Alan's 350 gallon

A

alanbetiger

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I'm trying to move over my thread so lets see if this works:?<h3>Re: Alans 350 New House New Tank</h3> alt="Post" width="11" height="9" />by?<strong style="margin: 0px;padding: 0px">alanbetiger</strong>?on Sat Sep 03, 2016 2:27 pm alt="Image" width="660" /><br style="margin: 0px;padding: 0px" /> alt="Image" width="660" /><br style="margin: 0px;padding: 0px" /> alt="Image" width="660" /><br style="margin: 0px;padding: 0px" />This is after adding everything I had from the previous tank[I added 60lbs of dry rock, 100lbs of sand and 30lbs of crushed coral.?]<br style="margin: 0px;padding: 0px;font-size: 13px" /> alt="Image" width="660" />[We built this house so added in a drain and water connections in the garage. Added a utility sink myself. Plumbed in my RODI system. The clear box in the back is top off RO water. There's a separate connection into the two trash cans plumbed together for saltwater mixing. The top hose on the right is my water syphon that reaches the tank about 45 ft away from the utility sink. The center hose is long enough for the top off and the bottom black hose is saltwater. Everything is gravity feed with no pumps which is why the trashcans are elevated on cinder blocks. Don't knock the cinder blocks when my "stand" only cost $15 and isn't going anywhere]<br style="margin: 0px;padding: 0px;font-size: 13px" /> alt="Image" width="660" />There's not a lot of equipment to talk about really. The cabinet has three sets of double doors alt="Image" width="660" />On the far right is one sump on a stand that receives one drain line from the display. It flows to the left down into the main sump. I'll use this for frags and I just have a cheap Current USA LED fixture that is on an opposite time to the main display lights on it and a nano Koralia for more flow. My purple tang is down there because it was being a butt head to the new yellow tang. He's in Time Out.? alt="Image" width="660" />The main sump is in the center. It has the standard three compartments. The second display drain line has a T in the top of the picture. The right side goes directly into the skimmer and the left goes into the right chamber. The skimmer I think is a DAS and has two recirculating pumps. It stays constant without needing to be at a certain water level which is nice. It's output was a few inches above the water so the slanted white PVC pipe redirects it back into the right chamber. To the right of the photo are the two drains from the other sump. The middle chamber has a deep sand bed and is for macro algae. I just use a clip on IKEA LED light. alt="Image" width="660" />The left chamber is the return section. I have a mag 9.5 for each of the two returns alt="Image" width="660" />On the left side of the stand is my top off and electrics. I only have two timers for the whole tank. One for the display and frag lights to turn on/off opposite. The second time is for my aqualifter to turn off/on every 15 minutes since it stops after about 10 min of being on constantly. I put my returns, water top off, and skimmer pump on one power strip to turn off for water changes. My power heads, which I have two Koralia 1050s in the display, and one in the frag section and my algae lights are on another power strip and are on constantly. My display lights are in a timer power strip. Theres another power strip empty for the future. All the power strips are attached to wood with multiple zipties so they cannot wiggle at all. And they are all plugged into a single power strip at plugs into the dedicated outlet I had the builders install for the aquarium that is on a gfci. alt="Image" width="660" />Mild setback this week I'll get some pictures up tomorrow.?When we built the house I requested a dedicated GFCI plug placed here for the tank. A few days ago we noticed the corals were looking bleached and got worse and worse through out the day. In testing the parameters I got shocked. Turns out one of the nano Koralias I have in the sump had stray voltage. I didn't have a Multimeter at the time to test how much, but once I removed the pump I no longer got shocked. After talking to our builder we found out they made a dedicated plug but it was not GFCI. Really annoying when you request it specifically and it did not happen. Electrician is coming out next week.All my SPS were bleached, all the zoas were not opening, my anenome was 1/3 it's normal size, and my clams weren't open. All the fish were completely normal and eating well that afternoon. Now two days later I'm starting to see a little fluorescence on my SPS except for 3, all my zoas are fully open, and the anenome is about 1/2 the size it normally is. So I got lucky and didn't kill myself from the stray voltage and also it appears I only lost a few corals.These were all taken immediately after the stray voltage was removed from the tankOn the right the zoas are closed and the plate is bleached alt="Image" width="660" />On the right the green slimer is gone and the middle was a rainbow montipora alt="Image" width="660" />The rainbow montipora in the middle is a loss and others are starting to come back alt="Image" width="660" />My anenome on the right is really shrunk along with the clam alt="Image" width="660" />My second clam is closed and this used to be about 100 Kedd red zoas all closed up alt="Image" width="660" />These frogspawn and hammer used to be about the size of a soccer ball and are looking better today alt="Image" width="660" />Things are finally bouncing back. Sailfin, purple and yellow tang alt="Image" width="660" />All 4 tangs. Kole, sailfin, purple and yellow alt="Image" width="660" />Two RBTA about 4 inches in diameter. I have two ocellaris that host it. There's another four in the tank also alt="Image" width="660" />
 
Video from 10/24/2016http://i1339.photobucket.com/albums/o718/alanbetiger1/th_690F7FCD-82B5-4BAF-AC96-A1DA4D1FF836_zpsi0qxi7lc.mp4
 
Posted by: alanbetiger?Getting my daughter started early![ATTACH type="full said:
212[/ATTACH]Adorable! ?My granddaughter loves my tank. ?We can put her in her bouncy seat in front of it and she'll stare at it for hours. ??"]
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A few weeks ago I noticed some of my zoas started to close up and die. When I really paid attention I kept seeing an Asterina on the single polyps before they disappeared. Then at night I checked the tank with a flashlight and turns out had literally about 1000 starfish. Got a pair of harlequin shrimp and it took about two weeks before one came out of hiding. Hopefully I'll start seeing a dent soon. I'm still pick off starfish on my Magicians daily, no idea why they love those particular zoas.
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Wow that is allot of starfish, hope the shrimp take care of them! Hope I never get those in my system, let us know if it works!
 
