Where to start... bad news first, I suppose. I noticed a small white spot on one of the clowns one evening, but passed it off as nothing. The next day I noticed a few white spots on both of them. Their smooth black color made the salt-crystal-sized spots very noticeable. Anyone who has been in the fish hobby for some time knows where this is going... Ich! The Marine "Ich" parasite (Cryptocaryon irritans) is a ciliate protozoa that has a complex life cycle. It is free swimming until it contacts a fish's skin or gills, whereupon it latches on and feeds for a few days. After that, it drops off the fish to the substrate, crawls around, and forms a cyst. During this phase it multiplies and eventually the child organisms hatch out in search of a host or hosts.
Marine Ich occurs all the time in nature but never gets the chance to overwhelm fish due to the vastness of the ocean. In the closed environment of an aquarium, however, it can quickly turn into a huge problem. Unbelievably, there has been NO reef-safe treatment developed for this parasite. If you figure it out, you would be a millionaire in no time. The only surefire way of curing Ich is to treat with Copper-based medication. While fish can tolerate Copper to some degree, invertebrates will NOT; therefore to treat the fish you have to remove them from the tank and put them in a hospital/quarantine tank. As any experienced reef or fish keeper will tell you (especially reef), a quarantine tank is a must-have. I thought I could weasel by without one... nope. There is nothing quite as heartbreaking/infuriating as finding out that your hard-earned reef is infected by something that came in on a new frag or fish. Always quarantine new acquisitions for at least a few weeks!
Anyway back to the story- I was pretty sure of what I saw and knew what had to be done... better to be safe than sorry. Fortunately my LFS was understanding and lent me a small powerhead and a 50watt heater, and I bought a cheap 5 gallon tank to serve as a hospital. Getting the clowns out was easy- only one of them needed convincing with my spare hand to get into the net. My Randall's Goby was a pain... I had to move several rocks and shoo with my free hand to get him out. Now I know what people talk about when they complain of difficult-to-catch fish. I have read of whole tanks being dismantled just to get at ONE small fish.
All of my fish were eventually removed and placed in the tank on Friday the 11th of December. If you were paying attention above, you'll realize that the tank still has Ich in it which I can't kill using medication. The only way to rid the tank of Ich without killing my invertebrate inhabitants (corals, snails, crabs, shrimp, basically everything in there) is to leave the tank fallow, or fishless, for a period of time exceeding the longest conceivable life cycle of the Ich protozoan (it only infects fish). If I took my last fish out on Friday and a parasite had fallen off that very moment, it might be up to 6-8 weeks when the last protozoan dies of starvation after hatching out from the substrate and not finding a fish. If a fish is present any time within this period, the whole life-cycle of the parasite could be restarted. Thus my fish will be on vacation until about January 22nd. It really sucks, and the Goby seems to be taking it the worst. There is a little PVC tube in there for hiding, but the Goby tends to just mope around dejectedly.
On a good note, though, I now have a quarantine tank for future fish acquisitions. As soon as I reintroduce my three fish to the tank in January, I am going to begin quarantine of my next set of fish... probably a McCoskers Flasher Wrasse, maybe a firefish or a pair of small Banggai Cardinalfish.
I am also taking this next week to stock up on a few corals that I wanted to get eventually. Sure, there is a small chance that I can bring in some Ich with the coral, but there are no fish for it to infect for several weeks. As long as I get it early in the fishless period, I am relatively safe... but I wouldn't want to risk getting a brand new piece of liverock or coral frag the week before I put my fish back in the tank... there is always a chance it will come with unwelcome hitchhikers.
Treating the quarantine tank with copper may pose a problem in the future; the tank will still have measurable amounts of copper in it even if I change the water several times. That means it will be unsuitable as a quarantine for new corals. They also need a dedicated light while being quarantined, which I don't have. I need to do some more research. Ich is not the only ailment that can destroy a reef; there are plenty of things that come in on rock or coral that can quickly spread and kill. My instinct tells me I may need to find a way to quarantine corals lest I risk another Ich outbreak... or worse.
Early on, before I discovered the Ich, I bought a Royal Gramma (aka Fairy Basslet). It ended up going straight into my quarantine tank but was not swimming well from the start. These are a deep-water fish and collectors frequently fail to fully decompress the fish as they are being taken up to the surface, which results in swim bladder damage. I'm afraid the fish succumbed to this ailment as its swimming became more and more erratic over several days until it died. The clowns and goby were not affected, so it wasn't a water quality problem that I could discern, and the fish was properly acclimated. Royal Grammas are generally very hardy fish.
The live rock and glass are starting to show more types of algae that are loving both the long light cycle (roughly 8 hours) and the high dissolved nutrients. I added three Mexican Turbo Snails to help combat this before it becomes an issue. I've heard of problems with these Snails as they get larger- they will bulldoze rocks and corals in an attempt to search for food underneath. My nefarious team of hermit crabs have already been causing me headaches- many mornings I wake up to toppled frags. We'll see if this just compounds matters.
