Re-Constructing Tank

J

Joncelone

Membership Expired
It has been eight months with my tank and I'm happy with some of the things I've accomplished with it, but not with others.

Things I like:
-The hardware.
-The fish.
-Some of the coral.

Things I'm annoyed with:
-The rockscape.
-The beastly peppermint shrimp that owns the place.
-The quick snail die-off.
-The never ending red algea and diatoms.
-The corraline taking over the glass.
-The annoying corals like shrooms and texas trash palys taking over.

My setup is currently the Biocube HQI. This is the one with the HQI light and glass top combo as well as the nice back chamber setup which I have cheato and calurpa(sp?) on a grow light in the middle chamber. I'm also using, for fun, the stock biocube skimmer it came with and I have a chiller hooked up. I do 10% water changes every two weeks and I feed one small cube of brine shrimp every evening.


I'm looking to redo the insides, though, and have some questions about it.

1. The feasible way to do this would be to move what I want to keep to a temporary tank (rock, fish, inverts)?
2. Throw out majority of my current sand and get all new sand, then seed it with some old sand?
3. Since I'm saving fish and rock in another tank, get all new water and cycle it with half new rock?
4. Cycle all the new stuff for a month, then transfer everything back in?

I only ask because in all my experience with saltwater, I've never done anything like this, but in my head it makes sense. I welcome any and all input.
 
I think a couple of changes to the current setup would help: A 4-5 gallon water change weekly, and more flow. I had the red algea problems myself, and as soon as I put in the Hydor Flow thingy and a K1, no more red algea - except when I neglect the water changes. When I do them weekly, no issues, but if I wait 8 days, I start seeing algea outbreaks.

Im currently moving stuff from my cube to a 40B, and all Ive done is got it set up, and started putting my live rock in the new tank along with small stuff like snails and crabs and zoas. Not really worrying about a cycle since the good stuff is on the rock. Only reason I havent done it all at once is I am trying to prevent all bristle worms from making it into the new tank (they dont stir my sand bed, and I like being able to reach into my tank and not worrying about something painful happening).
 
I think the water changes might be my issue. I have two Koralia Nanos in there plus a Koralia pico for flow. My hammer and my fish seem to love the flow too. I'll try more frequent water changes.
 
Hi Jon!

Sorry to hear your snails dieing off, and about the cyano! Do the fish really need a whole cube every day? And how long do you run your lights? Some people turn the lights off for a couple days when they have this trouble. It did not help me, though. ChemiClean works wonders for cyano! I have diatoms in one spot on my sand right now - less flow there than anywhere else in the tank for a while. I'll point a powerhead down there.

I did not have any cyano in my tank for a year and a half, and then I bought 2 rocks with coral, and cyano on them. I thought that my "healthy tank" would defeat the cyano on those rocks. It did not! It spread. ChemiClean kills it! If you put anything that's in the tank now - sand, rock - back in the tank, I think you will be seeding it with cyano, unless you kill the cyano first.

Why would the snails be dying off? Aren't they usually the hardiest things in our tanks? When you need some more, I have some.

David
 
Hey David, thanks for the reply! The cyano and diatoms are pretty much only on my rocks. I might try realigning my flow I guess. I'm not sure what is causing the snail die off, but it kinda sucks. I run my lights from noon to 11PM everyday. I feed a full cube each night because I have a yellow headed jawfish, a fang blenny, a twin spot blenny, an onyx clown, and a purple firefish. I've watched all the fish eat multiple times and it seems like it doesn't get wasted at all.
 
What lights do you have? Metal Halide? 250 watt? 150 watt? 11 hours of metal halide is quite a bit, right? I run 35 watts of blue LEDs for 13 hours, and 78 watts of T5 for 11 hours on my 65 gallon tank.

David
 
Could a part of my problem be that I used pulverized limestone as my sandbed? I have a decently deep sand bed I clean every two weeks or so.
 
I don't think you should stir a deep sand bed. Doesn't that release nitrates into the water? I know Frank at Frank's Tanks cleans his sand, but it is only a couple of inches deep. He says not to vacuum a deep sand bed!

I just put pulverized limestone in one of my tanks, so I hope that it is not a problem! I expect that keeping nasarrius snails - sand stirrers - would be a good idea to keep the sand from compacting.

David
 
Well I don't stir it a lot. I have a good number of nassarius snails and a twin spot blenny that take care of that for me, but every once in a while, the twin spot will redecorate the sandscape kind of like an african chiclid and I'll go through and vacuum the shallow bed he makes in a certain spot.


I did discover a couple things last night that were going bad:

1. I had the biocube carbon filter over the middle chamber just for fun to see if the carbon would help. Well it collected debris and dirt and was clogging up the water.
2. A bunch of small snails got caught in the pump for my chiller so my tank temp rose to 81. My Chiller keeps it at a perfect 78.4 typically.

I also spent 30 minutes scraping coraline off my glass last night. I'm going to start feeding one cube every other night and cut back my light hours to 9 from 11 to see if all of this makes a difference.
 
Why not half a cube every night? They also sell the nano tank sized cubes, dont know if that is what you are using?
 
@C4rN4gE wrote:
Why not half a cube every night? They also sell the nano tank sized cubes said:
No, I just buy in bulk frozen food every few months. I guess I could do half a cube every night. The only pain would be pulling out a cube and cutting it in half every other night.
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