wasp

With regard to your test results, the nitrate rising while the other two are staying the same is likely because ammonia and nitrite eating bacteria are nearly up to strength and converting it all into nitrate, which will probably continue to rise for a while yet. Takes several months in new rock for nitrate eating bacteria to get established. Nice anemone Zev!

Not exactly complicated aquascaping but i like it Fmxmatt it's very attractive. Once you got some corals in there plus a few little fishies it's going to be one of the good ones ! Wouldn't add any corals while there is ammonia but that will be over in a week or two, many of them can handle some nitrite. Trouble with anemones is you would need a lower light needing one such as a bta, and they tend to wander around till they find the right spot, and in that size tank would be best put in before too many corals, as the anemone will sting any it runs into, or get stung by them. But you cannot add an anemone until all ammonia and nitrite are gone, likely to be 6 -8 weeks, unless there is sufficient cured rock to deal with the waste coming from the uncured. The presence of nitrate is a good thing it shows that nitrite eating bacteria are already operating. In another week or so you will know with more certainty if you will have an ammonia or nitrite spike. The lighting is borderline for an anemone but IMO anyway, I think a bubbletip could live in there.

Not sure about this brittlestar but just thought i'd give it a shot. I do have a few native invertebrates in the tank although most of them are rarely seen, some have been there several years. Agree with Mystic though a lot of native stuff will not last too long.

I can see a bit of stinging wars coming up when those corals get bigger! You could try a couple of small rock pool shrimps, in a small tank they are really cool cos you look at them closely and see a lot. I used to keep some of them in a tank on my desk which meant I spent a lot of time watching them, surprising how they live & what they do, each one has their own personality. i actually think they are more intelligent than we realise. (silly as that may sound :oops: )

Ah, that would be why there have never been any young ones. Pity. Coelacanth, David, if I ever saw eggs again, what would you think to me putting them in a small tank with no pump or skimmer, just a heater. Would they survive the free swimming stage? TM, long time no see! :lol: Yes I remember now you selling them under that name, and yes you are right, that is probably what they are.

Thanks for that, Wow, what a helpful bunch of people! I think it's a mottled brittlestar, a NZ native, the picture is similar and the description of the armplates is the same. Going by the behavioural description it will be a great addition to a tank. Quote "f019023: the mottled brittlestar (Ophionereis fasciata) [weki huna] does not move by means of its tubefeet but walks on its arms quickly to safety. It is seldom found in the open, but lives underneath stones or inside cavities from where it extends its arms. It feeds on plankton and detritus. Food sticks to mucus and is then transported to the central mouth by many almost invisible tubefeet." What surprises me they are described as common. Don't think I've ever seen one before, a few smaller ones of a different more skinny species, but not that one. Reading those links it was also surprising just how many different brittlestars we have in NZ, seems we have a ton of them!

Yes, thought of that, but it's not one of those dreaded green fish eating machines, so i thought i'd try it. Would be nice to get an ID but not really sure where to do this.

Went to the rocks at Takapuna boat ramp today to get some limpets, and look what i found! He will be going in the tank tommorrow. These things must have a hard life in the wild, you can see every one of its tentacles are recovering from injury.

Yes it is absolutely possible to run the tank without a cannister and in fact it is desireable to run it without a cannister. Do you have coral rock in the tank? I'm not going to say no external filtration because that might include a skimmer. However if there is no nitrate then it's not an issue, although it is a little surprising to be running two large cannisters but not have any nitrate. What brand of kit are you testing with? Reef Plus is a different product to Reef Solutions. Also just an edit what I said before that I didn't have any fish with lateral line disease, not quite true I have actually had fish with lateral line disease, back in the 80's when I had a FO system with an undergravel filter. The latest technology at the time :lol: .

Personally i wouldn't go so far to say external cannisters are not a problem, they can be a pretty major problem but some people will get away with it if the rest of the system can cope with the problems caused by the cannister. To find out if the cannister is a problem test nitrate (not nitrite). If there is nitrate then removing the cannister will help, assuming of course you have liverock in the tank. However a low level of nitrate is acceptable, just what that level is varies from one organism to another. If nitrate is below 20 then keep the cannister but if nitrate is above that removing it will help. In fact that is why I suggested looking at the cannister, when you said lateral line disease, i immediately thought you probably got a cannister or undergravel filter. The electric current thing has been discussed for years on overseas boards, some believe it is the cause although again it's never been proved. While my personal opinion is it is not a cause, since you should really remove all possible causes, you can test for stray voltage with a Dick Smith voltmeter or similar, connect one end to an earth and the other end in the tank water. If there is anything you switch off each appliance in turn to find out which one is leaking electricity. The reason I'm not convinced about the electric current is i've had stray current in my tanks for years, with no lateral line disease. However that doesn't really prove anything i could have just got lucky. Your diet sounds not too bad, however in the wild angelfish eat more of a vegetarian diet and increasing vegetarian content might help, but might not. Brine shrimp are very low in useful nutritian and should be regarded as a treat rather than a staple food, they are the equivalent of potato chips for fish. Let's know what nitrate is, if you can test it. Don't just shut the cannister straight down, if it's doing a lot of filtration this could cause an ammonia or nitrite spike. You could probably shut one down, then a week or two later remove 1/2 the media from the other, than a week or two later remove the other completely. Testing ammonia and nitrite during this process to make sure there is no problem.

