This one looks to most likely be A Loripes.
FYI - That new table looks to be A solitaryensis.
Love the 2nd clam as well. Things are looking great Dez. Keep up the good work.

Thanks so much for the ID Greg. It always amazes me how you are so good with the scientific names of the corals. Any special care on the A solitaryensis? I love it.

What's the diff. between the A loripes and the A granulosa? They are similar aren't they. The granulosa has smaller branching pattern correct?

Thanks for the comments Greg. Your tank was one of the main tanks that inspired me going mainly sps. I remember contacting you during my initial stages of the build for bits and pieces of advice. Thanks for all of that and taking the time to respond to me. Cheers!

Colors are really looking real good , love the new table, probably one of my favorite growth patterns for acros

A tank to envy all right.
Keep up the good work Dez. Amazing tank!

Dez I blame you for my SPS addiction :lol:. Beauty of a tank you got going there!

Well, you can pass the blame on to Snappy :). I blame him. Thanks for the props. You'll have to change your name to spsElite soon!

Haha, funny that you mention that as after seeing Greg's tank in person I caught the beginning of my addiction :lol:. I like the way MixedReefElite sounds over SPSElite but ZoaElite works just fine for me.

Well, I'm officially sick of saltwater for today. I decided to do some major aquascaping of the tank today. It's 11:10pm and I'm pooped. It all started with my deciding to get rid of my blue stag. I grew this stag from a frag and it barely fit in a bucket when my friend came and picked it up. It was hard for me to get rid of it since I grew it from a frag but it just wasn't fitting with the colour scheme I had in mind for my tank. Seeing that I have zero opportunity for an upgrade, I have to make this tank full of choice pieces. So here we go....I call up my friend to see if he still wants the big stag and a few colonies, he comes over and we started taking stuff out. I ripped out my pink birdsnest this morning since I have 3. I ripped out the biggest colony mainly cause it was running out of room to grow. My magnet barely fit by it and it was up against the right side of the glass. That came out without much of a problem since it was still on the original frag plug and birdsnest don't tend to encrust onto the rock at it's base. I had fragged up my other pink birdsnest that was a mini colony and sold it off due to popular demand. So now I'm left with one birdsnest that I started from a frag - it has the most room to grow now.

Out came the green fuzzy acro that trippled in size from my original purchase.

I also took out a big colony of my tricolor acro because I have one on the other side of the tank that started out as a frag and is growing into a nice mini colony now. No sense in having the same coral on different ends of the tank.

I had taken out my pink stylo a couple of weeks ago because I saw that my flame angle had developed a tast for it and was biting chunks out of it so that was a hard one to let go of.

I hacked out my lime green/yellow birdsnest simply cause I have quite a bit of greens and yellows in my tank and that nest is too fast of a grower. I have a colony in my frag tank that I had to break a couple of the tips off to get into the bucket.

Lastly the blue stag. I tried to get it off the rock but it had encrusted around the frag plug and onto the rock. This is when I put too much pressure and had my rock colapse on me....argh.

So after taking this many colonies out, I still had trouble rearranging the rocks and corals back in place. The corals were so close together and almost intertwining at some places. I managed to get it back together however many hours later and still feel that there is no room in the tank. I do miss the stag as I really enjoyed the growth pattern but it wasn't a coral that "popped" enough. I'm hoping that my yellow stag with blue tips will fill out that void of open water there. We'll see how that goes.

I know, none of this text means anything without pictures. I'll get some up sometime. I'm too tired.

On another note, my Hawaiian flame wrasse that I've had for 3 days is eating pellets now. I'm pretty excited about that as I was worried about other fish harassing it, and next I was worried about him being a slow feeder. He was slow to get food at the LFS.

Good night!.....phew!

Des what were you saying about not putting your hands in the tank for GREAT SUCCESS? Lol...sounds like she looks a lot different. I'm glad I got a chance to see v1.0 and look forward to seeing the new and improved.

And about your upgrade...you have room to go half a foot wider on each side without anyone noticing I think =)

When you sell a colony that's been encrusted you gotta put your hands in Brett. I just have to start the growth over again with the new stuff that I put it. It doesn't look that different, just really empty where that huge stag was. I'm kind of sensing a little bit of regret now but the longer I waited, the harder it would be to pull it out. I want to give other corals a chance to grow it that water column.

And once again, there will be no upgrade for me as much as I'd like to :biggrin:

new aquascape sounds exciting, the tank is awesome Dez.

I cant wait to see it sometime.

