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New pictures.
I cleaned off all of the coraline from the back glass of my frag tank to give it a cleaner look. Now you can really see the frags hanging there. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture059.jpg I've also re-organized my power bar and spider web of wires to lesson the amount of a fire hazard that it is. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...cture057-1.jpg I'm too broke to buy one so I built this DIY waste collector for my skimmer out of donated acrylic. The sticker is from a record label. I think it makes it look name-brand. lol http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture065.jpg I've been wanting more flow for a while so earlier this summer when I saw an opportunity to upgrade my OM SS Compact to a 4-Way I took it. I'm still running a Sequence Dart but with the larger plumbing I'm getting roughly 1000gph more flow through it. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture486.jpg Heres a pic of the gear that sits under the tank. Ca reactor, DIY effluent chamber, DIY kalk reactor, CO2 cylinder, battery backup, and Neptune DC8. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...cture064-1.jpg |
More new pics.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture138.jpg I nearly killed this bubble two years ago but after moving it to this shaded and protected corner it has made a steady recovery. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture130.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture123.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture110.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture100.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture099.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture134.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture106.jpg Why does it have to grow so SLOW! I love this frag. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture102.jpg |
Beautiful colours on your lion fish!
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Everything looks really healthy. Seems your pictures are very true to life as far as white balance goes etc. What's your secret?
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About a week ago my plate coral spawned. It was about two hours before the lights shut off and it just started puffing clouds of white liquid. I wish I could have taken a picture but I wasnt prepared. Heres a picture of it today, acting normal. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture101.jpg |
Do I see some Acans in your frag tank? *wink wink, nudge nudge*
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Wow, I just read through this whole tank journal and I am very impressed. I love the mature and "clean" look to your tank with lots of open water. Very very nice build. Out of curiosity, what pump are you running with your Bullet 3? I'm running one of those. Thinking about maybe adding a pump to it. Where do you have your water level in the skimmer? Thanks again.
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Elos NO3 <1 Elos PO4 .01 http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture150.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture149.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture155.jpg |
I cant get over the growth of this acro I bought as a frag from Ottawa Inverts in a group order we did back in March of this year. It was about 1/5" on a plug at the time.
May 17: http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture288.jpg October 16: http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture417.jpg November 14: http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture231.jpg January 13 http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture672.jpg |
wowow i hate you, ur tank makes mine look bad lol
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I was trying to take some good close up shots of various acros that I have for sale this evening. Unfortunately I succeeded and as a result I discovered that I have F@#$%^G Red Bugs again! I wiped all of these little bastards out over a year ago and now they're back. I've given every new SPS purchase I've made an overnight interceptor bath but it seems that wasn't enough. So once again I have to treat the tank... I'll be following Melev's system again for this one and starting my first treatment tonight. http://www.melevsreef.com/redbugs.html
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...do/redbugs.jpg |
bugs
thanks for replying.
My situation has changed and I am off work for medical reasons, NO INCOME till U.I. cuts in. Bad time of year will have to put off buying for a few months Linda |
The redbugs are gone once more and everything seems to be as it should. I've upgraded the overflow plumbing from 1-1/2" to 2" in order to quite it down a bit. I still run the small risk of an overflow because I only have the single drain so I've mounted a water level sensor to the top rim of the tank and connected it to my controller. If the water rises too high because something is blocking the overflow the alarm will sound, I'll get a text message and the return pump will shut off. This saved me from a potential disaster over the christmas holiday. Learn from my mistake folks... drill your tank for TWO overflows.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture678.jpg My skimmer is running a little bit better now with this Iwaki 70 pump which replaced the Iwaki 55 that I was using. It ran well before switching but now its able to process even more water. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture680.jpg The coral keeps growing and thankfully the bryosis is receding. Unfortunately most of my fish are the hiding sort (unless its feeding time). In there somewhere is a tomato clown, purple tang, mandarin dragonet, fu manchu lionfish, snowflake moray eel, and copperbanded butterfly. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture674.jpg The frag tank is where I spend most of my time. Sawing and snipping, tethering and gluing... I bought that big elegance a month ago. What I ordered was a frag of an Australian elegance and what I received was a large colony instead. I'm hoping that my purchase and placement was educated enough and that I will be successful. This is the second (and the last) elegance that I will buy. The first one was an Indonesian a few years ago that died within a week. If I'm successful with this Australian I plan to try fragging it in a years time. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture682.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture516.jpg |
Look who came out to pose for the camera!
