The Life of Blue Spots Tank 1800L

[dave.m]

Looks like aggression. Cardinals usually live in groups, a male and a harem of females, and are under pressure from predation. If you've only the two, and one is a male trying to dominate a female to prevent her from turning into a second male, the second one is going to take a bit of a beating. That's why it is better to keep cardinals in a group rather than a pair. Welcome to the world of cardinal fish.

Dave.M

[Blue spot]

cheers dave. Can cardinals change sex also. I didn't know this. it's really strange , Ive had these fish for over a year and they have always swum around together , although on a night they go to opposite ends of the tank. wonder why it's only happening now.

[Blue spot]

I've opened a you tube account and uploaded a video. This fish tank hobby takes you everywhere not only am I turning into an expert of aquaria, but now a master of the arts also. it's got a sound track , pictures , video, slow mo.... yes you herd me.. slow mo. I think I'll be up for some sort of award by the end of the week. check it out...... or as us thespians say , break a leg.

https://youtu.be/qiPo6JZskRE

[Blue spot]

right who's looking at my video and not giving me a thumbs up. are you shitting me ! IT'S GOT SLOW MO ! lol

[Blue spot]

OMG I've infringed a copyright. Ive only been on you tube for 10 minutes. It's not going well

[dave.m]

The next thing I know you'll be spelling correctly and using proper grammar and everything.

Dave.M

[Blue spot]

No chance. Lol

[Blue spot]

And I did'nt lose the irony of your double and.

[Blue spot]

Tank update. I've been running triton now for around 3 months and things seam to be going ok. I find it easier to keep my levels in check just by monitoring my kh. Light wise, I am not sure, I bought some new little frags to see if they would keep their colour , but they still seam to go green. wondering if I should add more light ? My nitrates and phosphates are at a low level so I think it can only be light. Changing the light has also had a negative effect on my lps corals , so at the minute I feel like nothing is going great coral wise. Could it be temperature ?? My tank is still at blue spot temperature ?? Just thinking out load here. Fish wise things seem OK. After what Dave has said I have been tryin to catch one of the cardinals for some time out. No luck so far , but got a fish trap in now. Blue spots are on order and a second home , I'm hoping I can get a good introduction though I would have liked to add them when the tank was less busy, I'm going to try and combat this by moving a few rocks when I put them in (got this planned when I re-scraped) blue spots should be about 3 weeks away, hope they look heathy . I don't usually buy without seeing the fish , but feel a bit obligated when ordering in special.

[dave.m]

Before spending a lot of money on lights you might be better off borrowing a PAR meter and mapping the levels with your current lights. This might give you an idea of where you should relocate either your corals or your lights.

There are other things that can affect corals. Not just the strength of the light but also the spectrum matters. Correct water circulation is also important. But most of all is stability. Corals come from a narrow area where the length of day is always the same, where the water chemistry seldom varies, where they have evolved to expect flow parameters to stay within the same norms all the time.

Dave.M

[Adam G]

I loved your video. Very nice work. Tank looks great. I am correct that you have a pair of Blue Throat triggers in your tank? Love those fish. Had a pair I had to re-home when I down sized tanks. Such beautiful fish with nice disposition.

[Blue spot]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not thinking of buying more lights, just turning them up some, I've got the radions but I have them on 75% running . 12.5 k 2 hours, 10k 2 hours 13.5k 3 hours then the blues (only recently). But so far it's taken about 2 weeks for frags to go green. i think my lfs has a par meter , I'll ask if I can borrow it..... Oh no that means I'm going to have to research par levels for each coral. More numbers !! Adam videos not very good (but thank you for humouring me )I was just seeing if I could record that cardinal behaviour and had no idea how to upload something onto reef central. I'll try and do something a bit better now I know how to. I can feel a "slow mo the return" video brewing . Lol . As for the triggers mine keep marching up and down the tank all day, they never bother anyone , just very vain , always looking at their reflections, well I assume it's that they are looking at? But agree they are a nice fish, I really struggled deciding if I should add them after some of the things I've read, but glad I did.
And Dave you've made me paranoid now. I nearly did a spell check........ But as you can see I didn't bother in the end .lol .

[Blue spot]

Dave forgot to ask , you know what you said about circulation. Will that alter colour aswell , or just growth pattern ? I'm still very new to sps so not thought about this.

[dave.m]

From what little I understand of it, SPS colour is more a matter of spectrum and water chemistry.

