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on the right of the duncan coral, what kind of corals are those?
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The mostly orange? Some kind of acan, the nicest ones I have.
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yes acetone/alcohol will clean it, do it just before siliconing:) |
Ugh, got home from work yesterday and most of my sps are bleaching out, did 15 gal or so water change without even bothering to test anything last night, come home today and the bleaching is no worse, no better.. pe is crap.. lps appear unafected and new clam is toast. ugh.. prepping more water for change.
the night before the problem i rearanged the powerheads a little bit, and used the bottom of the jar of my zeo coral snow, everything else was normal looking.....wtf. |
I remembered what else happened, the night before the problems started I was pulling the weeds(xenia) and a big chunk got away and met the food prosessor which was left stuipidly on full speed. half of the piece was minced and I have no idea where I tossed the remains. Most of my unidentified algae was also feathered at the edges and has since disintegrated. And to add to the insult my skimmer is barely pulling anything out at a setting that was doing good aweek ago.
some lps have bits of skeleton showing through but the affected sps still look bleached. At least they do not look dead |
Colors and growth seeping back into my sps. The girlfriend says the tank is full and I am not allowed to buy more fish or corals or a bigger tank. I guess its time to upgrade some hardware heh.
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My Skimmer is not working worth anything, so upgrade time, hopefully this new one works a little better.
I am on day four of a lighting experiment. My six bulb t5 fixture only covers twelve of eighteen inches width of my tank. I had a 250 w hqi de fixture I was going to put on the frag tank wasting closet space. It now sits behind the t5. I swear a couple drags that have barely grown since frag fest are showing little nubs of growth already. If that keeps up its totally time for a lighting upgrade |
what kind of skimmer is the new one?
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Skims sk 181. I wanted a little more airflow but the price was right so I will give it a go.
I am rarely home when the lights come on in the am, but damn my Bali sliver had long feeders this morning in the dark. The last few months I have been dosing mostly all and barely any ca but tasting last night ca was low 330 or 340, I guess I will have to start dosing more. |
quick fts from the phone
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-21-18_188.jpg there are fish in there they just chose that moment to hide heh. Might not be a new skimmer either, as of today I have lots of time to play in the tank. |
Frankentank has a new sump
I have been trying to be productive while on this vacation.. er week of unemployment some projects that have been on hold for months are getting done. hah got this sump/tank from Kal at the fragfest without knowing it was him. did the baffles and resealed it 2 or 3 times before i got it right < i think that was around christmas> I started isolating the mandarin/frag tank sometime this afternoon. an hour or so ago things got back to full running everything back in place.
I used to have my rock in the first chamber, but I could not get in and clean it. There was lots of nasty goo in there. This go round the rock is on a pvc/eggcrate cage so if i ever need to clean out detritus I can just lift the rock out quick and suck away. there is also a new mj1200 in there to keep things stirred up, though that might get downsized when i tie the 40 in. The last sump also had a baffle fail and eventually i just removed it, with no valve between the pump and the sump, it meant draining all the water out to do maintenance, that issue is resolved. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-18-53_457.jpghttp://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-18-15_999.jpg Here is my old sump just for nastiness sake: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-43-17_671.jpg It was too high, I could barely get anything in under the stand let alone clean much in there. I forget what i had the hole in there for, I think it was when i had it as a live rock refugeium before its sump life but when I started running zeo i had to bust a piece out to get the reactor in. my arms were regularly getting scraped on the rough edges. it might get rebuilt into something else for frankentank or perhaps just cut up for glass. Just need a few more plumbing pieces for the 40 and another batch or 2 of water and the 40 will sit where the 20 now is. I think it will be bare bottom fragugieum, the 20 will be moved below the 40 and be turned into FOWLR Mandarin paradise, or let him go to a new home and just remove the 20. He/she is pretty skinny right now, the wrasse outcompetes for food and i have not been feeding the LPS much in attempt to get the SPS to grow. All In all I wish I could take all these tanks and magically turn them into one but thats not happening for a while. :redface: I just remembered one of the reasons I decided I had to get on this sump move is as I was trying to clean the barely working skimmer one more time over the weekend I lost one of the rubber bearings/bushings under the sump. I just now remembered seeing it as I was cleaning up under the sump and totally forgetting about it.. I wonder where it went. Oh well new skimmer as soon as I am working again anyway. Ohh one more thing.. my white worms are now white worms amidst thousands of little bugs.. ugh.. dammed unsterile basement. I will try to start a couple new cultures out of the one culture i have and pull individual worms out and hope the bugs don't spread. |
busy today too. I cobbled everything together almost the way I want it. I will have to redo the bulkheads when i get some new ones.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-15-49_335.jpg need to decide if the 40 will be frag tank or just put most of the sps and the mp10's into it and leave the fish and lps in the other. manderin tank looks good there as long as the kids leave it alone. might need to skirt things in to make it all kidproof. |
Just fired up the radium above the 40... daymmmm that xm20k is gone for good heh.. i think it will be radium till the led-s show up.. i think ill be throwing the sps in there for sure..
