power heads and the salt i use

[lisamarie806]

i use instant ocean and i have had my power heads so long i do not even know the name of them. I use instant ocean salt mix, I did read that the salt you use does make a difference. What is the antias best food. I would love to make home made foods for my fish but I live in a small country town we have a very nice krogers store what might be some things I could get to mix up and the supplements i would have to use.Im trying hard here. Everyone has been great to help me out. Thanks so much

 

[yote]

There are a lot of folks that use Instant Ocean salt.Its not really a bad salt.
As for the foods.Raw table shrimp,fresh clams and such all blended together would probably be fine.I think Biff made a batch of homemade frozen fish food once,cant remember what all she used though.

 

[ccCapt]

Instant Ocean is probably the most popular brand of salt and has been around forever. Absolutely nothing wrong with it.

Here's a good fish food recipe.
http://www.melevsreef.com/food.html

 

[lisamarie806]

I think I will make up some food items and see what happens. Krogers is about all our town has to offer in nice fresh seafoods...then not much of a choice with items...I will check it out and see. Thanks

 

[Bifferwine]

I make my own frozen food. So much cheaper than buying it. You can use any frozen or fresh seafood except for fish (for some reason, fish isn't good, I don't remember the exact rationale). That means clams, shrimp, scallops, mussels, squid etc. I also used oysters that came in a jar. Make sure the seafood is not cooked and is not seasoned. It must be raw.

Toss it in the blender with some seaweed sheets and garlic extract and puree, but not so that it's liquid. Make sure there are still chunks, because if it's too small the fish won't be able to eat it.

I bought these off of Ebay to freeze the cubes in:
http://cgi.ebay.com/2-MINI-ICE-CUBE...5|66:2|65:12|39:1|240:1318|301:1|293:1|294:50

(or just search for mini ice cube tray)

 

[lisamarie806]

A big thnks. I will go this weekend and see what I can come up with. Will seachem. garlic be ok to use. I got my toadstool today, well I was actually afraid of it...LOL...I did not know if it would sting me or not. I had to call and make sure if it would or not.The girl said well probably. I was like ok now what do I do with this thing...LOL....It did not sting me at all, I guess it could have. Can you tell me a good place to place button polyps in the aquarium. I got this huge colony of polyps and it has two clams or I think they are anyway Im sure they will not open up...maybe they will I have no I idea. I got three turbo snails and they all were stuck to each other when I got them home now they are not coming unattached maybe they will later, what do you think?
Im not having much luck with my percula clowns, the one I got he is swimming just like the other one did....sigh....I float him in the bag for like 20 min maybe I did not add any of the water from the other place. Do you think if I feed him a little more that he might be ok?
Thanks

 

[dustin_P74]

you need to acclimate them, once the you float the bag for 15-20 minutes you need to open it and add a half cup of tank water every 5 minutes until the bag is full. once the bag is full take it out and dump half of that water into a bucket and repeat the process again until the bag is once again full, once that happens you can put the fish in the tank. also the snails will detach them selves from each other if you give them time, once you acclimate them just toss them in and they will go about their business cleaning the tank. as for the polyps, once you acclimate those you can just put them on the bottom, but if those clams you bought with them are tridacnid clams they will probably die

 

[lisamarie806]

I slowly added the water once to the bag, I did not fefill it. I hope that I did not do any thing wrong but at least, now I know, I should do it at least twice. The clams are pretty, it is a shame they will die :( Thanks a bunch.

 

[Bifferwine]

Leather corals won't sting you. The worst they can do is leave slime on your hands and make them stink.

 

[yote]

Just dont sniff you hands after you've handled the leather.It aint a pretty smell.

 

[Bifferwine]

And scrub all you want. It's not gonna come off!

 

[lisamarie806]

You should have been there with a camera when I placed the toadstool onto the rock I had picked out. You would have :lol: so hard. I got him placed on the rock, in fact the rock I picked out was made for it:D looks very nice. I have been using distilled water in my tank and now my tank is look really nice. Everything in my tank is checking out. I run all test, for now, at least once a day...sometimes twice..... When Im confident of everything maybe I will just test twice a week....hummmm...that may be a while:D Im going to use tap water but only after it has set a while, I filled a bottle with tap....for a test....I test the water and there was nothing in just as r/o water, Im sitting it where it will stay temp wise around 78 deg. I will do my 10% water changes weekly and use the tap water I have let set, is this a good idea or not?
Thanks again

 

[Bifferwine]

The tap water has stuff in it that you may not be testing for (commonly, nitrates, phosphates and heavy metals). I wouldn't suggest going back to tap water once your tank is doing better, it'll just get worse then. If it were my tank, I'd just stay using the distilled water.

 

[yote]

+1 Biff

 

[lisamarie806]

Yes I can see what you are saying. I tested phospahates nirates ect. I found out that it is not the right thing to do. Im going to stay wth the distilled water, it is working for me. I do all test. Im trying to get the phosphates to zero if at all possible, my phosphates right now are like 0.5, nirates 0, ph 8.4 of the morning and then at night the ph goes to 8.2. I do know that if phosphates are the cause of algae and zero is where you want it to be. My calcium is like 400. With everything checking out properly still my fish do not look as healthy as they should be. Yellow Tang looking really healthy, yellow tail damsel is healthy, Bangaii healthy, two anthias one is, one is not, my maroon clown healthy when I got him, now he does not look anything like he did yesterday, he eats very good. Maybe there is some test that Im not checking that I should be. I do all the test that come in your masters test kit, I do phosphates, calcium, kh test, are there any test I should be checking for that Im not? I feed my fish a varitey of foods twice a day along with some flakes in the middle of the day. I check my nirates constanly because I know that you can cause the nirates to go up doing this much feeding. Once I more water flow going in my tank, will this help will this help the dieoff in my tank, and what can I do to get my phosphates down some more.
Thanks

 

[yote]

I generally test for nitrates,alkalinity,calcium, and magnesium at least every other day.
You might try soaking your fishies food in something like Zoe or Selcon.Both are vitamins.

 

[lisamarie806]

Coral food

Can someone tell me if marine snow is a good product to buy for the corals. I read that it was good for stony coral,anemones,tube worms,sponges,clams and other filter feeders. Or, what is a very good product to buy so that my corals, ect. get all they need to grow and be healthy.
Thanks:sfish:

 

[ndepratt]

Marine snow is fine, but I probably wouldn't mess with adding it. Focus on simply keeping good water quality. You should be getting enough nutrients into the water simply through your feeding routine.

I saw that you have a clam, what type of lighting do you have? Clams, ESPECIALLY tridacna clams require high lighting, preferably MH in my opinion. If you don't have this lighting, or at least a nice 4x54W t5 setup with the clam up high, you should consider taking him back to the LFS. Before jumping into tridacna clams, you might try the easier clams which are still beautiful, like squamosas and derasas.

With all of the money you have spent on your tank, and your livestock, you will be wasting all of that if you're using tap water, that's my honest opinion. The key to running a great tank of any kind is starting with good water. (like papa john's, better ingredients better pizza).

Tap water used to contain a disolved form of chlorine to control microbial growth, however that came out of the water easily after sitting for only a day or two. However water companies now use chloramines to control microbial growth (chlorine and ammonia mix). This will not just come out of the water, in order to remove it without chemical treatment you would need to heat the water for a prolonged period of time, not just let it sit. Chemical dechlorinaters also have the nasty habit of breaking the chlorine-ammonia bond, and leaving a bit of ammonia left over.

On top of that, there are many various types of phosphates added to tap water by the water company in order to coat the inside of their pipes so as to protect them, these break down into simple phosphates in your tank.

It is VERY worth your time to invest in an RO/DI system. Your tank and livestock will look better.

BTW you instant ocean salt is designed for use with RO/DI water, not tap water, so to me that matters as well. IO is also rather low in calcium, and high in alkalinity. If you plan on going the direction of clams, and perhaps later SPS and other more calcium demanding corals, then I would recommend doing the miracle mix. 50/50 instant ocean and oceanic. I was very pleased with the results when I made the switch. but if it ain't broken don't fix it..

i'm rambling now.

 

[lisamarie806]

So all the information about feeding my corals is not something I have to really worry about. I feed my fish alot of different foods. I have nova pro t5 lights. I do not have any clams. I just read that on the bottle of marine snow. I wanted my corals, ect. to get all they needed to eat to help them grow bigger. Where should your calcium level be, mine is like 390, does it needed to be higher? Im using distilled water for top off`s, Im soon going to get a ro water sys. I still get some algae, I think ths is due tophosphates being high. My phosphates were like really low, now they are like around 1 this is to much for me. When you add live rock or coral will this cause the phosphates to go up? This is the only reason I can think of why it went up. I done a water change and every thing was fine...checked out, no problems...then I realize the algae is back when I added the corals and a live rock. What do you think of this and how can i control it? I will get my water flow pumps wed koralia 3 Im going to get two of them for my 75gal, I have two power heads and my canister pump going.
Thanks for the info let me know what you think. I will save my $ for a coral i seen at the lfs.:)

 

[yote]

Your going to have algae issues pop up ever now and then.No way around that,its all part of a maturing system.The key is in controlling the algae.
If you add a piece of rock thats been sitting in a tank with a load of phosphates,then there is going to be some leech out into your tank.But the algae will eventually use it up.Rowa-phos are Phos-ban will help control the phosphates.