S&M's Seahorse IM Lagoon 50 Build

[vlangel]

I like what you have done with the rock. You will be able to maintenance and have access to the back wall and personally I think it is attractively layed out.
For the cycle have you tried putting in a quarter cube of frozen mysis? That should definitely get the cycle going. You can remove the remains of the mysis once you get an ammonia reading. Maybe even keep it in a jar with an open lid so you can remove all of it once things get rolling.

 

[vlangel]

O yeah, thank you for the compliment of reading my whole thread. Wow, I hope it was worth it. I was terrified but O so excited when I first started. I certainly have some examples of what not to do, ha ha! After a year and a half of keeping ponies I am feeling a bit less of a newbie and I still have my original ponies.

 

[shornik]

Well I went out of town for about 4 days and hoped that when I got back I might have some ammonia, still 0. I've been feeding the tank with frozen food when I feed my other tank - I saw this used on the BRS clown fish tank set up. Maybe I'm not putting enough in, I get the same 0 reading as my 2+ year old tank. Hmmm, I'll keep "feeding" the tank and testing. I also tested Nitrates today to see if maybe I just missed the spike and they are somewhere between 0 & 2, so not high either.

Anyway, I did hook some things up when I returned, my chiller is not working and thankfully not leaking.

It gets pretty hot in the cabinet when the chiller turns on so I'm thinking of getting one of those cooling fans for media cabinets. If I do I'll have to cut out a part of the back of the cabinet with a jigsaw and i'm a bit wary of doing that and having the vibration do something to the tank so I'm still weighing that option. But it looks pretty nifty, a fan attached to a temp probe that turns on automatically when the temp gets too hot.

I also hooked up the CPR Aquafuge 2, and I'm kind of excited about that. It will be a pain when I need to do maintenance on the one filter sock/media basket that it hangs over but that's what I get for buying an AIO tank.

I also bought the ATO, I went with Tunze Osomilator mainly because I have that in my other tank and am comfortable with it, and too go along with a nifty looking ATO container from Synergy Reef. Also for the Aquafuge I purchased some Marinepure ceramic biomedia squares - they have amazing amounts of surface area which will hopefully get filled up with little pods and bacteria. Well that's it for now, just waiting for the "cycle"

 

[vlangel]

Try some pure ammonia in the tank. Folks do that when they are seeing how much bioload thier tanks can handle.

 

[shornik]

So this weekend's job was installing the ATO. I think I mentioned I with the Tunze Osomilator (what the heck does that word mean anyway). All I can say is there isn't room in the sump part of my AIO for anything else. I purchased a synergy reef ATO container, yeah I know a bucket works just fine but I like the look of this and am planning to eventually run a line from the RO/DI to the container so I won't have to carry/pour from buckets again.

The towel on the floor makes my wife happy

 

[shornik]

Woops I forgot to mention I think the tank has cycled. Ammonia is 0 (well it's always been 0) and the Nitrates have gone from 2 to 0, though I'm going to check again today. I have a decent diatom bloom and have been "feeding" the tank frozen food whenever I feed my other tank. I've been doing the tank with bacteria Continuum's Bacter Gen-M and so far so good. If things continue to test at 0, I might get a few snails to work away at the diatoms before doing anything else. I'm trying for slow and steady with this tank - wish me luck!

 

[vlangel]

Good luck. It looks like things are progressing nicely!

 

[shornik]

So an update since Monday.... My params well Ammonia and Nitrate are still at 0 and I continue to "feed" the tank with frozen food twice a day and does it with bacteria. I added 5 Astrea snails to clean up the diatoms and they've done a great job on the rock not so much on the sand so I just stirred that up a bit so it isn't looking so nasty. Oh I also bought some Chaeto for th AquaFuge and broke up some of the MarinePure ceramic cubes and put them in there, all nice homes for bacteria and pods, I hope). I have way too many ceramic cubes, I think I have enough for a 500 gallon tank, if anyone wants some just PM me. I also ordered copepods to start seeding the tank and those arrived on Thursday. I use @AlgaeBarn and they have a nice YouTube video on cycling a tank with pods, that they did for a mandarin tank. My accident they sent me 2 bags of pods instead of 1 of pods and 1 of phyto so I dumped 6000 pods into my tank.

And I've ordered a CUC from http://www.kpaquatics.com I'm getting cerrith and nassirus snails, I think those will be good for sifting the sand and eating detritus and 5 small blue hermits. I really don't like hermits well that's not true just look at my avatar, what I don't like is how they are constantly fighting/killing each other, so I'm just going with a small group of them and hopefully the tank is big enough for those 5. And I'm getting 3 Gorgonians, a purple sea rod and 1 yellow and 1 red Finger. So those should be here early next week and I'll upload pics of everything when they are in the tank.

With my last tank I got fish first but I'm trying to get this tank established with some gorg's and other softies so the tank is ready for the Sea Horses once I get them. I realized I'm going out of town a bit over the next few months so I' targeting a July date - yikes that seems so far away - to get them. But I'll be adding other fish and corals to keep me from getting too impatient.

Well that's about it for now.....

 

[vlangel]

I think you are wise to wait until you are home and around a lot when your ponies come and are settling in. If none of your fish are pod eaters then the pods should really be well established in your system too which is good. I too had to wait and I know how hard it is. You will be glad that you did however.

