The Deep Blue Sea in my HDB!

A Deeper Blue Sea in that same HDB!

2008-10-23T20:53:00.002+08:00

I'm back! and I'm going to build a new aquarium and this time it is going to be (3.5 feet long) x (13 inches wide) x (2 feet in height of visible swimming area). It will no longer be in my room because I've finally convinced my folks to have it in the living room as a sort of divider between the dining and the living area! Cheers!

Production Schedule

3-9 Nov: Finalize design with tank maker

10-19 Nov: Delivery and intsallation of tank

20 Nov: Cycling process begins + optimization

8 Dec: First fish

20 Dec: Open house!

Check back! The adventure will begin soon!

Last Days

2007-05-25T23:28:00.000+08:00

Fish, corals and rocks are all gone. Equipment sales are pending now. It was really sad to let San Francisco, Bala, Mr. Ms. Mo, Dr. Shrimp and Mr. Sexy go. Do you think they feel it? It seems like I saw some soulfulness in their eyes when I fed them for the last time. It's really sad.

My Dearest...

2007-04-26T21:07:00.000+08:00

Someone commented that I speak of my fishies too dearly. Too dearly for a man at least. What the heck? All I can say to that person, don't ever try keeping fishies let alone a reef ecology aquarium. You'd never succeed.

The Deep Blue Sea is closing soon. Sadly.

Who's who?

2007-04-14T12:46:00.000+08:00

San Francisco, Ms. Mo , Bala and Dr. Shrimp! Go figure who's who. That red coral at the top, is called a rose brain. It's not mine, just a temporary resident in the deep blue sea.

Big Boy

2007-04-13T08:57:00.000+08:00

This is San Francisco, showing a bit of attitude here with that tilted cheek and pouty lips. The most dominant fish in the deep blue sea.

Mr. and Ms. Mo

2007-04-12T12:44:00.000+08:00

Mr. and Ms. Mo has been the longest inhabitants of the deep blue sea. They look pretty sad here, a little discolored. The discoloration is proabably because of age, secondly they don't have a host anemone. Clowns with anemones look healthier. One of the ways to tell if your clowns are happy is to watch for those fins just beneath its chin. If they're fully extended and the clowns swim about with those fins hanging, its a good sign. Else if they're tucked in, then something is wrong. In this case, their fins are tucked in but that's because the water current in this part of the tank is strong and hence they retract those fins to streamline themselves to fight the current.

What's up on wiki?

2007-04-11T22:56:00.000+08:00

Sorry guys, no updates. I've been so busy and sad news, the deep blue sea might be closing because of a change in the course of my life. Anyway, see anything familar? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marine_aquariums

Updates Finally

2007-03-16T14:25:00.000+08:00

It's been quite awhile since I updated the blog. Nevertheless for all you fellow reefers, I hope I haven't disappointed you guys at the rate I was replying to your questions. Did a water change today, the tank's been up 4 months odd and I decided to throw out all my old chemical and mechanical filters and got them replaced with brand new ones.

Glad to report that everything is doing good. The brain that stayed for a while has found itself a new owner and a rose brain is now here to stay. Got myself a new cup coral and a small broken of bit of a plate coral. See if you can find them.

Water Change

2007-03-02T11:51:00.000+08:00

I used to change 25-30L of water each week but lately I realised that its getting costly. I seem to use up all my salt really quickly so I'm gonna change the regime. Alternate weeks! I will still maintain the aquarium on the weekly basis. The norm is to wash out the skimmer and the filter. The difference is one week i'll change 20L and the next just 5L. hopefully that would be able to double the lifespan I have for each packet of salt i buy.

Oh Crab!

2007-02-27T23:20:00.000+08:00

I had a decorator crab. I bet not many have seen a decorator crab. So where is my picture of this decorator crab? I don't know. A decorator crab is a crab that will pick up objects from its surroundings and place it onto its own body as a form of camouflage. It will pick shells, sand bits, coral fragments, anemones, algae, anything u name it, just to blend in with its surroundings.

This crab i had was too big for the tank. It bit my corals and ripped them off. I got upset and transferred it out to a holding tank and subsequently I sold it. It was only the day that I sold it off I realise what an ass I have been. The crab was truely a cool fella. It was just amazing too watch and just because it tore of some corals, I got upset with it. So upset that I didn't give it a name, I didn't take a picture of it.

Now that it's gone, I feel so rotten. All of us have flaws but beyond that, I'm pretty sure if we look hard enough it is not hard to find some good points. Don't let the flaws overshadow the beauty so easily. Treasure those around you, cos once they're gone, like the crab, you'd say Oh Crab! (literally, metaphorically)

122 Days

2007-02-21T22:13:00.000+08:00

Its been 122 Days since the glass tank was first filled with water. And since then the tank has gradually transformed into what i call the deep blue sea in my HDB. It's come a long way I must say, and there were defintely problems, there STILL are problems, and I've lost fishies in the process. I set out for a zero casualty aquarium but failed to maintain that standard. It is sad and often in this hobby we get too caught up with all these problems that we fail to take the time to appreciate the aquarium as a mini ecosystem sustained artificially outside of nature that we've created. That's exactly what I did tonight and behold...

Its quite breath taking I must say. Yes we reefers put in lots of time and money into the aquarium, but let's not forget to appreciate it for its beauty.

I'm glad to report that the brainy guest is doing just fine. Infact I think it got better.

Amatuer Footage: Creatures of the night

2007-02-21T09:48:00.001+08:00

If you've gone night diving you'd know that life in the sea takes on a new form when night falls and same goes for the deep blue sea in my HDB.

Resolution is not very clear but if you watch the sand bed closely, you'd realise that it comes alive with bugs scrambling here and there and there's a mysterious slug on the glass wall. Never knew it existed. I've got better footage but youtube wouldn't let me upload it cos its too big. Bister worms and sleeping clown fishes. In the following episode of this nocturnal video series i guess.

Brainy Guest

2007-02-20T22:09:00.000+08:00

Got a surprise text msg early in the morning in a half hung over, partially spaced out state that says "My purple tang is pecking on my green brain so its stressed. May need to borrow your tank to shelter it until I trade it. Can?" True to its cause, as long as its within its ability, the Deep Blue Sea in my HDB will never turn its back on any land-stranded coral or fish.
This is the first resident guest at the DBS. A luminous pastel lime green brain coral. It will be here till its nursed back to health or till when it eventually gets traded off.

008

2007-02-17T18:30:00.001+08:00

Say hello to 008! having a feast off the nuisance algae thats been growing wild on the tank wall.

Underwater Photography

2007-02-14T17:59:00.000+08:00

Underwater photography is pretty expensive. An underwater case for a normal point and shoot digital camera costs as much as the camera itself, and further more there's always the question if the camera performs well in dimmer underwater environments. I've got a solution, take picture of the Deep Blue Sea in my HDB!

Mystery Star

2007-02-05T00:28:00.000+08:00

I'm supposed to be studying but why am I uploading fresh pictures on to the blog!? All thanks to AHEM. Look what i've found! A white black-banded zebra brittle starfish! You know its just amazing how much life there's living inside this deep blue sea.

Brittle Stars are a kind of starfish. You don't really see body, just 5 or more very long tentacles joined together at the centre. Lower part of the picture u see 3 tentacles, white with black bands coming out of the rock. The characteristic of such star fish is that they're small enough to actually live inside the holes and cracks in the rocks.

Same piece of rock, but this time there's a single tentacle appearing at the top of the rock. If you do a little mental super positioning of both pictures, you'd realise that the entire starfish is actually living inside that piece of rock with its tentacles stretching out through network of holes in the porous rock.

Amazing stuff eh?

Everybody!

2007-02-04T00:28:00.000+08:00

Today everybody is out to play. 6 main characters in the tank. Top right is the doctor shrimp, the you have mr. and ms. Mo. Big fish is a sailfin tang and his name is San Francisco! why? Cos SailFin tang in short is SF and SF = San Francisco! Top of the tank is the red feather starfish. Its not doing to well, quite alot of legs and tentacles fell off since it came into the deep blue sea. One more mysterious character is the sexy shrimp, always too illusive for the camera.

Wonderful bloom with the sun corals. And the tree is really stunning i must say.

Garlic is good for you!

2007-01-31T00:21:00.000+08:00

So 007 left and the parasites are still in the tank. I've changed my strategy and have started feeding food soaked in garlic juice to the fishies. Fishies have responded very well and have regained all their coloration and skin texture within a day.

Nitrates are at a shockingly high level. thats probably cos of the high level of feeding for the sun corals. Ugh! knocked over some rocks. Sucha pain when that happens.

The TREE in the deep blue SEA in my HDB!

2007-01-27T21:47:00.000+08:00

Bleed through ur noses guys! behold this beauty! I call it the TREE in the deep blue SEA in my HDB! It even rhymes! I was the evil influence to get Belle into Sun corals, now she's the evil influence to get me into exotic colored sun corals! Dang!

Fish Society

2007-01-26T00:18:00.000+08:00

007 chose to die another day but unfortunately, it was the next day. It's heart wrenching to lose a life like that. Initially I thought it showed signs of improvement after shifting it to the quarantine tub but as time went on, i guess it was ill beyond any remedy. 007 left for fish society 21 Jan 2007 and will always be remembered fondly as the one who kept my tank clean from diatom algae and the one who fought strongly for his life.

I once said that aquariums is a very therapeutic hobby. You're playing 'God', you're creating a 'world', you choose the life that you want to put it, you provide for it. You don't live in the aquarium so you're a 3rd person but its from this that you understand alot of perspectives that the fish do not. If you take it further and draw parallels to your life, there's alot that it actually reveals.

007 was a fighter. I could tell watching it swim around till its very last. Somehow nature put a survival instinct in its creation that all will fight to survive. Why do humans commit suicide? Why do people choose to take their lives just because they made a mistake and found it imposisble to live with that guilt there and then? Even a fish can die with dignity, swimming till it breathes its last. It just goes to show how weak humans can be.

007

2007-01-20T19:18:00.000+08:00

A name is a label for a person, thing, place etc. Often we choose symbolic and meaningful names that describe what we're naming. For example Chinatown is where the chinese community gathered and hence the name. But that's in the case of a place. What if you're naming a child? A child is often given a name at birth but hey, it's still has another 80 odd years to live, its too early to tell its character. How can the name be representative of the child then? I suggest that the name epitomizes all that the parent hopes for that cihld to be and the child grows into the name. I have a personal story for this, but that's out of the scope for this blog.

007 is a Kole Tang. The yellow-eyed kole tang has distinctive yellow rings around it eyes making them very striking in contrast with its dark blue/purple body. Hence the name from its 'Golden Eye' - 007.

