New Journey Begins

Soooo, just a side note.

Don’t switch your marine setup from RO water to tap water.

Its probably good for the Amano’s as I have seen them feeding on the different diatoms,bacteria and algae.

But looks disgusting



I have ramped up my lights to 100% on all spectrums during the day to get them growing faster to remove any excess nutrients from the water, and also to get my green algae back as it died off when I changed the spectrums to a lower %

I was running 100% 24/7 which gave me good green algae growth. I changed it to:

White 50%
Blue 100%
Red 15%
Green 15%

This caused my green algae to die off and all this other crap to bloom after I switched over to tap water.

Even my nice green algae scrubber died off after changing the spectrum.

Since I’ve changed the lights back to full blast I have been getting some nice green growth again.


Also, I feed the Amano’s crushed up marine flakes and they grab really large pieces which they eat, I tried feeding them microworms which are a lot smaller than the food particles they grab and just stared in to the tank for almost 3 hours non stop to see if they will eat them. I didn’t see any Amano’s grab microworms, so that doesn’t work.

I’ll maybe try again in a week or so to see if they will eat them then when they are a little larger.

It was also super freaking cold during the evening and throughout the morning which caused major evaporation, I tested the water last night at 34% and made a mark on the glass, this morning it was about 5mm below the mark if not more and the salinity was sitting at 37%, didn’t seem to have effected them and it looks like all of them are still alive, hard to say as there are A LOT.

They do give me little heart attacks almost every time a couple hours after feeding as almost none are to be seen, as soon as you pop in some food they all rise from the rocks and you can see them again, I hate this because I never know if they are dead or not haha.

I have also installed a Nitrite remover sponge covering the entire span of the tank and since I have done this my protein skimmer has stopped working like a mad thing. Probably bubbles out for 2-3 hours at night when the lights change to blue only at 50% power, other than that not much happening.


Just a summary of the conditions they are living in

Water temp: 25.6 - 26.1
Salinity: 32.5-35
Filtration: 1200lph (2x internal filters one of which has ceramic rings instead of the standard sponge), surface skimmer and filter, double sponge filter, DIY protein skimmer, nitrite remover sponge.
Substrate: real white ocean sand, very fine. For biological filtration
Live rock, also for biological filtration
Lighting: Lancia 2 LED

Water changes: once a week (20-50%) I dilute the tank water to an SG of 1.025 and mix my new salt water to 1.025. I do not pre heat the water and drip in the water over the course of a day. Sometimes a little faster.

Feeding: live phytoplankton (nannochloropsis (spelling?)), crushed up marine flake food.

The others I assume they eat:
Brown diatoms, cyanobacteria, green algae (havent seen them eat the black algae to be honest)


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Waterchange time on the amano tank




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What do you guys use your waterchange water for?



Full DIY setup, pump is one of those canister filter swimming pool pumps I modified to be submersible. Also has a 5micron in line filter for removing any debris.


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I water my pots outside (fruit trees) and the lawn. I just use a bucket and do it by hand though. This system looks cool.

 

Just some Golden Wonder killifish I’m raising up, in their grow out tub.

Got 17 of the little buggers and all they do is eat haha.

The video is in their large tub, the pic was taken in their catch tub when I was acclimating them to the system.

https://youtube.com/shorts/-WDokTzkm80?feature=share




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Okay so, I’m not dead… yet…

Things have been really crazy my side and had a ton of things to sort and figure out and set up systems and change systems ext ext!

Its been crazy.

I will send some updates pretty soon.

But long story short

Got in a couple of different types of fish, got more baby amano shrimp, got tons of other baby shrimp, installed lighting on my system, changed some of the systems and added driftwood and a couple other things.

I promise I’ll be posting again in due time.


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Hey guys, I won’t be posting as much until things have settled on my side.

Currently so busy I don’t know which way is up.

Doing upgrades on tanks and setting up more tanks as well as closing my lapa, also have a bunch of other things going on that aren’t fish related.

I’ll still be posting when I have time. Just not as much as usual.


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Ah man. Gonna miss your lengthy updates. All the best with all you have going on

 

Haha will be back soon


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Had to share this, I removed some Diatoms and cyanobacteria from the tank and forgot to chuck the bottle I dumped everything in to.

When I was checking on my tank today there was a REAL bad smell and I saw the bottle, what intrigued me most is the water that turned a bright red/pink. No clue why and didn’t look it up, just thought it was interesting.




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Soo I removed some more diatoms from the amano raising tank as the carpet on the sand was lifting and I didn’t want them to get stuck under there. I made quite the mess in the tank, and to my surprise I saw some Amano zoeas feeding on the pieces drifting in the water, I have tried to feed this to them multiple times and I would stare in to the tank for hours on end trying to see if they are eating it and I have never seen them until now.

Super stoked to see them eating it as there is PLENTY. Might limit my feeding now as well and just brush some off from the rocks and sides to feed them with that.


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Little amano update, nothing major, with little details as im experimenting.

And right at the bottom just a random update:

I ran a couple of tests on baby Amano’s in fresh water, leaving them in there and feeding them different types of food.

In some of those containers I was able to make them last up to 7 days with close to 0 losses, others lasted a maximum of 3 days with high mortality rates.

I have carried this over to my salt water tank, I have also been experimenting with salinity levels and temperatures in other systems which all failed until I decided on one system that im just going to aim by eye and adjust the temp, I didn’t even test the salinity until 2 weeks in when I saw they were still doing great and growing as if they are on steroids.

