kindasleepy

No, I'd want occupants. though I know that in a 10gal I'd be pretty limited.

I'm considering turning over my 10gal to salt water and am doing some research. I'm reading a thing right now that says that the only filtration required is live rock and sand. Now, I understand what the author is getting at about biological filtration and its place in the nitrogen cycle...but no filters? No protein skimmers? No...nothing? I'm a bit skeptical. What do you guys think?

Oh no! That wasn't a "I don't believe this clown" sort of interesting. It was genuinely interesting. I really need to edit myself before I hit the post button.

Barbel erosion. Interesting. I hope they come back, they look a bit odd without them. It's weird that the peppered is ok. *shrug*

I have three cories, one peppered who still has his whiskers, and two Julliis that are both missing they're whiskers. I have normal smooth gravel in the tank and nothing sharp. It's all plants and driftwood in there. I mentioned it at work and one of my co-workers has the same issue with her panda cories. What would cause this?

I just wanted to fix the tank. I was willing to put up with some minor bullshit, but yeah. Screw them.

No, I'm not mad at myself. I expected to have to do a bit of red tape because that's how this place is, and figured I'd humour them and then get that tank fixed. I volunteered myself knowing that they may say no, or just be generally difficult. What I didn't expect was that my volunteering and the higher-up people liking my proposal would make the lower-down people be catty and cause all of this drama. I keep forgetting that some people only look like adults on the outside. It's funny because though I often come off a bit on the jaded side, underneath I am the eternal optimist, which gets me in trouble. I'm mad because they wasted my time, I'm not mad that I tried so hard. Michele ,

God you could do so much with that I don't even know where to begin. I'm totally posting here just to tell you how freaking jealous I am. Keep us posted what you do with it!

The magical site goblins fixed it.

The thing that sucks is I got emotionally invested (which is just me, I do that over lots of stuff). I've put so much thought in to this tank, and the countless hours doing full chemistry set tests on it to track changes. That bothers me a bit but I sat on my half hour break at work tonight just vibrating because I'm so freaking ANGRY about this. It was so simple and they convoluted it into this big mess of idiocy. To me it was "Hand me supplies and a bit of time and I will hand you a kick @$$ low maintenance aquarium that a bio department at a SCHOOL can be proud of." Pretty simple.

Nevermind, apparently posting this thread has magically made them work. cool!

I have all my settings on "email" but am not getting any notifications from the site at all. I have check my spam filter and there not getting stuck there, they just aren't coming. Michele

Well I've got some bad and good news all rolled into one. It's not my f*cking problem anymore. Here's the low down, when I saw this tank I found out who owned it and sent them an email. They were super stoked to have help, but they needed a proposal from me. No biggie, I drew up a proposal of what I wanted to do. Then, they (now there's also a department head, and two other people who work in the area involved somehow) wanted a list of what was needed and prices. No biggie since I work for PetSmart so I got all that stuff together, and visited a few local saltwater shops to get prices for base and/or live rock. Submitted that. Then one of these people (who is one of those people that has a fresh water tank and thus they know EVERYTHING ABOUT EVERY FISH EVER) wanted a calendar of how things would work. I scoffed but she said it didn't have to be super detailed. So I drew up a calendar that was pretty much "Day 1- 10% water change Days 2-5 algae scrubbing and water testing. Day 8- filter maintenance Days 9-15- algae scrubbing, water testing, Day 16- 10% water change " etc. I even explained to her that you can't schedule this because the water quality is so bad that anything could happen once I start changing things. I tried to explain why I can't tell her exactly when the tank will be stable. So anyway, I send off the calendar thing 9 days ago. Then never heard a peep. So I sent a "nudge" email today and was told that the calendar was not specific enough and that she would need to know when exactly everything would be happening. My response was polite but blunt and I tried again to explain why I can't tell her what she wants to know. (Bio expert my *ss). Then I get a response back that I had never provided a game plan, which supplies to buy blah blah blah. As we kept emailing back and forth it was getting b*tchier but I was remaining professional. I then said in an email that if all of this bureaucratic nonsense was all because I had stepped on somebody's toes, that perhaps it was not in my best interest to stay involved. Then I got a response that was a form letter meaning GTFO. With a ps- we want our live rock back. So I told them that they should have told me straight off that they didn't want me around. I also suggested that they donate the fish to someone else and tear the tank down because keeping fish in that situation is tantamount to animal abuse. So yeah. That's the story. I'm going to give the live rock back even though it's sooooo not cured. So they'll dump it in and send the already horrifying nitrates through the ceiling and everything will die. Good times. If I was a fish I think I'd be pretty pissed off that red tape killed me.

I'll let you know, don't wait on me however. I've got my hands full with all this other crap for now.

Thanks guys. Time be damned, if I had a salt tank at home I wouldn't tear that down ever! I'm considering turning my 10 gal into a salt maybe in the summer. Depends if I can find a better lighting set up for that tank.