I never liked putting medication into an aquarium. I've always advocated nature's way of curing diseases through the immune system. However this outbreak of parasites I judged it to be beyond what the natural rate of healing of the fish could handle. I'm into the 5th out of 10 doses now. 007 didn't take to it too well. I found it restless and not moving. Just this morning it went missing. I've scoured the tank but I couldn't find it. Mum said she saw it lying dead but its just wierd that the body is gone. I understand fully how the loved ones of tragic catastrophies feel. What sucks is not the news that your loved one died. Yes that sucks but at least its an end and you can move on. What's worse is that there's no news. You have no idea of whether that someone is alive, struggling out there somewhere. That was the case for 007 and I was the restless the entire day.

007 went missing for almost 12hours. I did a scan on the room floor, perhaps it jumped but no it didn't. i tried probing under the rocks but no 007. I gave up. Hope was dimming. Then in the evening I saw it ALIVE! I netted it up, set up an immediate quarantine facility and hopefully it will pull through and get healthy again.

What's this gotta do with the name? Loera's witty suggestion that 007's gonna 'die another day'. well there, uncanny but true. Let's just pray that day is not tomorrow.

White Spots

2007-01-19T00:09:00.000+08:00

Alright, major white spots outbreak. Medication has been dosed. In these dire times, I can only ask for everyone to keep the deep blue sea in my HDB and all its inhabitants in their prayers.

Sun Shades!

2007-01-17T23:17:00.000+08:00

Aquarium was originally built on an open concept but after these couple of months, it seems that the light is way to bright and glaring for viewing pleasure so today I embarked on a project to build a hood out of polyfoam plastic boards.

Here's the final product. Looks like something out the carpenter's workshop and it only cost me $9 bucks. Actually less but i over estimated the material needed. Held it all together with some silicon left over from previous projects and lets see how it works out. Its alot softer on the eyes now.

Not been updating for a while. Last saturday bro Patrick from the reefclub gave me a super sun, a prata and many zoa colonies. Sad to say the sun was in real bad condition and I had to let it go. On the bright side, the rest are doing perfectly fine. Prata is the disc shaped coral smack in the middle of the tank and the zoas are scattered here and there.

Some causalties happened since. one mushroom was half devoured mysteriously. Mandarin jumped for a second time. 1 tube worm is missing. Need to be more faithful in the husbandry of the aquarium.

Did some online shopping and i'm gonna get a PH monitor! hopefully that will help give more accurate and timely indications of water parameters. And oh for the videos, i've uploaded them on youtube but the resolution was so poor it didn't really matter if you watched it or not.

Side View

2007-01-12T18:22:00.000+08:00

Thought this was a pretty interesting view from the side. Never saw the clam so vibrant before. YouTube is down, I've just made a couple of videos. Really exciting ones but its lil amatuerish. YouTube get moving! I wanna upload vids!

Baby Suns!

2007-01-10T16:23:00.000+08:00

Baby sun corals! one big colony and now there are 4 (if you look close enough) other small conlonies growing on what was once a sun coral but now its just the dead skeleton. Sometimes I have this feeling. Did i see them before? or are they new growth.

The Deep Blue Sea

2007-01-09T22:10:00.000+08:00

The deep blue sea has been running for 78days now. 2 casualties so far. I lost a sexy shrimp while doing a very disruptive and extensive water change and re-scaping of the tank. My fault entirely. I lost a mandarin goby who jumped out the next day after it was introduced. It's unlikely for mandarins to be active in the water column and what more jump out so I consider that a freak accident. Other than that, i'm proud to report that everything is doing well. Infact things are growing and multiplying!

Comparing the aquarium with the first few initial shots, I'd say its come a long way. The floor is still a little messy with stray rocks I've yet to decide a final location for. Coralline algae growth has been significant and all the rocks look pretty much purple and alive.

Here's the deep blue sea from another angle. Let's see if you can find the following:

1. Sailfin Tang a.k.a San Francisco
2. Clown Fish a.k.a Mr. & Ms. Mo
3. Spotted Mandarin Goby a.k.a Tooshie Pox
4. Kole Tang a.k.a 007 (Double Oh Seven)

Explain the names another time

Round the Tank in um... 1 day?

2007-01-07T01:07:00.000+08:00

Yesterday while performing a water change, the feather star somehow decided it got tired of its location and crawled round the tank searching for a better spot. It went high and low and even after a couple of hours, it was still seen moving to other spots. Finally i woke up this morning, it was back in its original spot. so yes, the feather star went on a round the tank trip. I hope its happy in its spot now.

Quick! We need a DOCTOR!

2007-01-03T02:05:00.000+08:00

Accidentaly I spiked the carbonate hardness of the water because I read its value wrongly. I guess that caused a little irritation to the fishies. Mr. and Ms. Mo have been swimming in and out and through the hammer coral taking it as a surrogate host, probably to ease their skin irritation. White spots on other fishies. Things should get better.

More Friends!

2007-01-03T01:44:00.000+08:00

Added quite a number of stuff into the tank recently but have just been to busy to update. Yellow polyps and they came for free! Very generous gesture courtesy of the Golden Octopus! I was out coral shopping and what caught my eye was these small polyps growing wild on the sand bed. Asked Mr. Shan if i could buy them and he said, i'll give 'em to you. Looking for great corals, go to the Golden Octopus!

Zoas! I forgot the full name but I bought a bunch of them off Simon another member on the reefclub forum. Had real trouble finding a place to house this bunch cos it wasn't attached to a rock to weight it down. floating all around in the current.

And more zoas, this time in one big block. Much easier to position to them. I was very surprised that these zoas adapted really well and opened up the very same day I introduced them into the tank. One more colony, a little too tiny and I'm very disappointed in the color rendering of this camera. Ugh!

Star a tank? yes the red feather star. Got this poisonous intimidating looking creep out in some coral farm located in some far off place. I had no idea what it was, it just looked exotic and all the man told me was that star ate dirty things. Hilarious! Its a feather star and it feeds on plankton.

The final picture, more mushrooms. This pair courtesy of belle again. i love mushrooms. I have so many now. there are some more i've not taken pictures of them. Came in a big rock, so there was no place to house them so I hack the rock to bits.

Cauliflower is recovering!

2007-01-03T01:26:00.000+08:00

'Cauliflowers' are soft corals meaning they do not have a calcareous skeleton. It's just one soft coral polyp attached to a rock. The cauliflowers have only been fairing fine since they got into the tank. They usually thrive in dark areas and are often found hanging upside down in caves. The right side of the picture shows the cauliflowers when they first came into the tank. One of the polyps has its tiny tentacles extended giving it a hairy appearance whereas the other is fully contracted and looks smooth. That smooth polyp has refused to extend its tentacles until recently. On the left, that is a recent shot. Not very sharp, but you can compare how much the polyps have gotten better and grown. That's great news for the deep blue sea!

Bye Bye Mandarin

2006-12-30T02:14:00.000+08:00

I woke up in the morning to find the Mandarin Goby on the table. The spotted mandarin is some kinda like a bottom/rock dwelling fish. It never swims freely in the water colum much so it was the last fish i'd ever expect to jump outta the tank. Mysterious death i have no idea why.

Realised that diluting the water actually had quite a serious adverse effect on the chemical concentrations so did a water change today to rectify that. Absent mindedly i forgot to turn on the chiller after i was done with everything so ambient temperature reached an all time high of 29deg. Thank goodness I noticed that. Found it strange that the cauliflower coral wasn't opening, touched the tank and realised that the water wasn't cool. If I had left it any longer, the heat from the lights could have just caused a bigger disaster.

Visited a very interesting shop today. Shopkeeper was super helpful, super friendly and gave me free coral polyps. Very tiny ones but it was a generous gesture I very much appreciated.

Mg and Ca levels are low, am trying ways to remedy that.

A Wet Fishy Day

2006-12-26T22:50:00.000+08:00

I spent the whole day checking out fishy stuff today. After that disappointing Xmas eve, it was a very pleasant surprise when Belle said she found my fish and she reserved it. Was even nicer of her to drive me to pick up the fish. Spent the whole day travelling from shop to shop, place to place, pretty crazy i thought.

So i got my kole tang! this fish seems a little over sized tho it was the smallest already. Got bullied the moment it went into the tank. Cowering at the corner but is slowly familiarising itself and gaining ground.

The other fish was a spotted mandarin goby. A really dainty pretty looking fish which i'd never see myself keeping cos it's reputed as hard to keep. Belle convinced me that i shouldn't have any problems with it so there, second fish.

let's see how they go. Pictures will come sOON!

Bio Diversity!

2006-12-25T23:34:00.000+08:00

If you ask people who have pets what do they keep? oh i have 2 dogs. I have a cat. I've got a couple of guppies. Would you actually believe me if i told you that I have an entire eco-system teaming with life here in The Deep Blue Sea in my HDB?

Here's what's living inside...
Row 1: Crocea clam, orange mushroom, white mushroom
Row 2: Softcorals cauliflowers, similar speicies, different coloration, button mushrooms
Row 3: another mushroom, & another mushroom, hammer coral
Row 4: mushrooms again, trumpet coral, zoas
Row 5: zoas, sun corals, cleaner shrimp

There are other creatures too illusive to capture with the cam...
1. sexy shrimp
2. false percula clown anemone fish
3. sailfin tang
4. copepods
5. worms
6. shell fishes
7. tube worms

That alone sums up to 15 + 7 = 22 types of organisms inside the aquarium. I have not accounted for the actual number of each of these species. Take for example, I estimate that there are thousands of copepods living inside. no less then 10 worms, 15 tube worms, 3 shell fishes. I've not even started to count the number of coral colonies. There are also different species of algae growing in there. You can imagine wassup at the Deep Blue Sea in my HDB!

Merry Christmas Fishies!

2006-12-24T23:25:00.000+08:00

I think i'm getting lazy with this project. Problems just keep cropping up and i'm just looking to solve all these problems and hopefully develop a fix set of procedures that i'd just need to follow to ensure the tank's health. Hopefully this can be done before school reopens too. Also if i can doucment these steps nicely, then I can leave on holidays and not worry about the fishies cos these instructions can be past on to others at home.

Despite the mood and the cheer of Xmas season, today turned out to be a very disappointing Xmas' eve (in the context of the fish tank that is). I got a message from the fish farm today, they said "your kole tang is here!" Rare hawaiian shipment, I left the house almost immediately just for it. I got there, got the whole car muddied cos the rainy mud puddles, only to watch someone buy the last 2 of those fishes right infront of my eyes.

I've been waiting months for this fish. I refused to add anymore fishies into the tank. Many friends have offered to adopt fishies, but I've turned them all down, waiting for this kole tang before i get the rest. I was so excited when I got the message and I even decided that i was gonna name the fish Christmas!

No fish this xmas. On a brighter note, i wish everyone living in the deep blue sea in my HDB a merry xmas! No dried pellet food for you guys today and tomorrow. You guys shall have fresh yummy food!

Troublesome Sunnies!

