- Joined
- Mar 23, 2011
- Messages
- 43
joe ceph. you are in no way being a PIA. i am glad that you are helping me to be so thurogh. and i am thankfull that, with your help, im getting more confident about keeping this animal
i totally agree that about 5% of the genral public is crazy. but in a tattoo shop we get WAY more crazies. closer to like 50%. when we first thought about putting an octo in here, that was my first concern. i was so affraid of some a-hole customer tapping on the glass or opening the lids and hurting our animal. but we have had this tank in here for a few months and i have noticed that most customers ignore it. it has an open top right now, and i haven't found anything in there that i didn't put there. i had a clown fish in there for a few weeks, and peolple kinda noticed him. but for the most part people just walk right past it. i am still concerend about it though. we have a reseptionist who sits right in front of the tank, and she is there all day. she will not be happy at all if someone messes with our tank, and she has the right to kick someone out for doing so. but i still want to make the lids as customer proof as possible. i was planning on making it noisy some how, attach a bell or something. so nobody could sneek in when the receptionist isn't looking. i just need my lids to get here so i can start playing around with them.
as far as cycling. i understand that ballancing the micro organisms to what the tank gets fed is very important. for the first 3 weeks it sat empty. then after the initial ammonia spike settled down, we put a few fish in. i have had up to 4 fish in there at a time. i have been moving fish around my tanks at home and used this work tank as qt tank for a bit. so it has had at least 1 fish in it since early april. right now, most of the fish have gone back home. i still have a flasher wrasse in there, a choc chip star, 2 peppermint shrimp, and about 20 or so snails. i feed the wrasse way too much twice a day. i have been doing this on purpose for the exact reason you mentioned. i don't want my messy eating octo to change what the tank is used to. if anything the tank might get a break with only 2 dead fiddlers a day. i get a bit of algea growth and i go in and brush it off by hand when i do water changes. other than that my tank is pretty used to accepting a lot of waste food. if my lids take take to much longer to get here i may bring another fish from home so the wrasse doesn't get lonely.
i am hoping that i don't get the little nocternal cousin of A.aculeatus. but if i do, i am prepared for it. the lids are being machined to within 1/16" tolerance. i also have a tube of sylicone to plug any holes that are too big. and i also found this cool red led strip i can mount on top for nightime viewing.
as far as my tank mantanence. i do weekly water changes of about 5 gallons. i get the water from my own 5 stage ro/di unit at home and i mix it with instant ocean. i have a 5 gal bucket that sits at the shop with clean SW mix in it. and every week i use that for the water change and replace the bucket. so i always have 5g on hand just in case. i don't test the water that often any more cuz it's always zero. but i have the test kits here at work. i will be testing more once the octo gets here and im keeping a close eye on tank permaeters. mainly testing ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, ph, and phosphates. im not too worried about calcium and magnesium cuz theres no coral in there.
i totally agree that about 5% of the genral public is crazy. but in a tattoo shop we get WAY more crazies. closer to like 50%. when we first thought about putting an octo in here, that was my first concern. i was so affraid of some a-hole customer tapping on the glass or opening the lids and hurting our animal. but we have had this tank in here for a few months and i have noticed that most customers ignore it. it has an open top right now, and i haven't found anything in there that i didn't put there. i had a clown fish in there for a few weeks, and peolple kinda noticed him. but for the most part people just walk right past it. i am still concerend about it though. we have a reseptionist who sits right in front of the tank, and she is there all day. she will not be happy at all if someone messes with our tank, and she has the right to kick someone out for doing so. but i still want to make the lids as customer proof as possible. i was planning on making it noisy some how, attach a bell or something. so nobody could sneek in when the receptionist isn't looking. i just need my lids to get here so i can start playing around with them.
as far as cycling. i understand that ballancing the micro organisms to what the tank gets fed is very important. for the first 3 weeks it sat empty. then after the initial ammonia spike settled down, we put a few fish in. i have had up to 4 fish in there at a time. i have been moving fish around my tanks at home and used this work tank as qt tank for a bit. so it has had at least 1 fish in it since early april. right now, most of the fish have gone back home. i still have a flasher wrasse in there, a choc chip star, 2 peppermint shrimp, and about 20 or so snails. i feed the wrasse way too much twice a day. i have been doing this on purpose for the exact reason you mentioned. i don't want my messy eating octo to change what the tank is used to. if anything the tank might get a break with only 2 dead fiddlers a day. i get a bit of algea growth and i go in and brush it off by hand when i do water changes. other than that my tank is pretty used to accepting a lot of waste food. if my lids take take to much longer to get here i may bring another fish from home so the wrasse doesn't get lonely.
i am hoping that i don't get the little nocternal cousin of A.aculeatus. but if i do, i am prepared for it. the lids are being machined to within 1/16" tolerance. i also have a tube of sylicone to plug any holes that are too big. and i also found this cool red led strip i can mount on top for nightime viewing.
as far as my tank mantanence. i do weekly water changes of about 5 gallons. i get the water from my own 5 stage ro/di unit at home and i mix it with instant ocean. i have a 5 gal bucket that sits at the shop with clean SW mix in it. and every week i use that for the water change and replace the bucket. so i always have 5g on hand just in case. i don't test the water that often any more cuz it's always zero. but i have the test kits here at work. i will be testing more once the octo gets here and im keeping a close eye on tank permaeters. mainly testing ammonia, nitrates, nitrites, ph, and phosphates. im not too worried about calcium and magnesium cuz theres no coral in there.