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture686.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture683.jpg |
Not a lot to report on. I lost my big golden tear drop maxima clam last week. On the Monday its mantle looked pinched in one spot so I moved it to my frag tank because I though it may have been nipped by one of the fish. By Wednesday it looked pretty bad so I gave it a fresh water dip. By Friday it was dead. I guess I waited too long to dip but I'm not sure. I had the clam for 5 years and it died in 5 days... sucks.
Here is a picture of how the maxima looked on the Wednesday before the dip. Normally the mantle would be very well extended. Theres probably a regular picture of it in this thread. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture750.jpg Most of the other 6 clams are doing fine and havent had any problems. However I did freshwater dip my squamosa about 3 weeks ago when it started exhibiting signs of pinch mantle. The squamosa recovered without incident. Ironically I've never had any problems with the 'difficult' to keep crocea clams. Just the 'easier' maxima, squamosa and derasa... March 19 FTS http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture778.jpg |
Read the whole thread, very inspiring! That Fu Manchu is awesome. I saw one at the LFS a couple weeks ago and have vouched to get one when I can house it properly.
Very nice work. And for the record, I too am a sawdust sweeping degree holding metalhead ;D |
Here are a few new interesting pictures. The small green coral is a tiny little trachyphyllia frag that accidentally came off of the larger colony that I recently sold. I've added an arrow to point to a pod for size reference. It started out as a little chunk of skeleton with some tissue attached that fell off the side after I did some cutting and has grown into a mini colony with its own mouth and feeder tentacles.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1215.jpg This just looks cool... http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1208.jpg FTS May 14. I'm feeling pretty lucky these days. My only real problem is the red slime that still wont go away. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1219.jpg Here are a few pictures of my Australian elegance coral that I got back in December. This is a picture from the first day. Notice the location of the tissue on the skeleton... http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture349.jpg ... Here is a picture of the elegance at night all closed up. You can see here how much it has grown in the past 6 months! *note: I cut 1" of old skeleton off of the bottom so that it wouldnt sit so tall. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1200.jpg Here is a day time shot with the tissue fully expanded. I'm pretty excited about my success so far. The only other elegance I've tried was an Indo and it was dead within a week. If this Australian continues to thrive and grow for another six months I'll try fragging it. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1223.jpg |
Awesome colour and shot of the open brain coral.
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I haven't posted anything here in over a month so here are some updates on the world within my tank. Shortly after my FTOTM release the yellow coris wrasse disappeared. I suspect my eel may have eaten it but I'm not sure. I had had it for over two years and it was 3" long... There was no trace of it inside or outside of the tank so maybe I'll never know.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...edo/Wrasse.jpg It seems like every month comes with a new problem/challenge and I think I may have solved this one. My beautiful blue and pink chalice has recently been showing some recession while the other chalice frag I have under identical conditions continues to grow very well. They are both in my frag tank which does not contain any fish, crabs, shrimp or anything else that could pick on them... or at least that is what I thought until I found a crab molt the other day. So I did some exploring and found a little gorilla crab hiding under a large coral that was very close to where I kept this chalice. The crab has since been removed to a fish bowl in my sump so hopefully that solves the mystery. Before http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture697.jpg After http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1238.jpg Red circled crab in exile http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1276.jpg Some good news... This coral continues to grow at an exponential rate. Here are two pictures taken one year apart. May 2009 http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture288.jpg May 2010 http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h.../Acropora2.jpg I did a little system tweaking this month too and added this solenoid to my fresh water reservoir. I bought the valve on ebay from valvesforprojects and wired it to a 12VDC adapter from an old internet router that doesn't work anymore. It is on a timer to turn the flow on for an hour each day. This way my RO/DI filter doesn't have to turn on and off 40+ times a day whenever the Tunze top-off system replenishes some evaporated water. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1271.jpg |
Thank you for that wonderful photo. I read this whole thread start to finish, and I love those two fish, and one day want to start a tank dedicated to this style of fish. I currently read about them all the time and just love everything about them.
Also, love your setup, looks wonderful and everything looks so clean and thought out. |
I've spend a considerable amount of time inside of the tank staging my rockwork and planning for how my coral will grow in but that is about as thought out as it gets. The rest of my system is the result of endless fiddling and bandaid solutions... which works. But I'm not overly proud of it.
