XeniaGirl's blog

[XeniaGirl]

Our maroon clown died this morning. I want to cry. As usual, everything else in the tank is fine, including our fat 6-bar wrasse. The clown was acting weird yesterday as Isaac did a water change... almost like his swim bladder was starting to fail, but not 100% sure. He wasn't skinny and had been eating just fine. (I always check to make sure that both fish actually eat when I feed them). His tail and pectoral fins had been a bit torn up and almost just discolored white on the ends, but that may have been from whatever tore them up a little. It wasn't significant but something I did notice the other day. I feel like a murderer and I hate it. I fight with myself... why have animals if they're going to die even with the best care and the most love? It's so heartbreaking.

[XeniaGirl]

On 3/1/2009 we got two Kupang (???) damsels who came from the same tank at Boutique Pet Shop. They're blue and yellow and really cute. We also got 6 baby reef hermits since we've lost a few of our hermits the last few months. We took in a ton of mushrooms and xenia and got our water checked - as usual, everything is PERFECT. We always amaze the guys at our LFS because they tease us about "hmmm let's see if something ISN'T ideal this time" and "why do you even have us test your water anyway!?" So that's a good feeling. Temp is staying around 78 now and we've been keeping the lunars on at night for over a month. Lots of coraline algae which is starting to annoy me, but Isaac likes it on the glass. Our fat hermit, both narcissus snails, and the fighting conch ARE STILL ALIVE. Especially that conch, just amazes me. It's actually kind of gross that he's still not dead!
We're still changing the water once every 2-3 weeks with 1/3 water changed out. Isaac adds topoff on a regular basis. We haven't rinsed the sponges out in a while, hmm... I guess we should do that.
The button polyps are continuing to do better now that they're front and center of the tank... maybe they're just wanting to be the center of attention? Our star polyps have a mission to take over the tank and so it's them vs xenia vs red and green mushrooms. Our tank really is beautiful. I'll hafta put new pictures up soon!

[XeniaGirl]

Yesterday we got back from San Antonio (surprising my dad on Friday the 13th for his birthday) and brought a few stowaways with us from my parents' tank: 2 renegade starfish, 3 baby snails, and a colt coral frag. Everything looks great except I can't find most of the snails, and only one starfish is visible. The colt coral hasn't attached to anything but it looks fine, considering that it just survived a 5 hour car ride!
The kupang damsels and the wrasse are still doing well. They have the cutest little faces! All our nassarian snails and crabs are doing well, too. Mushrooms and star polyps continue to battle for reign of the tank, but that's fine because that equals more store credit for us! (I still want a bunny... and a hedgehog... and a bigger tank...)

[XeniaGirl]

Just a quick update - it's spring break and we just got back from camping in Oklahoma yesterday. Earlier this week we brought back some baby snails, starfish, and a colt coral frag from my parents' house. They were brought here in double-bagged Ziplocs with some water and all of them survived the car drive from San Antonio to here. We dripped them for a while and then dumped em in! They're all still doing fine. That means that the date they were put in our tank was 3/16/2009.
We're saving up our store credit at the LFS (Boutique Pet Shop) for a bigger tank... maybe a bowfront? Something 50-65 gallons...

[XeniaGirl]

oh ok... I'm an idiot... I already posted about the San Antonio stowaways! All well...

[XeniaGirl]

I think we lost our 6-line wrasse last night. On Saturday morning he was stuck in a hole face-first and while he wasn't dead, he acted like he was on his way to that big tank in the Sky. Ugh I hate this... My poor fish...

[XeniaGirl]

just a quick update...

*the only fish left is one of the damsels. We've lost our wrasse and one of the other damsels, the latter of which being in just the last week or two.

*the colt coral from my mom is doing awesome, and so is everything else.

*our fighting conch is STILL alive. I think it grosses me out more than anything at this point.

Did a water change last weekend. Clean the glass on a regular basis - some coraline algae but nothing major algae-wise. All else is good - haven't taken frags into the LFS, need to do that soon.

