Red Sea Max 250

Yesterday our Sleeper Gold Head Goby died. My wife tried to save him by catching him when he was stuck against the overflow and put it in the crab tank. But when she told me in the evening and I took a look I saw him lying lifeless on the bottom.
I don’t know what did it for him, my wife said his fins seemed damaged so maybe another fish took him on, however he seemed very skinny to me, so maybe he couldn’t find food and starved to death. We will probably wait with another replacement until the dottyback is caught.

Someone was very happy however with the fact that the goby died,...

Been a long time since the last update, personal life been a bit busy so not much time to spend time on the aquarium besides the necessary maintenance. But we are back and picking things up, so let me bring you back up to speed with what is going on.
In the Red Sea Max we have had several issues with the result that we lost many corals, mainly buttons and mushrooms. Buttons won’t open anymore for reasons yet unknown, I have bought some new ones not too long ago, but these are also closing, especially in the higher areas of the aquarium.
We have lost many mushrooms due to the Planaria,...

Been some time since I have updated here, and to be honest also been a long time since we did a big cleaning on the aquarium. We had a busy period but hopefully we can get things more steady now.

First of we bought a couple of Kauderni’s on the 13th of October. After a long time we are going to give them another go. Good thing about these is that they have been in the aquarium in the aquarium store for some time already, so might make them stronger?

Just a quick update before my vacation. On Saturday the 23rd I bought a couple of fish for the 60liter aquarium, my wife liked them very much and we put them in the RSM250. So now we have 2 new inhabitants there, the Neon Dottyback and the Cleaner Common Wrasse.

Neon Dottyback

Cleaner Common Wrasse

That same day...

The RSM is still overcrowded and messy from all the frags that are still located there. And in the past days it only became more instead of less. I needed to save some corals from the expending starburst polyps. So I removed some pieces and placed them on rocks to hope to get some frags from them. But after 9 days they still haven’t attached to the rocks.

Also I cut of a blue mushroom from underneath the rock with green star polyps and placed it in the shot glass. Only problem was that he attached himself to the bottom of the glass instead of a rock. So yesterday I went to try again.

Yesterday we went to pick up 2 urchins we where able to trade for a couple of coral fragments. They are 2 really awesome looking urchins, one nice small Tripneustes gratilla and a bigger Echinometra mathaei. Traded both of them for a piece of Cabbage leather, starburst polyps and Finger leather.

Both arriving in the box

At first my wife wanted to test them for eating red hair algae and then think of putting one in the Red Sea Max, because...

Yesterday I cleaned the Red Sea Max again, tried to get rid of as many cyano, red hair algae and planaria as I could.

One coral which I noticed was covered with Planaria is the soft coral, last week I already tried to clean him as much as possible, and I continued with it this week. He doesn’t really seem to like what I have done to him.


Also cleaned around the Xenia, which is getting pressed away by the starburst polyps. I tried...

Cleaning and work on fragtank

Yesterday I went to our local store to get some water, salt and bacteria. Also I wanted to ask if they could make a transit for an overflow in an existing aquarium. Turned out they could do this for not too much money and could do it the same day as well. So I went home and emptied and cleaned the fragtank.

The more fragile corals moved to the RSM250. The fish (Foxface, Blue Tang and Manderin) really enjoyed these new addition, they started eating from the rocks immediately. Some of the algae, like the feather algae I liked, have almost been...

He was already acting weird last few days, riding up to rocks and walls (and clam) and dropping on his back. I moved him back to a place with more sand for him to move around in, but he didn’t go under. He had a weird spot on his rear, which I found out this morning, wasn’t a spot but a hole. He has now lost all of his hairs and the cleaner shrimp was already busy with him, so it is officially over now for him. Cause of death is unknown, but my guess is that it has something to do with the Cyano Bacteria covering the sand now creating air pockets as well. This was also the situation when the previous...

Because the Frogspawn coral was doing very bad and the buttons and Xenia also had trouble expending we decided to sell the Kenya Tree in the middle. First we thought about cutting off a few branches, but I realised that this would be a shame to do. We have one big Kenya Tree still and we have three smaller ones. Besides that I have a beautiful piece of Cabbage Leather in my fragtank, so we don’t have to miss that either if we would want it.
It does look empty now without the big tree in the middle, but we will find another way to fill the empty space. My wife even mentioned she might like...

