Purchased a 14gallon BioCube, and some goodies.

[Ssteve]

Little blue hair like thing in the upper third and slightly to the right.

Kept my lights on for a couple hours and the thing in the first pic started to open up and looks a lot like a Zoa.

 

[Aquarian]

The second is also a sponge both are safe

 

[Ssteve]

Came home to a Asterina starfish on the glass. Kinda excited actually cause I would really enjoy having some harlequin shrimp eventually, so I'm gonna leave it there and see what happens.

 

[Ssteve]

So my ammonia levels have been lingering at a tad over .5 for a few days now. They came down from a bit over 1.0, and havent seen any other changes. Still zero trates and trites, ph is 8.0, and thats it.

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

I would not invest in a harlequin shrimp. this is one of those mandarin type animals. expect to continue to spend 30bucks a month to maintain their eating habits. if you ever want one, just youtube it and watch them from your computer. I wish I had a whale in my tank to be completely honest!

 

[Ssteve]

A whale. Yeah that would be damn awesome. I want a lot of stuff so I guess I can scratch the shrimp off the list then and I'll just start pulling the asterina.

 

[Aquarian]

Asterina stars IME are safe I've never seen them on a coral that wasn't dead or on its way there. In large numbers they can be a pest. In small numbers they add to the biodiversity of the tank you should leave them in

 

[Ssteve]

So my ammonia levels stayed just under 1ppm for about 4 days, no nitrates or nitrites at all. So I added straight ammonia and brought it to 4ppm.

Now two days later and ammonia is down to about 2ppm, and my nitrates are somewhere between 50-60ppm, and my nitrites are about 2ppm.

Should I leave it as is and let it do its thing, or should I bring the ammonia back up to 4ppm?

 

[ErinCahir]

I'd just leave it be. Once your nitrates are down to zero, you can do you first water change and start stocking.

 

[Ssteve]

ammonia spiked, trates and trites when't up, then came back down. Yesterday morning I tested everything and they all were zero's with ph about 8.0.. So today I checked again and same thing. So tonight when I got off work, I grabbed a emerald crab and a few snails. I know its just a crab, but man after looking at this empty box of water for a month now, a crab is fascinating stuff lol. Man he is loving the smorgasbord of algeas I have accumulated. I thought he might hide when I put him in, but he went straight to work, no hesitation.

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Good to hear, it is an awesome feeling having your first creature, no matter what

 

[Marinne13]

Emerald crabs LOVE to eat...if I had more algae I would have one

 

[mariobrothersleeve]

Sea hairs are awesome too! They make me laugh just saying the name.

 

[Ssteve]

So I called my LFS to place a order for a specific clown I wanted, and happened to ask if they had any very small watchman gobies in stock. They did, so I headed there after work.

Long story short I fell in love with a juvenile true percula. Awesome deep orange coloring and was hosting bta and was extremely playful. Brought him home, did a hour long drip and get him in his new home. He hated the flow so I had to kill the koralia and angle the return pump up a lot for him, but he seems to be happy now. My girlfriend named him Marley, and his eventual partner(in two weeks) will be Mobley.

Oddly enough my emerald crab seems to seek him out and try to attack him. The clown actually seems to be amused by it and antagonizes the crab. Hopefully that's not a sign of something bad to come as I would like to maintain a mellow nano since there's not a lot of space for everyone to escape each other.

 

[Ssteve]

 

[Ssteve]

So I made a few changes over the last couple weeks. Added some zoa's, two heads of frogspawn, and sold the kessil in favor of a reefbreeders full spectrum fixture. I had thre dreaded algae bloom, but it cleared up in about two days. Shocking actually how insanely quickly such a large amount of algae came and went. Im assuming its due to the LR was from an established tank, so its helped speed up the bacteria growth.Let the tank sit for a couple weeks, and then last night I picked up a small rbta. I know its a new tank, and it might not work out, but it is what it is... When I got my true perc he was being hosted by a small rbta at the time and seemed so happy in it, that I would take a long shot and see if he will take to another one. Plus my lfs gave me a pretty good deal.

Last night after acclimation.



This morning when I turned just the blues on their lowest setting.


abuot an hour later with just the blues turned up some.


Since then hes on the move again. Right now in the sand bed rocking back and forth I think trying to make his way to the rocks.