Winged's Tanks

Before selling him back to the store, I put the filefish in the pico to eat some aiptasia. I left him in the tank for a few days, and did frequent water changes as the tank isn't quite stable. He hasn't started eating the aiptasia yet, but I'm sure he will soon.

Current params:
Ammonia: 0.25 ppm
Nitrite: between 0 and 0.25, closer to 0
Nitrate: 10 ppm
pH: 8.2

Here are a couple of pictures.

A couple of days ago:


Today:



(You'll have to excuse the quality in these pics. They were taken with my phone.)

A month or so ago, we were shopping at a LPS and were browsing their SW selection, when we saw one of these guys. I believe the scientific name is Acreichthys tomentosus. Because we'd had a problem with manjano anemones since we set up the tank (our peppermint shrimp have done a fabulous job at keeping the aiptasia away), and everything we tried to get rid of them failed, we bought one of these fish. At this point, the manjanos were quite numerous on one rock, so much so that we had refrained from putting any coral on that rock. While at the store, we asked if he would be any danger to our corals, and we were warned that he might try to eat the polyps of some corals. But we were quite desperate to get rid of the manjanoes, which had continued to increase in number, so we bought him. We brought the filefish home, acclimated him to our tank, and released him.

For the first several days, nothing changed. Then one morning we woke up to find a number of manjanoes gone. The next day, even more were gone. And the day after that, all the little anemones were gone and our filefish had a very full looking belly. He did his job very well.

Over the following couple weeks, he seemed to be doing quite well. He started to eat the pellet food the other fish got and seemed to be doing good. But last week we noticed that our waving hand was not looking good, and each morning, there would be several polyps gone. Because nothing else in our tank has changed, the only thing seems to be that the filefish is eating them. We will be returning him to the store and getting some more waving hand in his place.

I'm working on a new tank, a 5 gallon nano reef, and I'm totally stoked about it. It will be going back to school with me in the fall in place of my 10 gallon planted freshwater (which may or may not stay set up--I'm debating putting the shrimp and plants in my 20 gallon planted). I made my mind up a couple months ago that the tank I was taking to school in the fall was going to be a reef tank, but until this week, I was planning on doing a 10 gallon reef. However, after putting much thought into it, I decided I'd use my empty 5 gallon. It has a smaller footprint, which is always a plus in a dorm room. It will also get about 7.2 wpg, which will allow me to have some corals I wouldn't have been able to have if I had done a 10 gallon. Because it's smaller, it will also be easier to transport it to and from school when necessary.

So, a few days ago, I started working on this tank. I want to get it established before going back to school because I've yet to find a good fish store in Lexington (if anybody has suggestions, let me know!). I also need something to keep me busy over the summer. I purchased about 6 pounds of live rock and some dry sand, which I seeded with some sand from our other reef tanks. I've been monitoring the ammonia, nitrites, and nitrates levels. Yesterday, the ammonia was almost at .50 ppm, the nitrites were between 0 and 0.25 ppm, and the nitrates were too low to be detected.

Current equipment for this tank:
Filter: Bio-wheel (either 100 or 150, can't remember; probably not the best for this tank, but I was working with what I had)
Heater: none yet (tanking staying at 72.5 F during the day with the lights, drops to 70 F during the night)
Light: Nova Extreme HO Light Fixture - 10,000K-460nm - 2 x 18W - 18 in. - T5 (same one I had on my 10 planted; I never switched out the actinic light like I planned)