2006-12-21T01:05:00.000+08:00

Sun corals are a pain in the ass though they can be really pretty. That's quite true for all things pretty ain't it? ie. troublesome girlfriend. Feeding was sucha hassle. The Sailfin tang's gotten alot braver and everytime i deliver food to an individual sun coral polyp, it has the guts to actually 'challenge' my pincer and nib food out of it. So what do i feed the sun corals? shrimps cut into tiny shreds. Each polyp is hand fed with food delivered to every mouth. Not all polyps can be fed cos its just too time consuming but i feed as much as I can. Sister got a lomograph camera and there's where i got the inspiration for this picture.

Following the frames from left to right. 3 polyps have extended. Delivered food to 2 polyps. The one higher up swallowed it quickly. All the tentacles have retracted to push the shrimp bit down its 'throat'. the lower polyp is still having trouble ingesting the shrimp bit. The top polyp has opened up for a second helping. Notice that polyps that weren't extended at the start have started extending. The third polyp has decided that its' bro is unable to handle its food portion and so bends over to snatch part of it. Another piece of shrimp is delivered to a polyp that has just extended right at the bottom. The first polyp its extending its body, squeezing its food down its throat. You can see the lump along its body.

Interesting eh? Its hecka troublesome! Anyway I've observed some new growth in the suncorals. new polyps forming but at the same time, a couple of old polyps seem to have just rotted away. I'm wondering why. Perhaps it got choked by sand or something. Sun corals are propoagating but yet 2 polyps have faded away. Is everything good?

New Toy for Xmas!

2006-12-21T00:19:00.000+08:00

Google's blogger has been acting up lately so i've been slow with the updates. Anyway I've gotten myself a new toy for xmas! and its a refractometer! Thanks to bro Honda from the reef club, passed it to me at great price.

So here it is! What does it do? it gives a very accurate reading of the aquarium water's salinity (the amount of salt inside the water). In a previous post, I discussed about the hydrometer, how it worked and how it measured salinity. a hyrdometer is a useful device to have but it will only give (i prefer to use this term) an indication of salinity. Its accuracy can be easily affected by bubbles stuck on the swinging measurement arm or salt crystals forming on the device itself because you don't clean it well after use. Besides that, the principle its built upon has an intrinsicly large margin of error.

How does a refractometer work? Its basically an optical instrument with a prism being the basis of its physics. You drop some aquarium water onto the prism, hold it up against the light and you peer down the device. I believe that because water with different salinity levels have different refractive indices, the refracted light is directed onto a scale to give a correseponding reading. Pretty complex? ha! I think it's pretty cool!

My hydrometer indicated the water's specific gravity was 1.021, the refractometer gave a reading of 1.025. Grossly over the acceptable range of 1.020-1.023. Diluted the water and dang calcium and magnesium levels plunged.

Its dead

2006-12-19T13:31:00.000+08:00

Gotcha! its not dead. The cleaner moulted and I fished out the shell. You know I've had cleaner shrimps with me since I started with this marine aquarium hobby. They've moulted so many times but never have I once watch a shrimp moult. It'd make a good documentary clip for this blog i'm sure if i could catch it moulting.

They moult in the dark i suppose so i'm on my way to DIY a LED moonlight to illuminate the aquarium, simulate the moon!

Pod Cast!

2006-12-17T23:14:00.000+08:00

Ever wondered what copepods are? I blogged about them sometime back about the sudden population explosion of copepods in the aquarium. So here you get a visual. There you have it, copepods grazing on the algae groing on the aquarium wall.

I believe that these are only medium sized copepods and the adult ones grow up to twice this size. These that you see here are like 2mm in length. Copepods live inside the porous rocks and in the sand bed. I imagine that the whole colony would have established an entire network of tunnels running inside the rocks. Each rock would be like a city with many 'roads' running all through it.

Copepods are small but yet they form an important part of the food web. Maybe not so much when it comes to land creatures, but the food chain can be pretty intriguing when it comes to the life in the sea. Krills are small but yet they are the ones that keep the giant blue whales alive. Without krill, blue whales will have nothing to eat. Likewise for copepods, they help form the foundation of the food chain in the reef environment. Even in an aquarium, a healthy population of copepods can be a very healthy supplement for the fishes' diet. Copepods are filled with fatty acids and other nutrition that is not easily substitutable and in some cases, fishes depend solely on them. Not essential, but it is defintely beneficial to have pods living in your aquarium.

The Greedy Sun Corals!

2006-12-16T00:11:00.000+08:00

Sun corals are really beautiful. I hated them after I first got them cos they all looked so dead and dying. At that time I didn't really know much about them and it was only then that I started reading up more about these corals. The corals were thin and bony when I got them but I would say that they've put on quite a bit of 'weight'. Its been a while now and I guess the water conditions in the tank has been favourable and hence they're growing. I've even spotted new polyps spawning off the older bigger ones. Lovely news! Irony about suncorals is that they do not require sunlight at all! They're non photosynthetic and are often found in caves where's it dark and gloomy. Maybe that's the reason why nature made them this way, to bring some 'sunshine' to the darkness.

For that reason of them prefering a more shady environment, I've placed them under the shadows of rocks. Its true that they do not respond to light. Other corals open up and extend only when the light is on and retract when its dark. For the sunnies, they're triggered by FOOD! Everytime when I'm feeding my home processed mix of grinded shrimp, seaweed and what not and the pieces too small for the fishies to take notice are floating around in the water colum, these sunnies will extend their tentacles fully to pick all these loose particles up. Really beautiful sight. Picking up food particles in the water colum isn't the only way they feed. They literally swallow chunks of food into their mouths if they're available but that will be a post for another time.

The Mysterious Monster

2006-12-16T00:04:00.000+08:00

Take a close look and what do you see? If your eyes are keen enough you will see a spikey tentacle coming out from under the rocks. I have no idea what it is. A worm? a starfish? I just hope its not a worm and its not gonna crawl under the clam on the left and bite its tender ass.

FTS = Full Tank Shot

2006-12-14T12:26:00.001+08:00

There are many acronyms used by the community of aquarists and reefers and FTS is just one of them. What does FTS mean? its a Full Tank Shot and as promised, pictures of the tank after the rescaping. Overall it seems to me that the tank scape is now more engaging with more interesting angles to look at things.

This new scaping is really different from the past ones. The first one was crap, the second one just had a little more space but was generally a boring stacking of rocks to form a wall. This time after much consideration and looking around Kino's aquarium scaping books and with much referencing here and there...

I came up with something else entirely different. I have created sort of a valley in between 2 rock islands. If you are wondering how it looks like form the top, think about it as splitting a rectangle diagonally. Looking straight towards into the 'valley' you will see a green tube. That's my water return outlet. The long tube has many small holes along it all directed into the 'valley' creating an area of high flow current right through it. As the current streams through the valley it deflects off the glass wall at the front left corner of the aquarium and wraps around the left aquarium wall and the water flow is directed into the next filter inlet which leads to another filtration system. So generally these are the high flow regions while the other parts of the aquarium has a slower flow of water. There's a little bit of everything for everyone i guess.

I've also decided that I should pour some sand on the ground to make it all look a little more natural. If you remember there was a blog entry where I suggested that the bright light reflecting off the bare tank bottom was very disturbing and glaring to the fishies so hopefully this sand will help. It looks prettier now and I plan to have more corals, small bits to lay on the sand as well as on the rocks to complement the rockscape.

Rescaping

2006-12-13T00:40:00.000+08:00

I've been staring at the tank for the past week and think that it looks really dull. The rock scape isn't engaging at all. I spent Sunday pouring through all the aquarium books at kino trying to find some tips on rock scaping and after an hour or so, finally got what I wanted. Took another couple of hours searching through the net for inspiration and with some sketches, finally I got down to rescaping it today (technically yesterday). Added sand so it all looks much nicer now. Pictures tomorrow!

I've got a power lamp to illuminate the aquarium but somehow the spectrum seems to be off, so I've been sourcing for a new bulb for the lamp. I've scoured all over Singapore, up and down Sim Lim tower and all the way to the Pasir Ris fish farms but it was all in vain. It was most unexpected when i recieved an email from the Japanese bulb manufactuer whom i've enquired more purchasing details from. They have it! and its somewhere in some industrial estate office so i've gotta go fetch it. Ugh! I hope all the effort and the money will be well worth it.

Its on YouTube!

2006-12-11T09:02:00.001+08:00

Moved beyond still pictures, here's one of the sailfin tang taking a snack.

Ah HA! It worked!

2006-12-09T23:00:00.000+08:00

So the verdict about yesterday's invention... It worked! HAHAHAHA! There the sailfin tang coming in close for a nib. It was pretty interesting to watch how the fishes approached this foreign object in their little 'home'. All of them were apprehensive, swimming everywhere except anywhere near the clip. Then there's the initial attempts to go near it swimming past quickly. Followed by going near it and staying a little longer, and then the tang started checking out the piece of seaweed and after many returns to it, finally a nibble!

So the clip worked! Actual retail price was SGD$6-7? and guess what's the total cost of MY clip? Just $0.05 for the paper clip excluding the costs of other scrap material of course. Total savings? SGD$6.95! Not very much, but that's how you get more outta ya buck in this hobby.

And yes for the sake of those who've just visited this blog, HDB is a form of flatted apartment housing in Singapore, so its the deep blue sea in my apartment in other words. Cheers Reef Rancher!

DIY Feeding Station

2006-12-08T20:29:00.000+08:00

When you have herbi fishes, you'd need to feed them veg otherwise their immune system will weaken. This is a feeding clip. Its meant to hold pieces of seaweed or fresh vegetables in the water preventing them from floating around so your herbi fishies can eat them. Cost? The last time I saw it at the fish shop was SGD$7 and that's crazy! So I decided to make one.
I made this from pieces of scrape aquarium equipment I had lying in my store. A suction place holder, cable tie, paper clip, plastic mesh.
There are of course many ways I could do this. Using a magnet instead of a suctoin place holder will be lovely because i wouldn't need to wet my hands at all putting the feeder into place. However here we have constraints on resources so we'll make do.

Bingo! There you have it! Seaweed feeder with seaweed attached and ready to go. You might be wondering why use the plastic mesh? That's because the area of 'clipping' of the paper clip is very small and hence all the pressure of the clip be on one small area of the seaweed. Changes of the seaweed breaking away when the fish bites is very much higher. The plastic mesh serves to diffuse and spread the pressure so you have a snug clip onto the seaweed.
There you go, DIY seaweed feeder in action holding a piece of seaweed inside the aquarium. How successful is it? It's too early to tell. I've chosen neutral and dark colors so it wouldn't appear to scary to the fishies. So far the fishies have yet to accept it. They all seem a little apprehensive to go close to it. They've all gone into hiding and refused all forms of feeding. Give them a couple of hours, they'd get use to it i suppose?

