Jack's tank log

decided to use the rest of my store credits when i saw a pair of firefish

and finally the hair algae is under control

used a digital camera this time


















can anyone ID this hermit, ive had him for about a year now


me black mollies






anyone know how to tell male and female? one is larger and slightly more colored then the other

Not a clue on sexing firefish. But the hermit in the last pic might be Paguristes cadenati.

Check the following link to verify:

http://www.recif.be/article/hermit.htm

HTH
Matt

^ thanks for the link i think the unidentified one is a Paguridae sp.

also my female mollies are hiding all the time, only saw one of them yesterday, is this normal? the male is always out in the open happily swimming and eating. i always thought mollies wern't that kind of fish to hide all the time

they usually are pretty friendly fish, but like all fish they do hide occasionally.

well it turns out that one of them got sucked into the intake of my protein skimmer but the other seems to be doing fine. what is mating behavior like in mollies? ive noticed that the male was "nipping" at the famle's underbelly but when the female tries to do it to the male he freaks out.. is this normal?

also ive noticed that the fire gobies make very half-heated "bites" (its more like slowly bumping into each other with mouths open) at the others dorsal fin. its doesn't seem to be that aggressive of a motion but should i be conserned?

Mollies are worse than rabbits. They just breed like crazy, I'd say that just about any behaviour is breeding behaviour, but I haven't watched them actually breed even though I've kept them for like ever. I'm sure you could find out on google though.

alright ill try googleing it, and another reason i like them

unfortunately my yellow watchmen has had his entire bottom jaw ripped off! i think it must have been one of the hitchhiking pistol shrimp that where living in the rock that he was living under they snap at anything that goes near the holes in the rock and so far have killed a snail and hermit crab, soon to add the watchmen to the count
he is still alive but can't really eat though

I've started making my rock im using portland white cement in a 1:3 mix of salt and im just waiting for them to harden hopfuly will get some cool pieces out of it..... i have to wait a week for it to harden right?

ill have picks when they are done hardening in a day or two

o ya and im getting a mantis next week at some time

just a quick up date with some pics. my yellow watchman is still alive and can manage to get the occasional piece of food (i now have him in a separate tank) the left side of his jaw seems to be healing but the right might have had too much damage done to it, so chances are he still won't make it, but i am surprised that it actually started to heal though. i also started curing my live rock

yellow watchman

well my yellow watchmen was dead this morning and now my snail is on his way over to eat him its a shame he was a interesting fish, i think im going to get another one once i have my other tank set up.

forgot to mention that the liverock is DIY, its about 4 salt to 1 cement, kinda fragile for my liking but very poris


finally finished talking to the people at Meral spot about getting that mantis, we are now just deciding on which day is best to ship


this is their site
http://www.freewebs.com/themeralspot/

but stay away from the male... hes mine

Can you give me step by step on how you made the rock? Thanks bro.

http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144526

that's the recipe i went from, it also has a step by step of how to do it. but i will say this if you are using sand to make molds use crushed coral instead of sand it would look much nicer, im definetly not going to cheep out on the next batch. i also used white portland cement, instead of the gray type one or two. and let them dry in their molds for a day or two

Jack wrote:http://www.aquariacentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=144526

that's the recipe i went from, it also has a step by step of how to do it. but i will say this if you are using sand to make molds use crushed coral instead of sand it would look much nicer, im definetly not going to cheep out on the next batch. i also used white portland cement, instead of the gray type one or two. and let them dry in their molds for a day or two

Thanks for the link, and for your mollies their natural habitat is fresh/brackish streams and rivers, so the flow in these places are a lot lower than in a marine/ocean environment. So the high flows cause stress on them and cause them to die. Make sure there is an area within the tank that has very little flow.

And to see if the female molly is pregnant just look at the bottom of her body, and if its bulging out, then she is pregnant. Make sure to split the babies from the parents, because they will eat them. You can just feed the babies very small flakes, use your fingers or a mortar and pestle.


BTW: Rock salt is the same type of salt you use to melt snow?

k that must be why the mollies are hanging out closer to the rocks, to avoid the flow... ya thats what i used, the larger the grains the better i think

well figured i'd do an update... my black mollies had babies the other day even though there are only a male in the tank for a day before he got sucked into the intake to the protein skimmer. yesterday i moved everything out of my old tank and brought moved it to my new place and everything survived and the rocks are going through the 2nd week of their curing saltwater so they should be ready in one more, its good to finally see this tank come together

i'll post pics in a bit, everything is in what will be the fug im just waiting to get the lights for the bigger tank, they should be in tomorrow or Tuesday

so my lights came in two days ago, 2 URI bulbs and 1 geseman bulb, are so nice the next time i get tubes im definitely getting more gesemann. unfortunately one of my t5 ballasts dusted after putting the bulbs in so i moved everything into the main tank and all is well....

So the ballast just died with you replacing the bulbs? Did you maybe knock a wire loose in an endcap while changing bulbs or something along those lines?

it looks like it burnt a fuse in the part that plugs into the bulb

Just a little question...what do you use to control or get rid of your hair algae?

Colossus wrote:Just a little question...what do you use to control or get rid of your hair algae?

There are a couple things hair algae needs to thrive, light and a food source (phosphates being the most common). The key to controlling hair algae is eliminating the root cause/s of the problem.
Light bulbs shift colour spectrum over time. As K rating slide below 10,000K the lighting conditions become increasingly favourable for algae growth. Depending on the bulb type (CF, T5HO, MH) bulbs should be change every 6-12 months to minimize spectrum shift.

May foods (both frozen and flake) contain high phosphate levels. Selecting low phosphate flake and rinsing frozen foods in RO/DI water prior to feeding will help.
Running a phosphate removing media in a reactor will also help eliminate any phosphates leaching from rock or being added through feeding etc.

Small outbreaks can be controlled somewhat with some snails.
Manual removal works to some degree if the problem is in an isolated area.
In my experience punching your magnesium level up to 1500 -1600 works well (don't do this all in one day). The hair will die off over the space of a few weeks. If you choose this method I recommend aggressive skimming while the algae is dying off.

HTH
Matt

i by all rights should do an update on this but i don't have a camera to show you guys what ive been doing in the tank, but my brother took some shots of my things so ill post them up... ill get on updating and FTS later

some pics of the whole system:note that i can't see the picture im taking at the moment
getting some coral tomorrow







ill post a few more tomorrow,

I didn't know Mollies could be intreduced in a marine tank!? I used to have them in my tropical fishtank a long time ago!!!