Project 58!! (Image intense)

[Maxx]

I dont think I'll have a problem getting a refund....I just dont want to eat the $24 shipping fee's. I dont know if they will or wont refund that since they offered to ship me a new fish, no questions asked. I want to upfront here.

I am not dis-satisfied with Live Aquaria's service, and would consider buying from them again. I'm just not in the mood to wait until some unknown future point in time to get a Tomini tang.
I dont want people to think I'm bagging on Live Aquaria, because I'm not. I just dont want to have to wait forever to get this fish. I honestly cant put another fish in the tank for about a month anyway...so its really kind of a moot point.

Nick

[Maxx]

02-02-2005

I turned lights off on the left side of the tank last night when I released the Chalk Bass and the Bellus angel at 9 pm. I also turned off the OM unit, but left the Iwaki on so that the water flow was blowing from top left to right, which gave the left side of the tank the least amount of flow. I did this in order to encourage the fish to hang out in the left side of the tank as the Lawn Mower blenny hangs out on the right.
Everybody dissappeared almost immediately towards the left side of the tank, with the angel hiding by the overflow in the darkest part of the tank. The right side light was on for about another hour (until 10 pm) and then shut off. The chalk bass were starting to check out their surrounding area's when the lights went out. The angel had been playing peekaboo every time it saw me.

This morning at 10 am the lights came on. I started thawing out some brine shrimp plus, and mysis shrimp in RO water. The fish were still kinda shy at that point. I turned off the closed loop entirely so I could feed them. Once the food was thawed, I poured it through a brine shrimp net, and discarded the water it thawed out in....dont want to introduce any phosphates to the tank. Even though I have a Phosban reactor running, I dont want to add to what I'm already dealing with.
I rinsed the net out with some tank water and put the food back into a container to be sucked into a turkey baster. I put a little in the tank...and everyone started eating!
The chalk bass were a little unsure at first...they dont strike me as the smartest fish in the world...but the angel jumped after everything she could find. She's currently cruising around the tank, and examining everything.

I turned the closed loop back on and restarted the OM unit. The angel is still cruising, but the chalk bass have moved back into their chosen safe havens...
Once they closed loop was back on, alot of food that was missed got thrown back into the water column. The angel again went nuts and starting going after everything that looked edible, the chalk bass would look at something...think about it for awhile...then venture out and eat it.

All in all....a good start to the day. Pics will follow later. Nobody is really adjusted well enough to get clear pics, yet so maybe tomorrow.

Nick

[Maxx]

02-02-05

Okay, I lied.
I took a couple of quick pics today. The Bellus is kinda tough to photograph. It doesnt help that I cant adjust the focus on this camera, nor the F-stops/shutter speed.....so I'm kinda at the mercy of the Gods of Crappy Digi-Cams for getting a decent shot of whats in my tank....
Really need to buy a better camera. The Canon G-6 is looking pretty good right now. I'd really prefer a 20D...but those are a little out of my price range right now.

Any way...here are some pics of the new guys...

First are the Chalk Bass (Serranus tortugarum). First pic is with the on camera flash on...forgot to turn it off.



Without flash




The Chaetomorphia algae is only temporary. I got it from Spooda420 to seed my liverock with Pods and other critters. In a couple of days, its going as it traps a lot of detritus.


here are two pics of the female Bellus Angel (Genicanthus bellus)



Here is a pic of her picking at stuff under the lava rock on the left side of the tank.



Nick

[Spooda420]

they sure look happy... I wonder if they know how much time their master has spent on their new dwelling? the better write a fishie thank-you note.

[Gina]

Glad to hear your new fish are settling in well! I really do like the looks of the bass. How big did you say they get? Do they prefer being in pairs or do single fish do okay?