Monday I noticed that the Wrasse was acting strange. He is hardly active anymore and often lies underneath the Anemone rock with his belly up. Also his breathing seems to be heavier and faster. Don’t know how long he will keep this up or if he gets better.


Two days later it seemed that it was over. After looking real close in the aquarium I could see something which looked like the Wrasse underneath the rocks at a place that we couldn’t reach. But now, 4 days...

Saturday I had a nice aquarium drive. Went to pick up some extra life rock for the fragtank and ended up with some corals as well. I traded 7 life rocks for 2 Kenya Trees and a mushroom, well if that isn’t a great deal I don’t know what is .

In the Red Sea Max I added 3 of the corals.
First is a small branch of Trumpet Coral, a small LPS Hard Coral. We have seen this before at someone’s aquarium and thought of it back then. So when I got this offered I couldn’t refuse. I...

Last Friday we got a call from our aquarium store saying they had a new male manderin fish for us. I went to pick it up and put it in the RSM.
They immediately went to find each other and they seem to like each other a lot. I must admit that I was pretty nervous about it, if they would like each other and if I really saw correctly that the one that died was the male. But I guess I was right
So we have a happy couple again in our aquarium!

Here are some first pictures of him:

A lot has happened in the last week, but I didn’t have the time to post many updates in that time. So here is one big one for the whole week together.

Kenya Trees sold

Thursday I had someone coming over to buy some Kenya Trees. He took 3 from me, so that makes some more room in the aquarium. Unfortunately he doesn’t keep a journal, so no updates on how they are doing.
But we still have a couple in the RSM250, also couple in a shot glass in the RSM250 who hopefully recover, they had been in a bowl without current and light. And every piece...

Tuesday I did a full cleaning of the RSM again and also started a little with the second aquarium. I dumped one bucket of water from the RSM into the 60 litre aquarium and also added some freshly made water to it till it was half full. Reason for this quick action was the big amount of Kenya trees we got again from our first Kenya Tree. I had put them in a small bowl, but of course this isn’t very ideal. I figured that putting them this way might give them a better chance of surviving.
Tonight someone is going to visit to buy some Kenya Tree(s) again, so slowly the RSM will be free from Kenya...

It was time for cleaning again, and during this cleaning some tasks needed to be done.

The cleaning started with the killing of Majano Anemones. We had them some time ago, injected them with boiling water and never saw them again, until lately we started to discover more and more all over the aquarium. Time for another round of injecting them with boiling water.
I did do some research first, see if the Majano Anemone has, just like his Glass Anemone “friend”, any natural enemies. Unfortunately this list is very limited and the risks with corals and invertebrates are very high,...

Yesterday I have sold some fragments again. A member from the Zeewater Forum voor Nederland en België, called Bikerdick, wanted to buy the last Red Mushroom fragment and some Kenya Tree fragments. He left with 4 Kenya Tree fragments and the Red Mushroom. Now there are still 7 left for sale.


He also showed interest in many other things in the aquarium, like the Anemone. I gave him a price for it and he would consult it with his son. So who knows, maybe he will buy it from...

First of all I want to wish all the readers all the best wishes for 2011. We started the new year with a big cleaning of the aquarium, which was necessary because we hadn’t done anything for a month or so.
Last year (last Thursday ) we went to our regular aquarium shop in search of a solution for the Planaria and the Sea Pearls which we have a lot of lately. We ordered a couple of Mandarin Dragonets, they eat Planaria so we figured this would make a beautiful addition to the aquarium as well as a functional...

Yesterday I sold my first 2 fragments. The rock with the biggest Kenya Tree fragment was sold and the rock with the 2 mushrooms on it. All together for 15 euro’s, not bad .
I sold them to BvN, a member from Het Nederlands en Belgisch zeewateraquarium. I already got a reply from him that he had placed them in the aquarium.

BvN wrote:Tnx De oortjes en keniaboom hebben ondertussen ook...

Yesterday evening it was time for another cleaning round. As always cleaning is paired with trying to kill sea and majano anemones. The big sea anemone was first, and even though I’m pretty sure I hit him he moved back. Well first try couple of the majano anemones, but these are all hidden pretty good and are hard to reach, so I didn’t get all of them.
Then it was time for another attempt at the sea anemone, and each time he moved back a bit and then showed himself again…he was taunting me! Well I wasn’t going to let me got beaten by an anemone. So another attempt, and there went my syringe…or...