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System Split Picture heavy heh.
I took a bunch of shots with the slr but now Iphoto is acting up and so is everything else that will handle NEF. grrr
the 40 is looking awesome, mostly sps, both mp-10s 250wHQI radium, If the colours even of the frags that were totally browned out under 4-5 month old xm bulb all ready show colour everything else should colour up pretty quick. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-39-32_799.jpg only took this one with the phone before i pulled out the d200. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-40-05_509.jpg <.... .... ... ok an hour later ill try this again.... ... ... > Unedited jpegs as nothing is co-operating today. This was a quick photoshoot before lights out rushing through everything I will try harder next time when everything looks better. FTS http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/DSC_4249.jpg This rainbow has some hydroids or something in it its spreading pretty good not sure to pluck the hydroids out or just nuke that section of it. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/DSC_4253.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/DSC_4250.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/DSC_4251.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/DSC_4252.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/DSC_4255.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/DSC_4257.jpg http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...s/DSC_4270.jpg bah I am to tired if your really interested here is the album http://smg.photobucket.com/albums/v228/nakedboy/fts/ |
Skimmer finally crapped out. the shaft for the impeller cracked just above the magnet. skimmer replacement is still waiting on me finding a half decent job.
oh well I all ready pulled out the hob remora pro out, weak tea is better than no tea. On the other hand if anyone has a skimmer for loan or cheap It would probably make my sps happy. |
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I do have lots of glass sitting here, i will just make a new sump... or not lol thanks for the offer :)
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so i pulled the old workhorse 7 out of the fixture i put the radium in and the 2 pc bulbs were just sitting there doing nothing.. they are a 454 and a 50/50,uvl with internal reflectors.. I just draped them over the glass to see how i like them with the radium and i think they might stay.
that is until i get some end caps and new t5 bulbs to put in instead. I need to clean up the old pc reflectors and re bend them a bit for t-5s as well. my only wonder... with these 1-1.5 year old bulbs will my sps color up more or brown out more? I guess just try it for a few weeks and see eh? sure whats another 192W of electricity/light seeping into my tank going to do... heh break the wallet? |
I went away for 2 days over the weekend and came home to most of my chalice fraglets dead or having unexplainable damage.
Today I was bagging up some frags to help pay for a skimmer and I see my buddy, the GF's must have orange coloured Protoreaster nodosus right on top of the one untouched frag,.. green eye green rim that was growing slow and steady since i got it at fragfest. guess what is now half eaten? can we all guess who is now a resident of the reffugieum/sump area. The gf's response? "Can I just start a tank to put him and a few seahorses in then?". she then points at a 14 gallon cube that had some freshwater fish in it till a few days ago. "that would be big enough wouldn't it?" I just need to remember not to let her talk me into putting things in my tank. on a side note, new to me skimz sm161 is bubbling away.. I do not have it quite dialled in yet but im sure thats a few week long constant tweaking event. I only fully lost one challice. is 95 percent gonner, and the other 3 should recover with big dead spots. the insanity never ends |
Silly starfish is at it again.. this time I don't mind.
I cut all my GSP off the glass a few weeks ago in hopes of selling the large chunks for cheap. they ended up in the.. anything I don't want in the DT tank also known as a refugeium. Seems my starfish loves GSP may have been munching it for quite some time in the other tank but I never noticed. Unfortunately it appears It only eats the polyps and leaves the purple base intact, Perhaps one would have a taste for these clove polyps everyone is complaining about. |
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Stuipid glass why do you have to crack and make work for me.
