tHEcONCH

Most of the rock was just dead bits from the pile at Organism, but one smaller piece came from his holding / sales tanks. I assume the rest of the critters have just hitchhiked on corals and begun to populate the rest of the tank. That dubious looking thing coming out of the zoos is some kind of worm, but I don't really know too much about it. It doesn't seem to do much other than wave around occasionally.

A few shots of random night lurkers... (sorry about the picture quality - my camera really isn't too good in low light)

Marvin!

Thanks for that - my skimmer is still not 100%, but definitely better. Good to know that the impeller is assembled correctly.

Scroll down to the bottom of this page for another RSM fan cooling option... http://www.ultimateaquatics.co.uk/acata ... a_Max.html

Hi and welcome! - could you give us some more details on your tank? How big is it / what filter do you have - that sort of thing.

I don't think it would - it looks a little too deep - the Deltec MC500 seems like the best (albeit pricey) option - in fact I wouldn't be suprised if the RSM was configured with that in mind at some point, a little like the Jewel tanks are. My only concern is trying to remove the glass veins for the standard skimmer - the last thing I need is a cracked tank. It would be nice to get the stock skimmer going properly.

Have you heard about the straw that broke the Camel's back? I would strongly recommend that you buy a bigger tank, rather than another fish. Your tank is VERY overstocked, and it will end in tears (yours, as well as the fish's). You can expect any outbreak of disease to destroy all of your fish in very quick time in a tank that size. I'd recommend you sell one or two Bristlenoses now (smaller ones are easier to sell than big). Live plants are a very good thing to have in a tank because they help balance out some of the waste products in the tank, and also promote populations of other useful (sometimes invisible) creatures in the tank - and they look nice. Good luck

Epsom salts work by giving the fish 'the trots' - by clearing out its bowel, gas from the swim bladder can exit the fish via the bowel and it can control its bouyancy. If Epsom salts havn't worked, then it is likely that the fish has an infected swim bladder and the passage between it and the bowel has swollen shut. The only way to cure that is with a systemic antibiotic like Metro, but that doesn't come cheap (and you'll need a prescription to buy it), so you can either source some of that, wait and hope it comes right, or euthanise the fish and replace it. Hard choice.

I decided to 'blueprint' the skimmer at the weekend and make sure that everything was as it should be, and low-and-behold I discovered that the plastic sleeve of the impeller was cracked, allowing the magnet to move about - after fitting a new impeller, the performance of the skimmer is noticably better. Curiously though, both the old and new impellers had both of the pink end-cap bushes on the lower end, rather than one at each end to retain the ribber caps. Odd. Any other Max owners out there4 feel like pulling the intake off theirs and seeing if it is the same?

Unfortunately if you use something like that you just remove the food source you need to grow the bacteria, so you just end up delaying the problem.

Yep, its even produced when they breath. You really just have to wait for the bacterial population to grow. I was also pouring a lot of filterstart in to try and speed things along, but it got quite expensive.

Yep - I had awesome deltoids after that :lol:

When I first bought home my pair of Oscars (they were returned to the shop once they got too big for the original owner's tank) I had to change 200 litres a day for three weeks before the tank could handle the bioload. On one hand you need to remove the toxins (ammonia etc), but on the other you end up dumping a lot of good bacteria down the drain at the same time. Just keep changing water - and perhaps put your product in the filter, rather than straight into the tank.

Eeekkk!!! That's a good point - in fact now that you've jogged my memory I think I read somewhere that you use Palytoxin to make poison tipped darts / arrows - should you need some.

Have you tried using a filter seeding product like JBL filterstart, Cycle, etc? I'd do a big change (as much as you can manage, then use something like that to kick-start the process.

Just wedge them into a hole as best you can - they'll eventually get a grip themselves as they start to grow.

You've just isolated both the biggest strength and weakness of forums - they give equal voice to everyone, even those that don't know anything.

Just get something (nail file / skewer / tweezers) under a polyp or two and prize them off the rock, then just tear or cut them away from the ones around them. It seems to work best if you can get 3-4 off together. They will spit brown crud all over you - do not be alarmed.

Just clever its head off with a big knife! (This method is not recomended for spastics)

Excellent! You'd be amazed what they will recover from - they are actually a real pain to remove!

I'm hoping for a couple of small bits, just to finish everything off

Given that you are down to just a couple of fish, it might be time to do a complete stripdown/restart and run a little test at the same time. Buy some new filter pads, some filterstart / cycle / or similar, and age some water a day or two before (as much as you can reasonably store). Put the BNs in a bucket of old tank water and put it somewhere warmish for an hour whilst you completely empty your tank and filter. Wash everything (including filter) thouroughly with salty tap water (just use a handfull or two of common household salt), then take the tank outside and rinse it thoroughly. Once you are absolutely sure everything is rinsed, dry it off with a clean towel and reassemble the tank, heater and filter with new pads etc and fill with your new aged water plus a water ager if you have it. Don't put anything else in the tank (bare bottom) Toss in the filterstart and fish, and do normal waterchanges for a week or so (test for the usual signs of cycling - do a water change if anything gets too high). If everything seems OK after a week then you can probably conclude that whatever is killing your fish was in the tank and is now out; if not, then you know you have some sort of external contaminant. If all goes well then you can reintroduce gravel etc, although I'd strongly recommend you heat sterilise it (boiling water), and then new plants etc. Good luck.

You're right - perhaps we got a bit carried away. Happy Valentines Day

I think you are right on the money - a lot of tanks have very poor gas exchange due to a lack of circulation within the tank and particularly poor water surface movement which causes poor aeration, a weak biofilter, and also allows algae to grow. I've managed to get enough from just a spraybar, but it has a big pump on it. Another thing people often overlook is floating plant leaves, like on Tiger Lotus etc - they do a pretty good job of halting gas exchange, so it is worth keeping them in check too.