samuel88

my nitrates are 2.5 ppm, phosphates not sure, but if nuisance algae is an indication it shouldn't be too bad since i don't notice any nuisance algae. I'm a bit hesitant about adding SPS corals to this tank now after listening to all the advice, and the last time i tried adding a birdnest coral the sexy shrimps stripped half of it white and i had to move it to another tank. haha, think i'll wait awhile more before adding SPS, haven't thought about how many of them i want to keep, i'll just add them one at a time and see how well i can maintain the calcium and trace element levels.

my ammonia, and nitrite were at 0 during the second or third week, so i'm pretty sure it was cycled already, i'm sure that my water quality is good cause i do weekly water changes and my nitrates are at 2.5 ppm. and the 2 sexies are the only live stocks that died, i think 'kept dying' is a bit too strong a statement, haha. its more likely predation than water quality, cause i have a pistol shrimp in the tank and 2 hitchhiker crabs that have grown quite large but i think the pistol shrimp is more likely, but well, i'll never know for sure now.

Update 7 week 8 nothing much has changed this week just changed water yesterday. so rather than talk about it, today i'll just be showing pictures.

i have a 5 gallon tank, 8 inches tall, 1.5 feet in length. currently i'm using aquazonic T5 lighting, 1x16 watts super sun, and 1x16 watts actinic bulb. if i wish to keep SPSes is this amount of lighting sufficient? if i should upgrade please give me some suggestions. thanks.

Update 6 week 7 I've just done a water change today. and i've also added a new coral, a branching frogspawn i believe. I also have bad news, 2 of my 5 shrimps have died, not due to water quality i would assume since i'm sure i'm understocking. I saw my pom pom crab chew on the body of my sexy shrimp but i seriously doubt it was him who killed the shrimp. I think the prime suspect would be the pistol shrimp, cause i've seen a video of them killing a cleaner shrimp before and i have been hearing clicking noises from my tank a bit more often. New branching frogspawn coral Here's some pictures of my new coral which i intended for my sexy shrimp to host in, they do hang around it at times but they're not as 'sticky' to the coral as i thought they would be. Livestock so right now i'm down to 3 sexy shrimp, i hope that i won't have anymore deaths. 2 pom pom crabs, the pregnant one actually gave birth! i couldn't take a picture of the larvae cause they were too small but it was an amazing sight to see, hundreds of little babies swimming around. but the next day they were all gone, i'm not sure where they went, hopefully some of them survived. and the pistol shrimp which i'm sure killed my sexies. mushroom corals are doing alright, most of them still not looking too good except for the orange one i'm not sure if u can see from the big picture. I also have a montipora digitata frag in the tank but its a little hard to see. Future plans i'm going to try adding some light demanding corals since for my tank size i think the light's pretty decent. but that'll probably be in a few weeks. If touch wood my sexies all die, i'll probably get a shrimp that can host in the frogspawn. That's all and thanks for reading.

cause i read that they actually grow faster when placed sideways because of a stronger base, and in the wild, when frags of SPSes break away from the mother colony they usually land on their side so its more natural, and due to the uneven shape of some frags its a bit hard to glue them on the side.

i think sponges would be a great choice too, since they're mainly filter feeders, and some really look nice but i heard they're kinda hard to keep alive.

hi, i'd just like to know, if its possible, to for example, take a acropora frag, and instead of gluing it to a rock or something, can i just place it side ways among the rock work, assuming i don't have any critters that will knock the frag around.

how's ur tank inhabitants doing i do hope they're alright. do update us.

hmmmmm, yeah i have been thinking about getting them a host coral, but i'm worried they'll eat the host too, haha. time to go coral shopping!

many books and sites list them as reef safe though, have you tried birdnest coral? i swear to god they really especially like to eat birdnest. last night saw all 5 of mine on top of the coral thought they were just 'cleaning' it. so sad. the other corals they harrassed didn't get wiped clean like the birdnest.

hi, i'd just like to share some things that i found out about these supposedly reef safe shrimps yesterday i put in 3 bird nest coral frags, 1 monti digitata, and 2 plating montiporas into my sexy shrimp tank, the moment i put them in, the sexies started to crawl all over them, they only gave the plating monti and digitata a little browse, but they went CRAZY over the birdnest coral,i took out 2 frags to put into another tank just in case, and sure enough, the next morning the frag that i left in the tank, was STRIPPED BARE, (completely white!) i googled a bit about it, and it seems that they have a taste for birdnest corals even when they were well fed. previously i had mushrooms as well, i have green striped, blue, brown, and orange mushrooms. and they seem to love nibbling at thy green and blue ones, while leaving the orange and brown ones alone mostly. so the thing i wanna say is, they may be reef safe, but they certainly have a taste for certain corals.

