Mini Clowns in Saitama Prefecture

This time with a 43 Litre mini aquarium.

I'm not sure if what I have should really be considered a reef tank, especially in its current form, but the tank was a present, and was intended by the giver to be a salt water aquarium, so I'm a little obligated to oblige. Especially since the giver is my father-in-law.

Yes... I'm married and living in Japan. On to my aquarium.

What I have right now is a 43 Litre all-in-one Caldia Aqross glass aquarium. It has an under-gravel type synthetic fiber filter (two densities of poly fill I think) that is integrated into the lid. The tank was labeled OK for both fresh and salt water, which is why I believe this ended up in my hands.

Ok, so on to what is going on with it right now.

This aquarium has been running for apx 24 hours. It has 5 kg of crushed coral as a gravel base for the filter. There is currently 0 live rock in the tank because I wasn't sure how much I needed.

The salt concentration is 30PPT, (right in the middle of my meter) and the PH ended up at 7.7 when all was said and done. We used filtered well-water and Instant Ocean. We also used a filter start bacterial solution called I believe "Bio Score" in english. Bio Suco-ru for anyone who is at least familiar with Japanese Romanization. It's an Elltech Japan product.

Due to circumstance, this aquarium has been going for only a day, but already has three (albeit very small) clown fish. They are at most 2cm in length, and share the aquarium with no other fish.

Needless to say, I'm nervous because I feel like these fish have been thrown in as sacrificial lambs of a sort, but I'd actually like to attempt to keep them alive through what I know is going to be a harsh week or two.

I know I need to run to the fish store and get live rock. After doing the conversion from 1 gal = 2 lbs of live rock, in metric that converts to roughly 4litres of water = 1kg live rock. That means roughly 10 kgs of live rock, or double my crushed coral amount. At roughly $10/kg, that's $100 of just live rock! I didn't realize this was quite THAT expensive...

Can anyone give me some pointers on what else to do for these three little clowns? I'll post pictures when I can, as they're actually quite cute.

 

Use 0.25kg-0.5kg of live rock per 4 liters of water volume which roughly equals 0.5-1.0 pounds of live rock per gallon of water.

As far as your clowns go, you will have to check your ammonia, nitrites and nitrates daily and have to do daily water changes as the ammonia and nitrites spike. It would be best if you could have someone keep your fish in an established tank till your tank fully cycles in about 6 weeks. In the mean time feed sparingly and probably every 2-3 days and get some cured live rock as soon as possible to help handle the ammonia and nitrites which are toxic to the fish.

 

....welcome to the world of reefkeeping ;D !

 

$10 per Kg (2.2lbs) for live rock is a great price if thats locally. Here in Minnesota it costs $9-12 per pound for poor quality rock.

 

I am not familiar with that bacterial product but putting fish in after 1 day would make me nervous too to say the least. Please resist going any faster.

That said, welcome to 3reef. It is cool to have someone here from Japan. Please get on the 3reef Member Map. EDIT - Never mind, I see you are on it! THanks!

I am reminded of an old old thread I posted on Japanese aquariums. They can be amazing. I would love to see any pics of your tank and those of your friends or public tanks when you have time. How long have you lived there?


matt

 

It's not much to look at, but then, I'm not Japanese... my wife is.

Matt, you might remember me as the California.com Sysadmin who you would email when your site had trouble... ;D

Progress so far: I have PH, Nitrate and Amonia test kits, levels are measurable, but low. They are getting tested daily, and a carbon pack thrown in for 30 mins to an hour a day depending on the levels. I don't want the carbon to become a permenant fixture, so I'm purposely using it just to take the top off the spikes.

One clown has become a victim of bullying (he was the smallest of the three) but the other two show no signs of torn fins. Two kilos of live rock are in the tank now, and brought some snails, and assorted other visitors with them. Will probably buy another kilo, but any more than that and this tank will be very crowded. (It's tall compared to its footprint)

Updates and pictures to follow.

One of the pieces of live rock is VERY good quality it looks like... the other two are kindof iffy, but the price wasn't bad, and all do have living things on them, so I'm not complaining too much.

My freshwater tank just got a new filter as well, and the sediment from the substrate is making it look like a San Francisco Summer day.

 

I'm going to guess that you now have a mated pair of clownfish. Once a pair bonds, they will not tolerate the "odd man out".

 

Finally, I have pictures!

This is unfortunate... will they deal with additional clownfish (assuming more than one) or other breeds of fish well?

In any event, I have a couple of pictures as to how things are going so far.

The first two are my salt water mini tank and the pair of clowns that are left. I still need another couple of kilos of liverock obviously...

Trying to keep things relatively slow right now... the worst of the Ammonia spikes seems to be over, (still watching) but I'm still getting spiking nitrate levels as of this morning.


My wife and I have been looking at our live rocks, and realized that we got one very good quality, and two medeocre quality live rocks. The good quality one has all sorts of life on it, and I'm attaching just a single picture that shows just how alive the far right hand liverock in our aquarium is. It's rather startling actually how much is living on the surface, whereas the other two look more like pink, grey and white rocks.


The third picture is my fresh water tank. It's well established by now at nearly three months old - but a little foggy due to my changing the filter around and introducing a new substrate medium. As this was taken on a cel-phone, the contrast ratio isn't that good, and the "fog" doesn't help conditions. I've misplaced my digital camera right now, and it actually adjusts well for these conditions, so I can take better pictures soon.

The odd bulbous looking thing on the right hand side of the freshie tank is a PH meter incidentally... it has a bubble of air inside that conveys the CO2 level in the water to the PH indicator, so it essentially acts as a CO2 level meter. Green is good, Yellow is High, Blue is low. I'm tempted to attach one to my salt water tank because... well... it's just cool looking, and at $10...

ADA stuff is generally pretty expensive, but the quality of what they make is supposed to be very good from everything I've read and seen... and it's made in Japan, not in China like so many things recently, so it's a little easier to trust.


The last picture is of a new fixture to the fresh water tank, though I can imagine it could easily be of use to salt water tanks as well. This is the ADA CO2 injector system, and it works wonderfully, and is actually not the least bit painful to set up. (If you can read Japanese well... I hear they sell it in North America too) Probably the most critical part is putting the water into the bubble counter, but they include a bulb to make this part easy... just remember to connect the check valve FIRST.

 

Not unless you have a very large tank and even then it's "iffy" at best.

 

NO WAY! 8) ;D Is this Charles?

That's too funny. Out in Japan now eh? How cool is that? 8)

That ADA co2 unit looks cool. How long does it last before refills?