Phosphate - Hanna low range colorimeter
Nitrate - American Marine Nitrate Moniter (probe)

How are you able to detect 1ppm of phosphate? The Colorimeter isn't accurate to more than about 1ppm.

Congratulations on the anniversary! Awesome pictures, thanks for sharing.

Just a nice photo for no reason at all
 

I just like this photo. I suppose it would have been better if the feeding clips weren't there, but cropping them out seem to ruin the shot.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0580.jpg

Simply stunning, and I bet he knows it :wink:

Wow I love that fish. He's amazing and seems pretty darn plump too. Are you planning on keeping him for his full lifespan?

I can photoshop out the clips if you like. Email me the largest version you have of this image if your interested. chokomoloko "at" yahoo . ca

Keith

Full lifespan? Sure...but does anybody know what that is? I'm obviously concerned about how large he might actually get, but I would say his growth rate has slowed a bit lately. (slower..meaning less than 1" per month!) I think if he gets much beyond 2 feet long, it is going to be a problem. Just checked...I've had him in the tank for exactly 1.5 years now.

For obvious reasons, you just don't see people post images of N. vlamingi at full maturity. For over a year, Freckles had no visible sign of the Naso twin spines...but in the last few months they are starting to show. Maybe they never develop beyond small bumps, but spine-wise...he's still a baby.

Thanks, I could do that as well. No big deal.

GORGEOUS pic!!! I wouldn't even care about the clips...I wouldn't even notice if you hadn't pointed it out! It's fantastic!

Any updates on the mantis?

I have not seen a mantis in over a year. I have no idea why they didn't make it...or it could be that they've settled into places where they stay pretty secretive. There are plenty of loud "cracks" coming from the tank, but that could be any number of pistol shrimp that I know were there.

At one point, I know I had at least 6 mantis.

I am not sure if this has been asked, but what do you use to clean your tank. I have a big acrylic tank and access is not as easy as a regular rectangular tank, so its hard to clean it.

1" thick acrylic required me to use the Great White Mag cleaner. In order to avoid scratching the outside of the 'glas, I wrap the outer magnet in a baby diaper and lubricate it with "brillianize" acrylic cleaner. I have to clean the 'glas about every 2nd or 3rd day..which involves cleaning almost all the way around the tank since it is almost 4 completely 4 sided viewing.

deep sand bed????
 

INcredible set up....

May I ask what depth you went for your sand bed and what type of substrate you used?


Thanks,

Tim

The sand bed is intended to be decorative and is only 1" to 2" deep. It is crushed coral that came from Florida and is the substrate that naturally surrounds the live rock in that area.

Love the bar beside the tank. Nice tought.

Anemone spawning
 

When I returned from two weeks holiday, the tank had moved in a few ways.

1) Things got too hot (hitting 85 degrees F a few times). It turns out this was primarily because someone accidently shut off my ventilation fan. That won't happen again.

2) Salinity got a bit lower than I would prefer...measuring 1.020 when I got back.

Overall, I lost another 3 or 4 coral colonies...and browned out a few others. One of the gobies hasn't yet been seen, but that isn't entirely unusual. We'll see.

So...some rapid salinity adjustment, a water change, and getting the fan turned back on seems to have returned the tank to as normal as normal has been for the past while.

Here's the interesting part...the events seem to have triggered a massive spawning. My urchins spawned last night and.... for the first time in 12 years, my carpet anemone spawned at the same time. This turned the tank so milky you could barely see into it and I was very concerned that the tank couldn't take it. By next morning, all was fine aside from a slight unusual smell and a LOT of skimate.

While spawning, the anemone changes shape distinctly....stretching itself as high as possible and forming a "cup" shape. It seems my anemone is a male...or..it was this time.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0598.jpg

That is pretty cool!:biggrin:

Wow, neato! So is your anemone male because it made that funny shape? :razz:

About temperature and heat...
 

I can't believe that it took me 3 years to figure this out.... doh!

2 years ago, before we air conditioned the house, the tank was getting too hot. So...I naturally installed central air conditioning to the entire house.