Hi guys, is anyone selling SPSes like acroporas and birdnest or the like? i'd prefer small frags like 2 inch tall, and i'm on a budget like 20 dollars. or is there any marine shop that has a large collection of spses?

if you inspect it properly and don't see anything wrong with it, and the price is ok with you there's not reason not to buy it.

just the bottom glass that can be seen at the right side seems a bit unsightly, but other than that looks good.

Update 5 week 5 Alright, today i just did a water change. No deaths so far which is good, the only thing is my sexy shrimps harassing my mushroom corals, and a lot of them aren't expanding like they should, but there's no real damage done. And.............. i had a surprise a few days ago! Rare pictures? Ok, maybe not, but a few days ago i found one of my pom pom crabs holding a sac of eggs on its body! Here's some pictures. Enjoy and thanks for reading!

Update 4 week 4 New corals a few days ago i bought some mushroom corals, they were doing fine but the sexy shrimp started to nibble a bit on them and as you can see from the picture some of them aren't fully expanding. they only nibble on them occasionally so i'm hoping that they'll ignore the corals sooner or later. Livestock all my critter's are doing great, which consist of 5 sexy shrimp 2 pom pom crabs 2 hitchhiker crabs 1 new discovered pistol shrimp with green claw! i couldnt take a picture of the pistol shrimp cause he's hiding all the time. Overall everything's going great, i just did a water change today, no casualties so far, i'm even seeing more growth, in terms of coralline algae and other colorful red algae. more feather duster worms are appearing all over the rocks. sand is pretty white all thanks to the shrimps and copepods. there's no nuisance algae really so i'm really glad. i had one pom pom crab who lost both anemones on his hands that i transfered to this tank that already had an existing pom pom crab. but i saw the existing one actually drop one of his pom poms for the other crab to pick up and then he split the anemone he had on one hand, so he now has two, and the crab that lost both now has one on his claw. and i've seen both crabs hanging around each other so i'm glad they're getting along. i hope there won't be any mishaps and i'll have this tank for a long long time. thanks for reading.

Update number 3 week number 3 week number 3, i'm pretty happy with how the tank's been coming along, if you compare this photo with previous ones you'll notice some of the algae is actually much more intense in colour, aside from the near crash i had this week that i posted a few days ago. i got pretty paranoid cause i'm not sure if it was just me or my water was a little milky, and i saw 2 dead bodies of my hitchhiker crabs and 1 dead body of my pom pom crab when the tank turned milky. but it turns out it was just their molt! quite surprised cause when i took out their exoskeleton i even tore it apart to check if their meat was inside, and it looked very convincingly to be their real body. Coralline Algae there's some coralline algae that's growing on my skimmer and on my HOB filter. i'm quite surprised that its growing so fast, i've never seen coralline algae appear in 3 weeks in my tanks before. its usually the nuisance algae. i would attribute it to 2 things. The crabs and shrimp are always nibbling at the algae on my live rock and causing bits and pieces of them to floating around the tank i haven't fed the tank in 2 weeks! cause i've always seen them nibbling at the live rock i don't really see a need to supplement their diet. so the water quality's pretty good. so that's all, all 5 shrimp and pom pom crab are alive and well. and i also managed to finally catch the pom pom crab from my other tank, and i've added him in as well, so thats 2 pom pom crabs! there's diatom growth in my protein skimmer though, but strangely its ONLY there, and the rest of my tank is pretty clean. I'll probably clean out the skimmer soon. Thats all for this update. Thanks for reading!

thanks i'll look into it

its strange cause when i pour it in with a few days interval at a time its fine, but less than 24 hours in between shit happens, doesn't seem to matter what the amount is as well. i made a small condensation tray to place over my tank so it won't evaporate so fast. anyway, i have another tank right now that's empty with only live rock, and a few lil zoanthid looking things that have survived all the crashes, i'm gonna try all the triggers on this tank, and see what happens. i think i'll let the tank mature for a few months before i start using up my money again T_T

yup definitely distilled water. dunno why mine got problem when i do it frequently =(

i also thought about the topping up and destroying my beneficial bacteria, i used air line dripping method also died.its very puzzling thats for sure.

i use a swing arm hydrometer to measure my salinity.

thanks for the info, but i think mine was a bacterial bloom, it was white cloudiness, i'm not sure if algae blooms look the same. and my tank doesn't have any nuisance algae so i'm not sure about that. my daily water top offs shouldn't be the problem but its kinda too coincidental cause it's happened too many times. may be some variables that i've overlooked, but i guess i just have to do what works for me.

yup, the level was 1.023 and i don't have any corals at all, only live rock and sexy shrimp,