I noticed during this debacle that my diamond goby is nowhere to be found …. coincidence? I think not.  I’m guessing the death caused the spike and the cyano went on a rampage.  At any rate, things are back in check now and I’m in the process of finding another goby.  I’ve burned through 2 or 3 of the diamond backs.  They last a year and change and then die off.  Guess they just can’t handle the small tank sans refugium (which I’m planning to add as time and $$ allow in the near future).  For the next sand sifter goby, I’m thinking about going with a 2 spot – thrive in smaller tanks and still churn up the sand pretty good.  Check out the Two Spot Goby when you get a chance and let me know what you think, as I’ll most likely have to have on shipped.

I’m also upgrading to a dual DJ4 power center that I’m setting up inside my stand.  The current DJ8 has been great, but it’s just laying behind my stand kicking off ambient light to the room.  Time to upgrade and get things in house.  If you or someone  you know has a need for a used DJ8, I’m willing to trade for colorful frags in the West Los Angeles area.

As you may have heard, I just picked up my new iPhone 4.0.  This thing is pretty much amazing, and I can’t wait to start taking more pics and vids to get get posted on the site. I’ve been doing some cleaning in the past couple weeks, including adding some extra sponges for some mechanical filtration and taking the old school razor blade to the glass (which I do every couple months regardless).  I’m going to try to post an update weekly for a bit and see how it goes … Hoping to have some more active growth shots as well as some more video as I start to add more pieces to the collection.  This weekend I’m hoping to grab a little hammer coral from a guy down in Redondo Beach, look for pics next episode!

All the rock out, it took about 20 minutes (and a couple tea pots of boiling water) to find his burrow, and pull his boiled parts free.  Once loose, it took another coule hours to clean up, place some new sand (which I had been meaning to do for quite awhile) and get onto the task of re-structuring my rock work.

In the end, I’m not sure if I love the configuration … but so it goes, one can never be fully content or else what would we have to work on next weekend!?

Cracked plastic on the housing

here is a link to the original part (if you care to check it out):

I figured it was finally time to start fighting fire with fire, so I went to the LFS and picked up a diamond goby. I’d had a couple of these before (at different times) but they had a tenancy to not do so well in my tank. Not sure if it was the size of the tank, if they weren’t getting enough food or what. I looked into a couple of other options to get more sand turnover (engineer gobies, dragon goby, more nasarius snails) but in the end this little guy was cost effective and a fun addition to the tank.

After a 45 minute drip acclimation, I turned him loose. Shortly there after, the sand storm began. I’m guessing I just had an OBSCENE amount of junk in my sand, but the more he sifted the worse the storm got. I ended up doing 10% water changes every other day for a week – and finally the storm started to settle.

No that he’s settled in, and the cloud has subsided, things are looking MUCH better. My sand is looking clean and healthy again and he continues to pound out some serious turnover!

In other news, SJ’s mom sponsored us a new fish!! We have a new Royal Gramma – that pretty much does nothing but hide in the rocks – these pics might be all you ever see of the little guy!  I’ve also got my new Saphire skimmer coming in the mail – I’ll have pics up of the install as soon as it gets here (I’m hoping for tomorrow!)

Petey the Royal Gramma! View at Picasa Petey the Royal Gramma!

Clinton + Royal Gramma View at Picasa Clinton + Royal Gramma

Frags post cleaning View at Picasa Frags post cleaning

I ran a solid 20% water change last night after a 48 hour exposure to a round of red cyano killer.  I’m pretty sure at this point that it didn’t treat the fish well … I lost em both.

The little male I pickedup 6 weeks ago looks fine … not sure why I can’t keep one of these little suckers longer than 3 months?! Perameters look good, doing weekly water changes, etc … 

In other news my new Sapphire skimmer is finally shipping!  Just talked to Nick over at Nanotuners and they should be out sometime this week, can’t wait!

C

I got em home, did a 30 minute float, then a 30 minute drip and then sent them on their way. Everything seemed to be going good, but when I got up the next morning the larger of the pair was belly up pressed against the overflow

Not sure what happened, but shortly after I got the typical nitrate spike and immediately countered with a round of Algone pouches. The smaller of the two was pretty timid for a week or so, but now he is feeling much better and even starting to snuggle up to the RBTA a little bit. Here are some pics of the process

30 minute float

Tank introductions