wasp

Very Impressive!

Here's the current forecast for high tide Thursday, not conducive to good clean water at Takapuna I'm afraid. Long time from now till Thursday though!

A few other thoughts, if he is not right in 24 hours it may be worth considering pulling him & placing in a seperate system where salinity could be increased a little more. Also, maybe a year or so ago I had a tang that became ill, it stopped eating, swollen belly and hid most of the time but would sometimes zap around, actually crashing into things,like it was in pain. After a few days of this I actually saw it happen, he did his zapping around thing & crashed into glass etc, then something must have freed up he did a HUGE amount of poos, there was stuff floating all over the tank. But from that moment he was completely normal, swelling gone, and behaving normal, made me feel better too . However in your case the obvious thing that is out of the normal is the hyposalinity & should be regarded as a likely cause.

Doesn't sound good, you need to sort this or death is likely. He may be swelling because with the water so close to his own salinity he is not able to flush his system properly. I think you should increase salinity to 1.009.

That is not an uncommon amount of evaporation. Assuming you have normal overflow type arrangement in your main tank, the drop in level will show in the sump not the tank. If you are not losing salinity, just fresh water, and topping up with fresh water, then that may just be the amount of daily top up you have to live with for your system. But if you are losing salinity then salt water is leaking somewhere, you will have to go find it. I'd say just replace it with fresh top up water, and monitor salinity daily so you can figure if it is just evaporation, or if it is an actual leak.

What fish are in there and how long are you going to give them?

Excellent. Odd about the rock though, was it working OK before you put it in hyposalinity? My rock continued to function fine throughout.

Great to see it all looking so healthy, and the excellent growth.

Good point Puttputt. When i used to use iron based phosphate resin, the pumps would clog up quicker than normal, and the buildup was orange or brown. I just assumed that some iron was getting mixed in with the calcium deposit, but now you mention magnetism, that may well explain why the iron tended to accumulate in the pumps.

CC is not the best IMO because it can accumulate & hold even more waste than normal sand, and it is within the pores so even vacuuming cannot get it out. There are other opinions on this though as some people want a biologically active sand. A few years ago I set up a tank that was a Muriwai biotope, with all the inhabitants gathered from Muriwai. Was a little 2 footer, cold water, and had some of those really nice anemones. Unfortunately I did not have a camera then I wish I had some pics of it. For the substrate I used a mix of crushed shell and black sand, both from Muriwai. Never tested the water for iron but there did not seem to be any issues. As the sand does not actually go rusty, I assumed it must be bound in some inert form, although I don't understand the chemistry of that sand. What I found though was it looked good at first, but the sand was very fine & fell down below the crushed shell, which all came to the top. Eventually I replaced the whole lot with aragonite.

Wind is forecast turning more easterly friday evening so last guaranteed really good high tide will be Friday lunchtime. Went down last night to fill the rest of my containers the water was like glass

Pretty much any NZ beach sand is fine, but may need a good clean. Also the grain size will often be too small, best to get it yourself, on some beaches the tide has sorted it into areas of different sizes so you can get what you want.

Excellent!

Thanks Kyle, all good now.

Movie didn't work for me, anything I need to know to make it go?

I like the one with the beadlet? anemones, how was that set up with lighting & flow?

Just thought I'd post that for you guys that have not been able to get decent water for a while. I went down & collected at high tide last night water was crystal clear. Should last as long as the South Westerly continues.

Kyle that is Excellent! You did not mention that you designed it all yourself! Great Job!! Looking forward to following your progress.

Yes.

Have you got plenty of flow in there? That will help with the biological filtration. When I did hypo I found the salinity could be dropped to just about 1.008, to provide a slight buffer against it getting too high. Would not go past that though the fishes own salinity is 1.007.

Sorry Feelers your post covers my last post, didn't see your post till after I posted.

By the way, you can't use just any rock. It must be coral rock, as sold for marine tanks by LFS's.

Sounds like a good scheme Penejane, I think a lot of us gradually accumulate stuff unnoticed! :lol: Live rock, is as you correctly surmised, simply dead rock, which has been left in water for long enough for it to get full of bacteria to do the filtration. If your LFS will sell you rock that is already "live", so much the easier. However if you get dry rock, which will sometimes be cheaper, you simply make it live by leaving it in salt water for normally 6 weeks. Easiest way is to put it in your tank, some flow via a powerhaed or two is needed, and then around 6 weeks later it is done, or as they say, "cycled". You test the water along the way to see how it's going. First couple of weeks the water will contain ammonia, then as this gets eaten it will contain nitrite. In around 6 weeks the nitrite will drop to zero as the bacteria that eat it get up to strength, and you are ready to go. In view of budget, an ammonia test kit is not essential, just a nitrite one so you can determine when the rock is finished & ready for fish. You may know a friendly reefer who could loan you a nitrite kit to do a few tests. The correct order to set up the tank is to put together the tank, water, heater, rock & powerheads. Once the rock is cycled lighting & livestock can be added.

Dr. Wasp's relational advisory services! :lol: Actually having a marine tank seems to put a strain on many relationships & dealing with it correctly is important. I've seen several reefers forced to sell up & quit because they were not able to take their partner along with them, & eventually the crap hit the fan & it was ultimatum time. My wife is not interested much in the tank, and I guess not everybody is, so I've just had to go slow & stay within the boundaries, better that than causing a simmering resentment or something!

Well you can certainly do that, & it will not cost much. For 67 litres and the low bioload you suggest, 6 kg rock will be adequate. If you buy it dry & cure yourself it is often around $10.00 per kilo. Better filtration will be had by getting a few bigger pieces rather than lots of small stuff. For clowns, the commonly available False Percula would be the most suitable in a small tank. These stay relatively small, and are also relatively non aggresive if you add other fish later. Get the smallest two you can find so that one will become a female & you will end up with a mated pair. A tank like that with a couple of clowns & cleaner shrimp will be awesome. In fact my first "reef" was almost exactly the same size, and had an anemone, 2 clowns, and a cleaner shrimp. No skimmer. My wife thought the clowns were ciute & that gave me leverage to spend more money :lol: . It is likely that some time down the track you will want to get a skimmer, and when you do you will see an immediate improvement in general "happiness" of the tank.