That prevented the tank from getting too hot, but there was still a significant high/low day/night swing in the temperature. For some dumb reason, I figured that by keeping the tank warmer at night, it would minimize the daily swing. Stability is better than instability, right? I adjusted my heaters to keep the tank at 79 overnight.

It only just became clear to me that this didn't really work at all. Each day, the lights added a certain amount of heat energy to the tank, while the air conditioning was able to remove a certain amount of heat energy. That all happens mostly independently of the temperature that the tank happens to be every morning when the lights start up.

In other words...the tank goes up about 3-4 degrees every daylight cycle, and it is going to do that regardless of how cool I allow the tank to get at night.

So...I've decided that a range of 78-82 is probably much better than 79-83. In fact, I'll probably end up dropping it right down to 77-81 or even 76-80.

Erm .. I'm not sure I follow. You mean the A/C *eventually* kicks in and lowers the tank temperature, but there is still a heat "surge" (for lack of a better term) when the lights turn on ?

If I do understand this correctly, it seems there may still be a case to add a chiller to a tank even if the house has central air?

The lights are putting heat INTO the tank when they are running....and the air conditioning takes heat OUT of the tank pretty much all the time. During the time when the lights are on, the lights win...and the net contribution moves the tank about 3 or 4 degrees. When the lights go out, air conditioning drops the tank toward room temperature, but the tank stops dropping because heaters kick on. (which now happens at 78 degrees)

A chiller would probably be able to prevent any rise in the tank temp at all during light cycle. However, I don't really have space for a chiller...don't want the noise...and I would need to vent the heat out of the fish room and can't come up with a simple plan to do that.

As an aside...the central air conditioning does not have a vent directly into the fishroom. It therefore is less effective at cooling the aquarium than it could be. I plan to tap into a duct in the ceiling of the fishroom that should improve that situation quite a bit. It could be that once I do that, I might end up at very stable temperature.

Putting a square peg into a round hole!
 

This took an entire day of work, but I finally got that new skimmer into place. What a beast! This is a Reefmania PS12-4 with wet neck option. I don't yet have the wet neck plumbed in and working.

So far, it hasn't skimmed much at all. Still breaking in, I hope.

The key changes from the G6 are:
1) The volume of the skimmer is almost 2x
2) There are 4 Sedra 9000s instead of 3
3) All 4 pumps are recirculated and out of the water
4) The skimmer is now directly gravity fed from the main display

I'm a bit concerned that I'm flowing too much water through, so I intend to order a 9" height extension to the skimmer which should result in a dwell time of about 2 minutes based on chamber of 20 gallons and flow of 600gph.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...n/100_0675.jpg

Holy moly, that's a big skimmer!!

I'm back!
 

I have been wrong once before...but this time I really think the aquarium has turned around.

As most everyone knows, the past year has been a steady downward decline in the health of the coral. I lost so much coral, I can't even begin to describe it.

However, for the past 2 weeks there has been a dramatic reversal in the tank. Unfortunately, I can't say with certainty WHAT caused the reversal....but coral is growing like mad and colours are returning. Coral that had been reduced to a small puddle is suddenly shooting up branches.

1) The new skimmer went in 3 weeks ago. Could be that.
2) I began feeding ozone to the skimmer off/on. Could be that.
3) I began dosing VSV (Vodka, Sugar, Vinegar) at 4ml/day. I never measured nitrate higher than 10ppm, but since dosing began my nitrate is down to 1ppm. (almost unmeasurable) Phosphate levels have also dropped...but from a high of 8ppm to 1ppm.
4) I vaccuumed the sand bed (but I had done that 50x before) For whatever reason, this time the cyano didn't come back (VSV?)

Some things that I have NOT changed:
1) Same Salt
2) Same water change schedule
3) Same fish feeding amounts/schedule
4) Same lighting
5) Same water movement

Very puzzling, Brad. But the main thing is your tank is on the mend. Whoo Hoo!