Dave.M

[Blue spot]

I have yet another confession. So I've mentioned a few times about having ph issues , can't understand why , something weird is happening. Well ....... I was in my lfs talking about di resin. I mentioned I run a double di stage as I had read longer contact time improved efficiency . True . My lfs smiled and said have you checked your ph on your rodi water. I had, but not for ages and well before I had added the double di stage. He said well test it I'm sure you'll find it acidic. So... I have.... I am not sure what colour bright yellow indicates on a ph test. But I am sure it is not good. No wonder I am having ph problems I am adding (all be it very clean) acid into tank. In my water changes, top off ,everything. No wonder I am having problems .

[Blue spot]

Solution. I've added some calcium carbonate into my rodi water and circulating it through a pump. lfs suggestion. I'll let you know how it works out .

[Blue spot]

Ph of my rodi water is now around 7.8 (colour blind so could be anything) I'm not going to say the change has been instant , but it has definitely altered ph for the positive , looking at my apex I can see a link from top off to lowering ph, only slightly, but now I am looking I can see it.

[Blue spot]

Continuing to monitor my ph with the new rodi water. It's now gone up by 0.1 with doing nothing but improving my top off water. Other thing is , byropsis back, I had it down to just a few strands but it's had a flare up . I know the reason why aswell. Told you I was swaping over to triton, well I had swapped to their phosphate remover, after the byropsis started to appear more noticeable I tested my phosphates and it had gone up to 0.15, I'm normally around 0.02. So I've changed back to biophos.

[Blue spot]

So another update. I have very little excitement going on at all really , byropsis as I had mentioned has had another flare up, not as bad as before but still there. Got my phosphates back down by changing media which has stopped the spread and I may drop my lights for a little while to see if my sump can outgrow it + one pony sized sea hare .
Additions to the tank , I've had a red nem and today I bought a really unusual anemone, I've only ever seen one before in the uk (that's not saying there is only one, just the only one I've seen). I've researched them before so remember they are relatively safe , but for the life of me I can't remember it's name. I'll get a picture.
Fish wise I've added a baby Bangai . This is living in the sea anemone ? I wasn't aware they did this and I keep looking thinking one false move and he's breakfast , but he's been in there for about three weeks now with the clowns and crabs ??
The lizard blenny has turned out to be quite a find , at first very reclusive but now it's settled it's got a little perch right out on the front of the tank , adding some interest.
Corals left from the big clear out are doing well, keeping there colour and a few of the sps are growing, I never get lps growth , I don't know why they just seam to stagnate or in the bad cases slowly wither away .
I'll try and get some pics on my next update

[Blue spot]

I've gone from one extreme to the other. I've had a fish crazy day, went in a shop and they had a lot of my favourite fish. So I have added 2 blue spots, I may even have a pair. They were in the same tank together a showing no aggression to each other, but 1 is a lot smaller than the other , I'm not going to name them until I've had them a while . I also got a kalidos wrasse, I had one of these before but it jumped when a relative was looking after my tank when I was on holiday. I have looked for another ever since and this is the first I've seen in over a year. Then to top it off 2 kamohara blennies , again another fish I've coveted but not seen. A fantastic fish day. They had a beautiful pair of Picasso clowns aswell but thought better of it and they had 2 huge clarions but these were 3k each , even I'm not that mad !
So the blue spots are in full swing again , been smiling all day

[Blue spot]

Forgot another thing, my pipe fish is pregnant. He's been carrying the eggs for about a week now. Should I try and do anything with them ? I'm not thinking flambé here, more on the lines of trying to raise them .

[dave.m]

You will need live foods of the correct size to feed the babies. This usually takes some experimentation. First of all you need to have them in a separate tank. Get some books on marine fish breeding. It's not a simple exercise but can be done.

Dave.M

[Blue spot]

thanks dave I'll have an investigate, as long as I don't have to feed them every 2 hours or something mad i might give it a go, I did this once with an abandoned baby squirel I found, it lived in a sock for about 2 months and I had to feed it every 2 hours, `i had to take it literally everywhere with me, If those pipe fish babies need that sort of attention they are going to have to fend for themselves in the big tank.

[Blue spot]

another update folks, I've done it in video format again and tried to film as much as possible, you can see the bryropsis flaring up again in the background. but I've also put the new blue spots on there.

https://youtu.be/35-8zv0YjVE

[wowkingjames]

Nice set up.