Tank parameters today (some need some work to get where I want them)

Calc: 480ppm

Nitrate: 10ppm-20ppm (need to lower. Trying Instant Ocean nitrate reducer)

Ammonia: 0

pH: 8.0-8.2 (need to raise just a touch)

Specific Gravity: 1.0215 (Need a raise a bit. My next top-off will be a saltwater top-off rather than RO/DI)

KH: 179ppm

Phosphate: 0.0

The Royal Gramma went into hiding right after the introduction of the blenny. I assumed it was because he was a little skittish and not used to the new fish. Well, we didn’t see him again and I am pretty sure the shrimp ate his corpse over night because he is nowhere to be found. After that the blenny started acting strange. Instead of hiding in a hole in the rock and peeking out to watch us, he curled up in the corner of the tank. We figured something bad was about to happen. He was dead the next morning. That evening we came home from dinner and a dead clown was half eaten by the cleaner shrimp.

We finally we would see what was happening. The last fish left, our other clown, had marine ick spots all over him. We did not see the ick present on any of the other, now dead, fish. We pulled him out and put him in quarantine and dosed with medicine. He was dead by morning.

The coral and inverts are still doing great thankfully. We now are going leave the tank fish free for a minimum of two months which actually works out perfectly (not that I am happy with dead fish) because we are buying a new house and moving the tank should be a touch easier without fish.

I am loving the color on my small frag of King Midas Zoanthids.

Small Frag of King Midas Zoanthids

Another awesome colony of Zoanthinds. I love how bright they are

Love the colors on these

Also got a green torch. I need them to do awesome so that I can get the $115 colony of Ultra Golden Torch. I need to figure out what is up with our lighting that makes the greens look yellow.

We just got a hang on back protein skimmer to replace our stock filtration. It is not installed yet because I need to move the tank another 2 inches away from the wall which is going to take some work.

Enjoy the pic of my sock in there too. I HATE SOCKS.

We picked a Conch to clean up the sand bed and a Bicolor Blenny, but they are being shy at the moment and wont let me get a picture.

We separated the Damsel from the rest of the tank with an in-tank net box. Everyone who told me catching a damsel is hard was not lying. I spent hours trying to coax it out of hiding. Finally I put 2-days worth of brine shrimp in the net and it swam right in.

The next morning we noticed it had a large white bubble forming around its eye. We immediately went to the store and picked up a 10g tank to use as a quarantine tank. We put the Damsel in there and dosed with some medication. Within 3 days it was all cleared up.

I am not sure what to do with the damsel or the quarantine tank now. I don’t particularly want to leave the quarantine tank setup because it is in our living room right by the display tank. I was thinking of two options. Giving the damsel back to the local fish store is option 1 and my preferred option. Then I would take the quarantine tank down and rebuild it somewhere more convenient. I have a really large counter in the guest bathroom and thought it could go in there. It wouldn’t look so bad if it had a couple pieces of live rock and some sand. Option 2 is making it into a second display tank in my living room. I think that is the route my fiance wants to go. She wants to put some sand in there, a Diamond Goby and a shrimp. She will likely win.

Obligatory pics:

Best pic I could get of the Gramma

1st Set of Zoas

2nd set of Zoas

Quarantine Tank

There was a massive frogspawn colony. I can only hope that someday my frogspawn colony will be 1/4 as large.

I wish I had more free time here because they offer snorkeling in one of their large tanks. Man, that would be fun.

While I was away my Fiance picked up a few new things for the tank. I think she got some Zoanthids. I will post some pics when I get back from my trip. I hope to get a video of my target feeding my frogspawn up this week too.

If you want to see all of the pictures I took (all with camera on my Galaxy Nexus so they aren’t that great) check them out here. https://picasaweb.google.com/107539342630976908226/DenverAquarium#

Below is a pic of the tank with LED lighting.

Below is a pic of the Kenya Tree Coral

I am really looking forward to my next coral. I want to get a good sized Green Star Polyp followed by some Sunflower Zoanthids.

The new crew:

New Test Kit:

With no intention of buying a tank when I walked in, I left after having purchased a 29g tank, stand and everything I needed for the initial setup. Joni and I were pretty pumped.

Josh, the owner of our local fish store delivered everything the following morning along with pre-mixed saltwater. Josh even set it up for us and explained everything he was doing so we could learn. With no fish in it, it was still beautiful.

We had only got about 12lbs of live rock as you can see in the image above, but we had a vision of what we wanted the rockscaping to look like so we went back a couple hours later and picked up 20 more lbs.

Above is what we initially did with the new live rock. I read quite a few horror stories about rockscaping disasters causing the tank to shatter so I rearranged everything to make an avalanche less likely.

You will see in the image above the rockscaping that we finally decided on along with our 1st resident, a Yellowtail Blue Damsyl.

We are very much looking forward to documenting everything we do and watching out tank grow. Next up is going to be for us to make a decision on lighting.