New Journey Begins

Ohh also going to take my water in to be tested, was supposed to do that yesterday but got busy so I never got the chance to do that.


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Sooo

Water is a little messed up.

Ammonia is at 0.75
Nitrates are at 50
PH is at 8 need to get that up a tiny bit
KH is good at 14

Will be doing a 20-25% water change and dose with stability. Will then have my water re tested later this week.


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Sooo I built a real crappy DIY skimmer.

But it seems to be working.

Edit: removed image.

I have actually pulled it up quite a lot as it builds a massive head


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Awesome! Congrats!

 

Soooo I think I went a little overboard after building my diy skimmer.

Went ahead and built a surface skimmer that acts as a filter as well.

So now I have.

1 double sponge filter
1 800lph internal filter
1 diy protein skimmer
1 surface skimmer/surface filter

All in 1 tank


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Sorry to read you lost all the baby amanos on day 22. Any idea what went wrong?
At what point do they need to move from brackish water to fresh? Is it like a gradual change or would they generally just walk out the one and into the other in the wild?

 

Not too sure but I think it was an ammonia spike.

They are in full ocean salinity, not brackish. I have found they don’t do well in low salinity.

From freshwater to saltwater can be an instant change but from salt water to fresh needs to happen over a couple of days, too quick they die, too slow they die.

Growth rate from what I have found is dependent on salinity as well as temp. So anywhere from 30 days to 60 days that they’ll start to change in to shrimp depending on parameters.


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Sooo here is a short clip and a real crappy photo of the female.

Zoea age from 3 days old to a couple hours old. This isn’t all of them some drift in the middle of the water column and just stay there, anyways.

Here is the clip


And the female (still has a ton of eggs)


Edit: I also have some coral that should arrive next week on Tuesday or Wednesday that will be added to their tank.

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Not a decent photo, but those blue dreams are stunning


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Wasn’t expecting they’ll be able to do this. Amano baby sitting on the glass in 800lph flow, quite impressive.



Uploading the image does make the quality quite bad but oh well.


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I was so confused earlier, I could not understand why the water in my tank kept rising.

Did some investigation and found that with one of my prototype systems in my amano raising tank I built a GIANT algae scrubber and was not allowing the water to flow as it should as the algae was clogging it.

Went through and cleaned certain spots and now everything is A okay again.

I did dump a whole lot of that algae in with the baby Amano’s and they had a feast, some attaching to some large pieces and chowing down, or so I would think haha.

Its been a couple hours now and a lot of the algae seems to be gone, don’t know if they ate it or it just settled somewhere.

Ohh well at least they had a feast whilst it lasted.

Also got some decent fully established live rock coming in tomorrow that has some decent algae growth on it, I’ll just scrub a little and slosh it around in a bucket to remove some life forms that might be stuck in it, hopefully there aren’t any parasites that are going to mess with my Amano’s.

Might even just put the rock in one of my filter chambers, so if there are any parasites after washing they still won’t be able to get to my Amano’s. Unless they go through the filter media and in to the pump.

I don’t know yet, I’ll see what it looks like when its here


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Soooo

Bought this tank today, stripped the entire tank and re siliconed the tank. Re glued the top, still need to do the base. Will then leak test it and clean everything else.

This will be set up as a Sulawesi Shrimp tank, or so I hope. Will take a while to finish as I have a nice scape in mind.

All the filters are already precycled and will be installing additional filtration as well.

Also going to upgrade the heating from a 200w to a 500w with an external temp adjustment.

Maybe some other stuff too but I’ll see.




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On the amano tank,

The babies are doing amazing. I’ll try and post updates every 5 or so days.

I am feeding them 5-6 times a day. They get a large live feeding at night and get small amounts of preserved food during the day

I removed the DIY surface skimmer and installed another internal filter which I changed to act as a surface skimmer as well as a filter also producing some flow in the tank

So currently the setup is as follows

1x 800lph internal filter modified to pump water and create high flow in the amano tank
1x DIY surface skimmer
1x double sponge filter with a modified top to pump water into the amano tank and create circulation on the surface as well as push down any babies that might be stuck on the surface
1x 300lph acting as a surface skimmer as well as a filter, added some ceramic rings as filter media in the filter. Also modified the outlet to produce flow in the amano tank

Edit: since I added some decent established live rock the tank is producing algae on the sides of the tank as well as the other dry rock I have added, the Amano’s seem to be feeding on this as well which im stoked about

Coral is also going to take some time to reach me due to the massive cold front coming in next week, so that is postponed once again. Absolutely sucks but oh well.


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Wow, just read through this post from the start... Great job man

love all the DIY ing

 

Haha thanks,

Yea I do a lot of DIY work as it’s just a lot cheaper, and no point in buying stuff you can build lol.

Plus I do this full time, so have loads of time to play around and figure stuff out.


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Removed about 20 or so more babies.

Have around a total of 100 or so,

As I was removing the babies I saw the female drop all her eggs for some reason, there were a couple unfertilised eggs but some you could clearly see are still developing, no clue why she did that but ohh well.

I moved her back to the breeding colony, I do have some females that are berried again after hatching babies on the previous rounds, so they should be dropping within the next month or so.

I have also decided to stop moving the females into a different tank for “giving birth” as I feel it’s really unnecessary and just puts less stress on her. Might be harder to catch the babies but I prefer their comfort over mine.

And in a way it lessens my work to constantly check on females and acclimate them to the new tank ext ext.

So in a way its also a win win with the win lose on the zoa side of things haha.

Anyways, super hard to count the zoa in the new setup as they sit on the liverock and I guess they are feeding there, even if I switch off the pumps only these suspended in the water go to the light but these sitting on the glass/live rock just stay there. So basically impossible to see exactly how many there are in the tank, every now and then I do see quite a lot of them drifting away in the water when I’m working on the comp or just checking on them casually.

Soo we’ll see what happens as time goes on. Will be doing another +- 20% waterchange on Wednesday after my water treatment cycle has finished.

I have switched over to using tap water and dropped the RO water as my PH was a little low for my liking on RO water. Have not seen any negative effects by doing top ups with tap water, so I’ll see how the water change goes.

I also changed my salinity fluctuations this round, previous round I had my salinity between 35 and 30% this time round I am keeping my salinity between 35 and 33%, only issue with this is I have to keep track of when I remove babies as I just dump them with tank water in to the salt water system and I have to make sure I don’t add too much fresh water so it drops below 33 and I also have to make sure that I don’t add it too quickly as to change the salinity too fast, the above is just explained really quickly.

And I do apologize for typing books every time, no need to read it.

The info is for you guys to stay in the loop but in the same process I’m “keeping track” of some things on here as well.

If you guys would like me to add short bullet points of my books to make it a bit easier to read let me know and I’ll do so below every time, so you guys don’t have to read through all my blabbing


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No need to apologize. This is anecdotes in my view and should any member try this as well they can see your fine tuning to help them from the get go with out having to share the same losses as you

 

I enjoy reading the detailed updates.

 

Sooo not a Amano update, but a shrimp update.

One of my females decided to be an a hole and molt with the eggs still busy developing.

Had to build a quick egg tumbler and set up a new tank in like 30 seconds luckily I have spare sponge filters already running in a fully established system.

Grabbed one of them, grabbed 14L of my shrimp tank water, popped in a heater, made a tumbler and plonked the eggs in there.

I have never in my life tumbled shrimp eggs so I’m hoping for the best haha.





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