Recent content by PopeShawnPaul

The problem with Chevron Tangs is they tend to forget everything quite often. I'm not sure if it's genetic or amnesia, but they don't have a long term memory at all. I don't know if you've seen Finding Nemo, but that movie illistrates this fact quite evidently.

Seems like too many fish in my opinion. I have 4 fish with one small tang in my 55. It's all I can handle to keep the parameters good long term. All those fish will muck up your tank parameters and your corals/clams will suffer. Maybe one small tang and a couple clowns would be best. Two...

Never vacuum true fine sand in a salt aquarium with live rock. If it's not live enough, or gets icky looking, get some sand with worms and live stuff in it to seed your tank. Some say use a sand sifter, but I wouldn't unless you have a dead sand bed and want to keep it that way...

Just go with the 55 gallon. It's not more expensive in equipment really. I use the bak pak 2 on my 55 gallon, which will set you back about 100 bucks. Your current skimmer will prolly work that you described. The sump will be too much trouble for you starting out. There are benefits to a...

To update: My test kit was bad. My nitrates were not 160 ppm. They were 40 ppm. However, this still scares me considering I have a few inverts in the tank. I did do two 30% water changes, and my nitrates are now about 10ppm. I took out the Fluval and the ceramic stones (it was originally...

I'm getting deja vu. It's definitely the emerald crab from the sounds of it. I have owned many in the last 6 years, and have caught about half of them going after something they shouldn't. About 4 years ago, I caught an emerald I purchased catching one of my clownfish. He hid in a cave, then...

Crazy. I put this in here because I think it's more appropriate. I've had a FOWLR for about 6 years now, no sump, with a bak pak skimmer. My nitrates have always been less than 5 ppm. Now all the sudden I did my first nitrate test in over 2 years, and the test is indicating 80-160 ppm...

We are so quick to get after those that have Mandarins for their inability to eat anything but live food most of the time. Yet we feed them live copopods and such... What about the copopods and other "food" animals, aren't their lives just as important? Lets start a "save the copopod" club...

I moved from Idaho to Washington, it took two days to get the tank back up. I did like they said, went to Wal-Mart and bought huge rubbermaids. Then i put heater in each, one with live rock and one with fish, along with a powerhead. Put lid on! They like to jump out of the Rubbermaid tubs...

My Coral Banded Shrimp was a nasty bugger. I caught him killing my watchman goby, and later grabbing my clown fish. What's funny, he didn't even hide it. As soon as he was in the tank, I caught him stalking my less mobile fish... I even fed him well, in hopes of keeping him happy. He had to...

I was going to take mine out after I had it in for about 6 months. When I took it out it was home to lots of pods and tiny shrimp and stuff. I decided these could only be good and provide a separate food source for the fish. I still took out half, and put the heater in there anyways...