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So I was downstairs watching something on netflix, go upstairs for 20 mins, and my kid starts saying something about the tank dripping. I ignore at first as we were about to come back down to watch a movie. as we come down he starts yelling all excitedly. Before I can even see the water I can hear Power heads and return pumps churning and gurgling in air. Panic sets in.. breakers are shut off for safety. I look for about 5 mins before I see that the bottom of the 40b is cracked diagonally corner to corner. 2 hours later cracked tank is outside. 15-20 gallons of water are cleaned up. all livestock is crammed into the display and sump. meh i need to upgrade anyways I just can not do it right now. |
one mp10 has flaked out after being moved over too. Probably something simple but I am not worried about it right now, to grumpy.
I forgot my mckoskers does not get along with my dotty back and could not see him in the tank. the overflow has netting around it. i fed everyone and could not see the wrasse and was worried because he got pretty beat up last time. little bugger is in the baffles in my sump, I did not make those big enough to get a fish net in hah but he can stay down there till i know what the hell i am doing. |
I have a couple dry 30 gallon tanks sitting here if you need something to borrow until you figure out tha DT situation...I even have a dry 170rr acrylic tank if you want to borrow that instead.
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The gf is out for an hour or 2 might as well sneak that 170 to prove to her i need a bigger tank.:mrgreen:
which of those tanks in your basement was the 170? the one on the tall stand? ok back to reality heh Thanks for the offer but I think I can make do for now. I do have a 25g and a 14g cube neither one drilled or clean right now, and a few brand spanking new rubbermaid tubs if I decide to do something crazy. I got most of the corals into the 55 a few colonies are in the 20g refuge. I need to do something about lighting in there. I have a 250w de pendant but i salvaged the cord when i put the lights together for the 40b. I don't really want to unwire that as it was a little PITA to jam the cord back into the wiring box. I think the original wiring was done in the factory before the box was riveted into place. so the only thing I really need to find is a male plug for a Hamilton ballast. or plug/cord combo. or any 24 inch lighting that will sustain SPS, or to mod my 250w se not hqi that used to be on the 20g that will not fit in the stand the 20 is in now. It would be nice to keep the same or larger footprint <36x18> on any replacement just for the lighting bits I do have availiable, 18 wide always feels a little cramped to me. I have a few things on the go for work possibilities but not all of them are local. It would be nice to know if i have to move in the next few months before i get all crazy with bigger tanks. Must be a little stressed I just re-read this whole post and it seems really scattered oh well |
Oh my! Any idea why the 40B cracked?
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old age? I am not sure. I was at least the third owner of it. It was running bare bottom, there are no obvious chips or impact points from the rock, and all my rock looked to be in the same place as it was. I have never checked if it was level, and I have never liked the construction of the stand. I will try to see if it is twisted or not level, as I would like to have an excuse for its cracking. I have a futon sitting on the floor 5 feet away and it does not sit level as there is a crack in the cement there. and the water that spilled out of the tank makes some interesting puddles. The water defiantly does not flow towards the floor drain on the other side of the room.
I don't mind the bare bottom approach but I guess next round I will either run some acrylic or sand. The mp-10 started working again after being unplugged for a few hours. It was flashing red/green and was totally unresponsive. I think I made a few new frags today too. I will have to pick through everything as I finish sorting everything out. once again tank in an unfinished basement, and the power of shop vac saved the day. |
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:surprise:Holy crap dude that sucks!.....at least it happened when you were home....
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Yeah i was rather shocked, considering it was at most a half hour I was upstairs. Corals were just starting to be out of the water.:what:
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overpacked DT: currently running 2xmp10 2xac300 with no media. mj900 with prop and a k2 i think. should be enough flow around all that rock.
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-30-29_313.jpg I think it could survive like this untill i have a bigger tank if need be. as long as i get those frags/colonys on the frag rack thats just wedged between the rock and the glass somewhere. Jail http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...-30-39_345.jpg all coral packed into the dt now, except for the starfish food that is in the fuge. My son wanted his fishy out of the sump so I tried without a plan to get it out of the baffles. It quickly jumped in along the heaters then when trying to catch him out of there squeezed under the cryptic rubble/rock area. I've had enough playing with the tank he can stay there if i fish him out i have to shut down the pumps and do a water change as I think it needs a quick cleaning. |
Just curious when SPS, particularly montis start warfare on eachother will it affect all corals in the tank? a few of mine are fighting, and this week i was a little lazy dosing, and some of them have some damage. First i thoguht it was high alk, or one of the powerheads shifted and was blowing to hard, but now I am a little stumped.
