Thanks, Red Six....I watched your tank build for a long time during my planning stages.

It is interesting that Holmes-Farley wasn't able to keep his particular sponge alive for long regardless of his attempts with Silica. Nevertheless, if HF recommends Silica additions, that's enough recommendation for me!

Crabs
 

Even I have a limit as to how large I let a crab get before he makes me uncomfortable. I never saw this crab kill anything that caused me concern. (just some hermit crabs, which was quite entertaining...), but he reached a size that began to worry me. I'm sure that at some point he was going to graduate to larger prey.

So...he's moved into the sump. I hope he will be OK there. Certainly food travels into the sump all the time.

Capture was pretty easy. I small piece of shrimp in a tall glass just as the lights went out. (He was obviously hungry, because he slid in in less than a few minutes)

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0090.jpg
http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0091.jpg

creepy, great pictures!

tee hee, what a lil cutie pie:wink:

in case you're interested, from the secnd pic i can tell you it's a boy.

Wow......having followed this thread from the beginning I was privileged to see this system up close. Nothing is left to chance with this system. The tank room is very organized and the rock work and bar look a lot better in person than the pictures here. My wife found it facinating (well...not the tank room. She could care less about the hardware). She was amazed at the diversity of this display. She could have sat there for hours.....on wait...she did. lol

Thanks Brad...and thank your wife for allowing us to visit.

Scott

silica
 

I've proven that if you dose silica, you can grow diatoms. This did make the tangs happy as they are back to grazing the rocks again. Unfortunately, growth of diatoms hasn't caused the cyano to slow any....I just got both.

So I'm temporarily suspending the silica experiment until I can get the cyano under control.

Do you use any phosphate control like phosban?

Yes, I'm running two Phosban reactors in line...one has AC, the other has phosguard media.

In observing my previous tank, I saw no reaction either way to using the AC/phosguard or not. Right now, because I have cyano, I'm running it...but I'm not really sure that it is making any difference to anything.

Tank update
 

Some weeks ago, I introduced a smaller maroon clown fish in the hopes that it would pair up with the older maroon that I've had for years. When I first introduced the new one, the original clownfish attacked it mercilessly. I'm quite sure it would have killed it if I had not rescued it.

I placed the new clown in a small cage on the bottom of the tank for another day or so. That seems to have given the other clown time to get used to the idea of having a friend.

Over the course of the next few weeks, the original clown became increasingly friendly, leading to this....they've moved in together and now seem quite happy.

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0111.jpg

First blood
 

Zues here got his first taste of human blood when he bit my friend Tim who was watching over the tank for me while I was away. He's nipped me a few times...I guess I don't bleed as easily as Tim!

http://i142.photobucket.com/albums/r...s/000_0113.jpg

Don't ask me what that white line is...it's not a scratch. This fish really moves so you have to pan in order to get a shot of him. The panning has caused some small white object to look that way.