Hey all! Another noobie! =P

[RYknow]

Hey everyone! Just thought I would take a minute to say hi, and give everyone a quick run down of what I've done, and where I am. About 16 months ago my girlfriend and I had been thinking about getting a small fish tank for her daughter. My girlfriend wanted a saltwater, and I wanted freshwater (had a freshwater tank growing up, so I knew a little bit about them). We happened to go to the LFS and we were checking out some of the SW fish they had. Their display tank had a Sailfin Tang, and that fish alone pretty much made up our minds that SW is the way we wanted to go.

Luckly for us, the LFS had a HUGE sale going on that day, so we walked out of their with a Filter, 55 gallon tank, stand, hood, light, salt mix, and sand (every item was marked down CONCIDERABLY!). And so it began...

Everything went well. Extremely well, and we fell in love with the hobby in a big way. About a month ago we upgraded to a 90 gallon, and things are going pretty good! Anyway, here is a quick list of fish, and equipment to date.

Equipment -
Filter: Dual Emperor 400's
Power Heads: 1x Maxi-jet 900, 1x Maxi-jet 600, and 1x Koralia 3
Lighting: Stock light fixture, with PowerGlo bulb (18,000K)
Live Rock: +/- 60 lbs. :frustrat: (work in progress)

Fish -
Sailfin Tang (Large, about 5" long)
Powder Brown Tang (Med, about 3.5" long)
Blue Hippo Tang (Small, about 1" long)
3x Ocellaris Clownfish
Bangii Cardinal
2x Green Chromis
Yellow Watchman Goby

Inverts/misc -
2x Chocolate chip starfish
Various hermit crabs (red, and blue legged), and one VERY large brown crab. I'll need someone here to ID him for me when I can get some pics.

So, anyway, thats my tank. I'll have some pics coming very soon. I would have them right now, but my distro doesn't like Photobucket for some reason, so I gotta jump over to my g/f's computer.

Thanks for reading! Hope you all like my pics when I get them up. =]
-RYknow

 

[cgoodman381]

Very cool. A good place to look is craigslist. I got most of my tank rock off there for about a buck a pound...

And I know someone will say it so I may as well beat em to it.... If you ever want a reef watch out for those choc chip stars.... :D

 

[yote]

Welcome to the reef.
Be careful with that many tangs in that size tank.Really and truly,a tang shouldnt be kept in anything less than a 125.JMO.

 

[cgoodman381]

About a month ago we upgraded to a 90 gallon

Dnno if you thought they weren't in the 55 yote, but a 90 for em isnt horribly bad. But they may feel a lil cramped :p

 

[RYknow]

Yeah I know that a 90 gallon is a bit tight for them, but they get along great so far, and I haven't had any issues! We'll see how things go as I add rock, and they grow. Anyway...Here are the pics! Enjoy, and comment please! =] (Sorry in advance for any of the blurry pics.)

Heres Maynard, my Powder Brown!

Heres my Girlfriends Sailfin. Such an awesome fish!! =]

Maynard again!

I LOVE this pic of the tang! He's checking out the camera!! haha!

Awesome pic my g/f got!!

The Blue Hippo is in the foreground quite a bit. He's WAY smaller then the sailfin.

Sailfin and Clown.

I love this little guy!!

This is the crab that needs ID'ing. He's awesome, and HUGE!!!

And just a couple more full tank shots.

Thanks for looking! Hope you all enjoyed them. I'll be updating VERY often!

-RYknow

 

[yote]

It is a pretty tank.Thats a huge hermit too.Keep an eye him.
We put one in with a couple of tangs at the LFS.The next morning,one of the tang had its tail missing.
And yeah,I missed the part about the 90gal.

 

[RYknow]

The hermit was one of the very first things we got! He hasn't been an issue at all (luckly!). What kind of hermit is he though? I'd love to get another one!

-RYknow

 

[yote]

I call em sand hermits.But thats probably not the right name.

 

[RyanG]

Nice looking tank so far! What are your plans for it? Staying Fish Only With Live Rock(FOWLR) or going to do a reef?

 

[cgoodman381]

How much rock is in there?

 

[reeffreak]

Congrats on the upgrade and welcome to the site!

You could use more liverock.I suppose you realize that otherwise you wouldn't be banging your head against a brick wall.I can't blame you,live rock is expensive.

Is your powder brown spooked or excited?I have a brown and sailfin,the PB gets pale sometimes when it is angry or excited like the the way your's appear.BTW,I call them scarlet hermit crabs.

 

[Bifferwine]

Eh, those giant hermits are just giant hermits to me... I have one, his name is Claude. He's massive.