Last weekend we cleaned the aquarium again, and considering the two birthdays we had I decided to just give an update on how everything is looking now.

The fish are all doing fine, the birthday boy (Foxface) is still swimming around happily. He had a period in which he was more scared but now he is eating from my hand again, so everything is turning back to normal.


Only one that gives some concern again is the Blue Tang. I noticed a white spot on her body again,...

Past Sunday the Cleaner shrimp celebrated his first year anniversary in the Red Sea Max. He is currently the oldest Invertebrate in the aquarium and therefore the first to celebrate his first year anniversary.


December 2009

In the early days he could be found a lot near the big toadstool we had back then, the cave behind it was his hideout, but also the toadstool was used as a hideout often. After the rebuild he found a new cave where we could see him all...

The foxface celebrated his first anniversary in the RSM250 this Saturday. In the past year he has done great, it’s a great fish to observe. He changes colours depending on his mood, sometimes he is coloured bright yellow, sometimes with a black strip on his back and sometimes with brown/gray spots all over his body. Also sometimes the colour is more pale/white, mostly when he sleeps or is stressed. Also fun to observe are his spines which he flashes when he feels threatened.

Monday evening I noticed three white spots on the body of our Blue Tang. First guess and fear is Marine Ich so reason to get as much information on it as possible.

Tuesday started searching my regular forums for ways to treat Marine Ich, during this search I found out that Tangs are some of the most vulnerable fish to ich. However, the Blue Tang is a very strong fish and has a high ich survival rate. One of the members from tropischzeeaquarium.nl started a post in which he complaints about the lack of information on how the disease evolves. He also has a Blue Tang that had three spots,...

An update mainly on plagues and unwanted inhabitants. Let’s start with some algae!

The Sea Pearls seem to be gone now, guess the Foxface does eat them, or we have another inhabitant who enjoys this algae. Only one bubble was seen on the rock with Xenia en Mushrooms.

Unfortunately we now have a lot of red hair algae, which is coming to the point that I think we should do something about it. Expect a topic on it sometime soon on the forums.


Then...

Past Friday we got a call that our ordered Firefish had arrived. When I was there to pick it up we also found that they had a bunch of peppermint shrimps, so we also bought 2 of them. One has eggs, so I’m curious how that will go and if they survive. But our main hope is that these two survive longer and will kill the Sea Anemones.

The new Firefish

The...

Tuesday I went to our aquarium store. There I found about 6 lose mushrooms which I could all take with me for only 5 euro’s. One rather large striped mushroom and 5 small dark red/brown mushrooms. Unfortunately by now we have already lost 4 of the small ones (blown away) and the striped one doesn’t seem to want to stay anywhere either. Hopefully it’s still there when I get back this afternoon.

The big one on his preferred location

We left the aquarium alone for two weeks, only some small maintenance was done by my mother, but nothing serious. When we got back we noticed many of the corals and inverts had grown. Actually in the period we had the aquarium, little over a year now, many things have changed. The fish never gave much problems, but the corals always where hard, didn’t grow very fast till now. Let’s see how things evolved in our two weeks vacation, and in the previous year since the first life were introduced to the aquarium. A look in the history of all our still living creatures in the aquarium.

Not really an update on the aquarium, but did want to share it with everyone. Last month I started recording a movie on the aquarium, with the idea to show all life forms in it on that moment. It has taken me some time to finish it, but now finally just after our vacation I finished it.
Hope everyone likes it, comments and suggestions for a next version are always welcome.

I will do an update soon in which I will tell and show more how the aquarium looks after we came back from vacation and how much everything grew.

Yesterday our Salarias celebrated his first year in the aquarium. He was the first life form we bought for our aquarium.

He isn’t hard to keep, since he has gone through a lot in the last year but managed very well. It happened once that we where worried about him, he didn’t react to anything anymore and was just sitting in the corner of the aquarium. Afterwards we suspect it was just stress. He came through the rebuild without problems and even the second unplanned rebuild was no problem for him.

