Gathering comments on my setup

[atdm2403]

Hello everyone

I just bought a tank back in feb 07. About 200 ltrs tank , 55 gls aprox

At the moment I have live rock, crushed coral 1 pearl scale angel,1 yelow tang, 1 copper banded butterfly, 2 yellow tail damsels and 1 tomato clown, one orange starfish and 1 hermit crab. I also have 2 soft corals but do not know the exact name, every shop name them different...

Now I am running 1 Proaqua JB 2500power head on 1 side of the aquarium, an air driven protein skimmer and a Jebo 819 cannister filter

I have few questions since I am new to all this

1- Should I keep running my cannister, taking into account that I have live rock and a protein skimmer?

2 The cooper barnded is getting a bit fuzzy with the food. I have tried brine shrimp, but still does not eat properly. Any suggestions

3 Any comments on the set up would be much appreciated. What to add, what to remove, upgrades, etc

Thanks

 

[Bojangles]

1. Lots of people are against canister filters because they tend to build up a ton of gunk. I mean if you plan on cleaning it weekly then it cant hurt too much.

2. Not sure on the CBB, they can be hard to get onto frozen. Mine ate Nori and brine so you might want to try those.

3. You might want more circullation. Depends on what kind of corals you want to keep. They say you should have about 3-5x the tank size turning over. Personally I keep my current pretty high.

 

[atdm2403]

Thanks for your comments. WIll try the nori tonight on with the CBB.

I have increased the flow of the power head. It will be close to 4 times the capacity of my tank per hour, that is about 1200 litrs per hr

cheers

A

 

[Rikko]

I would just toss the canister and replace it with a power head - the live rock and skimmer ARE your filters and the canister is at best just another redundancy you don't really need. Canisters can also be noisy when air bubbles get sucked in or air cavitates. I've also had a lot of bad luck with them leaking and dripping after reassembly after cleaning... I still use them for my freshwater tanks, but I find them annoying.

When I used to work in a pet store we had pretty good luck with CBBs, so it's difficult to say what's wrong. Yours could be stressed (your tank isn't very large, is it aquascaped such that at least he can disappear behind rocks and feel safe?) or just not accustomed to captive life. We always fed the store fish frozen mysis shrimp soaked in garlic extract. Garlic to me is one of those voodoo additives that purportedly increases appetite. I refuse to say it was what got them eating but it was one part of our feeding regime that we stuck with.

As far as removing things, I would pull the damsels before long. Yellow tails aren't the most unruly of the damsels but they are still a bit high strung for most relaxed tanks.
Do bear in mind that your tang needs a lot of swimming area. I have the faux pas of having two in my 120 gallon tank, but there are lots of caves and open areas in the rock that they are always exploring and don't exhibit any signs of stress. If you find yours doesn't seem "happy" you may want to consider trading him to someone with a larger tank.
Oh, and be prepared for that starfish to die on you - they seem to do abysmally poorly for even the most advanced aquarists.

If you want something with a little more personality, I really enjoy blennies. The bicolour blenny is a good bet. Beware the flashy blennies - there is a subset of the blennies called "fang blennies" that are actually nasty little buggers that nip bits of flesh off other fish. Many stores bring them in and have no idea what they are so just sell them.

Good luck with the tank - it becomes a very rewarding hobby if you can survive the first year.

 

[atdm2403]

hey man thanks for your tips. I will turn off the canister straight away and will rearrange the rocks around to have better hiding areas

The CBB just died after 3 days in my tank. I tried the garlic but did not have enough time to get it working

Cheers

Andres