ALK was HIGH at the start of the week. 151 or so on the hanna and is now back down to 135. calcium was down to 320-340 today, way down. kids kept me from testing anything else earlier but perhaps now that they are in bed I will catch up on my reef work. Oh well time to pull out the chisel, though I am guessing I should go get one just for the tank and not use one that has been collecting who knows what in the garage. Possibly related but doubtful. I am due for a zeo change ran out of bak this week. I am happy with the zeo results but might just call it quits as its almost time to go work on the road again as the local job hunt is not going well. though this will require acquisition of some kind of replacement for the 40b, perhaps just to run as a fuge section or fuge/frag tank. right now i have all my extra rock. the mkoskers that the dottyback keeps beating up, and the coral muncher starfish the gf does not want me to get rid of squished in the 20 gallon that should just be the fuge. and I am Pretty sure the starfish is eating every sponge he can get to on the rocks. so much for cryptic LRR fuge. Ohh one more gripe.. my skimmer that ran quietly for almost a month after getting used decided to start being really loud last week too. nothing looks wrong to the impeller or motor to my eyes but something must be out of whack in it. Cleaned it once last week I will try again. its in the basement so it does not drive me too nuts. but if it was in the living room.. it would be out the window by now. |
I picked up a used 65 g to put where the 40b used to sit. It happened to come with a stand. Now the gf does not want me to tie it into my system she wants me to set it up as fowlr upstairs somewhere. I guess i need to keep shopping for a frag tank.
Yesterday we had guests, the gf's friend and her three kids. They thought i was downstairs when i was really in the bedroom. While down there the kids were playing in the tank and did something to the starfish, either poking, grabbing, or taking it out of the tank and then squishing it. Try getting the truth out of a four year old an hour or two later. Pretty sure it was the older visiting boys but who knows. I guess its time to skirt in the stands. |
Moved the 20g up on top of the stand again.. temporary frag tank instead of fuge.. all extra rock is crammed in the sump.. where i did not want it. DT was opened up slightly.
I will be skirting the sump next week. at least i have a frag tank again.. its nice to have somewhere the frags can grow without constant harassment from large snails, hermits and angry bab/marooons... Mr coral muncher is happily in the sump with the rock, but all the more reason to skirt the sump in as the kids can easily get in there. I chipped up some of my fighting monti's yesterday too but some of them are looking pretty dull from poor placement the last month or 2.. but they should get nursed back to health where they are and be able to be shared out soon enough. |
I am not quite sure how this works.... Starfish eats coral.. Temporarily gets banished to sump..then finds himself a new home in the living room, while all my corals and fish are still in the dungeon.
set up a 65g upstairs over the last few days, decided tonight to throw protesttar coraleatius in there as well as one baby conch. Tank quickly went from its planned ST-fowlr to starfish with all the softies I don't want to spread through my frag tank. I believe its official tittle is "The girlfriend wants it but I don't want it in my tank". It only got half the sand I planned on. I had a bucket and a half of sugar sized which took its time in the buckets well. I had another bucket and a half or 2 buckets of CC mixed with sugar fine and it was solid black and smelly even after some washing... gross. There is enough for the current inhabitants. It is sumpless and currently skimmerless, so I was contemplating a DSB. Low maintenance is priority. I need to figure out some good critters to suggest she put in there once its stabilized in a couple months. |
I guess I will have a few more frags to get rid of for fragfest or whenever.
