The FLog has moved!

Here's the new FLog: http://www.adamhorton.com/flog . This will probably be the last update of this blog, so make sure to subscribe there if you want to continue to receive E-mail updates.

I said I'd update again when something happened...

...well something did happen. I was passing by when I wanted to check out a new fish store. I was very impressed with everything they had and the way they treated their fish, but most importantly they had something I've been looking for for a very long time...

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/yellowclowngoby01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/yellowclowngoby02.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/yellowclowngoby03.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/yellowclowngoby04.jpg

He doesn't have a name yet, but I've been looking for a yellow clown goby for quite some time, and not only did I finally find one, but he's in very good shape also. I also went to the other fish store where I was going originally and put in a request for the next two tangs, so hopefully they'll have something soon.

An update...

I haven't updated in a while, because not much has happened in a while. Things are going well for both tanks.

I'm getting close to the point where I'm ready to get two tangs for the saltwater tank, either this weekend or next weekend I'll work on getting the fish store to get them for me, but I don't know how long that will take. I'm not holding my breath, but hopefully it will be soon. Also, during that time, I'll be looking into getting more of a clean-up crew since all that's left of the old one are the hermit crabs that killed all of the snails.

The freshwater tank is starting to settle in, and I'm getting better at feeding the plants right and keeping the algae under control. The Ludwigia is doing very well, there are now three of them and I just started with one. Also, one of the anubias was growing so much I had to cut it in half today, so there will be more of that now. Here are some pictures:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank09.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank10.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank11.jpg

More updates when things happen...

....and some more pictures!

Not all that much new this weekend, but I do have some more pictures. They're all of the freshwater tank, so here's my saltwater update: everybody is doing fine.


First, I've been playing around with the macro option on my camera, and I've gotten a couple of new pictures, including one of a red cherry shrimp, which I wasn't able to get earlier, and also a cute picture of a big snail and a little snail together.

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank07.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank08.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/herbert06.jpg

Also, the Ludwigia was growing so much that I had to clip it, so there are now two Ludwigia plants (I may have said that last weekend). I took two pictures a day apart, and you can really see the growth on each one of the plants. Here's the first one:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/plants04.jpg

Here's the picture a day later

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/plants05.jpg

Pictures!!

I have some more pictures of the saltwater fish, eating their vegetables:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish17.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish18.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish19.jpg

Now, I have some updated pictures of the freshwater tank. The Ludwigia was doing so well I had to clip it, so now there are two Ludwigias. I moved a couple of things around also.

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank02.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank03.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank04.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank05.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank06.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/torpedo03.jpg


One other thing. I did some work on the plumbing underneath the tank. It's no huge deal, but I'm really excited about it. The benefits of it is that now the sump can be almost completely full of water, and that water level will stay constant. It also doesn't look ugly anymore. Here's a link to a video of it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mzXLy3FLnYs

That's all for now. I'll probably update again next weekend with pictures.

Initial stocking is done!

UPDATE - April 3: I forgot Manny! I'm a horrible dad! Anyways, here's a link to a picture of him.

Mandarin Goby (Dragonfish): Manny
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/mandarin01.jpg

167 days after this whole thing started, initial stocking is finally complete! Everybody is finally in the tank, and the tank is almost completely stocked. I still want to get one or two more tangs, and maybe some more clean-up crew, but other than that, it's done! Here are some pictures (these four are kind of large):

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/salttank01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/salttank02.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/salttank03.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/salttank04.jpg

 Also, here are some more pictures of the saltwater fish:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/butch02.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish16.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/midgee01.jpg

 It's also time to reveal the names of each of the fish:

Cave Goby: Dusty
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/dusty01.jpg

Two-Spot Goby: Jetson
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/twospotgoby03.jpg

Firefish Goby: Flash
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/firefishgoby01.jpg

Green Clown Goby: Midgee
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/clowngoby02.jpg

Bi-Color Blenny: Dantrell
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/blenny02.jpg