[XeniaGirl]

Well with everything happening with "the accident" (Memorial Day weekend... Xavier got totaled... drunk driver... etc etc etc) it's been a while and this is delayed, but...
We got 2 new fish on 5-31-2009. They're Sergeant Major damsels (hahaha) and look like this:
http://www.saltcorner.com/sections/zoo/1024frameset.htm
One of them has passed away in the last day or so - we still have one blue damsel from before, and wanted to add two new guys so that nothing bad would happen with dominance, fighting, etc. So we added the two Sergeants with the tank lights off. One of them just hid all the time after the first few days, and while I'd see him come out to eat, he was nowhere to be found today when I was cleaning up the tank and feeding them.
On that date we also got 6 pieces of live rock - small ones to help with collecting the frags and giving them something to attach to.
Water and everything still looks good!

[XeniaGirl]

ooh a few more things...

*the fighting conch... STILL ALIVE. Gross.

*colt coral and other corals are still doing awesomely - although the mushrooms are getting on my nerves, I think there's too many of them but they're so **** hard to frag!

*continuing to feed the mysis shrimp 2 or 3x/week.

*One of the reef hermits has a huge chunk of xenia stuck on it and it's funny as hell to watch.

[XeniaGirl]

We are continuing to frag xenia and mushrooms to take in for store credit at the Pet Boutique... right now we have almost $100 and are saving up for a bigger tank! We went to DNA today while killing time and found a tank/stand setup we LOVE... it's made by Red Sea and it's the "Max 130D" (or at least the one we saw was). I think it was only about 34 gallons but it had a modern looking black stand and was squarish with rounded corners. The tank itself had a lot of cool additions, like waterproof power switches, places to store your water test tubes, etc.
We also found some LED Unique Lighting that we loved, it combines what looks like tons of lunars/blue lights with white lights. We thought it looked awesome on one of the show tanks.
One of the blue and yellow damsels is the only fish we currently have - we have also lost one of our snails in the last week. We need to change the water but everything is still doing well.

[XeniaGirl]

We totally cleaned out the tank last week - rinsed sponges, scraped the glass, removed rocks so we could suck as much detritus as possible, etc. It looks beautiful! The one bicolor damsel is still fine and so is everything else. The colt coral was pissed at us for a few days but he got over it. We also saw a few copepods which was cool - glad to know we have them!
We're just continuing to take care of everything - will probably make another trip with frags to the LFS... gotta save up that store credit for the new tank!

[XeniaGirl]

Yesterday we took in a lot of xenia and mushrooms that weren't attached to anything, and we got 3 small black and white striped damsels to see how they'd do. I'm feeding them today - they're not fighting with our one blue and yellow damsel and are getting along fine. I hope it continues!

[XeniaGirl]

The fish are all still alive! It's been almost a week. I'm glad.
We also have started feeding them mysis - I think it'll be better for them but it's funny because the mysis are bigger, so the fish take a while to eat a piece.
I hope they stay ok!

[XeniaGirl]

We took some water in to be tested today and I ran it in with the corals/frags while Isaac did a water change. We lost our last damsel about 2 weeks ago. Here's what I found out:

-our water (that was sampled before the water change) had a slightly low pH, and a dH of 7 when it should be 10. Ammonia and nitrates were less than 10/1,000,000 and everything else looked awesome. Jason said in a totally serious face, "This is the worst I've ever seen your water."

-Isaac did the water change while I was out. We washed the sponge filters and cleaned the glass. He also added buffer.

-I should be feeding about 1/2 cube every other day or so. I'd been feeding a whole cube 2x/week so that needs to be adjusted.

-WE HAVE TO REMEMBER TO DO WATER CHANGES MORE FREQUENTLY. While the corals still are doing awesome (so much so, that they're actually starting to piss me off), I think the dirty water + my incorrect feeding schedule has been the cause for us to not be able to keep fish as long.

I bought a small Mr. B (bicolor blenny) today. He's only about 2.5 inches long and nice and fat. I hope that he'll be the start of the next wave of fish, where they can live happily and FOR A LONG TIME in our little nano haven.

[XeniaGirl]

Oh I forgot to mention... my mom in San Antonio is giving us a big tank! They've recently moved into a new house in San Antonio and had been given back a tank that they'd let my cousin use. He's put PC lighting (Power Compact) on it as well as a glass canopy and a Remora backpack filter on it. I think we'll have to buy a new pump and not sure that the filter is totally working. They're bringing it down in about a month and a half. I'm so excited! It's glass and about 58 gallons. We'll put it in place of our nano and then use the nano as a frag/sick fish tank, probably in the office. Yay!!!