 

[shornik]

OK so yesterday I received some CUC, gorgonians and sponges for the tank. All went pretty well but the sponge seems to have died already. I think I might have jumped the gun to soon on sponges, the tank should be much more established. So this post is mostly pics of what I got and how they look. The gorgonians had some polyps showing at night but not a lot so I'm going to give them a few days to acclimate in and then hopefully they'll be alright. I'm sure I'll need to move them around a bit to get the best flow so where they are now in the pics is probably not where they will end up.

I'm also trying to figure out the best way to attach the gorgonians, is it alright to use epoxy like I do with corals?

Oops I also forgot to mention that I purchased a sympodium from my LFS as my official first inhabitant, here are some pics of that:

I think in my earlier post I mentioned I was going to try to do mostly snails for my CUC so I purchased dwarf cerrith's, 50 of them, and quite a few were climbing out of the tank and bouncing on the floor. Those that tried to escape were placed in my other tank that has a lid, I will definitely need a lid on this tank soon! Also 20 Nassirus' snails and 5 blue legged hermits.

I took a goofy video of the cut, hmm I can't figure out how to post videos so I'll do that later I guess.

Here are the gorgonians I got:

Red Finger:

Yellow Finger:

Purple Plexora:

Well now I'll just let these settle in a bit and impatiently wait for what's next. BTW, ammonia and nitrates are still 0.

 

[Dropped]

Looking good!

But that first pic is killing me! Bottom left of the picture is aptashia' you don't want that from the start

 

[shornik]

Looking good!

But that first pic is killing me! Bottom left of the picture is aptashia' you don't want that from the start

Yeah I saw that as soon as I put it in the tank. I dip all my coral but that doesn't (or didn't) get the aptasia, but I nuked it with Red-Sea's Aptasia-X so its gone now, I should have taken an updated pic.

 

[Dropped]

Haha glad ya nuked it!

 

[shornik]

Went to the LFS yesterday to buy some reagents and also came home with this Orange Fan Sponge - I couldn't help myself.

 

[vlangel]

Went to the LFS yesterday to buy some reagents and also came home with this Orange Fan Sponge - I couldn't help myself.

That is a very cool find. I hope it does well for you.

 

[shornik]

Me too, the 2 blue vase sponges I bought aren't making it, one died the first day and the other seems to be on its way out. But this orange one looks good so far.....
I almost bought a fish yesterday too, I'm glad I didn't when i got home and started researching I realized that a) my tank isn't established enough, and b) it would probably be a bit too much for when the Seahorses are in the tank. It was an orange spotted blenny (maybe I was just in an orange mood yesterday, haha), a cool white fish with bright orange spots all over. Anyway... I'll keep working on the "hitching post" decor for now.

 

[shornik]

In keeping with using this thread to document my tank, I noticed some cloudiness in the water the last few days. After posting a question about it on R2R the consensus seems to be that I have a mini bacterial bloom going on. I'm not going to do anything but as you know (if you've been reading this thread that is) I've been "feeding" the tank with frozen food to help cycle it. I'm going to cut back on that now and see if that helps and then start up again once I get a fish. Though I'll still dose phyto and stuff for the copepods/amphipods and gorgonians/sponge I have, but just less frequently.

 

[tomtom2245]

Looks good! How about a FTS now that you have some gorgs and sponge? That orange fan is pretty awesome looking.

 

[shornik]

Well its been a few weeks and not much to report but the bacterial bloom that was clouding the water was gone once I returned from my trip, so that's good. But the beautiful orange sponge did not make it, I think it's probably way to early to be putting sponges in the tank, not enough "dirty" water to support them, but I'm just guessing.

Well as you might remember I've been seeding the tanks with lots of pods, and on Memorial day I went to the lfs to pick up supplies and they had these two beauties and I had to get them. If you haven't noticed I do quite a bit of impulse buying but I know the tank is ready for these guys, so here are a few pics.

It's really hard getting pictures of these even though they move pretty slow, I think I just need more practice with my camera. Anyway I see them snapping their snouts (is that the correct term) when they are eating pods - at least I assume that's what they are doing as I can't see anything myself.

I have ordered a BBS hatchery that is supposed to arrive today and I'll start hatching some BBS to supplement the pods in the tank using @Paul B DIY Target Feeder. http://www.saltwatersmarts.com/diy-target-feeder-mandarinfish-pipefish-2804/

I also ordered a few corals from @uniquecorals that should arrive tomorrow, I'll post some pics once I have them in the tank.

Oh yeah, its June which means I'm about 1 month away from getting some sea horses, woot woot!

 

[vlangel]

Those pipes look just like the captive bred pipefish I got from Ocean Rider, which came eating frozen mysis. Do you know what specie of pipefish they are? Mine is a flagfin banded pipefish. I would try to train it to eat some frozen mysis which would be more nutritious than newly hatch bbs. Hikari is the smallest and I would think the most likely to be accepted.

You should know that there is a common belief amongst seahorse keepers that keeping WC pipefish with captive bred seahorses is very risky. Any WC fish carries pathogens that the CB ponies have little or no resistance to.