Bangai Cardinals: Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Sue
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/cardinals01.jpg

Yellow Tang: Filet
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/yellowtang01.jpg

Black Neon Damsel: Ruckus
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/ruckus02.jpg

Lemon Damsel: Lemmy
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/lemmy02.jpg

Blue Streak Damsel: Magnum
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/magnum03.jpg

Yellow Damsel: Butch
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/butch02.jpg

Sergeant Major Damsel: Sarge
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/sarge02.jpg

...and if that wasn't enough, the new plants in the freshwater tank are doing very well. Here's a full-tank shot and some close-ups of the plants. Everything except the micro swords are doing very well and have new growth, and I adjusted the way the swords were planted so hopefully they'll do better now. These four pictures are also kind of large.

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/plants01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/plants02.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/plants03.jpg

That's all for now. Enjoy the pictures!

Some good updates

I've spent many hours between yesterday and today working with the fish tanks, and there's quite a bit to show for it. First, the saltwater tanks:

The yellow tang is finally in the display tank! It's been seven weeks in quarantine getting over the ich, but he's finally in there, and after almost a day, he's finally relaxed a bit. It won't be long before the tank is completely stocked! Sarge and Butch are rooming together in the 20G quarantine, which was completely cleaned. Both of them are happy with the extra space, especially Sarge. Here are some pictures:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/yellowtang01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/mandarin02.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/mandarin03.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/twospotgoby04.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/blenny03.jpg

They all have names, and the names will be revealed when the tank is fully stocked. If everything goes well, that will be next weekend.

Now for an update on the freshwater tank. I've had to do a lot of adjusting with quite a few of the plants, but I think it's finally going to settle down now, and it looks good enough that I'm not embarrassed to take pictures of it. Here are a few:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/fresh03.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/fresh04.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/fresh05.jpg

The plants are as follows:

Back left and front right - Dwarf Onion
Back right and front left - Anubias Barteri
Attached to the driftwood - Java Fern (this one is the only one that isn't new)

Middle, on the right (with the red leaves) - Ludwigia peruensis
Middle, on the left - Tall Sags
Front, growing like grass - Micro Swords

I also got nine Red Cherry Shrimp, but those guys are really tiny and they like to hide a lot. I haven't gotten a good picture of one and I don't know if I ever will. Hopefully the plants will do well wince I have good lighting and I'm dosing the tank with fertilizers.

One more thing, I'm starting to reduce the size of a lot of the pictures I post by cropping them, which means that except for full-tank shots and stuff like that, my pictures won't take so long to load. That's all I got now, next update will be next weekend at the latest.

New plants!

First, I have several more pictures of the saltwater tank, just because.

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/cardinals07.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/cardinals08.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/crab01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/dantrell01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/dusty03.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/flash01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/flash02.jpg

Next, I got a shipment of a whole bunch of plants and some Red Cherry Shrimp. There were 9 shrimp in total, and I haven't gotten a decent picture of one yet. The tank is still kind of cloudy from planting everything and I don't have everything identified yet, but here's a full tank shot, and by this weekend I should have more pictures of everything.

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/fresh02.jpg

Almost there!

Last weekend marked the end of the yellow tang's hyposalinity treatment. I'll keep him in the quarantine at least until this weekend to make sure he is doing OK, but everything is set up at the moment so that all that's left is to acclimate him to the display tank and put him in. We'll see how well he adjusts there and once he's comfortable there, Butch and Sarge will join him. There will have to be a little break but after a couple of weeks I'll start looking into other tangs.

Yesterday I turned on the lights for the first time in a really long time to get some hair algae growing. I'm not so worried about an infestation this time because all of the hermit crabs and the tang will graze on it. What it does mean, though, is that I'm able to get better pictures of the display tank fish, so enjoy a few pictures of Magnum and the cardinals.