[Maxx]

The Bass get to be a max of 3.1 inches according to Scott Michael's book "Reef Fishes Vol 1". The LFS I bought them from has a gorgous one that is almost 4 inches....beautiful colors, doesnt bother anyone...just a pretty fish. I noticed that mine have already picked out territories in the tank. They only seem to squabble with each other over hidey holes. One is a little skimmier than the other, and he's the one I'm a little concerned about. I just fed everyone again (Both Chalk Bass and Genicanthus angels are planktivores and require regular feeding).
One thing I did notice however is the Bellus angel appears to be in the early stages of Pop-eye.
This is basically caused by a bacterial infection from a scrape or small wound to the fish. It causes the affected eye to swell out and turn cloudy for about a week or two. I'm not too worried since she's still eating fine, and Ive dealt with this before in my previous tank. I had a Black Cap Basslet that developed Pop-Eye. It was ugly for a little bit, but pulled through just fine. I expect this will be the same. I didnt do anything special other than ensure it was well fed.

Nick

[mps9506]

Those chalk bass are a great fish. I try to get them in as often as I can. I can't believe they aren't more popular considering how nice they look and how inexpensive they are. Pretty calm personality also.

[Maxx]

yeah, The LFS I bought all this from has them on a regular basis...I just never paid attention to them thinking they were kinda blah colored...but didnt realize that was due to shipping stress. The one they have in the show tank is awesome.

Interesting sidenote....
I just read a rant on RC about Dr Foster's and Smith from an unsatisfied customer. He was pretty irate, and very unreasonable...managed to singlehandedly get Live Aquaria a bunch of new customers with they way they bent over backwards trying to resolve his issue with them. But he said something interesting...basically all orders will be cancelled if not filled after 2 weeks. So I kinda wondered what would happen with my order. I spoke to a really nice guy who answered all my questions. Adam said that it was true, each order had a two week max life, then it was cancelled and money was refunded. He said if I wanted I could call and get the order extended for one week if I wanted. I asked about the refund, he clarified that it would be a full refund to include the shipping costs.

I have Zero problems with Live Aquaria now....They will ship the fish, or give me my money back in full. No problems with that.

Nick

[Craig Manoukian]

Just saw a bunch of Chalk Basslettes at the LFS! Very healthy looking. Good luck with the new additions Nick!

[Maxx]

Thanks Craig!
Everybody is eating and the Chalk Bass are beginning to associate me turning off the water current, (OM and the Iwaki 55), with food are beginning to eat more aggressively. The Bellus angel is anything but shy when it comes to eating. She often comes flying in from wherever to snarf down food. This bothered me a little since the Chalk Bass seemed to eyeball stuff forever and didnt decide it was food until the Angel had eaten most of it. Oddly enough, when food was dispersed into the current from the chiller returns, they immediately dove on food that appeared to be moving more rapidly. I guess the food being slower moving and sorta hanging there from lack of current was something they werent used to.
Right now I'm just feeding thawed mysis shrimp. brine shrimp, and brine shrimp plus.
I thaw everything out in RO water, pour the water and the food through a brine shrimp net, and then put it an container of fresh RO water. Then I feed with a turkey baster. This is to lessen the amount of phosphates entering my tank. Even though I have the Phosban reactor running, I just want to keep from introducing anything more than necessary. I can tell the phosphate levels are lowering since the algae isnt doing as well as it used to. Even the Chaeto I got from a friend is turning yellow on the outside of the ball. I'm going to be shredding that up here soon to force as many of the critters hiding in it, into my rockwork. I dont like how the chaeto is acting like a net for any detritus that floats past it...
I pulled out a bunch of algae yesterday since we had a friend over for dinner last night...had to make the tank as pretty as possible. He thought it looked good...but I'm still a little embaressed. Its like having a dirty house and inviting friends over....
Still, Since the idea behind this thread is to show everything about the set up of this tank, (The good, the bad, and the ugly), I think a few shots might be in order. I'll take some after the lights turn on.

Nick

[Maxx]

I shredded some of the Chaeto in order to reduce the overall amount of it in my tank. Not too much...just a couple of small handfulls. The idea is to slowly reduce the amount of Chaeto in order to give the critters hiding inside it a chance to flee into the liverock, so I did this just before my lights kicked on.
I also took some pics as promised. Not really pretty as I didnt clean the glass of water spots and doggie nose prints/smears...
Ewww............dog boogers............

Anyway...on with the show.

Note the slightly fuzzy apearance of my live rock...thats the algae. Its not nearly as bad as it was a few weeks ago. I dont know exactly if the cycle of nutrients conducive to algae growth is dying down, (I hope so), or if this is just one round of the cycle of ecological succession....meaning more is on the way.