Wow thats some skimmer! :eek: Sometimes I think this hobby is funny as nobody can ever pinpoint what they did to make their tank "better" yet we can usually figure out what we did to make it worse :razz:

I can sense the excitement in your comeback and I'm happy for you! Great to hear and I'm eagerly waiting for some new pictures =)

Tang Tales and Other Stories
 

These things just kind of sneak up on you and suddenly you notice..."Hey, Freckles has tail streamers".

Because "he" is so huge, it is easy to forget that Freckles is still a baby. He has not yet been in the tank for 2 years. (2 years in Jan, 2010) It seems that shortly before 2 years old, he suddenly developed tail streamers confirming that he is, in fact, a he.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0173.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0191.jpg

The timing is about right, IME. I added Moe (the blonde Naso) almost 2.5 years ago and when I purchased him he was at least 1 year old judging from his size. He first began to show streamers about 1 year after purchase. Now, at about 3.5 years old, his streamers are just getting more stunning all the time.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0185.jpg

So....is my youngest next? Lance (the unicorn), has only been in the tank for 18 mohths and was a small juvenile when purchased. I don't even know if Unicorn Tangs develop tail streamers but his tail looks like "he" might. I could get get lucky for a 3rd time!
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0175.jpg

That's AWESOME! :mrgreen:

Congrats... to Moe I suppose.. haha

Skimzilla! Very happy to hear your tank has turned around.

FTS...with survivors
 

Here's an updated full tank shot and one from 1 year ago to see how far the tank has fallen. You should be able to see all the large colonies that aren't there anymore.

Oct, 2008
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/100_0306.jpg

Oct, 2009
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0192.jpg

Fortunately, there are survivors. Let's classify these ones as "hard to kill".
The Hammer Coral and this very-hairy acro...
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0193.jpg

Don't know what this is, but I'm glad I didn't lose it. It is quickly regaining its purple with brown colour.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0195.jpg

This moss-green acro also seemed to do OK while everything else died. It never even lost it's colour. Recently, this coral has started to grow like crazy! The red milli behind it took a real beating, but looks to be recovering. If you look closely at the red milli, you'll see that a couple of branches are orange. That is because they died and were covered over by orange encrusing fire coral....another coral that seems impossible to kill.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0197.jpg

wow untamed, your tank looks really purple now in that shot. those fish are definitly georgeous. your tank is truly and inspiration to not quit when the going gets tough. your tank is a dream tank for me. great photos too by the way, i wish i could see this tank is person i would be blown away compared to what i have ever set up.

Well...between the cyano on the sand and the uncleaned coraline on the glass...there is more purple there. But I think you are mostly seeing some bad colour balanced photography on my part.

Wow Brad: Sure did lose quite a few. Glad things have settled down and recovery is on its way. Fish look good. How are those gobys doing? Still excavating?

Thats a humungus (sp?) hammer coral.
Is that new skimmer working out? Is the cyano getting less?

I've had that hammer coral now for 15 years. I can't imagine how large it would be if I had not sold off most of it when I sold my first tank. I purchased it as a single head.

Sadly, I lost both Gobies over the summer...just shy of two years in the tank. I'm trying to replace them now.

I think the new skimmer is the reason for the tank turnaround. I still have cyano, but I've always had cyano even when the tank was extremely healthy. I just feed too much.

Onward and Upward...
 

The extension for my skimmer arrived today and I couldn't resist putting it in place. Unfortunately, the carbon cup for the very top wasn't built quite correctly so that will have to wait for another time.

If I ever get out of the hobby, I've got a start on an interesting Halloween costume!
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...n/000_0205.jpg

Close a valve and water stops going to the skimmer allowing me to dismantle it even while the pumps are still running.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...n/000_0206.jpg

Add the new section....
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...n/000_0207.jpg

Put the top back on, open the valve and away she goes! I can't go any higher than this because the water line in the skimmer would become higher than the overflow box that is feeding the skimmer. At this height, the reaction chamber is 12"D x 40"H. At 600gph that makes the dwell time inside the skimmer about 2 minutes. The water is calmer at the top of the skimmer now than previously.
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...n/000_0210.jpg

That's a good look for you Brad.

One of these days I'm going to get a phallic skimmer as well.

:)

I'm guessing it didn't fit.