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/magnum03.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/magnum04.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/cardinals03.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/cardinals04.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/cardinals05.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/cardinals06.jpg

In other news, either today or tomorrow the freshwater plants I ordered should finally be getting here, so later this week, or this weekend at the very latest, there will be another update with lots more pictures.

I can't think of a good subject for this post

It's been a while since I've updated, so here's what's happened since then.

The yellow tang has been doing very well. I learned that if I feed him less brine shrimp, that he will eat his vegetables. He's halfway through the hyposalinity treatment, so in two weeks I'll bring the salinity back up to normal, then after that it will be a couple of weeks before he goes in the main tank.

Butch was getting a little mean in his quarantine tank, and the other guys (Lemmy, Magnum, and Ruckus) are a lot smaller than the tang, so it made sense to add those guys to the display tank. They are very happy in there, and Ruckus has even started to turn purple instead of his usual black color. We used to think he got that way when he was stressed, but he's clearly not stressed. Here's a picture:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/ruckus02.jpg

Dusty got really agitated, and he sort of buried the hole where Flash liked to hang out. I saw him once after that but I haven't seen him in a couple of days, so I hope he's OK.

I got a new light for the freshwater tank. It will hopefully allow me to keep some more plants and will help with the java fern that's still in there. I'm going to order some more plants this weekend, and hopefully the combination of more plants to compete with the algae and actually getting the right nutrients in there for the plants will make for less algae, and that tank should end up being really awesome. I also managed to get a couple of pictures of the freshwater guys while experimenting with the new camera.

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/ctanley02.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/herbert04.jpg

So, there should be another update soon about the plants in the freshwater tank. That update will probably be next weekend at the latest.

Tang update, and freshwater tank update

After spending the week looking for another suitable tang to go along with the yellow tang, nothing turned up. I didn't want to wait any longer starting preventative hyposalinity treatment on the yellow tang, so I think at this point, I'm finally ready to bring the initial stocking to a close. The yellow tang will finish his hypo treatment, and at that point, everybody except Sarge will go into the main. Within a week, Sarge will go in, and I'll deal with any stocking issues then.

Of course there will be more fish I want to get, but I don't want to prolong this process any more than I already have for a convenience issue. The benefits of adding the damsels last aren't worth the risk to all of the fish in quarantine right now. I'm pretty sure I want another tang, though I'm not sure what kind. Maybe certain types of butterfly fish or cardinals would also work. Once the tank is stocked and a new quarantine filter is ready to go, I can start looking locally for additional fish.

Anyways, things are going pretty well, and I want to focus on keeping them that way. The yellow tang has become sort of a picky eater, he eats the brine shrimp but he doesn't eat much algae anymore, so I'm going to try and get him to eat a more balanced diet with lots of vegetables. If Sarge can eat them, he can too.

Speaking of Sarge and his vegetables, sometimes he gets a little excited, and he's kind of a messy eater...

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/messyeater.jpg

The freshwater tank finally looks good enough that I'm not embarrassed to take a picture of it! I recently did some cleaning, and everybody (plant and animal) in the tank seems happy, especially Herbert. I'm probably going to order some more shrimp and some more plants and hopefully they'll do well with the proper food.


http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/freshtank.jpg

A quick update...

Some good news and some bad news. The good news, is that I've finally figured out how to make Blogger send E-mail notifications to people when I update the blog, so hopefully that will work this time. The bad news is that the powder blue tang got sick and died Monday night, it happened so quickly that I didn't even have time to really get hyposalinity treatment started. This weekend we'll probably get another tang and start with a whole bunch of preventative measures, so if that happens, there will be pictures this weekend.

It was bound to happen...

Well, I was warned to be cautious with the tangs, and last night I'm glad I was. The powder blue tang appears to be sick. I've separated the two tangs in their quarantine by putting an eggcrate barrier in between them, hopefully this will keep the yellow tang from picking on the powder blue too much, and it will make it easier for the powder blue to eat. They're both still eating, but it's pretty clear by now that the powder blue isn't doing too well. Here are some recent pictures:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue02.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue03.jpg

...and some more from last night, when it was a little worse.

