Rygh's 250 gallon upgrade

[tr1gger]

Rad Hogfish!

 

[rygh]

Decided to scale back the tanks in the garage


I fairly recently added a new 75G refugium tank, with thoughts of adding a lobster or something.
Between kid stuff and work, I simply don't have the time.
The extra maintenance has been a hassle.
Plus there is the extra evaporation, heat loss, larger water changes, pumps, etc.
It was a fun thought, but I need to know my limits.

Time to focus on my display tank first, and maybe someday get my water exchange system done.

 

[sfsuphysics]

Heheh.. that's kind of the way I was with my tank, get rid of everything that isn't directly related to that tank and can fit in the stand area... still working on that "getting rid of everything bit". While I had no problem getting rid of display tanks, the swiss cheese sumps and stuff I got all over the place is proving harder

 

[rygh]

Hmmm, forgot about the goal of getting more garage space back as well.
But I think I will keep the main sump there. So convenient, especially when I spill water everywhere.
I did move a lot of the water stuff outside, into a small shed. That helped also.

 

[rygh]

Sad week : All my new fish died.

I had several new fish in QT.
One died the very first day.
The others were doing great for about 3 weeks. Eating, happy, no signs of disease.
Then suddenly over 3 days, all died.
Not sure what happened. No obvious signs of Ich.
I noticed some had red blotches on the side of a couple. Possible suspect is an Ammonia spike,
but really unlikely for my QT system, and test (after they died) showed zero.
Perhaps some other disease. Strange that they would go 3 weeks and then all die at once, but
perhaps that first one that died did it.

It is in the garage, which was pretty hot this week. But temp is ok now.

For reference: I have a 40G QT tank, air-stone, heater, foam filter, and powerhead.
PLUS it has a salt water exchange system, of about 5 gallons per day.

Major bummer.

 

[Darcy Vasudev]

Sorry to hear that. They're our little friends even if they only have a tiny peabrain. Still sad.

 

[Geneva]

Mark - so sorry to hear about your new fish - it is a major bummer and happens even when you do all the right things. Where did you get them from? What types of fish?

 

[rygh]

Mark - so sorry to hear about your new fish - it is a major bummer and happens even when you do all the right things. Where did you get them from? What types of fish?

Yep.
Purchased at a good LFS. Prefer not to say, since it may give them a bad rap, and I don't think it was their fault.
They all buy from similar wholesalers anyway.
A couple of Lyretail Anthias and a Diamond Goby.

 

[Kensington Reefer]

I can empithize!

 

[rygh]

I think I figured out what went wrong with the fish in QT ..... Car trouble.


My wife's car has been over-heating a bit. She parks it in the garage, and the garage
has been really hot because of that.
My sump and QT are in the garage!

On Friday, I noticed my my main tank temp was at 82.25. Ouch.
I usually have no temperature issues, so really don't monitor it all that well.

I went back through logs, and on the 5'th, just before fish died, main tank was over 81.
Since QT is in garage, and has even less cooling, it likely went higher.
Air temp on that day hit 88 in the garage.
Poor fish.

Time to get a new car ... yeah ... that's a cheap solution.

I also need to set up some sort of alarm/trigger, instead of just looking at logs.

 

[sfsuphysics]

hhehe, every time during farmer's market season I always worry about the diesel trucks they back up to the garage. Luckily the garage is so full of crap there's no room to park anything in it anymore, they used to do that all the time... and drip oil all over my floor because the trucks cost like $500 and a $500 is bound to be dripping something!