Show us yer tank! (DO NOT QUOTE PHOTOS)

here's a little video of the cleaner shrimp in the small marine tank now that I have everyone in it.



i just changed the ROM on my phone and didn't realise that by default it wasn't recording in HD, so the quality isn't great, but you get the idea.

the heavy breathing is due to me having just tried to wrestle some 25L drums of water almmost above my head to pour them into my freshwater tank for a water change.

i've named the shrimp Ozzie (as in aussie) as he spends almost as much time upside down as he does the right way up. :pac:

i also only just found out (by RTFM'ing) that i can turn down the flow rate on my external filter to better suit the tank and that i need to position it lower to get rid of the bubbles (which are bad for the ponies), so that'll keep me busy this evening.

i have a couple spare if interested....

fungun wrote: »

i have a couple spare if interested....

Thanks very much, I'll have a look at the finances over the weekend and see what kind of mood the other half is in before coming back to you!

Great tanks pete.

I realise the tank isnt the best setup but kind of did what I could with the money I had. I'll try to get clearer picture at another stage.

well, the poor seahorses both died within a couple of weeks.

everything else in the marine tank is thriving so i've no idea what happened to them, unless there is still something in there that i can't see (even after clearing out the two aiptasia anemone's that i found) that might have stung them.

in slightly happier news, i seem to be finding new things popping up in the tank almost daily at the moment.

here's some of what i've had appear in the marine tank that i didn't (knowingly) put there.

here's a red mushroomy thing that seems to be doing quite well.



some kind of centipede type thing that turned up the other day.



and what i assume is a sea cucumber, or possibly a radioactive cornish pasty. :pac:



here he is on the front glass, giving it stacks but not really getting anywhere!

you'll have to excuse the audio, i had to change it due to my wife's habit of constantly talking whenever i'm trying to make a video of something.


can anyone else see this vid? it's not displaying for me at all.
here's the link just in case: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_eyXBmTiDWs

here's a black slug of some kind.



and a green/yellow slug/snail thing, that i seem to have two of.



and a pretty amazing video of my starfish asexually reproducing a clone of itself!



yes, it was news to me too!

incidentally, starfish are excellent at keeping the sand clean in the bottom of the tank as they are great burrowers.

it's pretty cool when they burrow into the sand, so i'm going to get a time lapse of him/her/it doing that and post that up the next time i catch him doing it.

Nice to see another white cloud keeper

Will that gravel be a bit harsh on the Sterbai?

kylith wrote: »

I've gotten differing reports online, with some people who claim to be cory specialists saying that barbel degredation has much more to do with water quality than substrate.

As you can see in the swap shop I'm looking to swap the gravel for some sand. In the mean time they're under close observation.

You can pick up some aragonite sand in your building providers fairly cheap. Just give it a good wash.

kylith wrote: »

Might be a silly question, but how would you go about washing sand? Obviously I can't put it in a colander and rinse it because it'd just pour through the holes.

I dont' think I'd go for the aragonite sand, from a quick google it seems like it'd push up my ph, which isn't something I'd need.

I just half fill a 10 litre bucket with the sand and rinse it throughly.

@fred funk, i think the rock layout looks very good and natural.

that's actually how i clean my sand in my marine tank from time to time, although i just drain out a percentage of the old water using a gravity vacuum pump and then use fresh marine water in a large container that i put above the level of the tank water and run the vacuum pump in reverse so the end of the pump that would normally be in a bucket is in the tank.

the water coming out of the hose agitates the sand directly under it and separates the grains and mixes it all up, releasing any detritus into the water.

then it's just a case of doing that in small batches and cranking up the filter to full power and letting it clear the water before continuing one the water is cleared again.

also, having a starfish or two helps as they bury themselves in the sand and eat all the crap that is left there, mixing it up in the process.

This is our 180L community tank. Currently has 10 Zebra Danios, 4 Swordtail fish, 2 Balloon Mollies, 4 Panda Corys and 1 Orange Spotted Pleco. The mollies and the Pleco were a bit camera shy!