The Thin White Line

2006-12-05T23:57:00.000+08:00

Actually the line isn't thin. Just spoofing off "the thin red line" Mysterious white patches have suddenly occured. This is wierd. One problem after another. Its really disheartening.

On the brighter side of things, exams are over. Have more time at hand to travel around and add more stuff into the aquarium. Waiting for sponsors to come adopt fishies. Many friends have agreed but I guess the time is not right. Alot of equipment still need a little tweaking.

Poor image quality, I apologise for that. Taken with a primitive digital camera, among the first to be launched when digi cams came into existance. I miss the 20D. Gota wait for a while.

DIY projects on the drawing board. Am contemplating more advanced lighting to be installed.

Party On!

2006-12-03T00:17:00.000+08:00

Came back from school and guess what? There was a sudden outbreak of copepods EVERYWHERE! on the glass (feeding on diatoms i guess) and suspended freely in the water column. Crazy stuff! So now there's many many living organisms in my aquarium. hundreds or maybe even thousands of mini copepods!

Probably their eggs have been incubating for quite a while now and then its finally time hatch.

Got some sun corals today. let's see how they fare.

Taking it off

2006-12-01T21:39:00.000+08:00

Today the cleaner shrimp moulted. It means its growing. When shrimps moult, they shed their shell which has become to small for it and then for a period of time, it will stay in hiding because its new skin is still soft and will take time to harden during which it is very vulnerable to attacks. One of the key elements for healthy moulting of shrimps is the prescences of iodine in the water. Iodine helps their new 'skin' harden.

Thre's quite abit going on. I started a thread on the forum discussing the ill side effects of this chemical media i've used and have subsequently removed. Wonder what other reefers will comment.

The clam looks so succulent I feel like eating it.

Problem Solved.

2006-11-30T09:51:00.000+08:00

MG levels have risen to 1200 and have stayed constant for a night. Calcium levels at 400. Will continue raising calcium to 430-440 so I can push MG to 1300.

The cause of it, as expected was inside the chemical filter. The carbon absorbed everything that i dosed in. everything. It just goes to show that my chemical filter's been working!

Alright problem solved. Once my exams end, will document more technical stuff about this aspect of water chemistry.

Google Me!

2006-11-29T15:17:00.001+08:00

The Deep Blue Sea in my HDB has been indexed by Google!

Magnesium Problems

2006-11-28T20:10:00.000+08:00

Can't seem to raise the magnesium no matter what. I've tried to evaluate all possible causes in a very logical way. Here's my chain of thoughts:

Firstly, MG additive might be fake and useless. I dosed a small portion into one cup of aquarium water and tested it. MG levels rose like nobody's biz. MG additive is working.

Secondly, Something in the tank is absorbing all the MG. As far as I know there are only 3 sources of absorbtive material in the tank. The carbon, the phosphate remover and the nitrate remover. Phosphate is close to zero, nitrate is high. They're not even working that well. How are they gonna absorb my MG?

Thirdly, I don't know what the heck is happening! HELP!

Day 35: Updates

2006-11-28T01:11:00.000+08:00

The tank's been running for 35 days now. To take a step back and sum up all that has happened. I'm not at all pleased with all that's taken place. This is what I expected:

1. Better control on Algae and Diatom Growth
2. Better Coraline growth
3. Better water stability and parameters

I've managed to find out what's the reason for the slow growth and possibly even retardation of coraline. Its because of the low magnesium levels. I bought a test kit today, and i measured 1030. Ideal levels are 1300-1500. As such i've dosed the necessary additive and let's see what happens tomorrow.

Diatom Growth is caused nutrients. Phosphates are close to zero, nitrates howeever are way out of control. went from 12.5 to 25. Nitrate remover should stop this rise but it didn't. My conjecture is that the nitrate remover is too tightly packed in the filter and little water is flowing through it. I'm going to loosen it tomorrow.

Reports:
1. Mr. & Ms. Mo are fine. not in the best condition but hopefully with more water parameter tweaking their health will improve.
2. Sailfin tang is doing well. Its white spots are getting less from day to day and it has also started taking pellet food.
3. Doctor shrimp is no longer a coward, it has ventured to exploring other parts of the tank though still not brave enough to snatch food during feeding time.
4. Hammer corals are fine. Mushrooms have become lusher since i first got them.

Let's just see how it goes.

Rocks are coming ALIVE!

2006-11-26T00:13:00.000+08:00

Water parameters are very important when it comes to marine aquariums. The most basic of which are salinity, pH, dKH and i've explained them in previous posts. After the basics are met comes more complex parameters such as magnesium, calcium, iodine, strontium levels. Calcium is particularly important when it comes to corals and coraline algae growth. Just over the past couple of days i dosed calcium supplements into the water and with a keen eye, the changes are pretty much noticeable. Pinkish/Reddish coraline patches have started appearing on what was bare rocks previously. If I'm able to keep this level of Calcium in the water, I beleive that in a week's time I should have observable coraline algae growth.

Its been a traumatic week for the aquarium. Algae growth was really strong and despite the introduction of chemical media, the growth was still signifcant. That led me to deduce that something's dying inside and leaching ammonia. My deduction turned out to be right. The bleached coral i thought was recovering actually started to die without me knowing. It was only when i fished it up and sniffed that stench did i realise it's health took a turn for the worse. Without that dying coral, conditions have improved. Just 2 days ago, i came back and found the floor flooded and the tank drained off 2inches of water. I was frantic checking for leaks everywhere but couldn't find any. Finally isolated the leak to an overflowing skimmer. I modified the skimmer and somehow my modication clogged up the return flow of water back into the tank and it flooded my room. Mopped up the mess and topped up sea water. When things like these happen where you lose water and top up water, all the effort in dosing of additives for the past couple of days to stablize the water will be gone to waste and started all over again. Finally I'm glad i'm back on track.

Sailfin Tang's displaying wierd symptoms of whitespots. The whitespots goes away in the morning but when evening comes and my lights go on, the white spots will start to return. I'm wondering if the lights are stressing this poor fish. Nonetheless its still as greedy. It has already wiped by tank clean of green algae. Now i'm waiting for another Tang to come scrub the tank of brown diatom 'algae'. Cleaner shrimp's set up a cleaning station and Sailfin Tang's visited it quite a couple of times. Somehow cleaner shrimp has retracted away each time. I wonder why.

Creatures of the Night

2006-11-25T01:09:00.000+08:00

If you ever scuba dived, the sight of coral reef formations and fishes weaving in and out is just mesmerizing; and if you're a curious one peeping in between the nooks and crannies, you'll discover lots more interesting organisms. Its like a busy metropolis, bustling with colorful life.

Staying on till dusk, though in the same place, you'll find that the mood changes dramatically as your vision becomes limited by the diminishing light. It creeps me out and I get the feeling of what was in the day, is no longer at night.

Coming back for a night dive you'll realise that it has all taken on a new atmosphere. One that is mysterious, spooky but yet mystically and magically alluring. Fishes exhibit different behviour, critters come out to scavange, coral polyps extend their tentacles to feed.

The timer of the aquarium switches off at 0045 and I was there to watch it. The moments the lights went, the fishes were tensed with their fins errect. The swimming became much slower as though proceeding with caution as they slowly eased their way into the safety provided by the rocks. I bought 2 sexy shrimps and a skunk cleaner shrimp today. They didn't come out at all the entire day but as soon as the lights went off, they started prowling the tank. I saw a bug, something like a worm squiggling throught the water, and when it hit the surface it secreted some fluid and it did that 3 times.

Very interesting stuff. Perhaps i should install a LED to simulate moonlight so i can observe such life much more easily. Hopefully i'd find some way to capture such night life on video. Its really amazing.

Mysterious Lifeforms

2006-11-24T00:50:00.000+08:00

The MOs ain't the only ones in the aquarium. Just on this little rock alone you can see 5 living organisms. 2 of which are not very visibly seen. There's the mushroom, the tube worm with its radial white tentacles. When it senses danger it will retract back into its 'tube'. Its called a tube worm because as it grows, it secrets some calcarous deposit around itself forming a tube structure and somehow this tube structure also adheres itself to the rock. Its kinda like it buidling a little 'house' for itself and the house is a calcareous tube and hence the name tube worm. Maybe in the next picture you can see it more distinctly. Looking slightly left from the top tip of the mushroom you see this red lil thing. I have no idea what's that but i'm pretty sure its a living thing. Behind that red little thing there's another mushroom, a much smaller one and if you look hard enough, you will see some red hair thing. that's another tube worm.
Aonther shot, this time with Ms. Mo hanging around. In the distant background those wavey tentacles are the hammer coral. Also another uninteded lifeform that came along. There's also a cluster of what i believe to be trumpet corals growing. Hopefully I get to picture them the next time.

Today I got a Sailfin Tang to resolve the algae issue. Its munching so much on algae right now but bad news, its got ich. White spot disease! so hopefully a doctor shrimp will help it out tomorrow. Oh yes and I found copepods today! YAY! Copepods! There's one more mysterious lifeform that caught my eye but this one is really microscopic. I thinik its a glass anemone. Check back for more

Mr. & Ms. Mo

2006-11-22T22:35:00.000+08:00

Alright so this pair of nameless percula clown's finally got a name. I think its quite cliche to name clowns as Nemo but I guess after that motion picture, that name's kinda stuck to anyone trying to name a clown. I tried avoidng that, thinking of a better name and so after referring to them as the MOs, and since the previous owner wasn't too keen to give them a name, I shall call them Mister and Miss Mo! Not all that cliche after all eh?.
Percula clowns are i think bisexual? Or is there a more appropriate scientific term for exhibiting sex changing behaviour? In single sex environments, percula clowns can change their sex in order to procreate.
When I started naming my fish, people asked me how do i tell them apart cos they all look the same! well maybe not that obvious in these pictures but you can tell them apart by the fins. In the top most picture you see Mr. Mo on top with a darker black rim on the top fin and Ms. Mo has a paler fin in comparison.

This is the first time I spent so much time taking pictures of what's in my tank. I must say this SLR does really make a difference comparing to the other pictures I took. Someone commented that me recongizing my fish is pretty obsessive but not so I feel. Unless I can idenify fish in a bunch of anchovies, now that's CRAZY!

So what can be expected in the coming months. Exams are here and its going to be a hectic next 2 weeks. I have two topics I wish to blog about. First is about tackling the nitrate problem. Gonna start on that tomorrow. Also you guys know that this tank setup is relatively new and so I haven't really bought anything. However there's just an amazing amount of unvited, mysterious, some welcomed and some unwelcomed lifeforms flourishing in the deep blue sea in my HDB and i plan to shed more light on them in a series of blogs. Check back!

Safe Heaven

2006-11-22T20:33:00.000+08:00

Just last thursday I had my last management & organization tutorial and tutor mentioned something that in life its very important to find your safe haven. When it comes to management it can be a lonely job up there and its essential to find a source of rejunvenation.