Looking at the glass, I've also noticed a huge bloom in pod population- that's a general term that refers to copepods, amphipods, etc. That's a good sign- it means the phytoplankton population is going up, supporting the pod population, which will in turn support other (larger) organisms including my fish and corals. I'm sure the lack of fish predation is helping the population of pods flourish. It really is a tiny little ecosystem in there, and my showcase organisms (corals, fish) are very dependent on that equilibrium and the presence of other organisms in the tank to deal with waste and so on. Once a reef tank is established, there are tons of animals in it that aren't on the list of "livestock" which nevertheless constitute an important part of the food chain. Shining a flashlight in there at night will reveal some of them.
On the coral front, I am growing out a Neon Green Toadstool (Sarcophyton sp.) for my LFS. His is not growing quickly in the pristine water of his SPS tank, and wanted to see if a small frag of it would do better in my "dirty" water. It's quite an interesting little coral. This frag is about dime sized; its polyps extend out over a centimeter and are tipped with neon green tentacles. Once it grows out to the size of a quarter, we may frag it and try to propagate it further. One thing to note about toadstool corals (among others) is that they are known to give off a poison that can affect other corals in the tank. Chemical filtration and/or regular water changes will make this a non-issue. You will only really notice the affect if you have a large quantity of sizeable Toadstool corals or sensitive corals in the tank with them which are susceptible to their chemical attack. The Lobophyllia falls in this category but should be ok.. it certainly doesn't seem to mind thus far. Here's a picture of the Sarcophyton slowly opening up after acclimation. When it "closes up", it looks like a little purple nub.
Some great news: I picked up my first SPS (small polyp stony) corals. These are probably the only types of SPS that I will be able to keep under the low to moderate lighting conditions under the stock Biocube bulbs. One is a Montipora capricornis, orange/red in color. This flattened SPS coral grows fast and will do alright under moderate lighting. I will eventually need to deal with its growth and size by fragging it and selling/trading it back to the LFS. The other SPS coral that I got is a Hyacinth Bird's Nest (Seriatopora hystrix). This is a very delicate-looking branching coral with dark purple polyps and a tan skeletal coloration (there are other color morphs of Bird's Nest). It should also do ok under my lighting so long as it is placed in an ideal position. My LFS was kind enough to frag this for me for free out of his display tank. I glued it to a small piece of rock using my newly bought cyanoacrylate superglue, and will monitor it closely. Both of these corals would prefer more intense lighting but can tolerate lower than what they are getting in my tank.
Here is a new Zoanthid that I picked up in what is the equivalent of a "cheap" bin at the LFS.
Speaking of which- Cyanoacrylate. This glue is amazing: it can and will set underwater in about one minute. I can't imagine it makes the water taste/smell very good for the inhabitants, but it sure does do its job well. I snipped off a bit of rock from one of my zoa colonies and glued the Bird's nest to it. It was set within about a minute of holding the two together in the air (I also dipped it in water to see if it would go faster). Works like a charm. This may also prove invaluable to prevent my hermit demo team and/or mexican turbo dozers/snails from rearranging my frags, but I have to be 100% certain that I want to affix a piece on the rock. Once it's glued, there is probably no going back.
I have been feeding the Dendros Mysis roughly every other day. Some days they're more open than others, but they always eat at least a little bit. By far the biggest eater in the tank is the Lobophyllia brain, however... it really scarfs down on mysis whenever I feed. It is a spectacular coral. The first time it opened up and showed its ring of tentacles I was floored, and have been feeding it almost as often as the Dendros ever since. This coral is also photosynthetic but seems to have quite the appetite for mysis and zooplankton to supplement its energy and growth. I hope to collect more corals like this because the interaction during feeding time is quite rewarding.
Here's a picture of the Dendros in its "feeding guard": a sliced-up plastic bottle top. It's a slow eater and have to protect it or the feeder shrimp quickly steals its food.
The moon LED lighting has raised a question. At first I had them on all night so that I could enjoy the fluorescing corals in the late evening. After leaving them off for a few nights, however, I noticed that the corals go through a full nighttime cycle which they do not go through if I leave the LEDs on. The Frogspawn totally deflates, Star Polyps and Zoas close up, Brain coral opens up and waves its tentacles around, etc. It may be unhealthy to leave the corals under some form of light all day. What I will probably end up doing is getting (yet) another timer that handles the LEDs only, and have them turn off a couple hours after the main lights so that I can enjoy the fluorescence of the corals but they still get their "night time" from about 3:00am to daybreak.
I am also going to design some method of mechanical filtration using a gutted filter cartridge and/or the drip tray and some filter floss. If I change and clean this regularly it should help to clear up the water more quickly after a feeding.
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