Hey! I had something magical happen today! There was a dirty bucket full of not so live rock in it left next to "my" tank. Apparently a student tore down their tank and donated it. It's all dried up and nasty so it's in my bathtub soaking. I've just been using my building's scalding hot water on it. Anything else I should disinfect that stuff with? I'm worried about introducing some bad microbes or parasites. To my logic, and I may really be out to lunch here, but if I had a salt water tank at home, I'd never tear it down totally and give up my live rock. Unless they screwed up and killed everything, I'm thinking. Watch on kijiji there might be a new tank up for sale from a frustrated student. :P

I work at petsmart in the specialty (fish/reptile/bird/small and fuzzy) and explain to people every single day why they need a water conditioner. I just didn't expect it from people with this apparently long standing salt water tank. I have no idea how those fish are still alive. I keep getting a lot of bureaucracy too which was a bit unexpected. The concept to me is really simple, "you give me money, I fix up your tank and maintain it. For free! Just fund the stuff to fix it!" Easy right?

And to answer you MMAX, they don't know a thing about keeping fish PERIOD. Never mind saltwater. I had to explain why we have to dechlorinate water.

Apparently the bulbs were replaced in january, they are Hagen marine glo bulbs. My plan of action as soon as they let me start getting my hands dirty is to do a 10-20% water change asap, then atleast a few days later change the filter media, then keep doing water changes every week until I get those nitrates down. I don't have access to RO water so it's tap water. Currently they have no chemicals or anything so my list of stuff included Seachem Prime, new food including frozen food, filter media, new airstones etc. I'm not sure what salt they have been using, I'm told it's from Aquarium Illusions. I dont mind doing all the work with the tank, what's frustrating is the fact that I have to make proposals, and now an exact timeline before I'm allowed to do anything. I've done three water tests in the past few weeks and those nitrites keep climbing. Hopefully they'll let me at it soon. I meet with one of the people tomorrow.

Well here's the issue, the owners of the tank LIKE the bubbley stuff. I'm obviously going to cut down the nitrates and well, if good water chemistry kills it, so be it I guess. It's a 55 gallon. Current chemistry is as follows; nitrite-.8mg/L nitrate-off the charts 110mg/L + phosphate-off the charts 5mg/L+ ammonia- 1.2mg/L pH-7.8 iron-zero free, zero chelated KH-110mg/L Calcium-1540 mg/L

I'm not entirely sure if they're being fed very often right now. The tank doesn't belong to me but I saw it and proposed to the owners that they let me fix and maintain it. I just couldn't stand to look at it like that. The fish are being fed nutrafin fresh water flakes and by the packaging I'd say the can is nearly 10 years old. The filter is a fluval 305 and from what I've been told the tank and filter were last maintained in November so I'm sure the inside of that filter is horrific. I submitted a proposal of my plans today and hopefully they get approved rapidly and they hand me some cash to buy new filter media etc. I attached a "before" shot of the tank below.

I was planning on going even slower than that (I tend toward being overly conservative). I'll probably do a 10% change as soon as I get the go ahead from the people that are actually in charge of the tank. Then do the filters as soon as they give me the cash to buy them, (next week maybe?) then do another water change after that. The tank has been in disrepair for a long time so I don't want to hurt any of the guys hanging in there.

I adopted a tank that is in serious disrepair. Chemistry is way out to lunch and there's no ornaments or hides or anything in there. There's two clowns, a very stressed pajama cardinalfish, a brown banded goby and a massive turbo snail. I've seen a few "feather duster" worm things pop up every now and then and there this blobby thing. A quick online search mentioned "blob anemone", what do you guys think? Also, with the water chemistry being so very bad, (nitrates off the charts, phosphates of the charts, low pH, growing nitrite, some ammonia) do you guys have any incite on how the fish and inverts are going to respond to me changing it? I plan on taking it really really slowly. Thanks, Michele

Thanks for the warm welcome! Right now I have a heavily planted ten gallon with cardinal tetras, a few oto's, julli cory cats, 3 amano shrimp and 2 assassin snails, and my newest addition a Cucumber Wing goby. I also have a Fluval Spec which is their fancy 2.5 gal (the little tank that could) which has a fat, old betta in it. I dream of putting a puffer in there but from what I've heard it's too small. (We don't carry puffers so I haven't learned all about them yet). I also got for xmas a USB powered desktop tank from ThinkGeek.com that's about a half gallon with a betta in it as well. I walk around at work and dream of larger tanks but live in a tiny condo shared with other animals (2 cats, a parrot, geckos, gerbil and a snake) and one other human, so no big tanks for the time being. The other question was what is the specialty department at PetSmart. It covers pretty much anything that isn't a cat or dog (though I can help in those departments too). So I help people with (and look after) small furry creatures, reptiles, fish and birds. Indeed sometimes I'm sure the hamsters should have helmets. We get some pretty "shortbus" critters in sometimes. Also, thank you for the compliment on my hair!

Hi, I'm michele. I got told about this website from a customer. I work at the PetSmart on 137th and 139 Street, in the specialty department. I only have a couple small tanks at home (a very planted 10 gal tropical community tank, a planted 2.5gal Fluval Spec, and a tiny desktop aquarium that's about a half gallon), but I'm always designing bigger tanks in my head for when I live in a place where I could fit larger tanks.