My main pump stalled—Iwaki pumps decouple when otherwise they might burn out due to a stall: they continue to run (they’re noisy as all getout…) but are pumping nothing. So no oxygen is getting to the dt (display tank). The skimmer (producer of bubbles, injector of oxygen, and remover of spare amino acids through ‘foam fractionation’, aka sea foam) is going just fine. The water level is high because several gallons have drained down to the sump from the dt with nothing going ‘up’ from the pump…but then I was breaking in a new ATO (autotopoff unit that senses a water level lowered by evaporation and supplies fresh water to make up the evaporated liquid) that WAS sounding an overfill alarm, but I’d been fussing with the level–and clueless in Spokane, I ignored it. Unfortunately, I lost all the fish in the dt but one. I found her a home at the fish store, because you can’t move new fish in on a damsel of her size (nearly 5″) because to her, they’re interlopers and possibly lunch.
So—I gave up on keeping a damsel tank and decided to go for the little guys. I’ve got 3 firefish, a pink margin wrasse, a royal gramma, a starry blenny and a tailspot blenny, —and still on order: a couple of yellowheaded pearly jawfish, a mated pair of yellow watchmen, and a mandarin ‘goby’. [The mandy is actually not a goby but a dragonet, but was misidentified early on and the name stuck.) You can get pix of them by google.
The fishes are all eating, equipment is running as it should, and I spent yesterday carefully adjusting salt levels. Just for a weird tag of information, marine fish live at a salinity of about 1.024 up to 1.026, and can live as low as 1.009 (for treatment of parasites)—which corals and invertebrates can’t take. Many fish stores keep fish at 1.019 to save money on salt, and to somewhat discourage parasites. They’re often shipped at that level. My system is 1.025. Now the next piece of trivia—fish can stand a sudden drop in salinity down to 1.009; but a rapid rise will destroy their kidneys and kill them three days later from uremic poisoning. So if you get marine fish that arrive at 1.019, you have to bring the salinity up slowly by injecting higher salinity water into their water until you’re within .002 of the target salinity. To make matters worse, fish are often 24-hour airshipped in plastic bags—and their respiration and body functions charge that water with ammonium. Now, ammonium is harmless. But they also give off co2—carbon dioxide, which also is present as airspace in the bag. If you open the bag, the co2 floats off, thus starting a chemical change—the ph drop converts harmless ammonium to lethal ammonia, also apt to trash the fish’s liver and kidneys if you don’t get the fish out of that water asap. And, remember, your salinity is higher than that of the bag.
If you’re smart, you open only one bag at a time and get that fish safely into your water. Novices rush to open everything and get ‘the poor fish some fresh air’ —lethal.
So, at any rate, I was busy yesterday afternoon, with 7 fish to get into safe water, because these had just arrived at the store by air yesterday morning.
But it was a ‘happy busy’. The tank will live again!
I’ve been missing your pics & discussions of the fish tanks, but am sorry this post of yours came about because most denizens of your marine tank demised.
My four 99 cents goldfish & 10 gallon tank are so mush easier to keep, though far less spectacular to view despite the “Roman Colloseum Ruin” they get to swim through/around, statue of Aphrodite in the corner and various water plants they nibble. Our cats find the tank an excellent TV and source of oxygenated — not to mention tasty — drinking water.
At our library, we discovered a ‘koi pond’ formed when one of our main sprinkler lines broke! As a result, we have to shut off the sprinkler system until it can be repaired; infelicitously, this puts major stress on our landscaping. One anticipates high plant mortality while our repair department looks for its ’round tuit’.
Further (easy) adventures of the Goldfish Keeper: the pump/filter for our goldfish tanked died late Saturday night (3 evenings ago). We didn’t have an extra pump and it took us until today to buy a new one. The four fish were fine. Because it is summer & their water fairly warm/conducive to algae growth, etc. & four goldfish can poop a lot into a small, 10-gallon tank, I’ve been doing partial water changes of 1-2 gallons each day. The water goes on my garden pots and fresh, non-chlorinated Boston water (after coming to room temperature) gets poured into tank. We also didn’t feed the fish last night in a mild attempt to keep the pooping down.
I swapped in the new filter late tonight. Water was a bit murky (normally crystal clear); I also scraped down the algae from the sides… the charcoal dust from the new filter also murks the water temporarily. So I scooped out about two gallons of said water and added in fresh. An hour or so later, water is clear again… And the fish are clamoring for food. They clamor by coming to the corner of the tank by my sofa seat and bumping the glass. I should stop enjoying CJ’s blog (& dreaming of her new books soon to come out) and go feed them!
Your FB post about Alliance Rising got noticed by File770.
And this is why the wife and I do not keep fish anymore. It is a lot of work, and living things depending up your ever action.
This has not been your year for fish. Sorry to hear you’ve lost still more fish.
How close is the kitchen remodel thing to happening? Is it still going to happen?
The tank has been iffy since the 8 day blackout a year ago. The re-set-up is solving some residual problems, and by the time I get it in proper operation, it’s going to be fairly maintenance-free. You have to do your water changeout periodically—30 gallons of water out, 30 new water in, which replenishes trace elements. But that’s not hard. Outside of that, I put 2 tsp of Mrs Wages’ Pickling Lime per gallon of fresh water that the float switch automatically feeds into the tank to make up evaporation—and as long as my tank water tests at 1200-1500 magnesium level, 7.9-9.0 alkalinity, and 420 calcium, those numbers will stay right there and feed the corals calcium endlessly,while the topoff water keeps the salinity bang-on: salt never evaporates. The lime is calcium, and it dissolves nicely at that rate to keep everything in balance: magnesium gets used up very, very slowly, and so long as you watch that one level, the tank will stay stable for months on end. When the mg falls, you just add more before it falls below 1200, the critical level at which the alk will start to crash. I can go off on a trip with no worries and no special care needed for the tank—I can even put the fish on autofeeder.
I looked up some of the new acquisitions and they look very striking. But how did the invertebrates handle the pump failure? I know your tridacna demised tragically some time ago but you had some nice nerites.
We have surviving snails and crabs. I got five more micro-hermits. I’ll slowly bring that population back up. And I have two corals that are thriving in the system, well, at least they’re expanded and look happy. I’ll be happier when that confused frogspawn/hammer cross expands a bit more and straightens out its tentacles, but that could be a response to increased light where I have set it. [Hammer and frog are close relatives, and if put near each other, they don’t fight, but start taking on each other’s tentacle forms. Torch is the third of the class, but it’s too ‘hot’ to get along with neighbors.] I have a nice little blue? or pink? it has yet to make up its mind—caulestra, or candy cane coral, which sort of looks like a cluster of daisy-centers. And I am working to stabilize the water chemistry: I think I’ve got it steadied down (a balance between magnesium and alkalinity) so that calcium will stay at a nice 420, available for stony corals. But we will see how that holds over the next couple of weeks. So far, so good.