That's something i'd like to see a lot more of in NZ. Look at Goat Island! What an amazing place! Also glad to see the government has just brought in more realistic fish quotas, of course the fishermen are moaning, this is because the government has followed their usual practise of doing nothing for years then suddenly coming in with a sledge hammer.

Noone quite knows exactly what causes this disease but it is often associated with poor water quality, more so in the old days when undergravel filters or cannister filters were used. Cannot suggest an infallible cure, but 2 things will help, if nitrates are high do whatever it takes to get them down, and having done that try dosing a product called Reef Solution, it has been noticed over quite a few years that lateral line disease is virtually unknown in tanks using the miracle mud system and cures are often brought about by converting to miracle mud. Reef Solution is the basic ingredients of miracle mud without having to convert to the whole system.

Can you ID the food? If that were known a person could figure out wether to have one or not.

Good score. Yellow tangs are pretty but kole tangs are very cool.

Dogmatix, I think they are Ring Cowrie, Cypraea annulus. I got 10 of them from TM in Chch, about 1/2 were either DOA or died within the first week or two, then the rest have been fine have had them more than a year. TheConch you are exactly right, I had a look this morning where they were, and there was some slimy mucousy stuff there with little white dots in it, but it was waving around in the current obviously going to come off. If I'd had more time I would have syphoned it & hatched them in a seperate container.

looking in the tank last night & noticed the two cowrie snails next to each other. There was a tube type thing from one to the other, and the snails moved around a little but stayed together i'm assuming they were mating. Here is a pic although by the time I took this they were not in the origional position, the tube thing seemed to be gone but they stayed moving around hard up together. Sorry about pic quality, taken at night with a flash. I'm told that snails are hermaphrodites and each inseminates the other.

My coraline sharply stops at a line a few inches below the water surface, the level the tank gets drained to when I do a WC. Although it looks like all your coraline is bleached, even the low down stuff? The other biggies to check are kh, not too low, and phosphate, not too high. Did you use NSW or ASW? If Mg goes 1600 + it can interfere with coraline.

Well it does look like you have quite an algae battle on your hands , but i can see nice new growth tips on some of those sps. The bottom pic of the whole tank is nice, very attractive aquascaping and lots of interesting stuff in there .

Well not sure if they read the forum & know who Reef is, but Reef does send stuff down there to shops they may know him by his real name, Alois. If not you could pm Reef & sort something.

That's an interesting one Ira. Should post that on RC where there's more people and see if anyone else has had the experience and maybe discover if it's the toxins, the FWE, or what. One thing I know, if somebody would like to become a millionaire, invent an easily used cure for algae in marine aquaria.

I haven't looked at their refugium for a long time so not sure what species they have and where. One option would be to get a 5 dollar bunch of several types, place in your refugium, then eventually remove all but the best performer in your set up. The sexual thing, yes 24/7 lighting will solve it, like some people they don't often do it with the lights on! Although a stress event such as overheating can cause it even with 24/7 lighting, but in any case it will be rare, if ever, with 24/7 lighting, plus it's good for the pH.

With Ira that it could be repaired, however the phosphate reactor idea would also work well. You would probably place a circular sponge or similar above the venturi to make the water flow up through the media evenly and not have a dead spot.

The NZ chaetomorpha is a different variety, however it would be interesting to try. Like yourself I tried to collect some once but couldn't get any. The other caulerpa species at HFF are all OK for a refugium, just the sexual thing but you have to manage that. The "saw tooth" looking one is OK but slowish growing, although a lot better than the red one. The other species are even faster growing. The toxin thing is not such an issue if you just keep one species, so they are not waging chemical warfare with each other.

Unfortunately the chaetomorpha species used for refugiums is not available in NZ. But Hollywood Fish Farm have several Caulerpa species that can do a similar job, admittedly not quite as well as Chaetomorpha but it is the only option. Steer away from the red Caulerpa, nothing wrong with it but it's a slow grower hence not such good nutrient uptake.

Yes, sorry TheConch, I screwed up and made my previous post look like I was talking about the sun coral, which I think everyone knows is non photosynthetic, actually I was talking about the chili coral, so have edited my previous post to make this clear. Turns out the chili coral is quite a difficult coral to keep alive in most cases.