More newbie adventures

Well, I spent the past week with relatives about 200 miles from here, so
the tank had plenty of time to "settle down". (For those joining late,
the tank contains live rock & sand, and one mantis shrimp; no little
vertebrates yet.) The first thing I noticed when I arrived home was a
slurping sound. Sure enough, the sump was about three gallons low,
which I replentished by pouring fresh RO water into the sump.

Also, the tank is again hard to see into due to brown algea. It isn't
nearly as bad at the "dark" end of the tank, so I'm thinking about using
glass covers everywhere and setting the timer to provide fewer hours of
light each day. As I stare into the tank, I can see one or two bubbles
of what I guess is O2 floating up about every fifteen seconds.

Four of the rocks now have thick patches of dark green fur on them,
about an inch long. The parts of the rocks without fur have turned red
and purple. And there are some little white things about the diameter
of a pencil lead that have really long white threads coming out of them.
All of these wave gently in the currents, letting me know that I have
good water circulation.

Of the other five rocks (which I originally feared had died in
transport), all now have at least a couple of miniature fern leaves
sprouting up. I'd estimate that less that 5% of the surface of these
rocks have anything growing on them, and the largest clump is still less
than the diameter of a U.S. dime.

Now that everyone has something growing on it, I feel more confident
about deciding which end is up for these babies. Unless I hear
differently, tomorrow I'll scrub my arms with RO water, then reach into
the tank and try to rearrange things. Of course, fitting everything in
originally was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, so I'm not sure how to
fit things together. I'll probably do a bit of stacking, and get the
better-off rocks nearer the surface.

Finally, as I've cleaned the tank with my Mag-Float, I've noticed a
couple of long scratches on the inside of my tank. Over the entire
front, there are three that look like strands of fine hair, mostly
running up and down. I assume that they were caused by the speedy
unloading and reloading of the tank, and that they are nothing to worry
about.

Thanks for any replies!

Just make sure you don't get any sand in under the
magfloat, or that can scrach the glass.

Wayne Sallee
Wayne's Pets



Samwyse wrote on 12/27/2005 5:06 PM:
Well, I spent the past week with relatives about 200 miles from here, so
the tank had plenty of time to "settle down". (For those joining late,
the tank contains live rock & sand, and one mantis shrimp; no little
vertebrates yet.) The first thing I noticed when I arrived home was a
slurping sound. Sure enough, the sump was about three gallons low,
which I replentished by pouring fresh RO water into the sump.

Also, the tank is again hard to see into due to brown algea. It isn't
nearly as bad at the "dark" end of the tank, so I'm thinking about using
glass covers everywhere and setting the timer to provide fewer hours of
light each day. As I stare into the tank, I can see one or two bubbles
of what I guess is O2 floating up about every fifteen seconds.

Four of the rocks now have thick patches of dark green fur on them,
about an inch long. The parts of the rocks without fur have turned red
and purple. And there are some little white things about the diameter
of a pencil lead that have really long white threads coming out of them.
All of these wave gently in the currents, letting me know that I have
good water circulation.

Of the other five rocks (which I originally feared had died in
transport), all now have at least a couple of miniature fern leaves
sprouting up. I'd estimate that less that 5% of the surface of these
rocks have anything growing on them, and the largest clump is still less
than the diameter of a U.S. dime.

Now that everyone has something growing on it, I feel more confident
about deciding which end is up for these babies. Unless I hear
differently, tomorrow I'll scrub my arms with RO water, then reach into
the tank and try to rearrange things. Of course, fitting everything in
originally was like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, so I'm not sure how to
fit things together. I'll probably do a bit of stacking, and get the
better-off rocks nearer the surface.

Finally, as I've cleaned the tank with my Mag-Float, I've noticed a
couple of long scratches on the inside of my tank. Over the entire
front, there are three that look like strands of fine hair, mostly
running up and down. I assume that they were caused by the speedy
unloading and reloading of the tank, and that they are nothing to worry
about.

Thanks for any replies!

Samwyse wrote:
Well, I spent the past week with relatives about 200 miles from here, so
the tank had plenty of time to "settle down". (For those joining late,
the tank contains live rock & sand, and one mantis shrimp; no little
vertebrates yet.) The first thing I noticed when I arrived home was a
slurping sound. Sure enough, the sump was about three gallons low,
which I replentished by pouring fresh RO water into the sump.

Holy cow! I just dodged a bullet!

I checked everything last night just before going to bed, and it all
seemed fine except the small air bubble in the syphon had grown a lot
bigger while I was gone. This morning, I was resetting the timer for
the lamps (from 12 hrs/day to 9) and decided to look at the SG before
going to work. There was something odd about the way it was floating,
but it took me a moment to realize that the water level in the tank was
actually touching the glass tank covers! My wife and kids are still at
the in-laws, so if I'd gone to work without checking I'd have come home
to about ten gallons of water on the floor!

I killed the power to everything and about an inch of water syphoned
out. Judging from the water level in the sump now, I suspect that most
of that three gallons that I thought I was missing had just moved up the
hill. Looking back, I had thought that three gallons seemed like a lot
to lose to evaporation. Plus, I noticed that the floating hydrometer
was just touching the plastic lid, but I'd assumed that it was due to
the increased salt concentration. I'll know better next time.

The "fabric" in the filter looks pretty dirty, so I guess it was
restricting the water flow just enough to cause trouble. I'm going to
leave everything powered down today, but tonight I'll be replacing that
filter, sucking the air out of the syphon again, and I guess adding some
more salt since all that water I added seems to have depressed the SG a bit.