My wife was checking out the aquarium last night and said, "Des, quick take a picture." It's not often my strawberry conchs show both their eyeballs. I bought 10 strawberry conchs when I first started the aquarium and all 10 of them are still kickin'. I like them. They are hardy and fun to watch. They don't knock corals over cause they typically stay on the sand most of the time eating detritus/leftovers.

http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...g?t=1275961395

Here is the new aquascape. I am still going through withdrawal of my blue stag and bright purple acro. Miss them, but it'll be better in the long run. Living room side:
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...g?t=1275961582

Den side:
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...g?t=1275961670

New Aquascaping is looking great Dez, actually prefer it over the old one. Tank looks much more open now (Although I'm sure that will change shortly :lol:)

Wow Dez...amazing tank.

Is this a zeo system? Also sorry but I've tried to find the specs in the thread....what lighting are you using.

The rusty/pink acro has orange tips from the picture. That one is something special ....

ya, this tank looks like a lot of fun to plunk ones self in front of and just oggle. So may pretty things to look at!

nice work!!!

Thanks for the nice comments. Yes it is a zeo system. It is a 5 x 2 x 2 150 gallon tank. I have 3 x 250 watt halides with cheap China 14k halide bulbs, and 4 x 84 watt T5's (Giessman Actinic plus and KZ fiji purples) and 2 x 54 watt T5s (Aquascience 10K I think). Also 2 x single LED moonlights.

Thank you Kien and Cuz for the nice remarks.

Trust me it is :mrgreen: Looks great (as always) Des

Really like the open look as well but can't imagine just yanking colonies. I hope my growth is never as good as yours man =)

You just gotta go bigger Brett :), you're the one always bugging me. Have to yank colonies cause I can't go bigger, although I did trick my wife once into saying yes, but she quickly retracted her statement.

A wise man (rus) once said "It is better to beg forgiveness than to ask permission"

yeah it is definitely easier to ask for forgiveness than permisssion... :mrgreen:

So here's the plan then. Order a new tank, order new lights etc. Send my wife and kids away for a week....then during that week install the new tank and everything. Then when my wife and family comes back, they can't really make me take it out..... think it'll work?:mrgreen:

Yep. :mrgreen:

Nope, I don't think it will. :neutral:

I think it all depends on where you send your wife for the week. If it is to her mothers it definetly won't work. If it is somewhere spectacular where your wife can get some spa treatments everyday and not worry to much about anything. It would probably be better for you to keep the kids yourself. If you do all the your wife probably won't even notice a new tank for a few weeks.


Chris

Sounds like a plan.

Maybe Vegas would work. It would be even better if I sent her away alone and kept the kids with me, then they could help. I'll just tell her it was the kids' idea :biggrin:

A got something in the mail today!!!!!!:mrgreen: So excited to open it!

http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...g?t=1276573323

What great workmanship......like a kid getting candy!
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...g?t=1276573375

And installed:
http://i600.photobucket.com/albums/t...g?t=1276573489

16" custom skimmer extension. I also have a 12" extension that I ordered as well, so I could stack them and have a 5' tall skimmer if I wanted. I put the 16" extension on to start and started the water level low to break it in. Excited to see how it performs.

If those extensions work well for you I may have to try out your idea myself. If you don't mind me asking, how much did they cost?

Sent you PM

Length isn't everything man but it sure can't hurt your system. Do you have to feed more flow from the pump in there now that you're skimmer is fully erect?

Well, at this point I really couldn't do anything about girth, so all I could do was to extend the length of it. No I don't have to feed more flow from the pump, I simply raised the water level with my gate valve. My theory is that the more erect it is, the more contact time the bubbles have, thus skimming more? I don't know. And Brett, FYI the skimmer isn't fully erect yet. I still have a 12" extension sitting in the box :biggrin:

Sounds like a good plan to me :biggrin:

Yet another good reason to fully read the whole comment. Somehow I read the part in bold and I missed words in front of it. Makes more sense when you read it all together :redface:

seriously, not the right time to skim posts.. all I pulled out on my first pass was.. blah blah blah 12" blah blah blah extension blah blah blah 16" blah blah blah erect blah blah blah more extensions! ..:surprise:

You've been using that extension for over a month. Got any updates for us to say how it worked out?

Dez make sure that you add more air now with the extension since you have longer contact time or you will find that the mid way up you will see the skimmer get really dirty

oh ya what pump are you running Dez on the skimmer

Oops, totally missed this post. The skimmer extension is awesome. The skimmate seems worse. My wife has recently started to complain about the stench from the fish room and the tank has been up for a year already, and it's only recently she's complaining about the smell. I agree with her. I need to get some sort of carbon soon for my external skimmate collector cause it really does smell.

Mike, the pump is my return pump - blackfin 6000. It's got lots of juice and yes I did increase the air a bit but I don't want the bubble size to be too big.