A week ago we found someone who wanted to buy our Angelfish. So we started catching it Friday before they showed up. The result of this was that all the stones and corals needed to be removed from the aquarium, because he didn’t feel like getting caught.
Result is that we have a new look, it’s more compact now and lower. Some elements look better others don’t. It is now harder to look underneath the rocks, so the shrimp is harder to spot unfortunately.


The rock with...

This weekend my girlfriend noticed something nice in the aquarium, underneath the oldest mushrooms there where two small ones. At first she blamed me for getting new corals without telling her, but then we figured the mushrooms (both red and green) split. The new ones don’t really have a solid colour yet, but I guess that is normal? One of them is turning red and the other green/red. I’m really happy about it (can’t tell right?).


The blue mushroom is getting more brownish...

Thierry.forumotion.com

Last Saturday we went to see someone I got in contact with through the Nederlands en Belgisch zeewater forum. He said he had some lose mushrooms for me so we went to have a look. This guy really had a wonderful aquarium, a lot of stone corals. His biggest problem was that the mushrooms and buttons where growing wild, almost became a plague. Of course this is a plague I don’t mind helping someone out with.
Unfortunately all the mushrooms attached to rocks already again, and we both didn’t really have a good idea how to get them loose from the rock. But we didn’t...

Wednesday the Dwarf Red Tip Hermit Crab decided to move out of his shell into a new bigger one. He tried it before in a same shell as he had before, but then bigger…but he didn’t like it, so now he picked another one.


Wednesday we also went to someone I contacted through one of the forums to get some fishes. They where selling everything because one of their anemones died ejecting toxin into the aquarium. Two fishes caught our attention, first was an Angelfish, we actually...

Friday our new Sand Shifting Sea Star arrived. We immediately brought it with us and introduced it into the aquarium. Hopefully he can help the Urchin with cleaning the sand, since it really is necessary now.


The Flagellates are back again, or maybe they are just Red Algae. The sand is now pretty much covered with it, and it’s slowly moving upwards. The Xenia already seems to have some in its tentacles. After some searching and researching on the internet I found that...

Friday we went shopping in our regular aquarium shop. We went to see if they had a new Urchin and Sea star, which we ordered some time ago. Unfortunately they didn’t have any sea stars at that time, but the salesman said he did find an Urchin in the coral aquarium some time ago. After some searching he found it for us, so we do have a new Urchin now


During his search we saw some mushrooms...

Yesterday we treated the rock for the Sea Anemones and I haven’t seen them so far. However, since they seem to reappear each time I decided to do some research on how to prevent them from showing up. So far I found the following information.

There are several animals that have sea anemones on their menu and experiences differ with each one. My only experience so far where the Lysmata wurdemanni (Peppermint Shrimp), but they didn’t last very long in my aquarium for a yet unknown reason.

Here is a list of animals that could help according to some sites, more details...

Tuesday I cleaned the windows again to make some pictures. I also asked my dad if I could borrow his camera to make some nice video of the aquarium next day.
I also moved the Frogspawn coral, which had fallen down. Didn’t think it would do very well on its side, so now I put it in between two rocks.


Next day I started with setting up the camera before the lights went on. I want to make movies of corals opening on a new day, the first one I tried to do this for...

Yesterday we went to another www.zeewater.info forum member, martin g, to look at some small coral fragments. We took most of what he offered, only the Ricordea Mushrooms and Kenya trees where left. The Ricordea Mushrooms seemed to be too big a bet at this moment, and the Kenya trees didn’t really look ok. But we got a lot of small fragments from other corals.

Our/my main goal was a blue mushroom, he had several of them but only one not attached to a rock. It still looks very small, but I think that as soon as it...

Yesterday we went to a forum member chriszuid from www.zeewaterforum.info to look at some corals he was offering. He had a rather large list with pieces that looked very nice, just didn’t send any pictures or prices in advance so it was a bit of a gamble.

We arrived a bit early and he arrived rather late. His wife showed us the aquarium a bit, which was a very nice aquarium. Most of the pieces for sale would come out of that aquarium, so we had a glimpse of what was for sale already. Some where already reserved,...

It has been a week now since we started the rebuilding of the aquarium. And how are things now?

The fish are doing fine, none of them seem to have any problems adapting to the new build, only the Angelfish that we suspected to be dead…is gone without a trace. But all the other fish are enjoying themselves, swimming through the newly build cave’s and caverns.

