The Puffer Forum

may be worth a shot, even without the heater ... alot of the bacteria will live i'm sure, it can survive at lower temperatures than normal tank temps.. must be reasonably warm in around those tanks anyway..

I have pure amm. in the cabinet that I can use but I think I'm just going to drop a shrimp in there so that it would last longer and I won't have to put amm. everyday.

I have an empty 10 gallon at work so I'll take it home tonight and put the two smaller pieces that's in the tank into the 10 gallon, then I'll take out the huge piece and let it dry out.

I'll go ahead and put my base rock back in for hiding. Guess I didn't think that part through too well. That's what your for.

I kind of figured you were asleep, I'm at work so I was waiting for an answer to start tonight when I get off. Thanks for
the reply. It was quicker than I expected.

Right now I have 3 powerheads in the main tank plus a mag 18 return pump. I don't think oxygen will not be much of an issue. I tested the oxygen level in the tank about 2 weeks ago and if I remember right it was at 8. I would have to look at my chart when I get home to make sure. But I do still have an oxygen test that I can use if I see they are breathing heavy.


One more thing, I figure I can take a small amount of sand at a time while doing all these water changes. I have a bucket to move sand into without stirring it up too much, then I can siphon some water out and do the water change to take it down to hypo. Maybe that way I can take down the deep sand bed a few inches. I found plans to do a rdsb on the net, this would be a good time to get it done. Do you think that would work?

Dadof4 wrote:

edmlfc1 wrote:I'm keeping my fingers crossed that the tank holds all the weight from the rock and don't burst one me.
I moved all the base rock into a trash can. When I get home from work I will lay it out to dry on the patio. Just don't know what to do with the 3 large pieces I have left in the tank. Two would fit in a bucket but I'm out of powerheads and heaters. One won't fit in anything. It's massive and it was a pita getting it into the tank. I have some very upset fish right now.

To keep the rock go to your local Homedepot and get some large Rubbermaid containers. I've used them in the past and never had any harm come to anything in them. They're cheap and a quick solution.

I have several in the closet, I actually thought about taking one out for the huge piece but I didn't have an extra heater for it. I think I'll do that tonight instead of using the 10 gallon that way I can get all 3 pieces into one tub. I'll have to take one of the powerheads out of the tank also.

Just got off the phone with my "good" lfs and he said leaving the sand in would be fine. And I asked him if the lr needed a heater he said no. When you think about it those who have fugu puffers use a chiller to keep the water cold and the lr is ok. Makes sense to me.

not sure about the dsb... they have many plus's a minus's ... not sure i can advise on that. Sorry.

I'm sure the live rock will be ok, as long as you can top it up a little to stop the SG going through the roof. Just let it cool slowly, i think it is dramatic swings that kill lice rock ..

powerheads sound good, just keep everything as stable as possible, temp, pH etc... so the only thong that's moving is the salinity.

8pm here, so i'll check pf at 11pm.. see how you're doing, then i'll be back on tomorrow morning sometime.. so can try and trouble shoot anything then.

I took a big tub and put the largest piece of rock and one of the smaller but still large pieces. That's all I could fit in the tub. Since I had a sand storm going I decided to go ahead and remove some of the sand. I figured it would be best to do it now rather than after everyone has healed. I removed two 5 gallon buckets of sand. I have very cloudy water right now but it's clearing up fast. After removing the rocks and most of the sand it dropped my water level so I grabbed a 10 gallon trash can, tap water, prime and ph 8.2, mixed it up and put it in the tank. It didn't even change my sg. My sg is still 1.020.
I'm going to let things calm down a bit and maybe in the morning I'll do another 10-20g water change. I'm thinking if I'm going to get this tank into hypo I may have to do about 25% to drop the sg. Right now I'm just waiting for the water to clean so I make sure everyone is still ok.

ok cool, seems like you have handle on things. Have a good evening, we who are in the UK are off to bed. zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

Well I decided to go ahead and start lowering the sg. Needless to say they are not very happy with me right now. I got it lowered by 2-3pts. It took two trash cans to lower it. The good news: the beta glucan came in today. I soaked some food in beta glucan, garlic guard, and prazipro for about 45 min. Elvis, Chong and Hoover tore it up! I also added vit c to the tank. This is going to be a long 8 weeks.