Over the last month I tried out a Prodibio Biokit http://www.prodibio.fr/index.php?fil...eau_id=2&id=14 complements of Progressive Reef. I didn't follow the instructions to the word because I have a fairly large system and would have used some of the vials up entirely the very first time I dosed. So instead I just used a row each week for simplicity's sake. Before dosing I already had undetectable levels of nitrate and phosphate (according to elos kits), good color and growth and I do plenty of trace element replenishing through weekly water changes so I didn't expect to see any improvements. However I was surprised when nearly all of the cyanobacteria in my sandbed cleared up almost immediately. Maybe this was a direct result of supplementing or maybe it was just its time to go as it has typically done so in cycles before. Aside from the cyano I noticed a slight improvement in one acro that had recently recovered after bleaching a bit earlier last winter. But thats about all. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1329.jpg I've made two other system changes this month as well. I'm curious to try out some solid organic carbon dosing so I've switched out the maxijet pump on my phosban reactors for this mag 3.5. When the pellets arrive I'll swap out the GFO for them in one and continue to run carbon in the other. I also traded out the mag 9.5 for a mag 12 for the frag tanks return because I figured it could benefit from a little more flow. Ironically I don't really like mag pumps, but to a certain limit I can get them for free so I tend to use a lot of them. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1331.jpg This month I also had a lot of clam spawning... which put me a bit on edge but everything seems to have gone fine. I was able to photograph the derasa pushing out some white fluid for an hour but I didn't capture the maxima clams doing it. The derasa begun doing it just before lights out a few weeks ago and the maxima clams followed about a week later at around the same time. All are still alive and looking healthy today. I attribute these spawning events to the Neptune controller's seasonal temperature and lighting variations my tank follows. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1291.jpg |
That looks so cool I want an eel now :D
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Beautiful pics. Man those caps are nice. :thumb:
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Its been a few weeks since I ran out of the probio kit stuff and it seems like some of my cyano is returning a bit. But that is the only noticeable difference that I can see.
This time I'm experimenting with some Vertex Pro-Bio Pellets. My hopes is that I'll be able to use them in place of GFO which I've been running steady for about two years now to keep the phosphate levels in my tank undetectable. The GFO from BRS has been great and I've been able to bring the phosphate down to 0 from .75 and keep it there by changing out 1 cup each month. But this solid organic carbon system appears to be much less expensive and a little less maintenance so I've been wanting to give it a try. At this time both phosphate and nitrate in my system are undetectable so I'm curious to see if the phosphate starts to creep back up or not and whether or not anything looks visually different in the tank over time. I was able to get about 300ml of pellets to completely fit and liquidize in a TLF Reactor powered with a Mag 3 pump. My net system water volume is probably a little over 200gal so according to their directions I should minimally have 400ml of pellets running. But most of my system is empty water space and contains just 6 fish so we'll see. EDIT: I removed the sponges and replaced them with some of that craft store plastic mesh. By doing so I was able to fit some more pellets in and now I'm pretty close to 400ml. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1398.jpg |
I'm only on day two of the pellet experiment. My tank looks quite a bit cloudier than normal and the skimmer is pulling more than it generally does. Some of the coral look a bit off while others look perfectly normal.
On a side note my Seachem KH test kit ran out today so I switched to a new Elos one. On my Seachem kit I was told that my tanks alkalinity was 8 dkh. On the Elos one it says 12.5 dkh! I don't know about you but that is a huge difference in my opinion. So I'm shutting off the flow of CO2 to my calcium reactor until it comes down to at least 10 dkh. In the mean time I'm going to try and find someone else in town with a test kit that I can reference mine against. |
OK here are a couple of ideas regarding the lack of reliability of kH test kits.
My Salifert kH test kit came with a reference standard to check the kH test results against. If no one in town has a reference standard to lend you, I can bring one out next time I am in town. The other idea is to use a pH monitor (recently calibrated against known standards) to measure the pH of a sample of tank water that has been aerated outdoors for a few hours. By aerating the water sample, the concentration of CO2 in the water will be equal to the concentration in the atmosphere. Since carbonate/bicarbonate is the predominant buffer system in seawater, you can take the pH and the concentration of CO2, and calculate the kH. By using both these methods you should be able to come to some approximation of how accurate your kH test kit is. |
A lot of coral looks ****ed off this morning and some of the fish aren't breathing right so I'm going to take some of the pellets out so that I only have 250ml running and do a water change.
I dont think I'll have a problem finding someone in town with a KH kit that I can try but thanks for the idea. |
Hey, I haven't used the Vertex Pellets, but with NP BioPellets they need to be tumbling very aggressively... I may be incorrect, but doesn't the Vertex ones need to be used in the same way? I see that you have your reactor stuffed, with no room to move.