I was just thinking perhaps the Deep Blue Sea in my HDB is that safe haven for me. Its something that makes me happy and takes my worries away. For the past week I've been doing some hard core coding in the computer labs, and I stayed a total of more than 24hrs in the lab just yesterday! But when i come home or when i'm on my way home, i usually find myself thinking how are the fishies? did the timer swtich the lights on? has the coral larvae grown a little more? is the chemical media working to clear up the water. Sometimes i come back and there's algae and i have to scrub the tank a little, other times everything looks good and i just feed my fish. But yeah it does take my mind away for a bit.

So today I did a full water parameter test.
Salinty: 1.022
Temp: 26.5
pH: 8.0
dKh: 10
Nitrite: undetectable
Nitrates: 25mg/L

I added some buffer to raise both the pH and dKh. Optimal levels are 8.3 and 12 respectively. Nitrites are zero! Lovely! Even with the pair of clowns and all the uneaten food rotting away, nitrites and zero which means the bio filters are working! Nitrates stayed at 25mg/L and so its bordering between an ok and a its time to do something kinda level.

There's been signifcant diatom and algae growth and its really irritating! I was thinking of a fish that eats them up or perhaps the UV light to destroy them but as I was analysing further, I realise that diatoms and algaes are not problems, they are symptoms. symptoms that there is a fair amount of nutrient levels in the water. I've introduced a phosphate remover into the system last week and through my observation diatom growth is still strong. So the next source of nutrients would be nitrates.

Updates Updates! Finally!

2006-11-21T14:08:00.000+08:00

Finally pictures! Pardon me for dropping off there after all that updates on the major overhauls that was being carried out. Yes, so got more new rocks, infact i'd say i got a very good deal, rocks that are heavily encrusted with purple coraline algae. Thanks Anne for those really matured live rocks, think you can quite see the sharp contrast between my other rocks and the newer ones. Got a few pieces of corals, mushrooms, sponges, fan worms that came along with those new rocks. Will document them soon.
Frontal view of the tank. there you see my pair of MOs. True percula clowns and they're doing pretty well, feeding with adequate apetite. Something tells me they're not really happy, maybe that's cos the tank's really bare and the sandless glass base must be really glaring especially with those powerful lights. Been so caught up with school, I haven't yet have the time to continue my work on the aquarium. Trying hard to be disciplined and keep to those frequent water parameter testing as this is still the start of the aquarium's life cycle and fluctuations are bad. You might ask why ain't there any sand? The reason is because sand traps dirt and will inturn pollute the water. Having bear glass makes it easier to suck up debris with a thin rubber hose and some siphonic action. I intend to lay the ground with more corals anyway so for now, i'd just let it be. If not i'd just have a thin 0.3cm of sand.

Overall i feel that this is a much better lay out, more room. the rocks are not leaning on the glass, or at least just minimally. they're stacked on one another and self supporting so there's a fair bit of hidding space behind. Ok gotta get back to work.

No pain no gain!

2006-11-17T00:54:00.000+08:00

Its been a series of bad things. the coral and then the algae, and then the broken UV filter. So today I did something drastic. I had a major cleaning operation. Took all the rocks out, gave them a good scrub, did water change and got myself very tired but happy. So here's the series of events.

1. Bought 20L of sea water
2. Turned off all filtration
3. Removed all rocks
4. Cleaned up the filter and protein skimmer
5. Scrub the rocks that needed scrubbing
6. Tank debris had settled by now so siphoned it all up
7. Re-arrange rocks into the half filled aqaurium
8. Top up water
9. Get all system equipment up and running again
10. Mop up the mess!

I usually like to do such big operations when mum is not around, but today the operation took too long and so she came back from work to see all that mess. Surprisingly she didn't say anything, just past me extra rags to help with the mopping up. Dad told me that I'm a very lucky boy cos mum says nothing about my fish. The last time dad kept a fish, ONE fish, he claimed that mummy nagged him for 3 years!

Pictures of the tank? Take it as a lil suspense, I'll get one up tomorrow.

Sad day

2006-11-16T00:38:00.000+08:00

It was a sad day. The coral is bleached beyond words. Must have been badly burnt by all that marine salt. The mucus is just crazy. Took it out for a srub and isolated it. Its still alive but its starting to stink in that small container. There you go, one heavy price to pay for a moment laziness. That's the way it is with marine aquariums, and all the more so that I have a small aquarium and hence the margin for error is much much much less. That's not the only bad thing, unfriendly algae is starting to grow. This is a bad sign and just when i wanted to install the UV radiation filter to kill off all the free swimming algae, the device is broken so ugh! Got more live rocks today. the best i've had so far. Entirely encrusted with coraline. Just inspected the rocks again and found good things and bad things. Good things are there are some corals attached to some rocks. Bad thing is there's a patch of red unfriendly algae which i'd have to scrub off asap. I need my UV!

Oh No!

2006-11-14T19:01:00.000+08:00

Bad things happened today. To think about it so much happened I have no idea how to begin. I introduced a chemical phosphate removal media into the filtation system this morning. In the process of meddling with the hoses, lost a little aquarium water. In the case of natural evaporation, you can't top up the water with salt water because only water evaporates, salt stays behind. If you keep topping up with salt water, then the salinity of the aquarium will be affected. You'd need to use plain water. Tap water has chlorine, and so i went to the supermarket to buy a couple of litres of distilled water. Today's case was a matter of both, I needed to add both salt water to replishnish the water lost through all that messing with the filters as well as to top up distilled water to compensate for the effects of evaporation.

This is what you should do, mix marine salt with distilled water outside the aquarium, stir and dissolve it in a bucket or something to a salinity level slightly below that of the aquarium, pour in it, and everything is good. What you should not do, is to top up the aqaruium with distilled water and dose salt salt into the aquarium directly. Knowing full well what i shouldn't do, I did exactly that and for that laziness, bad things happened. So the salt mix settled and covered the coral. I thought that the water will dissolve it in a matter of minutes, but I was wrong, the concetration of salt on the coral itself stressed the coral out so much that it secreted so much mucus and it started to bleach.

All that happened today caused a drastic change in water parameters and for that, I've observed many negative effects on the tank and whatever's inside. I ought to be shot for this.

In my mind I'm also thinking, is it the salt? or is the distilled water? or is it the phosphate remover? Too many variables all done at one time, its hard to isolate the cause.

Sigh.

It has to be a nemo!

2006-11-14T01:55:00.000+08:00

Cliche as it may sound but the first pair of fishies in the tank had to be nemos! These are not just any 2 nemos but a pair of mated Percula Clowns. Thanks to Andrew a long time friend who passed on this pair to me cos he was about to decomission his tank. I was really reluctant to take them in as I felt that the aquarium was still not ready, but couldn't just let these 2 fish die yeah? Anyway they're happy and well, swimming around exploring their new environment. Received them in the most unlikely of situations, at 1am at night, no food, no nothing, so these poor fishies have been starving and are still starving. Fish shop opens only tomorrow, so they'd have to hang in there before I get them something to munch on.

This aquarium project was started as some sort of a project that would invovle a community of friends and its working out after these couple of weeks. Though Andrew didn't buy me the fishies nor did he adopt them, they were his fishies and so long as these fishies stay alive, everytime Andrew visits he can say "hey that's my fish!" and rightfully so! It's an aquarium that a community of friends will take ownership of someday, hopefully. So cheers! the first pair of fishies in the aquarium!

Sunlight for the aquarium!

2006-11-12T20:47:00.000+08:00

All the time that i've been in this aquarium hobby, its always a practice that we do not expose the tank to direct sunlight but today, i just stumbled upon a blog and this guy had something called Sun Tunnels and they're basically tubes all the way through the ceiling which directs sunlight into the aquarium. An aquarium illuminated by natural sunlight! Way cool! Check out Reef Rancher's on the reefers' blogs links on the right side

Tube Worms

2006-11-12T13:49:00.000+08:00

One of the things I like about getting fresh live rock from the fish shop is cos of the hitchikers that come along with it. Sometimes you get crabs, other times you get mushrooms and of course more nasty stuff like perhaps a mantis shrimp. The rocks I have with me were pretty bare but as I was observing and just gazing into the empty tank, its not entirely lifeless! So far I've spotted 2 tube worms. After the bacteria, the first living organism in my tank was a coral, and the 2nd to be discovered was a white tube worm living under the coral and my latest discovery is a very shy red colored tube worm living on one of the rocks. Need to get a camera powerful enough to capture it. They're really quite minute.

The thing about marine aquariums, you're never quite sure what exactly you've got in that tank! Surprises are not hard to come by if you look hard enough.

Progress update & more about bacteria

2006-11-11T21:59:00.000+08:00

I've been spending quite a fair bit of time discussing everything except the aquarium. Well one of the reasons is that for now there's really not much to show or to talk about. The other reason is that I intended this to be a very informative blog for readers to learn about reef keeping. So here's the aquarium till now. If you compare the this with previous pictures, you'd realise that its less boring now and will those little itsy bits along the ridge, its kinda breaking away the outline of the boring break rocks and making everything look more natural. These is one of the techniques used in rock scaping. Big pieces of rocks are used to form the base structure and then tiny bits such as tonga branches, coral bits etc are used to break away the less sightly appearance of those big bulky rocks. Also I read somewhere that if you do make 'caves' for fishes to swim behind the rock work, your 'cave's' opening should never face the front of the tank directly. infact it should sharply angled towards the side of the tank. So that when fish swim in and out, from the front of the tank, you get to see their full side body, which is much more aesthetic then watching a fish swimming with its face towards you. Was trying hard to implement that into the scaping here but wasn't very successful.

This morning before I headed off to school, I tested the Nitrite levels. Just couple of days back I tested and it indicated a 0.3. Today Nitrite levels is in the good range! I didn't change the water, all i did was just leave it and nitrite levels fell by itself. What does this mean? That the bacteria are doing their job. They've been chowing down and converting nitrites. Its a very good sign! As we've discussed before, what happens next is that there should be a rise in nitrates. This is the most irritating part because nitrates in my opinion are the hardest to get rid off naturally. thats another stage of the nitrogen cycle and will save that explanation for another blog. Guys have a good weekend!

More Water Chemistry!

2006-11-10T21:13:00.000+08:00

In my blog I've always made it a point to explain aquarium maintainence using simple science because I believe that everybody have some basic scientific knowledge and by demonstrating that such simple and basic knowledge can actually be applied in reef keeping, it will make this blog more interesting and easier to relate to.

Maintaining an aquarium reminds me of secondary school chemistry. There was a topic called QA or qualitative analysis where you test for the prescence of certain chemicals with reagents. Alot of colorful chemical reactions.