It's ok once you are down at 1.009.. then you can chill out a bit.. getting down there, and then worse, getting back up are the hard bits...

maintaining 1.009 is not too bad.

But yes, once you've done it, you'll suffer frm ich paranoia forever, every tiny speck of sand on a fish will make your heart race, and you'll be preaching the values of quarentine to EVERYONE.. and practicing it yourself.

Pufferqueen is back online! She said what I expected between the move and new rock they were going through stress and could not fight the crypt. I was afraid of that. Anyway I'm waiting on a reply as to rather or not I should remove the rest of the sand. I'll keep you posted on what's going on. I tested my water this morning. Amm.0, nitrite 0, ph 8.2, nitrate 0-5. The only problem is without the rock I have no biological filtration. I'm waiting for an answer from pq on what to do. I have a rena xp3 in the cabinet that I took off the tank that broke a couple of months ago and I also have my old wet/dry with
bio-balls (dry). I asked her if I should set up the rena or put the bio-balls in the sump. I'll post here when I get an answer. I forgot about it but I have a whisper 40 (?) hob in the cabinet also (maybe 2 of them). Right now I'm just going to wait and see what she tells me.

Nice to know PQ agreed with what i said, always reassuring.

Good plan to wait an d see what she suggests.

There is no point trying to build up biological filtration, because as you know, any change in SG of over 0.002 will kill it, so it doesn't stand a chance.. any bacteria that manages to establish in teh filter will just be killed as you drop the SG... however using some big filters to suck out as much physical cr*p as possible will help you, just keep cleaning out the filters to get rid of it.

You still have your skimmer right? Well that will keep working at the higher SG's so that's good, it will have less effect at the lower SG although mine was still pulling out some stuff.

Other than that it's back to good old water changes..

although, as i said, once you are down at 1.009 your tank will begin to grow new bacteria so will have some stablising cycle for that 8 weeks..

What are you doing with your sump? what's in it? Anything live that will die in the SG drop? If so you may need to consider what to do with it, maybe separate it from the main tank if you can.. ? Unless there is nothing really in there... ?

Basically all I have in the sump is very little sand, protein skimmer, mag 18 pump, a large sponge that I clean weekly using reg. tap water (I'm sure there is no live bacteria on the sponge) oh and some mangrove plants.

The tank is drilled but I thought about this. If I have to hook up the rena for biological filt. I can lower the water line and turn off the sump. This way water won't be draining into the sump and I can remove the little water that is in it.

I would strongly consider putting the X3 on but filled with sponge and filter floss or cotton just to catch the waste not so much as a bio filter. I turned an old Fluval 204 in to a vacuum by doing this. Help keep the ammonia down.

edmlfc1 wrote:Basically all I have in the sump is very little sand, protein skimmer, mag 18 pump, a large sponge that I clean weekly using reg. tap water (I'm sure there is no live bacteria on the sponge) oh and some mangrove plants.

The tank is drilled but I thought about this. If I have to hook up the rena for biological filt. I can lower the water line and turn off the sump. This way water won't be draining into the sump and I can remove the little water that is in it.

doing that would keep all the bacteria a live in the sump at least.. as it will be separate from the main tank... you could put the live rock in there and then you have less buckets/tanks etc to take care of!

Can you move the skimmer to the main tank or will it not fit. If you can't, then keep the sump running. Your skimmer is really your only filtration at this point!

Dadof4 wrote:I would strongly consider putting the X3 on but filled with sponge and filter floss or cotton just to catch the waste not so much as a bio filter. I turned an old Fluval 204 in to a vacuum by doing this. Help keep the ammonia down.

Agreed. Having external filters to suck the rubbish out, just keep cleaning the filters out, as they will gather the cr*p but there will be no bacteria in them to deal with it, so unfortunately... you'll have too.