be easy but risky since it frequently overruns everything else. I have not and will not personally put in my tanks.

I don't know what causes it to die; I'd suspect a nutrient deficiency, lack of light or space.

Generally, speaking macro algae benefit from a little extra iron once in a while. They need other nutrients too as well space ,light too keep them healthy.