Help with inherited reef tank

Charlie,

Charles Henderson wrote:

Well, you're just full of useful information! Thank you for once again
correcting my misconceptions! ;-)

Not a problem, and I hope you don't see it as trying to "correct" you.
Just trying to help, and share what bit of experience I've gleaned over
the many years of doing this.

Coral Angels do eat algae off rocks, though, right? That's what they're
pecking at?

I haven't kept a dwarf angel for many yeara (beware that most dwarfs
will *nip* at corals) - but I do believe that CB's are primarily algae
eaters in the wild. This doesn't necesarily mean that they will eat
macro algaes like Caulerpa and other display algaes. They may tend to
graze more off of the hair algaes. Dried nori (available in most
oriental markets as well as large grocery stores) is usually a good
choice for algae eaters.
Have you tried live brine? Never met a healthy fish who wouldn't go
crazy for it. Or, see if you can get your hands on some Cyclop-eeze.

On other note - CB's imported from the Phillipines don't always have a
great survival record. Capture & transport practices are not always up
to *snuff*.

I was hoping to get *whatever* it is they like to eat by adding some
live rock, but it seems I should wait till the water chemistry is
corrected before doing that. MY LFS guy has given me some sage advice,
too: concentrate on PH, alkalinity, calcium and salinity first of all.

This is good advice, but truthfully, you're going to need to get the
fish eating *something* soon. It likely will not survive off of
organisms on the LR.
As far as your water chemistry, it isn't bad, and you honestly don't
need to be overly concerned about ca/alk until you anticipate keeping
corals.

He, along with some others here said I should get some live sand in
there right away, so I did that yesterday! Aragonite, anyway. I'll get
some sand from one of nature's reefs to seed that with soon, but it's
effect on water chemistry should be there now.

Well ... I haven't followed this complete conversation to a T, but are
you referring to the possible *buffering* capabilities of aragonite?
If so, this has been pretty much disproven. In order for aragonite to
"buffer' the water, it would need to semi-dissolve. In order to do
this, your pH would have to be so low that pretty much nothing in the
tank would survive. This is how a calcium reactor works - CO2 gas is
injected into the water, which drops the pH to 7.0 or below. This low
pH water partially dissolves the aragonite media, thus making a high
ca/alk (but low pH) effluent.

If you are instead referring to the denitrifying capabilities of a DSB,
it will take several weeks (possibly months), for your sandbed to become
truly *live*, and for it to truly become a denitrification factor.

The Coral Beauty was very unhappy with the disturbance. I kept the silty
cloud down to a minimum by pouring the sand down through a length of PVC
pipe, but of course the tank clouded up for an hour or so anyway. He was
swimming frantically till lights out, hours after it had cleared. I'm
really starting to worry about him... Everyone else in the tank seems
okay; no obvious signs of stress.

I'd try to avoid changes/disturbances as much as possible for a bit of
time. It sounds to me that the fish might be quite stressed - capture,
shipping, introduction into a new tank, etc., may all have taken it's
toll - and this may be why it is not eating.
(snip)

I plan to bring all water parameters into compliance before using the
kalk reactor.

Is it a kalkwasser (Nilsen) reactor, or a Calcium reactor? Neither is
truly effective at *raising* levels, but both are wonderful for
maintaining them. We use both - if you need any help, just yell.

(snip)


Thanks again, Teri. You've been very helpful!

--Charlie Henderson

Any time.

Teri
http://www.reefsanctuary.com