ALMOST impossible - Page 2

Gresham · 10-11-2004, 09:05 AM

I've seen similiar cases, a 30g with 8" of water left, heater mainly exsposed (but still working), fish alive, corals booming, and the hang on filter was barely pumping. Same thing, tap top off, barely any hair aglea, but plenty of cyano. regardless to say, all those critters found a new home in a better environment.

dano · 10-11-2004, 09:19 AM

im not touching that tank. like ya said its just fine the way it is. im just second guessing all this time and effort, when all you have to do is leave it alone and let it grow
just kidding!

cpandrewschmidt · 10-11-2004, 02:23 PM

I have a quick one, what do you guys tap off evaporation with? I just use tap water every couple days. I heard this was ok. Should I not be? I dont have any corals though, fish only

Andrew

hoodoo · 10-11-2004, 02:43 PM

well, it depends on your tap water. But I know mine wouldn't do any good. The best is to use RO-water or destilled water. There are a lot of bad things in (most) tap water. Phosphates, heavy metals, chlorine, ammonia, nitrates, silicates... Your fish would probably be happy if you would use RO-water.
(I hope you use a water conditioner before you put your tap water in the tank...)

JohnO · 10-11-2004, 04:03 PM

Dano,

Consider it from another point of view :-) What you are seeing is what has survived and hasn't died over the years.

There is a story in one of my aquarium books that relates the tale of ( I think ) and English lady who kept an Anemone alive for years in a bucket. Just fed it beef heart and swirled the water around with her hand each day ( or something like that anyway )

Marine creatures are not always as fragile as reported and are often very adaptable to slowly changing environments. Some things that are often misunderstood about corals and fish is the water they live in in the wild. Ocean water has been there for millions of years and contains traces of EVERY known mineral and metal etc. This includes some pretty wild stuff like Uranium, Gold and Copper for example Now just because they are part of the water in trace amounts doesn't mean any of the animals use these elements or need them to survive. Nor does it necessarily mean it will do them hard.

I only use tap water for my top up and also did for the initial fill. My water is good and I haven't had any different reactions to when I did the same in the past with RO water.

John

Birdlady · 10-11-2004, 06:20 PM

Shrooms, from what I gather, are low light requirements and can tolerate pretty poor water quality actually....is that all that is in there? Besides the fish??

Matt Rogers · 10-11-2004, 07:12 PM

Cool story JOhn!

Craig Manoukian · 10-11-2004, 07:21 PM

My tap water is between 36 and 50 ppm so no worries here. I top off with tap water and change 5 gallons of salt weater once per month. On;y have to scrape my glass once every three weeks.

dano · 10-12-2004, 02:08 AM

theres just about anything in that tank you can imagine. you name it i bet you coould find it in there somewhere.
im going to try to get a hold of some pics today shes a drive so im not sure

reiple · 10-12-2004, 06:52 AM

I just remembered an anemone I kept twenty plus years ago. This anemone looks similar to a carpet but looks like a large mushroom. And was it dark in color-close to black. Fed it shrimp meat 4x a week and it hosted to percula clowns. Thing is the tank was 20 gallons and the light was 15 watts of cheap pink-white (again this was around 1979). Lived and grew for 4 years before i returned it to the LFS.

I went looking for the same anemone. Not available for 10 years already. After describing it (with difficulty and with drawings) my marine bio friend told me he saw bright ones and never black. The one I got, again showing a pic in a book was already --- extinct.