Moved Tank Help, Someone Gave Me This And I Am New To Salt

[wired_one]

lol an elephant sat on yer crabs then they jabbed it with a metal spike too? dang! i thought about needing fast shipping, and the possibility that something else will demise them..but i live in a real small town, they think so small, they use small words...o sorry, there is only two places to get salt critters here, and the selection is very limited. a couple of sites i was checking out have these reef starter packs, a few of these crabs, a few of those crabs, a pile of snails. i pay like two bucks each for turbo snails locally. i have algae growing, i need an army of snails i think. also these guys sell umm like 20 turbo snails for 24 bucks. thats so cheaper than locally... and five emerald crabs for around twenty bucks, i just paid 15 for the one i just got.

 

[Donya]

Local selection being slim pickings is a bummer. Well, I can tell you that the liveaquaria place is good and I know others have good things to say about it too as far as the livestock. I haven't gotten any sw livestock from them, but did get some fw stuff from them in the past (back when I lived in the sticks and had probably many of the same issues ) and have gotten dry goods from the same company periodically when I can't find stuff nearby and need it quickly. If I didn't have any local places I trusted and had pockets deep enough for the shipping, I would consider sw from them too, particularly since they have a WYSIWYG section for some of the stuff where it's really a gamble to buy blind. That's the only online place I've ever gotten stuff from livestock-wise so I can't offer feedback on any other places.

Don't load up on emerald crabs though. You'll probably only want two in there at most as they're not herbivores. I've only got one in my 55gal. They like their algae, but only certain types and they eat a lot of other things too. If you need to get a lot of snails in one go then let the algae get really bad first...like really hard to see through the glass bad. Otherwise you'll risk having a lot of target feeding to do while it catches up. 20 Turbos is going to be too many in a tank that size if they are legit Turbo species and not something smaller being sold under the wrong name. In my 55 I don't think I have more than 8 in there of true Turbos (Turbo fluctuosus/fluctuosa in this case). I'd have to go count then all to be sure, but I would guess I have 20 or so all totaled in grazing snails (not counting largely sand-dwelling grazers like Ceriths) but that includes a lot of smaller snails in the Tegula and Trochus genera.

Also avoid mixing hermit species. It's very tempting to get a few of these and a few of those for variety, but hermits are just aggressive enough in general that it's not safe to do that and mixing species too often sets people up for only having a few of one left at the end of a genocide. "Reds" and "blues" (that being Paguristes cadenati and Clibanarius tricolor) are the combination most notorious for that problem. If you need more hermits and have some in there already, try to stick to more of the same type if you can get them but be cautious, since I remember you saying you had big ones. If you have something like one or two big ones of one species and a bunch of some smaller species that have been coexisting the whole time in the tank, then you should be able to build up the smaller species safely. If you've got big ones and no smaller ones, it's going to be a gamble what happens when you add smaller ones, particularly while the big ones remain un-IDed.

 

[Donya]

Actually...I need to correct something from that last post of mine: you do NOT want to let it get hard to see through the glass bad with the algae if it's coralline algae, only if it's soft stuff or films. If you get coralline on the glass, scrap that stuff off ASAP. Snails have a hard time making a dent in coralline as well. I should have gotten some coffee before trying to offer advice on anything.

 

[wired_one]

got an emerald crab earlier, put it in, and boom there are two. wow did not even know i had another he has been hiding very well.

 

[wired_one]

well the emerald crab i just got appears to have been killed by the emerald crab i already had but did not know i had. that must be why you warned me about multiple emerald crabs.

 

[wired_one]

hey crab lady, thanks again for all your help, i really appreciate it. i made you a graphic, hope you like it. thanks again.

wired

 

[wired_one]

yea for the first time in a while these two opened up. i am curious what are they, a. is like a brown stalk from which hair like things come out, now they look kinda white but before i think they were rust red. and it ate a brine shrimp, too cool.

b. is a brown leathery thing, it was closed up but now it has opened up again.

thanks for any help guys.

 

[Donya]

That is indeed one of the risks. But, just to be sure, are you sure it's not an empty skin that got mauled a bit? On crabs like emeralds, molts can look pretty convincing sometimes even when missing limbs unless you either take them out by hand (then the water drains out and they flop) or check to see if the carapace is firmly attached. Molts have fooled me a few times that way. Just a couple days ago I set about very carefully getting nets and stuff in place to catch a hitchhiker crab...but no. Somewhere there is a slightly larger crab laughing at the effort I expended on its artfully-placed decoy.