Are you a Tool/Perfect Circle fan by any chance???

Your fish look great. Are you planning on moving over to a reef tank eventually??

 

[RYknow]

Hey all thanks for the suggestions and comments! I am planning on having it remain a FOWLR. I would like to throw small, reef related (sorry...I don't know specific names! haha) items in. But the main reason we went with SW, was the fish!

As for Maynard (My powder Brown) I think he was spooked a bit. He's actually taken the move to the bigger tank the hardest. He was fine for the first week, and then he stopped eating the second week. He didn't eat anything (that I saw) in 6 days!! He's since started eating again, but nothing like he used to. I used to be able to throw some pellets in, and him and the sailfin would have them all gone before they even hit the bottum of the tank. I hope he bounces back, he's the best!!

As for amount of LR right now, I have +/- 60lbs. I'm going to buy what I can, when I can when it comes to the LR. It's soo damn expensive!! While we are talking LR, anyone bought LR from Foster&Smith? I read that it's cured, but they reccomend re-curing it prior to putting it in the tank? I don't have the ability to do that, so if thats the case, I'm going to have to get all my rock local. Which is $10 per pound.

As for being a tool/perfect circle fan. That I am!! Big time. More or less a HUGE MJK fan!! I think he's brilliant, and his music is just amazing!! If you like MJK's stuff at all, check out his new project, Puscifer. It's different music. Give it a couple listens, it grows on you! =]

Thanks again for all the comments guys! I have a thread started in the Filters/ Skimmers section. I'm looking for advice on a Protein skimmer! Feel free to check it out and give any opinions you have!

-RYknow

 

[yote]

Technically,your still paying the same for local rock as you would shipped.But its not a big deal to cure rock.All you need is a couple of cheap 30 gallon trash cans,heaters,and power heads.
But I still perfer to get my rock at the LFS.That way I can hand pick the pieces I want,not what somebody else want me to have.

 

[Hornet]

oops was on wrong page when i posted

 

[Bifferwine]

I have bought live rock from Drs. Foster and Smith before. Great deals. If you buy the type that's on sale at the time, you can get it for as cheap as $3 to $4 per pound, shipped. Definitely saves some money.

You may want to think about switching your fish over to frozen foods only. Pellet and flake foods contain ash, which will lead to algae problems. I only use frozen food in my tank -- it doesn't contain those algae causing preservatives.

MJK lives here in Arizona. He's kind of a "local celebrity". I've seen Tool in concert 7 times now, all over the country. Probably my favorite band ever.

 

[RYknow]

RIght now I'm feeding them the Pellets and flakes first thing in the morning (it's quick, and I don't have much time at all in the mornings). At night I feed them Frozen mysis, or frozen brine shrimp. What other frozen foods should I look into? I need to make a LFS run this weekend for some food anyway, so any opinions on good foods to get would be great!

I've never been to a concert...sadly! :frustrat: I would HAVE to see A perfect circle or Tool though! I love music, but I won't go to a show unless it's one of those two bands! I envy you for living right there with MJK!! Have you seen him in person on the street or anything?!

RYknow

 

[Bifferwine]

No, I don't live in the same town as him, just the same state.

Your fish don't need to be fed twice a day. Once a day or even once every other day will be fine. There are lots of good frozen foods out there. I recommend frozen mysis shrimp, Emerald Entree, Marine Cuisine and Rod's Food. You will be fine if you get a variety (2 or 3 kinds).

 

[RYknow]

Sweet! I actually went out a bought some food right after I left that response. We had to go out for some other things, so we stopped in. I ended up checking out the frozen food section, and I happen to find the Emerald Entree. I'm glad I picked it up since your recommending it anyway! :mrgreen:

I have Frozen Mysis, Frozen Brine Shrimp, and the Emerald Entree now. I think thats a pretty decent variety. I'm going to stop with the flakes and pellets as you've suggested. The sailfin LOVES the pellets though, so I might still throw some in everyonce in awhile as a little bit of treat.

Now...Maynard, my powdered brown still isn't eating all that well. Any suggestions? The first week in the new tank everything was fine. Sometime into the second week, he stopped eating all together for 6 straight days. Now he eats, but it's very small amounts compared to the rest of the fish. He almost acts blind, as he goes after pieces of food, but he doesn't actually eat them. Then you'll see him put pieces of food in his mouth, only to spit them back out. Any clues on what could be causing this? I assume that my real only option is wait it out and hope he bounces back to his ussual self?

Thanks,
-RYknow

 

[Piggy]

Try soaking some food in garlic to see if that helps.