If the Vertex are on the same principle as NP BioPellets, then the reactor is just going to get bunged up with mulm and garbage... I would suggest removing half of them and get them really moving around. This is way I use 3 reactors in my setup, with about 1 litre in each, and have them going crazy (tumbling and whipping around). I hope this helps, If the vertex pellets are different, please enlighten us all. Thanks. |
No they all tubling. I posted a picture and not a video so its hard to tell. I guess I could take a snap of them with the pump off and then with the pump on so that you could see... But I've already made some changes and removed a lot so there isn't really any point now. With the amount that was in there the reactor was about 2/3 full with the pump off. With the pump on it looks like its completely full.
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Not saying you have to do this, but I run 3 liters on my system (180G, with 100G sump/refuge) How much are you running, maybe run more. I know I run alot for my system, but I have researched that it is quite hard to overdose on these, and since I have a big bioload, I found what I run to be working well. |
I had posted that I was running the minimum recommended amount for my systems net water volume which was 400ml. However I just removed some this morning because some things in the tank didn't look so good. So now there is just 250ml. Yes I'm kind of paranoid but I think that trait has helped me to avoid a lot of disasters already. If everything starts looking better I'll go back up to 400ml eventually. If I try to fit any more I'll need another reactor. And since Nitrate and Phosphate are already undetectable in my system and my bioload isn't too bad I don't think I'll be doing that.
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I'm having a pretty busy week. The tank finally settled down after a few days of bacteria bloom from the pellets. The water is looking clear again and the coral and fish are no longer oxygen deprived and distressed. Here is how the reactor looks at the moment with just 250ml inside. It is tumbling, its just hard to tell because it is just a picture.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1405.jpg As I think I mentioned the skimmer was pulling quite a bit out for the last few days. Here is how it looked and underneath is how it normally looks. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1403.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture155.jpg I've got big plans for my frankensump tomorrow (note: I just fed the fish so my foam head has collapsed, this is normal). I've decided to tear down my 50gal frag tank and convert the sump into a frag trough. I'm going to remove the 50gal's return and overflow and the area where I've been trying to grow macro algae. Then I'm going to move the skimmer to the left outside of the sump and part all of the rocks to the sides as well. Once everything has been moved out of the way I'll put all of the coral that is in the 50gal in the middle and hang one of my Lumenmax pendants above. For some extra flow in the sump I've picked up two Hydor Koralia Evolution 1400 powerheads. I may leave them to run constantly or I may plug them into the controller and have them alternate... I haven't decided yet. (EDIT: after reading some reviews I'll just leave these to run constant and not on a wave maker) I'll post some more pictures tomorrow when the dust clears. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1404.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1386.jpg |
After about 5 hours of setting up and then cleaning up here is how frankensump looks this evening.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1432.jpg |
That is a lot of work and it looks much better. You can enjoy watching what's going on in frankensump.
I like the price tag idea of labelling plug-ins. Mitch |
I'm into the second week of pellet usage now. All of the tank inhabitants seem to be growing and looking the same as they always have. The skimmer has settled down a little bit although its still producing more than it would in the past. The cyano in the sand is back... perhaps in time it will go away as the tank adjusts to the pellets.
I received two new additions this week from Tang Daddy. The first is 3/4" of a Hawkins Enchinata and the other is 5/8" of some kind of blue tort. They certainly don't look like much now but hopefully if I'm careful with them they will grow into nice colonies in a few years. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1499.jpg http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1498.jpg |
Hey. Nice job on the sump. So was there any reason behind the downsize?
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Growing out frags in the sump provides me with more space than the 50gal. More space equals more frags. Also, because its in the sump there is no glass or fishing line to clean. While suspending frags has some advantages, the fishing line was an algae magnet requiring constant tedious cleaning because no herbivorous invertebrates could service it. I also expect that downsizing to less system volume will improve the skimmer's performance as there is now less water to process.
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Your tank is spectacular. Sump looks much better :smile:
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I'm into the 4th week of Vertex bio pellets. I've noticed a few changes but nothing too spectacular. My bubble coral seems to be inflating larger than normal and the polyps on my gorgonian extend out more than they used to. The skimmer also produces slightly more foam than it was. Other than that the tank seems to be functioning the same as it has been which is great. Nitrate and phosphate continue to be undetectable even though I'm not using GFO anymore and I've cut back to only 5-10gal weekly water changes. My whole objective behind trying this new product was to find something that would save me money on GFO and salt and they seem to be doing the trick.
I'm now growing this macro algae in my frag area under the MH. I used to have it under 16W 6.5K CF bulbs and it barely did anything (I also used to run GFO...). But now its growing at an exponential rate. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1527.jpg There is still just 400ml in the reactor but I've had to turn up the flow to try and keep the pellets from binding together. http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1530.jpg |
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