I had a lot in my tank as well. So I use the fish net to get them off of the glass. I pull it up the glass and they fell right in the net. I still have some but when i see them on the glass i whip out the net and get them out. The shrimp will be when i get my tank all back in wacky its out. I don't know for sure its out of wack but its been a supper long time and i haven't tested water. the fish are fat and happy and the corals are doing well so ill find out soon. let us know how the shrimp do??
 
It's been almost a month and so far I've only seen one Harlequin Shrimp since I've added the two. My biggest problem is the starfish stay mostly on the rocks and with the size of the tank I can't get to the back side of the rock even if I wanted to. The shrimp has stayed in pretty much one rock on the left side of my tank under the Frogspawn. On that one rock grouping I only see a few starfish. But the other 4 rock groupings are still completely covered at night with starfish. If I had 1000 starfish I probably still have 950 a month later with only one shrimp. I mean the rocks are covered with them at night! I ended up losing all the Magician zoas and they started eating two other small frags of orange zoas I recently got.?I put all three of these right by the cave the shrimp lives in but it hasn't been quick enough to really keep them at bay. Every time I went by the tank there would be another starfish on the zoas. My sump is covered as well so moving them down there wasn't an option. I have a few other zoas in the tank but they all have 50+ polyps so I'm not worried about them. I'll probably add another shrimp or two in the coming weeks. Once I don't see as many I'll add more zoas. Until then I'll stay out of the zoa bit'ness.
 
Oh wow, yeah I would add more too!?Have you tried "bump1's" method above^^^^If so, does that help at all? Might have to do that for awhile till back under control.
 
It's hard to get a good picture since the lights are out to see all of them.I wanted to see how much the one or two would eat for awhile before I added more. I didn't want to add 10 and then they all starve to death within a few weeks. Sad and expensive. I don't think I'd be able to catch them again. I think for sure one or two will live long term in the tank with the amount of starfish in my sump, so I'll get at least another two.?The only manual removal I have done was picking off the frags of Zoas whenever I walked by the tank. I can only easily get to front glass with my canopy. Since I clean that one better they are mostly on the back wall where I can't get them. I only have have two openings on the top of the tank that about a foot wide to access so can't use fish net well.?
 
If u have that many u will want to add more shrimp as they will take a while to get rid of them. Its been years but is there a star fish that eats other starfish or is it maybe a urchin that eats them.Ill help look around to see if we can find something else that can help wipe them out.  
 
On REEF2REEF someone recommended a Nardoa starfish. I'm a little wary since there's not a ton of info about that.
 
I just read that as well about the [Nardoa starfish. ] I also read where the H. Shrimp do best in pairs and  if u have a small tank stick with the one pair but in a big tank u might can do another set. From what iv been reading I think the one set of H shrimp would be fine and will get the job done with time.  If  the shrimp are going into your big tank and you are wanting them bad boys gone sooner then later IMOA I myself would try a second set.I have had these tiny starfish in my 240g from the start with no troubles. Mine will get up on the glass all the time so I'm thinking i will be getting one pair for my tank. I will be keeping my pair of shrimp so i don't want my tiny starfish to go away to fast. I will be putting some into my sump for safe keeping & for later use.Now if u are wanting to get rid of your H. Shrimp after they have done  there job I can wait and just get them from you. The stars in my tank don't bother me so a few months down the road is fine with me. Just let me know what u want to do_Or you can set up a tank to keep the tiny stars in to keep a steady food supply for them as they are very nice shrimp. Ill be putting some of the tiny stars in my sump so they can repopulate and give me free food for the shrimp.Keep us posted on how they are doing and let me know what your plans are for the shrimp.
 
I put a pair in last month but only see one and highly doubt the other is there. So I just bought another second Harlequin shrimp. I hadn't found another pair at the store since then. I'm just going to see how this goes for now. I'm fine with slow and steady. The nardoa sounds like it might of been an answer but now with my luck the Harlequins will probably go straight to it and eat it instead haha! Probably would of had to pick one or the other. I have a 29 gallon biocube for seahorses (which I haven't restarted after our move yet. They had all slowly died after living for about 2 years. Life happened since the move that I haven't wanted to be that tied down yet). So even if I run out of starfish in this tank I'll be able to supply at least two harlequin shrimp indefinitely. I'll let this one out on the opposite side of the tank so even if they don't get along there is enough space to have two different territories. Honestly even if I wanted to send them over to your house after I finally get in control of the starfish I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be able to catch them again.I also read about Bongo Shrimp as a Harlequin alternative if you want anything different. I was more concerned they looked to frail for my tank and the tangs would eat them. Also I've only seen one at Dallas North Aquarium and it was $60. Too expensive to test. Also my wife thought the Harlequin were cuter so I went for them.
 
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