75g w/ 33g frag tank system

I'm getting sick of the algae, so I scraped off the back glass today to help the snails out a bit. It was an algae storm.

I've actually had probably 50% of my trochus snails die off for no apparent reason, there was plenty of junk in the tank, unless there was some specific part of their diet that was missing, or maybe I should just expect that kind of mortality when getting trochus snails shipped? Maybe their bag got too cold en route or something. I'm not sure.
The ceriths seem happy though, I found my second batch of cerith eggs on the glass tonight.

I spent at least 6 hours today organizing all of my wiring and working on a few connections on the calcium reactor. I didn't get all the organization done but I got maybe 80% of the way there, I still have a bunch more stuff to do once I get my other DC8 in there off my old 30g, so I'm not going to put a ton more effort into it right now, it looks a million times better and I'm much happier with it is now. What a pain it was...

I also put in a valve on my calcium reactor feed pump today so that the full pressure from the pump isn't going to the reactor. I'm not 100% sure if it's needed but since there will just be a trickle of effluent coming back I thought it wouldn't be a bad idea to maybe try and keep some of the pressure from hitting the reactor chambers. I'm also testing how consistent the effluent is now, I dialed it down to .25 liters / minute and we'll see if it can hold that rate.

I was thinking about moving my coral over to the new system, I'm getting tired of dosing every single day and having to worry about things like the return pump locking up from precipitation all the time. I started dosing my calcium into my overflow on that tank so it hopefully mixes better before it gets to the return pump, it shouldn't freeze within a month or two of cleaning.

Moving is going to be a big project, I think I'm going to re-plug a bunch of stuff to see if I can prevent moving over bubble algae and vermetid snails from my old tank. I don't care as much about the vermetids but the bubble algae is a pain. I actually have had some rocks with bubble algae in a tank with just a heater and powerhead and no lights on it for at least a month and the bubble algae still looks happy as a clam. Crazy stuff.

Well that was my Monday in a nutshell.

 

Got some pretty good pictures tonight. I'm not the best photographer and I wish I knew a way to capture all of the blue in the Yasha's fins but the white balance seems to be blocking that out. This is what I came up with, the gobies are being much less camera shy so I might be able to get some even better ones soon.
Here are a couple. I know it's not the most exciting thing since I still only have 2 fish in the tank but I'm taking it slow and trying to get the fish I want.



And came home tonight to see this again. I decided to get a picture just because this is the first time in over a year of keeping a reef tank that I've seen cerith eggs. Pay no mind to the brownish rocks/glass, that will all be gone soon.

 

loving the gobies

 

They are awesome.
I'll be joining you with some McCosker's flasher wrasses one of these days, great fish.


I found 2 red planaria in my overflow area this weekend.
I have no idea how they got in there but they must have come over from my old tank somehow. I assume they somehow came over on one of the hermit crabs or something, even though I tried to make sure everything was clear of hitchhikers coming over. I'll keep an eye on it.
If I end up with flatworms in this tank I may change my stock list to include a Melanurus wrasse.
I was hoping to avoid the Halichoeres genus because some of them eat so many cool critters that I like having in my tanks but I hate having flatworms.

I'm considering treating with flatworm exit too (instead of the wrasse), although I would have to do it after I move all my coral over so I don't risk recontaminating the new tank with the coral. This might be the better option, I'll have to read up on that again and see what issues people have had with it in the past. If I do it when I first move the coral over I will have a very small population of flatworms, only the ones that have reproduced so far in the tank so hopefully there is very little chance of toxic issues from the flatworms decomposing.

 

Won't be much of a tank without rocks and glass.;D

 

It's beyond rimless...you'll see, it will be the next new thing!

 

Soooo I spent pretty much all of my free time from the last 3 days moving coral from my old system to my new one and cleaning the tank up to be used as a fish quarantine. I just have some zoas left in the old tank right now, they were on some rock that I really didn't want to clean off, some day maybe.

It was quite a chore moving everything over, dipping everything and trying not to move any bubble algae or flatworms over. I'm not 100% certain I didn't move the bubble algae. I replugged most coral or tried to cover up exposed rock where some spores might have settled but you never know. I'll just be keeping a very close eye on it and trying to get it controlled ASAP if anything sprouts up I guess.
Either way it's a relief to have that done with. I'm really looking forward to not having to dose 2 part every single day.

I also pulled out most of the rock from my old display tank and put most of it in the sump. I left some tonga branch rock in there and some more solid pieces for hiding spots for the fish. It's pretty barren but with some good caves etc.

The main reason for all of this is that I finally tracked down some female McCoskers flasher wrasses. I ordered 3 of them from reefhotspot.com on Monday and they should be here bright and early tomorrow. I've never ordered from there but they have a 14 day guarantee and they had a pretty good price on the fish so I thought I'd give them a shot.
Right now I'm not planning on adding a male but am hoping that they will work out their dominance and one of them will decide to turn into a male. I'm really looking forward to seeing how this all works out.

I'll quarantine them for at least a month I think and give them a chance to get nice and comfy and then I'll move them into the new big tank.

 

Well, got my McCoskers wrasses in this morning. I was a little disappointed with the packing from reefhotspot.com compared to what I've gotten from bluezooaquatics.com and liveaquaria.com.
The fish were in small bags with a relatively small amount of water. The entire package for 3 fish was only 3lbs according to UPS.
Compared to liveaquaria which were shipping me small fish as well their bags were probably 5-6 times larger and about the same amount of water more than was in this package.
They did tape a couple heat packs to the lid of the styrofoam insert in the box and the bags were well sealed and were packed solidly in the box but there wasn't any extra packing material or insulation aside from a bag filled with air to fill up the box so things were'nt rattling around.

Two fish looked pretty good when I first looked at them, I thought one of the fish was DOA at first but once I started acclimating them I could tell it was still breathing although it wasn't moving at all aside from that.

They're all in the tank right now, one of them didn't even hide when it made it in the tank, it's out and swimming around as I type this. That was the most active one in the bag. The second most active one is hiding right now but I can see it swimming around a little bit in the caves so that looks good.

The third one that I thought was DOA pretty much sunk to the bottom of the tank upon introduction and looks to be in very rough shape, it isn't moving very much, a little sporadically/twitchy every once in a while. It's still breathing but I'm not holding out hope for it.

If the third one doesn't make it I may consider picking up a male locally rather than paying for shipping for a single fish that costs the same amount as the shipping, even if I get store credit at reefhotspot.

 

As I'm getting a better look at these fish they both appear to me well on their way to male-hood, I'm not sure what the point of no-return is or if I'll be stuck with 2 males. Doing some research on that now. Disappointed in that as well.

 

Are McCosker's Wrasse's protogynous hermaphrodites, or are they capable of bi-directional sex change?