I have been trying to find something interesting to put in the starfish tank upstairs.. trying to keep the tank low maintnance fowlr. so i am talking to the gf about my tank telling her i want to try to round up all the mini gbta and bta and get rid of them. she tells me to put the clownfish and some of the nems in the FO tank. my two questions were something about does that mean i can buy leds to keep the BTA's alive?, and can the dottyback go too? I think the leds were a yes and the dottyback was a firm no. SO the next part was catching the maroons in the 55 with to much rock in it. 4 buckets of water and 3/4 of the rock moved now they are out of my tank. Re-scaping shall wait untill the kids are in bed..I should pick up some more glue before than as i have a feeeling the frags are not finished smashing themselves free of the rocks. On a plus note it looked like there was lots of detrius in the sand under the rocks where i can never get to so i did about 15g of sand siphoning water change ... 15g of brownish stank water I wonder if thats why the sps have not been looking their best the last month and a half or so. the 2 biggest pigs of my tank are now out which gives me some more room to play, I love my neon dottyback but i should have caught him while i had the tank half drained just because he is so mean.. |
Quick FTS of the redone rock.. might stay this way for now.
Upstairs FOWLR+starfishfood+nems: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...k/Patricks.jpg Dungeon DT FTS: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...tank/DTFTS.jpg Dungeon Fragtank FTS: http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...RAGTANKFTS.jpg Alot of things were out of position with either to much or not enough light while i had all the rock crammed in one tank so nothing really looks good right now. I was having some good colors and growth earlier this summer before things started breaking and acting up, so hopefully it goes back to that way. I am sick of some of my 1-2 year old frags still looking like frags while I know some people I have sold/given frags too have had enough growth to pass them along all ready. I chiseled/smashed most of the encrusting sps off some rocks that went up to the starfish tank, but the chunks came out pretty small, I guess just leave them in place and let them grow unless they magically heal up before fragfest. I only have PC lights on the tank with the clowns in it. the nems in there were all cheap/free if they keep on looking good i might have to get a nicer one in there. I wanted to get rid of all the little mini bta's on that one zoa rock but i could not get them off so the whole rock went up there they just split to much to keep in my other tank. one batch all splits as soon as they get a little bigger than a toonie, and the other ones were about 4 inches across then just split before i decided to move them here |
My pump is putting out lots of micro bubbles.
I don't think its the plumbing, I think I got all the leaks with that out a few months ago. I just went to clean the strainer again<cleaned it last night> and after I pulled off the strainer my pump started making buzzing noises. can't do anything till the kids are in bed but here is hoping it just needs a good cleaning<never ever cleaned it yet since purchased used a couple years ago... doh> |
Something has been munching on my zoa's, the last few days it has been eating toonie+ sized chunks out of previously healthy mats. the last three days it has all been confined to one rock, a fist sized rock with mostly goldeneyes on it.
now the rock is in about 10 pieces and i have one of those nasty worms <enuncid?> with the three feeding tentacles by its mouth, sitting in a container beside the tank. heh.. I tried to take some pics of it but I need a better container or to not be distracted by the rest of things in life for a few mins to set up a shot of the little demon. hopefully That is the only one. |
I have been slowly moving most of the lps and zoa's up to the 65g with the clowns in it.
I have been running a calcium reactor since fragfest, and its almost dialled in now. I do not have a controller or solenoid yet, just started slow and slowly bumped it up until it maintains ca and alk. my ca is steady and high< it was high when i started trying to dial it in> and the alk fluctuates with the changes. most of my sps are slowly getting more colour but they still seem dull to me. one of my bluish acros turned grey back after the tank cracked and the new growth is finally vibrant blue again but the grey has not left the body. it is also growing uneven as it is almost in front of the AC70 fuge and my return. I think i might get a sea swirl for the return, or another mp10 or a 40, and ditch the fuge. I have a few possible upgrades in the near future. A friend who is downsizing offered me a 180g for a good price, problem is its in Calgary, also perhaps a 150 from a fellow canreefer with a cracked bottom. thinking depending on glass size and condition the 150 could get cut down to a 48x30x12 frag tank instead of the 48x24x30 as it sits but who knows as this has not been discussed with the gf yet:) After not working all summer I start work again on tuesday unfortunately I have to work on the road, 10 day shifts for now, right when my sps are looking good. i will have to give the GF a crash course on zeo, and if she cannot do that perhaps switch to some other form of dosing to keep nutrients down. The plus side is that means its time to buy some toys for the tank. Right now I think I am sold on a reef-angel controller. I have some computer programing background but do not want to do a full diy audrino controller, I think the reef angel has enough packed into it for its price to give the bigger names a run. I would love a proliflux but can not justify the price... <yet heh> |
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