George the Fish

I haven’t put much on here for a while, that that’s daft because plenty is going on. I thought I’d get all the irritating stuff out of the way in one post (apart from the Seneye, which deserved its own), and then I can do the nice stuff after that.

So, in no particular order:

• Nitrates high, endless water changes, still high. Did a bit of research (we’re still very new to this) and realised that the skimmer wasn’t skimming. Pete prodded and poked it a bit and got it going but in the meantime we bought a better one from the classifieds on Ultimate Reef, but didn’t get round to putting it in until Saturday evening. This meant completely emptying the sump of everything but the water, by my word did it skim some stuff. But. See below.
• Have replaced the metal halide light of electricity bills of dooooom with a couple of neat PAR LED lamps from LED Pacific, one daylight white, and one with blue light too. The tank looks so much nicer. After reading up on how to modify an Ikea standard lamp fitting with the aid of sticky backed plastic and a washing up liquid bottle, we decided “Sod it”, and bought a couple of Boost LED fitments, which we bought from Aquatic Components, and a more helpful company it would be hard to find. Unfortunately, Lilith has taken to sleeping on the tank (photo to follow), but thankfully it does have a glass lid, so I just have to remove bits of plush out of the tank from time to time, and the fish don’t seem to mind.
• The tank temperature was hovering around 28C, despite us turning the heater down and down, so we bought a new one from eBay, although we didn’t get round to fitting it till Saturday. See below. The tank’s plumbing has always been a bit iffy, in that George the Yellow Tang tends to pull his seaweed off the clip, and it disappears into the outlet pipe and clogs it up. I came down on Sunday morning, feeling quite unwell (no, not a hangover, thank you), to find the sump very low, the tank very high, the whole thing making alarming gurgling noises. I tried to adjust the valve, but to no avail, so bailed for a bit, before turning everything off at the mains.

  Pete arrived downstairs to save the day, sorted out the levels, fitted the new heater, turned everything back on, and. No pump. Was dead and refused to restart. Arse. So he took the pump off the new skimmer to be just a pump, and put the old skimmer back in to keep it going until we could go and get a new one (thank $deity for Sunday shopping). And in so doing, he broke the new heater which had only been in, you’ll recall, since Saturday night.

  We went and bought a new heater for twenty quid from Frisby Aquatics, but they are freshwater/tropical only, so didn’t have a suitable pump, so we went over to the place at Skirlaugh and picked up a nice solid chap (£84.99 – scream), and came home and got it all fitted up. And it all works but my word, it’s noisy. However, the water is clearer than it’s ever been, the temperature is where it should be, and that should be that on George expense this month (apart from the little foray to Interfish on Saturday, which I’ll tell you about later).

• Oh yes – I suspect the guilty party is George the Royal Gramma; one of my zoas has completely disappeared, and I saw Kelsey coming out of the rock just where it used to be. Getting it out would mean dismantling half the live rock, and I cannot do that to George the Yellow Tang, because he’d be spooked for days. I shall dock Kelsey’s pocket money.
• Note to self: started vodka dosing today.

We said we were new to this. We were getting brown muck on the glass, checked the levels, and the nitrates were sky high. Turns out the protein skimmer wasn’t skimming. I have a new (to me) one on its way via someone on Ultimate Reef.

A bit of joggling and cursing, and Pete got it going, but it has stopped bubbling again and we don’t know. why.

Have done 35l over water change over the past two days, and the levels are done to something more sane, and have another 25l to go in tonight, but we’ve lost the new torch coral that we only bought on Saturday (so pissed off about this – it was lovely, and if I’d only checked the nitrates when I saw the brown gunge …), and I suspect the smaller leather coral is going to follow it.

Ho hum. I guess we’ll have more things go wrong in future, but it’s quite gut-wrenching all the same.

In other exciting news (well, it is to us), we hate the metal halide light on the tank – it buzzes, and eats electricity, so we have bought a couple of LED spotlights from LED Pacific. We shall call into Ikea Leeds on our way to Wales next week and pick up some suitable lamp fittings.

Still gutted about the torch coral though.

Here are some photos – they’re a bit grainy because I managed to spook the yellow tang, and he kicked up the substrate, so I didn’t bother with any more until he’s calmed down a bit; he does tend to be a bit nervous.

George the small coral by ramtops, on Flickr

George the leather coral and George the Clown Fish by ramtops, on Flickr

George the Yellow Tang by ramtops, on Flickr

George the Royal Gramma by ramtops, on Flickr

astrea turbo snail

We ordered a half dozen of these little chaps from Fishmansfrag (the stock and service is lovely, the site … not so much :) - they arrived promptly yesterday, very well packaged and with comprehensive acclimatisation instructions.

I followed these to the letter – left the bag in the tank for about 90 minutes, then put the snails and their water in a large jug, and used the provided siphon tube and tap to drip water into the jug over two hours. By the end of this period, the water in the jug was really quite cold, and I was concerned for the critters, but they are now beavering about in the tank, doing whatever Astrea snails should do, although not in a particularly turbo fashion, it must be said.

As for the other new arrivals, the starfish has done a cracking job of cleaning all the gravel.  The tang eats practically his own weight in seaweed a day (well, not quite but … I’ve run out until the order arrives so I’m trying spinach,but with little hope that he’ll like it). He’s still quite nervous, but has found some nice routes round the tank to nip off if someone comes near.

Kelsey Gramma has adopted as his home a piece of rock with many small holes in it, and darts in and out of those, and the fire shrimps spend their time at the back of the tank, but come out for brine shrimp. All settling down very well.

I have a fair amount of brown gunge on the inside of the tank glass – I don’t think it’s algae (at least, the snails aren’t touching it), so I’m going to have a go at scraping it off. But … since the new creatures and corals went in, suddenly it is a tank of wonder. We spend a lot of time every day just watching it, and I find it almost impossible to pass it without stopping for a look – there is even a viewing bench in the shape of a footstool. So glad we started this.