Today I did a pH test. If we all recall, the pH scale ranges from 1-14. 1 being the most acidic, and 14 being the most basic/alkaline. What I have here is a pH indicator, almost like a universal indicator. Universal indicators give absolute value readings of pH 1,2,3,4 etc. The pH indicator here with me is specially catered for alkaline solutions and it gives a reading to an accuracy of one decimal place. Sea water unlike freshwater is alkaline and its pH ranges from between 8.1-8.3. I usually try to keep the tank's pH at 8.3.

From the pictures you see that the indicator is actually orange, but as i dripped it into the vial with aquarium water, it changes to take on a blue tint. Matching that with the chart, we see that the pH is actually 8.0, not all that perfect. I'd need to raise it up to 8.3 somehow. How am I gonna do that? Well we'll discuss that soon enough.

What else happened? Thanks Roger for giving me some very pretty rocks. I met Roger from the forum, was a quick deal, i texted him, he said come get the rocks and I did. Very friendly chap, spent a while admiring his tank while i was at his office. My rock scape looks alot much more natural now with those small itsy bitsy ornamental pieces. Pictures another time.

More about the Live Rocks + the strange comment

2006-11-10T00:33:00.000+08:00

So continuing from where I left off, how can a rock be alive? Well its not actually alive but more like these rocks are super porous and these pores actually house millions of tiny friendly bacteria in them. Very similar to what i'm hoping to achieve in my bacteria farms housed in the filter canisters. Besides bacteria, these rocks may also have nooks and crannies where organisms such as copepods, crabs, worms, algae, plants live in and on the rocks, hence the name live rock. Live rocks are an essential part in any marine aquarium because the bacteria which they house helps to regulate the water quality. As two of our friends here have pointed out either in earlier comments or on the shoutbox that rocks should go in first, live rocks play a very important role in establishing and stablising the environmental variables in the aquarium. When we buy new live rocks from the shops, the live rocks that they sell may have been out of the water for an extended period of time while being transported from their orign to the shop and hence the organisms inside them might have started to die. When you put these rocks into your tank, these dead and half dead stuff will rot and hence bring about a spike in ammonia levels, just like what the shrimp was intended for in my earlier blog about the nitrogen cycle. But over time, the bacteria colonies will actually start to grow again and start converting ammonia to nitriites and so on. This whole process is known as curing of the live rocks. So what i need to do now is to let the rocks sit in the tank for a week, and measure water quality again.

If you notice the reddish tint on some rocks, those are coraline algae, considered to be a sign that the live rocks are doing well. Over time if all goes well, all the rocks should be encrusted with coraline which can be quite beautiful to look at.

Now not forgetting the strange comment that xersion made. It can't be so co-incidental that you sold me the rocks right!?

Have you heard of a rock that's alive!?

2006-11-09T08:36:00.000+08:00

Thanks eggplant and mr. anonymous for the comments on the coral, well I so happen to chance upon it, I didn't intentionally looked for a coral to put it in, but anway, its doing fine, will blog in specific detail about it sometime soon. Exciting new progress, got 26Kg of LIVE ROCK from Patrick, also another aquarist I met over a forum. Rocks came from an established aquarium and according to Patrick he's had time for a while and when he got it, he performed a fresh water dip to remove all kinds of nasty worms and parasites living on it. I'm not too worried about whatever dead matter there is inside. This is stage one of the live rocks. These are all big rocks and they form the base of the aquarium's rock structure. I'm going to get some tonga rock branches. Alright gotta take grandma marketing. Sorry for the abrupt stop in my blog, but will continue later on.

Chemistry and the Nitrogen Cycle

2006-11-08T21:39:00.000+08:00

Couple of post back I was discussing about the prawn and the nitro cycle and its time i continued the story. I left off in stage one of the nitrogen cycle where bacteria will start chowing away the ammonia. So what happens after? Well the bacteria do not really eat away the ammonia and the term use to describe it is that the bacteria converts ammonia into nitrites or NO2. After more than a week, i did a NO2 test with the aquarium water this morning. A sample of aquarium water is collected in a test vial and subsequently chemical reagents are added to it. The aquarium water will then take on a color indicative of the NO2 levels in it. This color is matched to a chart from which a numerical value can be derived.

From the chart we see that NO2 levels are in the 0.3mg/litre range. In my past experience I usually manage to maintain NO2 levels below the 0.3 mark but this is still in the aquarum's early stages so we shall wait and see. Nitrites when present in concertrations above 1.6mg/litre can be harmful to fishes so its best to keep it as low as possible.

On the other hand, this is not entirely bad news because it means that stage 1 bacteria are successfully converting NH3 NH4 into NO2! The stage 1 bacteria are growing! What happens next? thats stage 2 of the nitrogen cycle and this is where another kind of bacteria will convert the nitrites into something else but that's another topic for another time.

Ta Da! Coral!

2006-11-07T02:13:00.000+08:00

This is a coral. The first piece to go inside the tank. As there where I got it? that's a secret. Who gave it to me and how I got it? that's also a secret. The whole thing is pretty calcareous, stony and hard and if the brown texture is actually xooxenthalae plankton living inside the coral's bony skeleton. Yeps. Update more soon.

Feeling Cool Under The Scorching Sun

2006-11-06T00:03:00.000+08:00

Today is the first day I left my metal halide lamp running. its been running for 7 hours now and thats the approx. photo period that i'd expose my tank to. Although there's nothing in the tank, I kept it on to test and ensure that the chiller is able to still do its job despite the extreme heat radiated by the lamp. Water temperature is now sub 27degC. Lovely. Rocks later today? :) let's see how it goes.

Bubbles Bubbles Bubbles!

2006-11-05T20:22:00.000+08:00

The long awaited protein skimmer is here. If you compare this tank pic with the previous ones, this grey plastic device hanging at the back is a protein skimmer. What the skimmer does is that it produces many many fine micro bubbles. To simplify things these bubbles all have an ionic charge which causes waste materials in the water to stick to the bubble's surface. The more and finer the bubbles, the greater the total available surface area and hence more waste could adhere themselves to the bubbles. The longer the bubbles take to float and reach the surface, the more time there is for waste material in the water to stick to the bubbles. Hence the protein skimmer produces many micro bubbles and churns them in a way such that they would take a longer time to float to the surface as compared to simply floating straight up. After waste or in particular protein wastes are stuck to the bubbles, the bubbles float upwards and froth into a foam which then overflows into a collection cup. all i need to do is to empty that cup every other day. So in short, thats what a protein skimmer does is that it skims and remove protein waste from the water. This is quite like how you see the white water form when waves wash up to shore and sometimes you get some disgusting slimy foam on the beach.

Today, I spent another bomb but this should be the final piece of equipment. The tank is fully functional now. Lights, filtration, chiller, skimmer, can't ask for more. Thanks to this very interesting aquarist Patrick who sold me his skimmer at a low price.

One thing about the bubbles, bubbles are escaping into the aquarium! Nothing wrong with it, but aquarists generally regard this as unsightly. Will need to modify the skimmer a little bit.

Milestones

2006-11-05T01:34:00.000+08:00

I've set up a column on the right to note down all the major events with the aquarium. I don't consider buying equipments a major event but more like events that would affect the aquarium. Say for example I need to note down when I started the nitrogen cycle so I can guage how long before I can add fishes. I need to note down when I introduced activated carbon into the filter so I'd know when should I replace it. Things like when I add my first piece of live rock, fish etc. Basically they're important reference times.

Today I tidied up the wiring under the table I've taken apart the lighting so I can re-arrange it and have it more securely installed. Tomorrow I'm going to collect a second hand protein skimmer from a fellow aquarist. The skimmer will be installed and will start bubbling asap and hopefully on monday I can put my first piece of rock into the aquarium.

Its so Cool, I'm Shiverrrrrrrrrrrring!

2006-11-03T23:05:00.000+08:00

Think I'm getting old, together with all that dim lighting, the handshaking is quite obvious. The pictures didn't turn out as sharp as i wanted them to be but the shaking all starting to fit in when I was just about to write this entry. I've been in this hobby for years now and I've always wanted a chiller. Basically its a device that lowers the aquarium water's temperature. Its natural that the aquarium water's temperature will settle to that of the room's ambient temperature and with the effects of strong lighting, it might even be higher then that of the room. Room temperature in sunny singapore is roughly between 28-30degC but if you've gone scuba diving, you'd realise that even in shallow tropical waters, water temp is around 26-28 or lower. All this while i've not gotten a chiller because it was expensive. a good chiller could easily set you back 1000 bucks and the bigger the tank, of course the bigger and more expensive chiller you'd need. So to save that money I've experimented with many ways to lower water temperature, by using fans to increase the rate of evaporation, by piping tank water through a styrofoam ice filled box. All these worked, but its not a solution in the long run. Through it all I've observed one thing that fish/plants live better in cooler surroundings. Its just like how potted table plants grow better in an air con office then in your polluted sunny HDB balcony facing the road.

I'm glad a friend from the reef club let me have his second chiller for cheap. Saved me a fair sum and i'm quite confident that the new inhabitants of the tank will appreciate it.

Prawn's Gone!

2006-11-01T23:27:00.000+08:00

Waiting for the tank to cycle is the most 'uggggggggggh' part of setting up an aquarium. So now the shrimp's almost rotted completely and its broken down into bits and much of it has been chowed down the filter. As i said the water is supposed to stink and milk up, but the smell's gone and the water's all clear! Not kinda what i expected, so at this stage it leaves me wondering did the rotting prawn do anything at all.

Specific Gravity

2006-10-31T12:18:00.000+08:00

This is a hydrometer and its a hydrometer with a really suggestive name - Deep Six. What's it used for? It used to measure the specific gravity or salinity of the aquarium's water.

Specific gravity of a liquid is a unitless measurement that indicates the density of that particular liquid with reference to another (usually pure water) The density of water is taken to be 0.001kg/1cm^3 that's what we learnt in secondary school that 1 litre of water has a mass of 1kg. Specific gravity of the aquarium's water is calculated by (density of the aquarium's water) / (density of pure water).

In this instance, a hydrometer saves us the trouble of needing to measure exactly 1 litre of aquarium water and then weighing its mass and calculating its density before finally deriving its specific gravity. The hydrometer invovles a free suspended 'pointer/indicator' which when submerged in water will start to float. Based on the principle of displacement, the denser the water the higher the 'pointer' would float. In the case of the aquarium, the more amount of dissolved salt there is in the water, the greater the reading. The less amount of dissolved salt, the lower the reading. From the pictures you can see that when the hydrometer is out of the water, the pointer is just resting down. When water pours into the hydrometer, the 'pointer rises' and when the entire device is finally submerged, the 'pointer' will float and come to a rest point which indicates the specific gravity reading. The specific gravity of sea water ranges from 1.020 to 1.023. So if the reading is too low, I'd need to dose more marine salt. If its too high, I'd need to dilute the aquarium's water with more water. Also in a closed environment such as that of the tank, as water evaporates, salt remains in the aquarium and so the specific gravity will rise. An aquarist has to be aware of that and top up the tanks water from time to time.