I can’t say that this will work but these are the best results I have seen from all my experiments and im currently running batch 3 on ALMOST exactly the same parameters and feeding, there are some slight changes here and there.

I’m super stoked about this but I’m trying to keep my hopes low as that seems to provide the best results, just not caring.

These zoeas 2 weeks in are the largest I have seen compared to all my other results.

As soon as I am certain I’ll post a massive update with some of the details as well as mortality rates ext (yes I started counting the zoeas) I’ll also be able to show if they didn’t make it in the salt water or transition to the fresh water.

For now I’m keeping all the details on the down low.








On another note, set up this tank today for my GFs father, it’s his first shrimp tank and I gave him some blue dream shrimp as a start, filter has been running for 3 months so didn’t need to worry about cycling, also brought their tank water with and filled the tank with that so it was a insta setup, here is a pic of the tank.




Here is a pic of the babies and a cull that I saw in my breeding tank when I was catching them out so I gave it with.



Babies are about 3 weeks old so still SUPER tiny.


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Sooo amano update,

19 days in - batch 3

I have done 2 water changes in these 90 days, one of 50% and one pf 20% yesterday.

They are only getting fed preserved food in the morning around 7am when I wake up and at night 1-2am when I go to bed, the rest of the time I am feeding them a mixture of diatoms, cyanobacteria and green algae that I remove from their tank and mush it in to fine pieces with my finger in a container, I do this every time I see there are no more free floating particles in the water, and they are definitely eating it as they turn from a white color to a brownish color every time I feed them and I also see them grabbing the larger particles.

The plus point with feeding them the mixture is that it doesn’t foul the water and by removing it from the tank and pouring it back in just promotes it to grow in multiple places, I have a constant supply in their tank with the light cranked to 100% from 5:30 am till 10pm on all spectrums, only running blue from 10pm till 5:29am on 30% so it doesn’t light my room up so much.

I forgot to make more phytoplankton cultures and only had about 10ml left, so I am currently creating another culture again but it is taking its sweet time due to the fact I started with so little. As soon as it’s ready I will be adding phytoplankton to the tank again, I have tried creating a culture in the tank multiple times but I think my filtration just removes all of them.

They are getting to the size where you can see their tail clearly Id say they are 3-4mm in size.

I am extremely tempted to crank the heat up in the main system but I don’t want it to fail again so I’ll rather run experiments for some time in the smaller containers before I do that.

The diatoms are great but all the bubbles they produce drives me INSANE, I got myself a paintbrush and I wipe the bubbles off about 4 times a day as I don’t like the look

I am getting more and more excited by the day, mortality seems to be at about 10% loss just by looking in to the tank and seeing how many are floating around but I won’t be able to say for sure until I remove them. Honestly I’d be happy with 50% mortality, I could always tune it from there, any more losses than 50% I’m going back to the drawing board, then I’m going to start testing with other things I have been hesitant to test with.

I do have organisms in the main tank to help with the excess food, I don’t feed them at all so they have a very little impact on the bioload and the 1200lph filtration system, I also discovered a mussel in the tank and I have no clue where it came from but it’s there and doing great, or so it seems.

Tank is also now fully cycled and super stable, I have installed a nitrate remover sponge as well and the amount of other things growing in the tank is doing an amazing job at keeping everything at bay, it definitely isn’t a display tank and looks disgusting but I honestly don’t mind, the more things I can get to grow in the tank the better as I believe the Amano’s benefit from this, and I believe that is key.

I’ll do another update if anything happens.


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Sooo just to give you guys an idea how fast this stuff grows, check 2 or 3 posts up, on the 31/7, this is what the tank looks like 4 days later after cleaning it today, with a pic of the amount I removed.





FYI its the cyano bacteria that turns the water red


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@MadHatter I'm slowly realizing that I may be in over my head with my Amano project when I see how much round the clock time , which I simply don't have, goes into caring for them , but heck, I'm still going to give it a solid effort. My effort to grow Algae for the upcoming Zoas has proved to be a complete waste of time, which is insanely ironic as I'm now having to scrub my tank once a week to clean the Algae off the sides!, what is the best food that I can give the new Zoas, from research I've read that brewers yeast and phytoplankton (really don't want to buy phytoplankton if I can avoid it as I'm really trying to keep this to a small budget) is a good option? I've got that very fine baby fish food that I use to feed my new swordtail fry, would this work?

 

Im confused on the algae part.

As for food, if its a powder you can feed it to them, if its tiny granules you’ll have to make it in to a powder, or I’d recommend OG shrimps Baby shrimp food as thats already a powder, I believe at around the 2 week mark you can try and feed them small granules.

Live phytoplankton cultures are like R50 bucks, and then you can either just feed them from the bottle or do what I did and throw 1/4 in one 2L bottle and another 1/4 in another 2L bottle top it up with 1.020 salinity water and set them under a light. There is a little more work that goes in to setting up cultures but it really isn’t that bad.

And then the other 1/2 thats left in the bottle you bought you feed to the Amano’s.


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@MadHatter , OK great , I didn't actually think about the culturing aspect, you'd then pretty much never run out of it, is this the right stuff?

 

That is preserved. Check out

Phytoplankton on tap

Just run that through a google search and get there,


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