 

[Donya]

Doh! There was a second page here that evaded me even after two mugs of coffee. Sorry for that lol; I was still on the first page with that last post of mine. A is an Aiptasia species and B looks like some species of mushroom.

i made you a graphic, hope you like it. thanks again.

Oo! I'll have to check on the dimensions for sigs since I can't remember them off the top of my head, but that looks like it would make a nice one. Thanks!

 

[wired_one]

Doh! There was a second page here that evaded me even after two mugs of coffee. Sorry for that lol; I was still on the first page with that last post of mine. A is an Aiptasia species and B looks like some species of mushroom.

i made you a graphic, hope you like it. thanks again.

Oo! I'll have to check on the dimensions for sigs since I can't remember them off the top of my head, but that looks like it would make a nice one. Thanks!

o wow, now that you mention it, it was a molt that makes sense now. when we first saw two crabs the larger darker green one was right behind the lighter green smaller one. we thought they were boy and girl. lol, no one was hollow. when the dark green crab moved the light green core fell on its back on the sand below. having kept crayfish before i should have thought of that. lol thanks miss i feel better now. hahahahha

 

[wired_one]

so here is the pic i tried to post before, the emerald crab right after molting, with the molt still in front of it.

 

[wired_one]

hello so i went and read up on aiptasias and it said they are considered a nuisance in aquariums, because they sting stuff. but i think its cool because it eats shrimp, and it is alive and doing stuff whereas my corals are still sulking. are they so bad?

and i have been looking at this rodi unit and i had never heard of rodi two weeks ago

http/www.amazon.com/Coralife-05692-Pure-Flo-50-Gallon-System/dp/B0006JKO9W/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1350586464&sr=8-1&keywords=Coralife+Pure-Flo+II+RO+Unit

so i am thinking i fill this tank with an outside hose, my only option, so i guess the thing for me to do is get an inline system hook it up and let it run. that way when water dehydrates amazingly fast, as it does, i can just add more hose water and it will get cleaned up. sound correct?

the alternative i guess is to get a unit i hook up to my sink, that says it makes maybe 50 gals a day. or maybe i could hook one of the sink units to my hose when i need it. but even if i can, if it takes a day to make 50 gals, then it will take a little longer to fill up my setup. o ya and when it says it makes 50 gals a day, does that mean it drips out at a certain speed that equals 50 gals a day? then more time to get the salt mix set. sorry thinking out loud, this is all new to me, and i want to do things right and have success.

o ya what does the di part of ro di stand for?

for the first time today i tested what happens when i unplug my sump pump since drilling siphon break holes in the water return tubes. i was doing a partial water change. and yea, it worked, whew. no more flooding.

 

[Aquascaper]

DI = Deionization

RO units produce they're rated amount continuously so a 50gpd system will produce 25g in 12hrs, etc. Normally you would run the system and store enough RO water in reserve for a couple of water changes/top ups, then run it when these reserves are depleted.

Aiptasia are a nuisance as they multiply vigorously (even more so when damaged as the fragments grow new ones). If you have nothing to control them they will cover everything and kill off any corals you put in as they sting. True peppermint shrimps are a good natural control or injecting with vinegar, etc. will kill them.

 

[wired_one]

DI = Deionization

RO units produce they're rated amount continuously so a 50gpd system will produce 25g in 12hrs, etc. Normally you would run the system and store enough RO water in reserve for a couple of water changes/top ups, then run it when these reserves are depleted.

thanks for your reply, er not trying to be stupid here, i just do not understand quite how these units work. do you put them into the container of water you intend to purify and let them run, or do you use them to fill a container with water that is already purified. if so then how does this work, does it actually slowly fill the container at a rate of whatever gal per x hours? in other words, i am guessing this is a lot slower than water runs out of my faucet.

 

[Aquascaper]

You hook it up to your house cold water supply and there is two outputs. One is 'waste' which can be recycled for watering the garden, etc. and the other is the purified water. You would collect the purified water in a container (changing containers as they fill or just turned the system off) to be stored ready for use when needed.

If you think how long it takes to fill a 50g tank with a hose and compare that to a 50g per day output you understand the speed at which these systems run.