wasp

Wow, was that thing actually running like that!!! Yes I remember you saying you were having problems, same kind of thing as Chimera, or different?

Nice one Zev! I'm heading over there in a couple of weeks so now I'm really looking forwards to it. Some things we don't normally see over here, also one tank that seems to be thick with algae I presume that is intentional? Hey wouldn't it be sweet scoring a job looking after the marine tanks in a place like that!

True actually! I have in times past had the odd rusty thing laying around in the tank & just left it there. Now I'm dosing it because the zeovit iron is extremely cheap, cents a month, and by dosing I know exactly how much is going in. The thing is, an iron overdose can give the symptoms Chimera has, so while we are clutching at straws looking for a reason for his issues it would make sense to remove this source of iron. And in addition as others said, if it is some sort of alloy it could be leaching some other undesireables into his water.

Nitrate 10 is OK.

Their natural behaviour at night is to snuggle & bob right into the anemone where they will be safe for the night. If they don't have an anemone or do have one but have not figured it out yet, at night they will go to whatever they think is the safest place, and behave as you describe.

Should have added also, cannister filters tend to promote nitrate buildup in marine aquariums, and anemones, especially sick ones, are very intolerant of too much nitrate. If you could test your water for nitrate & let us know, people will be able to give some good advice on this.

Answering those questions will help. Another observation, from the pic it appears the anemone is "bleached", in other words, it has been stressed at some point and has expelled most of it's zooxanthellae. This is not really the shops fault it is a common occurrence during the shipping process. When this happens they will often tend to run away & tend to hide from the light. Chances of survival are probably 50 / 50. What you can do to give it the best shot, is allow it to settle in wherever it decides to go, and keep a light to moderate current on it, just enough to allow it's tentacles to sway a bit. If it goes to some completely unlit place, give it a few days, then try to gently re arrange things a bit so it will get some light. You can try feeding it also, a small piece of chopped mussel is ideal. If it just won't eat, get a worm from the garden, chop to a small size, and drop into the anemone, the wriggling will often trigger a feeding response, you may have to hold the worm there with tweezers just until the anemone grabs it. Feed small portions, too big and the anemone may barf it up again. If no joy with the feeding, just leave a day or two then try again.

Assuming it is pure iron, a little is a good thing, I dose iron to my tank each day. But too much can cause problems for the zooxanthellae and consequently bleaching and bright colours to the corals, exactly as you have been experiencing. Hard to say how much is too much though, personally I would have doubted that a little dripping off a bearing would be too much for your tank, but as the symptoms of your corals have been right in line with an iron overdose, perhaps this is the issue. Anyhow, presumably you have resolved the iron drip now, be interested to hear back in due course if this has fixed the problem. Wouldn't it be such a bummer to go through all this heartache just from such a simple thing!

Mine is an Aqua Logic Nema 4x, I used to run the fans on a timer as you are thinking of doing, and that is certainly a good cheap option. The controller just makes things a bit better and also gives me comfort that things will not overheat on those occasional very hot nights we get when the timer would not have had the fans on. There are a couple of guys selling temperature controllers in the For Sale section, plus there are some more guys on the forum, who may wish to chip in, who can supply or make them. http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/digita ... 16716.html http://www.fnzas.org.nz/fishroom/digita ... 16736.html

OK well here's one with a similar theme, from when I was a young guy flatting in Gisborne. My flatmates Dad had a boat & somebody borrowed some skis. None of us had skied before but we headed to the beach to give this a shot. There was another boat skiing so we watched for a while first. These guys were pros & when they finished they would swoop in near the beach, let go the rope, and cruise in just stopping at the water edge to give the skiis to the next guy. So the first one of our guys to get the hang of it and actually stand up on the skiis, was also the guy who always knew / could do everything :lol: . So he actually did pretty good, skied around a bit then thought he would imitate the other guys & let go of the rope & glide into the beach. Trouble was he mis calculated and came in way faster than he meant, hit the beach super fast & catapulted out of the skiis, hurtled up the beach, and was eventually stopped by the other flatmates car, which he put a major dent in with his head! :lol: :lol: This whole thing was witnessed by everybody on the beach, causing huge amusement. He told me later that he got hurt pretty bad & was furious at everybody running round laughing but couldn't do anything cos he was half knocked out! :lol: BTW he was a panelbeater so was able to fix the guys car. :lol:

There would be little point having one blowing in, and one out, because where the one blowing out is, you could simply have a hole, and the other one blowing in would cause the air to be expelled anyway. I use fans for cooling and found it most effective when the fan is pointing at the water at a bit of an angle, blasting strongly enough to cause reasonable disturbance to the water surface. I've actually done tests on this, albeit not very scientific, but am certain that blowing onto the water surface fairly hard is most effective at cooling. So, if it were me, I'd have both fans blowing inwards, at such an angle as to cause disturbance at the water surface. Allow some means for this air to be able to exit the hood reasonably unimpeded also. Another thing, this can cause quite an increase in evaporation, need to consider that with whatever your top off system is. But this is nessecary to get the full amount of cooling. For venting, you may or may not wish to vent air in, out, or both. My fans are on a temperature controller, in order to attempt to imitate nature and get a gentle rise in temperature during the day, rather than a series of ups and downs, there is one fan comes on first, and this is followed by another if the temperature goes up another degree F. Then another degree F higher the chiller comes on which drops it back to the cut off point of the second fan.

What's happening now?

Should fans suck or blow? Imagine you are eating dinner, and the potato on your fork is too hot to put in your mouth. To cool it, would you blow air on it, or, suck air off it?

Not any further improvement but still a little purple if you look for it. Anyhow i'll just keep on focusing on water quality & see what happens.

Hollywood Albany have it.

Tom if the clown dies, leave the tank with no fish for 6 weeks. Hard I know, but pointless putting more fish in to contract whatever nasty has been killing them. 6 weeks is long enough for most of these types of diseases to die because they do not have a host, the shrimps will not carry it. If the clown is still alive, try shining a torch on it after lights out, and looking at the skin not directly, but at the steepest angle possible. Do you see anything white & powdery looking on the skin? Particularly close to the gills.

The discussion will continue as long as people wish to keep having it. Shops have to charge more than wholesale that is how they live. I don't work for nothing either.

Thanks Ru

They are harmless, they filter anything they can from the water for food.

I think so, but we'll see!

Tubeworm?

Raeh1 and I swapped a few frags recently, he was to send me his one, an sps, in the mail last monday. Wednesday I contacted him to see if he sent it, and he said he had, we decided it would be stuffed by now as there was a cold snap. Friday it arrived, I don't know what NZ post did to it but the water was icy! Couldn't tell if it was alive, but put it in the tank. Looked pretty sad and shed some tissue over Saturday, but today, Sunday, showing some signs of life! Here is a pic of it, the one with the fresh putty. It has lost about 1/2 it's tissue, mainly in the lower areas, but the rest is alive and should be able to recover to a viable coral. Can't see in the pics but a slight tinge of green in the polyps. One tough little coral!

You can get a sick fish from any supplier. And the supplier may not know it either. The suppliers are in an impossible position. They get fish sent to them from all over, that have been mixed with other fish. An impossibility to expect disease free. Buyers risk I say, if every customer demanded compensation for every problem and the importers paid out, they would probably have to increase prices several fold or go out of business. Pretty much every reefer will sooner or later experience the heartache of losing a recently aquired beautiful fish. That should be an encouragement for the reefer to take responsability for their purchases by starting an effective QT and if needed treatment procedure for new arrivals. Me, I have a little QT tank, all new fish go in it for a few weeks observation. Once I'm happy with them, they go in the main. One thing to be aware of also, some fish may have been kept in lower than normal salinity. The water your fish comes in should be checked for salinity, increasing it too quick can cause problems, the fish may just fade away & die a few weeks later. If a QT tank is available, it is a simple matter to lower salinity to the same as what the fish was in, and increase this over a few days until it matches the main tank, simply by using salt water instead of fresh to replace evaporation. Fish with whitespot also cope better in a lower salinity.

Finally got a paper! Well Done!

He He! something similar happened to me once, I used to go kite fishing quite a bit with a Paul Barnes set up. Couple of years ago my son in law bought me the Paul Barnes Kite Fishing Video, as a gift. We watched it as a family, about 1/2 way through, while I'm getting a coffee, a big scream goes up and people are yelling for me. I come & have a look, and, I'm on it! I made a motorised kite hauler using an old 50 cc motorbike engine, which Paul had filmed me with, but I never knew this was on the video! :lol: But wait - there's more! Once the laughing dies down my wife says "Who's that woman you're with?" It was Pauls wife who happened to get into the shot :lol: