Hello :)

[Wet Nerd]

Hello! I have started a 29 gallon biocube exactly 3 weeks ago. I have had some questions, so i created an account for this forum. My current stock is one cardinalfish (not doing so well, trying to help him) a pair of ocellaris clowns, a dragonface pipefish (i supply plenty of pods, no worries ) and a firefish (currently missing in action for 3 hrs, probably hiding.) My CUC consists of a fire shrimp, 2 hermits, 5 turbos, one emerald crab, and 2 nessarius. I have 16 pounds of live rock and i will add more.

 

[meknudson2]

Welcome to Reef Sanctuary .
Is your tank FOWLR tank? Have you checked the parameters, I would check to see if everything is doing ok as far as salinity, phosphates, nitrates, nitrites and ammonia. You want to keep your parameters as close to a natural reef as possible. It is not as strict as when you have corals but they need this to stay healthy.
Salinity should be around 1.026
Phosphates should be 0
Nitrites should be 0
Ammonia should be 0
Nitrates should be as low as possible around 5 is pretty good hope this helps.

 

[Wet Nerd]

Welcome to Reef Sanctuary . Is your tank FOWLR tank? Have you checked the parameters, I would check to see if everything is doing ok as far as salinity, phosphates, nitrates, nitrites and ammonia. You want to keep your parameters as close to a natural reef as possible. It is not as strict as when you have corals but they need this to stay healthy. I hope this helps.

Thank you. I plan on adding corals in maybe a few weeks or a month. I'm 13, so money isn't super abundant. My ammonia is 0, nitrite is 0, nitrate is low (test strips a bit hard to read, + colorblind in right eye :O) Thank you for your help.

 

[meknudson2]

Great it sounds like you are doing everything you need to do. You have a lot of really nice fish.

 

[Wet Nerd]

Great it sounds like you are doing everything you need to do. You have a lot of really nice fish.

Thank you! I would like to know about a white spot on my cardinals. I would get pics but it's hard to take pics with a 17 inch laptop's front camera... Really hard. I may get some tom. I was thinking ich but remembered that ich is a freshwater parasite. Anyway, the cardinal has been very inactive and doesn't eat much mysis. He has a few white dots. The banggai cardinal also sometimes swims oddly. I know you can't pinpoint it with this much detail, but i think i'm just going to give it to my LFS, whether they give me money back or not. The important thing is that he doesn't die. I'm trying to go without killing ANY creatures from my mistakes. If you could guess what it is, i appreciate it. Thanks again

 

[melvis]

Welcome to the gang Wet Nerd.

If you haven't already, I'd get some test kits for Alkalinity, Magnesium and Calcium and do some weekly tests to see where your levels are at before adding any corals. I've had issues from the off with low alkalinity and unfortunately have lost a couple of corals because of this. Best bit of advice I got on here when I joined was 'take it slow'.

Don't forget to start a thread so other's can follow your journey.

 

[Rini]

Welcome. Dragon pipefish are so cool. Would love to have. Hard to get copepods here in nl sadly.

 

[DaveK]

Hello! I have started a 29 gallon biocube exactly 3 weeks ago. I have had some questions, so i created an account for this forum. My current stock is one cardinalfish (not doing so well, trying to help him) a pair of ocellaris clowns, a dragonface pipefish (i supply plenty of pods, no worries ) and a firefish (currently missing in action for 3 hrs, probably hiding.) My CUC consists of a fire shrimp, 2 hermits, 5 turbos, one emerald crab, and 2 nessarius. I have 16 pounds of live rock and i will add more.

Thank you! I would like to know about a white spot on my cardinals. I would get pics but it's hard to take pics with a 17 inch laptop's front camera... Really hard. I may get some tom. I was thinking ich but remembered that ich is a freshwater parasite. Anyway, the cardinal has been very inactive and doesn't eat much mysis. He has a few white dots. The banggai cardinal also sometimes swims oddly. I know you can't pinpoint it with this much detail, but i think i'm just going to give it to my LFS, whether they give me money back or not. The important thing is that he doesn't die. I'm trying to go without killing ANY creatures from my mistakes. If you could guess what it is, i appreciate it. Thanks again

Welcome to the group.

You have a couple of problems here. First, your tank is way overcrowded. By the time you add live rock, and a sandbed that 29 gal tank is down to about 22 gal of actual water. In a SW system you usually want to maintain a stocking limit of 1 inch of fish for 5 gal of water. In other words, you want a total of about 4 to 5 inches of fish in your tank. Most of the fish you mention are likely about 2 inches long. and you have 5 fish. This puts you at about double of what you should have in the tank.

As you have noted, you only have about 16 lbs of live rock. In a reef system the live rock is the biological filtration system, so by having less rock, you have less biological filtration. This puts more stress on the livestock.

You also have a new system, and it is possible that it was not cycled or that it was stocked too quickly. There isn't too much you can do about it now, but the suggestions to test your water are good ones.

As for the spots, there is a FW fish disease called ich and it's the parasite Ichthyophthirius multifiliis. In SW there is a disease that look similar, but it's a different parasite Cryptocaryon irritans, so it gets the same name. Treatment for the SW disease is completely different. Here are a lot of links on the site to it's treatment.

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/marine-ich-myths-and-facts.23132/
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/copper-treatment-use-problems.23130/
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/curing-fish-of-marine-ich.52236/
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/a-hyposalinity-treatment-process.23131/

It's a lot of reading, and it's quite an ordeal to treat the disease. To summarize all this -
Make sure they really have the disease.
If one fish has it, they all do. You must treat all the fish.
The only really effective treatments are copper or hypo salinity.
Most if not all other treatments don't work, despite what other might say.
Treatment must be given in a quarantine tank and should run for at least 2 week after you don't see any more spots.
The display tank should remain empty of fish for 10 to 12 weeks, so any parasites in the tank can die off from lack of a host.

Good luck with treating your fish.

 

[soco]

Welcome to reef sanctuary.

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

 

[Wet Nerd]

Welcome to the group.

You have a couple of problems here. First, your tank is way overcrowded. By the time you add live rock, and a sandbed that 29 gal tank is down to about 22 gal of actual water. In a SW system you usually want to maintain a stocking limit of 1 inch of fish for 5 gal of water. In other words, you want a total of about 4 to 5 inches of fish in your tank. Most of the fish you mention are likely about 2 inches long. and you have 5 fish. This puts you at about double of what you should have in the tank.

As you have noted, you only have about 16 lbs of live rock. In a reef system the live rock is the biological filtration system, so by having less rock, you have less biological filtration. This puts more stress on the livestock.

You also have a new system, and it is possible that it was not cycled or that it was stocked too quickly. There isn't too much you can do about it now, but the suggestions to test your water are good ones.

As for the spots, there is a FW fish disease called ich and it's the parasite Ichthyophthirius multifiliis. In SW there is a disease that look similar, but it's a different parasite Cryptocaryon irritans, so it gets the same name. Treatment for the SW disease is completely different. Here are a lot of links on the site to it's treatment.

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/marine-ich-myths-and-facts.23132/
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/copper-treatment-use-problems.23130/
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/curing-fish-of-marine-ich.52236/
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/a-hyposalinity-treatment-process.23131/

It's a lot of reading, and it's quite an ordeal to treat the disease. To summarize all this -
Make sure they really have the disease.
If one fish has it, they all do. You must treat all the fish.
The only really effective treatments are copper or hypo salinity.
Most if not all other treatments don't work, despite what other might say.
Treatment must be given in a quarantine tank and should run for at least 2 week after you don't see any more spots.
The display tank should remain empty of fish for 10 to 12 weeks, so any parasites in the tank can die off from lack of a host.

Good luck with treating your fish.

Went to my LFS and showed pics. Turns out they strain of their cardinals has white dots and that cardinals are jerky swimmers. I'm really happy i don't have ich. Also, I use bioballs and live sand on top of live rock. With this extra filtration, i put in less rock for more room. At the moment, I am not overstocked as my fish are not quite full size. If my fish grow too large, i will give some to my LFS. Thank you for your help

 

[Wet Nerd]

Welcome. Dragon pipefish are so cool. Would love to have. Hard to get copepods here in nl sadly.

Awh. Liveaquaria has an excellent selection of them. i reccomend tisbe pods
Cheers.

 

[Wet Nerd]

Welcome to the group.

You have a couple of problems here. First, your tank is way overcrowded. By the time you add live rock, and a sandbed that 29 gal tank is down to about 22 gal of actual water. In a SW system you usually want to maintain a stocking limit of 1 inch of fish for 5 gal of water. In other words, you want a total of about 4 to 5 inches of fish in your tank. Most of the fish you mention are likely about 2 inches long. and you have 5 fish. This puts you at about double of what you should have in the tank.

As you have noted, you only have about 16 lbs of live rock. In a reef system the live rock is the biological filtration system, so by having less rock, you have less biological filtration. This puts more stress on the livestock.

You also have a new system, and it is possible that it was not cycled or that it was stocked too quickly. There isn't too much you can do about it now, but the suggestions to test your water are good ones.

As for the spots, there is a FW fish disease called ich and it's the parasite Ichthyophthirius multifiliis. In SW there is a disease that look similar, but it's a different parasite Cryptocaryon irritans, so it gets the same name. Treatment for the SW disease is completely different. Here are a lot of links on the site to it's treatment.

http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/marine-ich-myths-and-facts.23132/
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/copper-treatment-use-problems.23130/
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/curing-fish-of-marine-ich.52236/
http://www.reefsanctuary.com/forum/index.php?threads/a-hyposalinity-treatment-process.23131/

It's a lot of reading, and it's quite an ordeal to treat the disease. To summarize all this -
Make sure they really have the disease.
If one fish has it, they all do. You must treat all the fish.
The only really effective treatments are copper or hypo salinity.
Most if not all other treatments don't work, despite what other might say.
Treatment must be given in a quarantine tank and should run for at least 2 week after you don't see any more spots.
The display tank should remain empty of fish for 10 to 12 weeks, so any parasites in the tank can die off from lack of a host.

Good luck with treating your fish.

I forgot to mention that I cycled several times

 

[soco]

I forgot to mention that I cycled several times

What do u mean u cycled several times?

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

 

[Wet Nerd]

What do u mean u cycled several times?

Sent from my SCH-I605 using Tapatalk

Might not be correct terminology. I let nitrates build up several times by adding food. Live rock dealt with it very well. I did this to test it for my clowns.

 

[Pat24601]

Might not be correct terminology. I let nitrates build up several times by adding food. Live rock dealt with it very well. I did this to test it for my clowns.

Not a term we use really, but I get what you mean. That's seems like a good way to test if you've really cycled.

 

[nanoreefing4fun]

to ReefSanctuary, a real Sanctuary of reef forums, with lots of very nice members

Start a new tank thread & share your tank with us so we can follow along - we love pics