Achilles Tang

For those who need/want chaeto for nutrient export urgently, I currently have enough to fill this styrofoam box! Took me a couple of months to grow to this size so this monster has absorbed a lot of MH electricity already! As many of you know, chaeto has been my favourite and proven 'crash-proof' natural nutrient export mechanism for a year plus already and has put my monster beckett skimmer out of use actually plus helped reduce my electricity bill! Going by market rate in SRC, I want to let go at S$70. Not interested to sell to many parties separately so first to respond gets this! I'll also throw in a few 'pods that currently resides in this clump! But box not provided so bring your own please! Cheers, AT

You have to evaluate logically... what causes nitrates? Overstocking? Still cycling bio-filtration? OVerfeeding? Inadequate skimming? So you know the source... reduce it. Stop-gap measures like using a denitrating agent is just that.... stop-gap. Get the balance right and it'll become less worrying and time-consuming. Maybe your tank needs time to balance itself. We have no clue if your tank is one day or one week old. Try to give more detailed info, yeah? Help us to help you... right now we can't even guess what tank size, equipment you have, dude!

I've tried it before and so have many other reefers! Fact of the matter is: mussels don't survive long in a reef tank. They filter feed and frankly, there isn't enough food supply for them in the long term. They will perish after a while. Same for flame scallops and other big bivalves which don't can't produce their own energy supply like clams which photosynthesize.

Could be something got clogged inside the beckett valve. Break it apart and clean it. Could be some piece of solid debris... tiny snails, pcs of sand/rock/algae/floss etc affecting the air/water mix. Make sure your pump impeller isn't clogged either.

I don't think you should worry excessively. That looks too small to be even of any threat to fishes. A worm that builds a tube doesn't leave it.

Looks like some kind of tubeworm.... possibly a vermatid. should be harmless. Do you see stringy threads/webs coming out from it? Are the 'feelers' like feathers or worm-like?

Installing soon.

Besides the mud factor, there's a reason why the brackish water around mangrove swamps are brown in colour.... tannins! That's why we fishermen switch to brightly coloured lures around mangroves for a higher hit rate! But i doubt the number of mangroves in our sumps can affect the colour... we are talking very young and small saplings here.... not whole grown trees.

Besides making your water slightly acidic and brown.... I believe nothing serious. Its similar to the effect caused by placing driftwood in freshwater aquariums.... which discolours clear water.

Thanks Reefzzz for the kind offer! And thanks for clarifying that point up about tannins... I always thought that the root system itself would leach out tannins also. We learn something new everyday!

MMmmm... that's true about the poo part...

Remember not to expose your SH to air or air bubbles during any tank to tank/bag transfers or you'll get the dreaded 'bubbles under the skin' or the 'big airbelly' syndrome!

Nice rockscape! I'll be tracking your tank progress for sure!

If I were you and I had the time, I would try to ween off the seahorse from live mysis to dead ones. Try this: 1. Put the seahorse in a floating tank. 2. use a turkey baster to squirt live shrimp into the tank so it will get used to it as a source of food introduction. 3. slowly introduce frozen mysis (defrosted) in with the live shrimp and use the baster to blast the mix up so the SH can't tell the difference between swimming and non-live shrimp and still snap all of them up. 4. slowly move the mix to more and more frozen shrimp and eventually it will automatically wait for the turkey baster to introduce just frozen food. Voila! Try it!

Anyway, if I had the space and time, I would have loved to keep a mini-mangrove swamp sump tank in my house and fill it with mudskippers and fiddler crabs... but that would mean the mud would smell plus I hope it don't attact sandflies and other undesirables!

Snails do release sperm clouds but its in very thin milky-like puffs... not with little 'bits' like what you see here.... hmmm... the mystery deepens...

Nothing wrong with fish eating natural algae grown naturally in your own tank! One thing about Chaeto... it's almost indestructible! I have never seen chaeto die before and it increases in mass so fast that it has to be pruned regularly or you run out of physical space and because it is so tough... fishes will never consume it as fast as the other softer marine algae! Anyway.... forgot to add one point why I think mangrove has a few -minus points... they add tanin acids into the water, turning it brown... plus they don't oxygenate the water like chaeto... you can see thousands of oxygen bubbles rising up from a chaeto bunch! My 2 cents!

That species of anemones are naturally brownish with a greenish tint. If they are bleached white, then unscrupulous collectors/wholesalers will inject them with a bright coloured dye that will make them appealing to new hobbyists who don't know any better. Trust me... in a few days/weeks' time, the dye will wear off and you may even find it collected into your skimmer waste cup!

Vandeam: I believe that there are findings some time back that mangroves are not that cost-effective/efficient in nitrate removal compared to some other marine algae. Perhaps there is newer information that proves otherwise? Anyway true... experimentation is how people discover new things!

Quite noble but I wouldn't do it personally... I don't have that many tanks in my home to accomodate that much fish!

Pregnant shrimp wills carry a green pouch underbody... which turns whiter as the eggs mature and hatch... into tiny shrimp.

interesting... what's the opposite of 'eggs'?

I've have seen my banded shrimp release shrimp fry before.... and looking at the 'burst' coming out from it.... looks like it! Can you siphon out/stop water circulation to see if the tiny dots are shrimp-like in shape/movement? That is, before the fish finish eating them!

Why don't you guys try chaetomorpha? I have disconnected my beckett skimmer for many many months and just use chaeto now! They grow like weeds and easy to harvest!

Yes they do stake out their own territories sometimes... i've a feeling that your two anemones may not last that long either.... they look like they have been dyed.