First off is the full tank shot.



Left side



Right side



I dont have three Bellus angels, I just have one really active camera hog.

I'm going to try and borrow my buddy's digital Rebel inb order to get a couple of good shots of things.

Nick

[Craig Manoukian]

Looking good Maxx. You'll have coraline algea in no time, eh?

[Maxx]

2-10-05

Things in the tank are doing fine. The fish are all eating very well, and parameters are stable. The algae growth has slowed, but is still noticable. Instead of the dark green hair algae, I have a brownish/tan algae that almost appears like stubble when I go a couple of days without shaving. You can kinda see it in the previous pics above. The snails still eat it, and my LawnMower still chows down and always has a pot belly going, so things are okay, maybe not aesthetically attractive, but okay at this point in my tanks development. Now on to the good stuff.
I bought some clams!!!!!!
I've bought clams from Barry at Clams Direct before, (www.clamsdirect.com) and was very impressed with his service, his clams, (no way to say that w/o it sounding strange...sorry man, you've got nice clams...okay, I feel creepy now...)
and more importantly, how he's responded to various threads here in the Tridacnid forum. Barry's just an out and out class act all the way.
So anyway, I received an email that Barry had gotten some new clams in....so I took a look see and was stunned.
I dont normally like Crocea's as much as Maxima clams. The Crocea's always seem to be more green than anything. Don't get me wrong...green is nice, but after awhile, it seems like all Crocea's look pretty similar. And Crocea's were the bulk of what Barry got in.
I was stunned at what I saw...Barry got some great Crocea's.
I could ramble ad nauseum about how awesome these clams looked...but why....Barry went to all the trouble to take pictures of his clams so go look.
I copied the pics of the clams I bought, so I'll post them up as well.

I've never seen a Teardrop Crocea before...and I've wanted a Teardrop clam for awhile. But lately all the Teardrop Maxima's I've seen have been brown...they're pretty, but if I'm paying for a Teardrop clam, I want a colorful one!



There were a couple of other clams I saw that I liked, but nothing really grabbed me like the Teardrop. I was looking for another because shipping two clams is the same cost as shipping one. I wanted Rocio to get in on this decision making also since she had just complained that my tank didnt have enough color in it....the first one she chose was this one.



I thought it was okay...but wasnt wildly impressed with it. I called Barry to ask him if he had any tiger striped Derasa clams, and if it would be a problem for me to buy the clmas now and have them shipped on Wednesday for a Thursday arrival.....he said no problem on the shipping, and that he didnt have any tiger striped Derasa clams. We started to talk about the different clams, and I asked Barry why he hadnt been getting many Maxima's in lately.
Barry said that 2 of the larger farms had gone out of business since they lost their grants, and the other farms have been shipping out what they had, which were the sub 3 inch Maxima's which required alot more care. Barry went on to say that he felt the Crocea's were hardier than the Maxima's anyway since he usually only lost 1 Crocea for every 4 Maxima's that he lost. I was surprised to hear this as I had always thought the Crocea's were more delicate than Maxima's. But with the number of clams Barry deals with on a yearly basis and because he is so knowledgable, I'm more than willing to take his word for it.
We talked for a little bit longer, and he asked why I didnt really dig the Crocea's as much. I explained its because they almost always seem to be a shade of green, and very little other color. He said that they appeared green from above, but when viewed from the side they look more blue. I remembered seeing different pics of Mike's (MPS9506) Crocea that he has as his Avatar here, and how it looks really green in one pic and blue in the next. Barry said he was looking at one clam right now that was really blue and gorgeous in person. I asked him if it was one of the ones on the Website. he said it was and gave me the number for it.....It wound up being the same clam Rocio had liked.
So I had to buy it.

They arrived this morning and I started acclimating them at 10:30 am. As soon as they are done acclimating, I will post up pics.

Nick

[Woodstock]

Very nice looking clams Nick!!! Clams are one thing I am not be able to put in my tank

[mps9506]

nice choices. You gotta do the two angel shots when you get them though
One from top down and one from the side. I finally found a spot in my tank for my clam where I can see all the colors. Let em attach to a rock then tilt them just right and you can see all the colors at once