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue04.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/powderblue05.jpg

I've asked around online and I'm going to start hyposalinity treatment tonight, along with some de-worming medication (even if that's just preventative). Once the powder blue is better, it will probably be at least a month before they get to go into the main tank at this point. I'm contemplating putting some of the smaller damsels into the main tank before this happens, but Sarge is finally starting to settle in to his new home and I would hate to take him from there if he didn't want to leave... I'll post updates as they happen.

On a lighter note, I saw something kind of cool in the display tank -- I thought one of the hermit crabs was going to change shells, but he eventually decided against it. Here's a picture of that:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish11.jpg

Also, the freshwater tank is starting to recover from the algae attack. Dosing the tank with nitrates seems to be helping, and I trimmed down the parts of the java fern that were covered in algae. It's not picture-worthy yet, but I put a piece of cucumber in the tank for Herbert, and even though Herbert didn't appear interested, guess who did?

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish12.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish13.jpg

Ctanley just wouldn't leave that thing alone... Also, one of the black neon tetras has taken to sticking his tail into the bubbles coming out of the pink coral. He's starting to get one of the other black neons to do it as well. I got a couple of pictures:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish14.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish15.jpg

Tang update

It's been a little over a week and the tangs are doing very well. Here are some more pictures:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish07.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish08.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish09.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish10.jpg

They're both eating very well, and there hasn't been too much aggression, but it is there. We haven't seen one of them emerge as the dominant one, though my guess on the situation is that the powder blue tang is in charge and that the yellow doesn't like it. We have names for them, but they depend on which one ends up being boss. Once that happens, I'll reveal the names of all of the fish.

An update...

First, the freshwater tank: things aren't going so well here. The fish are OK but the plants aren't doing so hot and algae is starting to take over. I've started dosing the tank with some extra nutrients, seeing as how the nitrate level was at zero, which is bad for plants. I'll update on how that's going as things happen, hopefully it won't get any worse.

The puffer we got last week didn't last too long. He never looked all that great and I wasn't surprised about it. Maybe some day we'll keep a puffer alive for a while, but it's kind of difficult to find good ones.

Now for the good stuff: last night we got two tangs. They need to be quarantined before they go into the main tank, so they're occupying the 20G quarantine that the damsels had and the damsels got split up into two 10G tanks. Sarge has his own tank and everybody else is in the tank that had the puffer in it, I just switched out the filter and the water. I have pictures of them in their new setups: Sarge looks thrilled.


http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish01.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish02.jpg

Now for the new guys: we ended up with a yellow tang and a powder blue tang. Both looked really good and have been doing very well so far. They're both eating and they seem to be getting along. Here are some pictures:

http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish03.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish04.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish05.jpg
http://www.adamhorton.com/files/flog/good/somefish06.jpg

Once they've made friends and are completely healthy, they'll go into the display tank, and around that time, the damsels will go in as well. That should happen in roughly 3 weeks if everything goes OK.

Update and a couple more pictures

First, an update on the saltwater tank: the hermit crabs have successfully killed pretty much all of the snails, which is wonderful. All of the fish are doing very well, though. Dusty is sort of aggressive, so I can't wait until he meets Sarge. The firefish goby has a name: Flash. Next weekend, I plan to get a couple of tangs to add to the tank, which will be really exciting. I know I want a yellow tang, and from looking around, I think I'm between a powder blue tang and a really nice looking powder brown tang I saw today at the fish store. Unless something else comes along, it will probably be the yellow and one of the powders.

Next, we're trying to branch out with the veggies we give Herbert. Here's a picture of him with some lettuce, and we'll see how much he goes for the cauliflower leaves I just put in there.

Finally, after several months of searching, we managed to find a Figure-8 Puffer. It was at a place that wasn't so good, but that's the only place we could find it. Hopefully he pulls through, but he was eating there before we got him, so things are looking OK. here's a picture.