Work Work Work!

2006-10-31T01:10:00.000+08:00

What has school work to do with an aquarium? Not much actually but i've just been too pre-occupied with school work. Well actually becasuse of work, many people find that they do not have enough time to maintian their aquariums and then they give it up. So a lesson to be learnt is that consider the amount of time that you have to spare.

In my case, the tank is cycling, so being pre-occupied with school work is actually a good thing, cos it distracts me from my impatience in getting rocks and fish into the aquarium.

A very interesting piece of news, next week I'm going diving with the school's marine biology department. Apparently they have a small 'coral conservation/farming' site off Singapore's shores. SWEET!

Fish Hunt

2006-10-30T00:33:00.000+08:00

The tank is up, one last component - protein skimmer to complete the whole set up. It's come the time where I've gotta figure out what kinda organisms do I want in my tank. What kinda aquarium should it be?

1. A fish only tank or what aquarists term as a FOWLR (Fish Only with Live Rock) setup. Its just rocks and lotsa fish. Very colorful, very lively.

2. From a fish only tank, I could have a happy fish tank, keep lotsa cute little fishes, colorful and cheery.

3. Or i could have a predatory fish tank. So I keep more agressive fish like a lion fish, bigger angels, triggers.

4. Reef tank with corals and all. I didn't really favour this initially because they require alot more care. But it seems that the equipment that i have in place, especially the chiller has make conditions possible to sustain a reef. Its very tempting!

I gotta note tho, that some of my favourite fishes in this hobby are what you call non reef safe, means they chew up corals, nibble here and there. Tough decision...

The Nitrogen Cycle & The Shrimp

2006-10-28T22:47:00.000+08:00

You must be wondering what the hell is that? Its a shrimp. A piece of shrimp rather. The filter and the chiller are both up and running, marine salt has been added and now there's salt water running through the system. Till now its just a tank with 'no' life in it and here's where the nitrogen cycle begins. The shrimp was dropped in to introduce ammonia into the aquarium. The shrimp will rot and from the past couple of pics, the tank water is rather clear and subsequent pictures that I post will show cloudy tank water. I dropped the shrimp in at 10am today and after going to sch and back, there's a little stench if you sniff the surface of the water. Good sign, rotting has begun and the shrimp has began to decolor. The shrimp will rot and leech ammonia NH3/NH4 into the water, and this where naturally occuring bacteria will feed on that ammonia and multiply forming bacteria colonies. Ammonia levels will increase as the shrimp rots and so will the bacteria colonies because they have more to feed on. It will come a point in time that the rate of rotting is exceeded by the number of bacteria colonies and ammonia levels will start to drop. That is part 1 of the nitrogen cycle.

The filters that i've installed are what we call biological filters. It is not designed to remove physical waste from the aquarium but they are more like a bacteria farm to house bacteria colonies that will help break down waste in the aquarium. So imagine that waste from fish are broken down into harmless natural occuring substances. It becomes an all natural aquarium. Fish eat food and shit and feed the bacteria and in turn cleans up the water. Perfect relationship. So here you see a pick of these 'cocopops'. They're actually special media that's super porous and so provdes alot of surface area for bacteria to populate. The bacteria farm behind the aquarium.

Water + Marine Salt = Sea Water!

2006-10-27T11:10:00.000+08:00

Since the last picture of the empty tank, there's been a lot of hustle and bustle going on. That ridiculous amount of money spent, together with all the late night fiddling and fixing. Setting up an aquarium is always an exciting task. With each aquarium you build, you leverage on past experience and you try to improve on the new aquarium. I've gotta prioritize between school work and this little project. I refuse to stay home this couple of days. Somehow's there's this strange phenomena that happens. Even though its an empty tank, I can't help but just gaze into it, day dream and idle precious time away. You can imagine what it'd be like when the fishies get here. So these afternoons and evenings I try to hold myself in school to finish as much as work as possible because when I come home, I'd be tweaking about the aquarium, checking for leaks, making sure all is well. Very very distracting!

Now more about the technicalities. From my earlier sketches, you'd see how i intended to suspend my lamp and now i've put it in action. All thanks to a very helpful uncle who got me the chains to suspend the lamp, I think it's pretty neat.

I initially filled the tank with freshwater and got the filter running. Its always important to do that first to check the tank for leaks. Its always easier to clean up a fresh water leak then a salt water leak. Now that everything seems fine, I've dosed couple of kilos of a marine salt mix in to convert the fresh water into 'sea water' NOTE! you DO NOT just put any salt into the tank. You put marine salt. Salt that has been specially treated or rather preserved to keep its 'sea-water properities'. Alternatively aquariusts can buy real sea water from aquariums but that's only feasible for small tanks. How would you expect me to carry 100L of sea water up to my deep blue sea in my 5th story HDB? If you observe the bottom of the tank, there's some white residue. Just like how you'd only get 99.999% Gold, you can never get 100% seat salt that dissolves 100%. Its inevitable to have some impurities, maybe specs of sand, dust etc.

2 posts ago I talked about water circulation. The water is running throught the filter, shouldn't the residue be all floating around? Why does it seem like they tend to settle down only on some parts of the tank? Its exactly what i've talked about previously. It is very important to be able to have a filtration system that removes all physical waste from an aquarium effectively.

Going Mad!

2006-10-26T00:48:00.000+08:00

If you take a look on the right, i'm about to go mad. Its not cos i'm mad about fish thats why i spent so much. Its more like I spent so much that's why i'm going mad. Goodness me!

You know i used to spend bit at a time and never realised the full cost. But today, I had the car and i told myself since the car is with me, i'll just go get everything i need. I guess couple of hundred spent at one go is the same as a couple of hundred spent spread over a period of time. On the bright side, I've got everything in half a day. I won't have to waste any more time making trips to the shops.

Will talk about the equipment piece at a time in subsequent blogs. Just a update on what's happening, bio filter has been fully filled with media and set to run. Salt has been added, and i'll have sea water tomorrow. Lighting structure is almost complete.

Water Circulation

2006-10-24T10:41:00.000+08:00

In any aquarium, water circulation is a very important factor. The pumps driving the filtration system must be powerful enough to circulate the water through the entire aquarium, drawing water from the main tank into the filter and then pumping it out again.

If you observe a shoreline, as the wave retreats, it takes all the water back into the sea, and with the next waves that rolls in, water comes back to the shore. The turnover rate of the water is instanateous. There is no stagnant water. If you take a reference point as a piece of rock, it is flushed by water action constantly. This is what we hope to achieve in a marine aquarium, to have a high water circulation rate.

In the ocean because of the large volume of water, the a water molecule might never ever return to the same point it was at, or perhaps only after a very long time. This is not the case in aquariums, especially in small aquariums termed as nano tanks. Although water in an aquarium is re-cycled just like in nature's water cycle, the aquarium's water cycle is limited to the volume of water in it. Water circulation is very important, it prevents waste from accumulating in one spot, transporting it to deeper water to dilute its harmfulness and when the waves come in again, they bring 'fresh' water loaded with deep sea nutrients to feed corals and what not.

All pumps come with a flowrate say 1050L/H or 350L/H and in my case those are the flow rates of my filter canisters making a total of 1400L/H and i have a aquarium volume of approximately 100L. Intuitively the water in my tank is cycled 14 times an hour.

Besides the rate of water circulation, the other factor is the way water flows in the entire system. Because its not like in the ocean, water input and output are usually done through pipes so water movement may only be isolated to certain parts of the aquarium depending on how the filter's input and output are positioned. Parts with stagnant water are called dead spots at which waste will accumulate and not be removed by the filter. It is also possible to generate a 'cyclone' effect causing a vortex to draw all waste to the centre. It'd be wise to centre the filter's input at that center but if not, the water flow will draw all waste away form the filter and the filter will not be effective. It is very important to arrange and position filter inlets and outlets to produce maximum water movement eliminating dead spots as well as to make sure that waste are not counter actively hindered from being taken in by the filter.

Time Schedule for the week

2006-10-24T02:38:00.000+08:00

So today after spending an evening working in school, headed off to my favourite aquarium shop to buy the hoses to hook up the filters with the tank. Came home and got the bigger of the canisters set up and working. Canister filters are all about syphonic action and pressure differences. You really need to understand these physics concepts to work with them easily.

Time line for the next couple of days.
1. Tomorrow set all hoses in place and get both filter canisters working.
2. Wednesday collect my chiller and buy aquarium supplies. Get chiller running and add carbon to the system.
3. Thursday put salt and bio filter media into the system.
4. Friday introduce ammonia to kick start nitrogen cycle.

What Lies Beneath...

2006-10-24T02:29:00.000+08:00

From the earlier sketches, there was one pathetic shelf that could only house perhaps both of this filter units, but I need more space because I wanna install a chiller to cool the water for the fish. So with a little fiddling around i manage to rip that shelf off, hence you see the small dot on the left on one of the table's shafts. Thats the screw hole. The middle beam across was obstructing the floor space so that I couldn't put anything big under the table. But again with a little creativity, two wooden planks solved the problem. They look really ugly but they'll make do for now. I'm sourcing for a carpenter who could give me some nice white wood planks to do with the entire look. See the wood jutting out at the bottom left corner? I've gotta shave that off. Daddy's bought a saw for me! Just for that... I'm gonna hack that part off soon as mummy starts complaining that either her feet or her mop gets caught in it.

The twin towers, there you have it. The two main engines driving the entire aquarium's water circulation. The taller canister at the back will serve as a biological filter while the smaller one in front will be both mechanical, and chemical and it will also act as a pump to push water through the chiller coming to fill up that empty space. Going to get a second hand chiller. Already reserved it and its coming soon!

The Tank is UP!

2006-10-24T02:17:00.000+08:00

Ah ha! A picture of the tank finally. Really beautiful tank that I inherited sometime back. To think about it this tank's been with me for couple of years already. Before this it was a freshwater tank with lotsa plants, some kinda like a underwater tropical jungle. Its a totally different game in all between fresh water aquariums and marine aquariums. With a fresh water, there's much less to bother about. Water could easily be taken from the tap and things were lot more convenient. Besides the maintainence requirements, the feel of it is entirely different. When you look into a freshwater planted tank, you somehow feel a sense of peace, tranquility, serenity, its kinda like a lil underwater refuge and esp when you keep a school of small fish and watch them swim slowly and gracefully among the leaves of the plants, you get a calm relaxing feel. Very therapeutic. Marine aquariums are entirely different. You feel a sense of excitement, life and mystery. Its just amazing how diverse and colorful the life forms can be. Gazing into a marine aquarium makes me feel happy and excited. Also depending on the way the tank is set up, the arrangements of rocks can be made to create an environment some sorta like an underwater paradise. Like you see in Finding Nemo. I also feel that the behaviour of marine organisms are much more interesting to observe. There are fishes that bury themselves in the sand, symbiotic relatoinships between anemones and anemone fishes etc.