The corals where something I misjudged in my plan, leaving them without light and water flow for 3 days was something most of them couldn’t handle. Of course the Xenia already died before, so that was...

Yesterday we went to buy some extra life rock, some new water, some Salifert Coral Food and Dennerle FB7 Marinus (bacteria). When we got home we immediately put in the new Life Rock to cover some of the reef rack that was still visible. Also I cut the small rock from the Kenya Tree, since it looked like it shifted again and was stretching the Kenya Tree up. I place the rock somewhere else, there is still some part of the Kenya Tree on it. Maybe a new one comes from it, it is worth a shot.
Also a lot of the buttons have opened now, so they seem to recover nicely as well now. The Colony polyps...

Everything in the aquarium seems to have settled a bit, the fishes are enjoying the new surroundings, the corals are opening slowly and the Tube Worm showed himself a lot. Today we are going to buy some new life rock to help boost the values (we hope).
Speaking of values, we measured them yesterday, and it’s not yet what it should be. We have some Phosphate (0,1), Ammonia (0,023) and some Nitrite (0,1) and Nitrate (2,5). Now according to the testing manual for Nitrate we don’t have to look at the Nitrate reading because of the Nitrite, we can never have an accurate reading. We...

Preparation Day

Wednesday evening we started the final preparations for the rebuilding. We filled the second aquarium with fresh water and salt to let it mix overnight. Also we searched all our barrels/buckets and crates to put rock and corals in.
My girlfriend started cleaning a piece or life rock already, getting rid of the sea pearls located on the rock and trying to clean of the grey dirt cover.

The last sequel to the road to rebuilding. Not many pictures this time, the aquarium glass is covered by algae and I don’t feel like cleaning just for today, since tomorrow we are going to start the rebuilding.
So how will this blog go…well, to be short, first a verbal update on how everyone/thing is doing and after that how the last preparations went (with pictures).

The Fish

Not much happened to them, the Flame Angelfish is still nowhere to be found unfortunately, and the other fish are still doing...

A quick sequel to the road to the rebuild. Just wanted to give an update before I would leave it alone for a weekend (not at home, so no idea how things will evolve in that time). Also tell a bit what I expect for each creature in the new environment.
For the support in the new version I had bought a reefrack and some PVC tubes. I already cut one of the tables out of the reefrack, but have some trouble resizing the tubes because the saw I have…sucks. More on that some other time when I have more to show, but here is one small glimpse of what I have so far.

The first part of the road to is here. Yesterday I cleaned the aquarium and was able to see what was living in there again (or not). All the short stories can also be found under the topic for the specific inhabitant together with some pictures.

The Fish

The Flame Angelfish hasn’t been seen for a while, I’m afraid he is no longer alive. Hope that I am wrong about it but I fear the worst.

Then there is the Salarias, still doing well. He is the main reason for not cleaning the windows too often,...

Plans for redecorating are in full progress, and I hope to be starting soon with this. I ordered a reef rack in Belgium, I will use this to create caves. The idea is to make two small tables (20x20 cm) using parts of this rack and PVC tubes. On top of this a big rack structure will be placed to create a giant cave in the middle of the aquarium. All the tables will be covered with rocks so you won’t see a thing of it when it’s done. Maybe some new life rock will be put in as well, to give the aquarium a new bacteria boost.
The big rack will have a bit of a triangle look, but with...

Last weekend I celebrated my birthday for my family, even though originally my birthday was last Tuesday. My father wanted to buy me something for the aquarium so he asked if I wanted to go with him on Saturday to look for something nice and new. Of course I didn’t object to that .
After a long and hard decision I left with new coral, new button/polyps, some extra food for corals and inverts and a tube worm. Both the polyps and the tube worm where installed the same day, and are currently doing great.

this was originally written 10 March 2010

Last weekend we bought a new piece of coral, Star Polyps, very bright and colourful. We also got another mushroom free which was just hanging around without a rock.
We put both in the aquarium now, the star polyps aren’t in a place yet where we want them, but the mushroom is. He didn’t really fold out yet, we located him next to the red mushroom.

The sea star has lost his leg now, it was hanging more loosely every day till Sunday he let it drop. Hopefully this doesn’t have any negative effect on the sea...