Project Toadstool & Cabbage Leather Rock - First Steps

The plan for this project is to create a rock like the one I had some time ago, a nice rock with a big Toadstool on it and a piece of Cabbage leather on the front. I already have a big Toadstool for this project.

Here is how the old rock looked like, the one I based this Project on.

On March 16 I took a nice rock for the project from the sump and removed the crown of the Toadstool. Using a PVC tube that I cut in half and a couple of rubber bands I made a vase like construction on the rock where I want the Toadstool to attach.

The reason for cutting the PVC tube in half is that I can easily remove it when the toadstool has attached, just cut the rubber band and both halves fall from each other.

I used a sharp knife to cut the crown from the Toadstool and placed it in the PVC tube. Now all we can do is wait for it to attach to the rock.

Start Crab Tank

Through a Dutch eBay like website I got my hands on a little plastic aquarium. The idea is to make this into a Crab Tank for my 2 crabs who are now in the Sump. I already found a couple of rocks that I want to use in the tank as well.

Using reef construct I combined the two pieces as one. The idea is to have some easy corals growing on it. The reason for easy corals is that I don’t know if the crabs are reef safe. The rocks have some hiding spaces this way too, but hopefully not to many for the crabs to disappear like they did now in the sump. 

Next steps for this project will be letting the corals grow on the rock (in the frag tank) and make an overflow part to attach the tank to the sump for good water quality. Also I’m thinking of making my own lights for this tank using LED’s, but that might be too much, so we will see :)

Marine Engineers | The Marine Reef Aquarium Source: Palytoxin Poisoning

Found this on another Blog, good to know when working with corals!

Marine Engineers The Marine Reef Aquarium Source: Palytoxin Poisoning: "Many of us in the hobby enjoy fragging and trading corals. Unknown to most, you are putting yourself in danger of a pretty severe poisoning..."

Kenya Tree and Cabbage Leather Sold

Because the Frogspawn coral was doing very bad and the buttons and Xenia also had trouble expending we decided to sell the Kenya Tree in the middle. First we thought about cutting off a few branches, but I realised that this would be a shame to do. We have one big Kenya Tree still and we have three smaller ones. Besides that I have a beautiful piece of Cabbage Leather in my fragtank, so we don’t have to miss that either if we would want it.

It does look empty now without the big tree in the middle, but we will find another way to fill the empty space. My wife even mentioned she might like to chance some things in the aquarium, so who knows what will happen.

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Fragtank work in progress

Last Tuesday I started work on the sump. First I needed to sort all the life rock that was in there, doing this I found a snail and some corals. The snail stayed in the sump and the corals moved to the fragtank on smaller pieces of rock.

In the first part I made a nice reefrack construction with a part to put the filters in and a part for a piece of life rock. The middle part is still a bit too full of rock, but that is where the skimmer will be placed, together with pieces of life rock for projects that will be running in the fragtank.

Then the left part is filled with 2 nice rocks, here I also wanted to put some invertebrates.

Later that day I went to pick up two crabs from someone. I don’t know yet which species they are, but hope to find out soon. The idea was to place the two of them in the left part of the sump, but one of them already made it into the other compartments and the other one hasn’t been seen since.

I also bought 2 corals, a rock with pink buttons and one with blue/green mushrooms from someone for 35 euro’s total and I also sold the Anemone on its rock for 20 euro’s.

Yellow Wrasse Died

Monday I noticed that the Wrasse was acting strange. He is hardly active anymore and often lies underneath the Anemone rock with his belly up. Also his breathing seems to be heavier and faster. Don’t know how long he will keep this up or if he gets better.

Two days later it seemed that it was over. After looking real close in the aquarium I could see something which looked like the Wrasse underneath the rocks at a place that we couldn’t reach. But now, 4 days later, there is no trace anymore of the Wrasse.

The cause is still unknown, but stress might have something to do with it. In the beginning he showed himself often, swimming around. Some months after he got in he hide more underneath the rocks, coming out only when he thought no one was near.

Not sure if we are going to get a new Wrasse, maybe to help against the Planaria? But it sure wont be another Yellow Wrasse.

Black mark on Foxface

Sunday my wife noticed a big black spot on the Foxface. I did notice a mat spot on his body, I think in the same place as the black spot is now. Might be something of a bite mark or something, it looks a bit like lip marks.

Going to see if I can find out what it is and if I need to worry about it.

Monday the spot seemed to be more mat again, not much black visible anymore. So far the only results I got from the forums was from someone saying it might be blackspot. Done some reading about this disease, but the foxface doesn’t show any of the symptoms. He doesn’t scrape against rocks or go to the cleaner shrimp to get rid of the parasite and he eats fine. Examples of black spot I saw where all small spots, size of a grain of salt, while this spot is a lot bigger.

One thing I did notice about his behaviour is that he now sits more often in camouflage mode (white colours and spikes up).

Wednesday the whole blackness around the spot was gone, only a mat spot remained. Another suggestion I found was that it might be a sting spot, maybe from the anemone. The behaviour of the Foxface is back to normal again now, no more stressing around. I will keep it at this for now, the sting does sound like a good explanation for its behaviour.

Anemone having a weird dinner

Yesterday I noticed the Anemone having something in its mouth couple of hours before the lights went on. In a quick look it seemed like the cleaner shrimp, but when I took a closer look I noticed it was only the skin. Guess the cleaner shrimp shed his skin close to the anemone which in his turn had a hunger for something different :)

New light Frag Tank

A while ago I got my order in from Fish-Street containing the new light armature for the frag tank, the Aqua Japan T5HO. Unfortunately then I noticed it had an Australian power plug, fish-street offered me a converter for free, which was great service. Only thing was, I lost my patience and just wanted to start using it :p

Yesterday I went into the city and searched for a travelplug that could convert Australian to European plugs. Unfortunately this wasn’t a big success, even a specialized electronics shop didn’t have it. He suggested I just cut of the current plug and replace it with a European plug and so I did. It was very easy, there are three wires exposed when you cut of the plug, a brown one, a blue one and a green/yellow one. The last one is the earth wire, you need to keep that in mind when buying a new power plug.

In short time the plug was replaced and I put it in the power socket. The whole room got lid by the 4 T5 24 Watt tubes. The armature itself feels very light (and cheap), it comes with a couple of plastic supports to place it on the aquarium, which are rather hard to attach on the armature. But the price was very low, so can’t complain about it feeling cheap. It looks nice, and it works perfect so far. So far I’m very satisfied about it and would recommend it!