There you go, another picture of the tank. Before i left for California I cleared out this tank and it was filled with junk. It took me quite a while to shift everything out. just couple of weeks back I emptied the tank and took it out for a wash. Everything looks good, silicon joinings are in tact and in good conditoin.

One aquarium technqiue here, you realise that there's a piece of styrofoam under the tank. NEVER EVER place a tank directly on to the supporting platform or table. Reason being should there be any irregularities in the platform's surface, the weight from all the water pressing down on the tank's base is conventrated on to any 'protruding' bump and as you know pressure = weight / surface area. A small bump results in concentrated pressure at a particular point on the tank's bottom and will cause it to crack. The styrofoam solves this problem as its able to 'mould' to the irregularities and compensate for that. Just a tip that everyone in this field knows.

No Easy Task

2006-10-22T01:53:00.000+08:00

Its been a while since i posted. I'd make it a point to post every other day from now on. So updates on whats happened:

1. I've redesigned the entire filtration system
2. Bought a canister filter
3. In the process of negotiating for a chiller
4. Washed out the tank, got a styrofoam to support it as well.

I've been so busy lately with all the projects in school coming along. An aquarium is always a finanacial drain and i guess people seldom share about that emotional strain. Yes you plan for a good aquarium, but then as you buy one component at a time, you realise the expenses climbing bit by bit. This is one of the most disgusting part of the hobby. Thinking about the finanaces.

More Equipment

2006-10-16T02:01:00.000+08:00

This aquarium project was meant to invovle as many people as possible. They could be friends, random fellow aquarists, people on the net who stumbled on this blog. Anybody! The whole idea is to create awareness about this hobby in my own little circle.

This week Kelvin did me a big favour! He collected a pump for me. Collected it, brought it all the way home, kept it for a week and then brought to me. Thanks dude, saved me heckalot of trouble. Seng thanks again for that little discount!

Scrap the Overflow Box

2006-10-14T12:43:00.000+08:00

So i said that i might be doing some re-design of tank after accquring some of the components only to realise that it all doesn't fit together really well. This is the overflow box I bought. There are 3 ways in which water can be drawn from the main tank into the sump tank. First is through surface skimming where water overflows into a comparment that pipes/drops straight to the sump. Overflows are useful to remove floating waste, bubbles, and oil from the water surface. However they usually require a hole to be drilled in the main tank that will lead down to the sump tank. Second, you draw water from any point in the water colum. This is very useful to remove floating pieces of waste etc. Third is through underneath the substrate. A plastic structure is placed right at the bottom of the tank and on substrate(sand) is poured over it forming a pocket of water beneathe the substrate. Water is drawn from that pocket and water from the main tank seeps downwards through the substrate to fill that pocket again. People do this because they want a constant flow of water through the sand and bacteria living in the sand can have a biological filtration effect on the water. However this method traps all waste inside the tank and doesn't remove it and over time, the accumulation of waste can cause a spike in ammonia levels and that can be very ugly.

So this device you see on the left skims water from the surface as well as takes water from within the water colum. All this is done without the hassel of drilling a hole in the tank which in turn can compromise the structural soundness of the tank. This device works on the principle siphonic action but its way too much to explain. Maybe sometime in my future postings.

So what's wrong with this device? its way too big for my tank and I can't refund it for cash, but the shop has so generously offered me a chance to exchange for products of equal worth. Sweet! So i guess i'm gonna take the opportunity to stock myself with lotsa chemical test kits.

I Spy With My Little Eye

2006-10-14T02:51:00.000+08:00

When you start a aquarium, there's always a sense of impatience and an urge to get things up and running asap. This is one of the emotions that an aquarist would need to overcome. Rushing into setting up and running an aquarium can have a very detrimental effect. Take it easy, think ahead, plan carefully.

The final plan is to hook up the aquarium to the internet via an internet web cam. I went shopping for one today. The Linksys cam looked pretty sturdy and cost $200. The D-Link cost $299 and what's cool about the D-link is that it'd support GPRS and 3G access and up to a total number of 16 simultaneous connections! $299! Gotta massage my heart when i spend that sum.

Crazy Times

2006-10-12T03:02:00.000+08:00

Schoolwork is piling up. Really big time! its crazy. 3 am and i've just spent my whole evening pouring through some PHP code, struggling hard to figure out what's happening. Fish tank wise, I've a few components on hand and it all doesn't seem to be piecing together all too well. I might just scrape the idea of the sump for several reasons namely complication of building it, the space constraints, can't have a chiller, the danger of flooding my room. Anyhow, here's the second another sketch explainng what i had in mind for the sump tank.

4 main tank compartments. Water flows in through a wet/dry filter and then flows through some chemical media to the protein skimmer and water is pumped back into the main tank. Alternatively water may flow from the wet/dry filter into the refugium which is a place with low water movement providing a favourable growth environment for healthy bacteria which will in turn regulate the water quality.

This is a really exciting set up but unfortuantely because of constraints, it may not be the best choice. Until an alternative is more certain, I'll keep you guys posted.

Controversies

2006-10-10T00:39:00.000+08:00

This blog's invited quite abit of fiery comments. Perhaps this is a good time to explain my intentions. This is an aquarium that friends can adopt the organisms living in it. Not necessarily in money terms but it could just be a commitment to drop by the blog every now and then to check out on the organism you adopted.

Friends who wish to buy a fish for the aquarium are most welcomed to do so. However the condition is such that we go shopping for the fish together. You pick the fish and should i think that the fish is not suited for the aquarium, I have the final right to reject it. 3 months stay alive garantee. That I feel is a acceptable time period that if the fish dies after that, the problem doesn't lie with my tank. Perhaps its of old age or something. If the fish dies within the 1st 3 months, I will refund the cost of the fish in full. This raises a question will i start killing fishes or selling them after the 3 months claiming they have died. I love fishes and thats the reason why i started this blog. So i assure you that'd never happen.

At the end of the day, I hope to be able to share the joy of keeping fishies and also share the good practices of responsible reefing (keeping of marine fishies). Bring the ocean to the world so that more people can see its beauty.

Design Stage: Filtration Mechanism

2006-10-08T17:49:00.000+08:00

Let us make a distinction between filtration mechanism and a filtration system. The mechanism deals with how you get water out of the tank into the filtration system and then back into the tank. It is a very thin line between the two. For this aquarium, the mechanism makes use of a sump tank housed beneath the main tank. A sump tank is basically a water containter that extends the overall volume of water in the aquarium and it usually also houses the filtration system. Water is draw from the aquarium via the natural force of gravity down into the sump and then pumped back into the aquarium so that it forms a water cycle. In the attached picture you can see how one hose draws water from the main tank into the sump under the table, and how the return pump pumps water via another hose back into the main tank.

Many people use glass sump tanks but for my case, I've chosen to use a plastic tub which cost $8.50. After all a sump tank is usually hidden out of sight so I felt that there is no need for an elaborate and signifcantly more expensive sump tank made of glass. A plstic tub will work just as well. However when it comes to newly purchased plastics, you have to be careful of the prescence of oil, odour which may be harmful to fishes. It is advisable to soak the tub for a couple of days.

Design Stage: Let There Be Light!

2006-10-07T23:44:00.000+08:00

Alot of itsy bitsy progress has been going on and I guess its finally time to start documenting the process. Someone remarked that i made setting up an aquarium sound like a breeze well i guess that's because all you've heard me talk about is how nice it is watching my fishies and feeding them.

I will reveal all the technical, finanacial and whatever considerations i've taken into account when setting up an aquarium. Hopefully that through this blog, readers will appreciate that being an aquarist or a reefer is not so simple as just to bring some fishies from the ocean and dump it in a tank. There is alot of careful thought invovled. It is the aquarist's responsibility to give his fishies the best that he can afford both in time as well as in equipment. The aquarist must be committed to learning about the ocean's natural environment and how best to simulate its aspects into the aquarium.

So above you see the sketch of my proposed aquarium. Finally you guys have an idea on how's its like. For now the tank is still filled with junk so pictures are inappropriate. My first component as mentioned yesterday was the MH light and you can see how I intend to suspend it. It will be hung from a wooden beam drilled and secured to the top of my wardrobe. On top of that, the heavy e-ballast for the lamp will be used as a counter weight to further stablise the bar.

This aquarium is a project meant to involve a community of friends. So i would like to say a big thank you to the first few people to be invovled. To Seng for letting me have your lamp cheap, Eugene for driving me to Pasir Ris to collect it and to Deborah for putting up with my nonsense along that trip and also for contributing 20cts to the cost of the lamp :)

2006-10-07T01:56:00.000+08:00

Thanks Seng for the Metal Halide lights. So there my first piece of equipment has been accquired. Bright bright lights for the fishies! The delivery of the overflow box will come on Monday. Will probably buy my plastic sump and whatever pipes on Sunday.

Pictures will come soon, you can also look forward to sketches on how the aquarium is going to designed, how certain components work.

2006-10-06T18:57:00.000+08:00

Been a really busy week but things are rolling along. For all those of you who have bothered lending me a ear, listneing to my crazy idea on this fishtank, thanks! Though I don't have everyone convinced, I've set my heart on it.

Going to collect a lamp for the tank's illumination from a fellow aquarist later in the evening. I've placed my order for my first piece of equipment, an overflow unit. Its so pricey that i'd need to massage my heart but its a pretty rare device and not many people have that out for second hand sale.

Haze is just crazy, throat's feeling scratchy, it stinks and we all don't feel comfortable. Perhaps you could see this as quite a similar situation for the fishies if no effort is put into ensuring good water quality. The fishies are going to suffer.

2006-10-04T21:09:00.000+08:00

Disappointment... just when I thought I had gotten my hands on a chiller so that my fish can live more comfortably in an 'air con' environment, can't seem to find a chiller small enough that would fit under my table.

2006-10-03T23:28:00.000+08:00

This blog has not really started yet. So long as there's no title, these are just random ramblings about the headaches, complications as well as the excitement leading up to the official opening of the aquarium. After much thought and consideration I've finally decided on the design. The first setback to happen. Thought i'd my hands on a very reasonably priced 2nd hand protein skimmer but someone beat me to it. Still looking at a few other 2nd hand components from other aquarists.

The contents of the blog is gonna document the entire process of setting up a tank with explanations on the equipment, the considerations etc. I'd cover a small detail each day in small readable chunks. I'm looking forward to it.

2006-09-29T23:51:00.000+08:00

So here goes.. the deep blue Sea in my HDB! Tank is in the design stage, So is the blog. Tank components are slowly coming in, and expenses are rocketing. painful.