Halichoeres Wrasse are great for flatworm, pyram snail, and bristle worm control. At the moment I'm waiting for the ornate wrasse to grow a little larger so that I can put it in my display tank and not worry that it will get eaten by the eel.

Experimenting with Prodibio again.
 

Some new pictures for the new month. I picked up a few goodies during one of my semi annual trips to the big cities. From Denis I got this fantastically blue 'frag' of his Turaki along with some others. This prompted me to do some minor aquascaping in order to accommodate it into my display tank. The old blue with brown polyps acro had to go in order to make room. But now I can finally see the one that was sitting just behind it. I'm not sure what kind of acro it is, all I know is that I got it from OA a few years ago and the polyp extension is nuts.

However not all is doing well at the moment in Russell's reef. My orange Montipora capricornis is still struggling to hang onto life. Some combination of new bulbs and seasonally low temperatures caused it to bleach a few months ago. Some spots on it are dead but I remain optimistic that it will return to its former glory in time. To aid its recovery and to hopefully rid my tank of cyano once more I've decided to try out another Prodibio BioKit. I don't know if I was just seeing things or not but when I tried out a BioKit last summer, compliments of Progressive Reef, my cyano went away until recent events brought it back. I think that because of some new product experimenting my tank could use a bit of a re-set and I believe that Prodibio might do that for me. Or maybe I've just been snorting too much kalkwasser. :wink:

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_7776.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_7831.jpg

I recently picked up a couple of new additions when a local shut down his tank.

This powder blue tang is now enjoying itself as the king of the castle in my lit 140gal stock trough sump.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8297.jpg

Although I've been wanting a nice derasa and maxima to partially replace the seven clams I lost last year I couldn't resist this moderately sized 6" squamosa.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8215.jpg

While attempting to take a half decent pictures of the top two I did manage to get a pretty clear shot of the ornate wrasse.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8318.jpg

The tail spot blenny is in better focus than last time but its still no award winner.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8465.jpg

The first picture I've been able to get of the reclusive female mandarin dragonet that lives in my sump. She was pretty slim when I bought her from the LFS several months ago.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8452.jpg

19 month old elegance that was fragged 11 months ago.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8226.jpg

Not bad for 10 months growth don't you think? From roughly 10 polyps to this in that amount of time:
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8244.jpg

Heres the pic again from September last year.
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...icture1666.jpg

Sweet Pics

I was wondering if you were goin to pick up one or all of those clams. I thought about getting one myself but I dont think my wife would be too pleased as i'm goin to be a poor student for a few months starting monday. Your post before your last one with probidio in the title, what is the coral in the second from the top?

This Acropora? I don't have a name for it. I got it as a small frag from Ocean Aquatics in the fall of 2008. It doesn't grow exceptionally fast but it does okay. The polyps on it are huge. I think you got a branch of it from me a few months ago.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...Picture110.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_7831.jpg

nice. i would love to see your tank again in person. i loved it, :)

Wow Russel, that looks just awesome. I absolutley love your zoa "life-ring" around your clam. That is rockin'. How has that "green death star" brittle star been behaving? I've seen them take down fish-especially small ones. But i guess your lion also helps with that to! Looks just beautiful. Keep the pictures coming.
Cheers Ronnie

You're more than welcome to stop in again the next time you come to PG.

Before I forget. I've concluded my second one month trial of prodibio. The cyano on my sandbed did not go away this time which was unfortunate. However my orange montipora capricornis has made a full recovery. I don't know how much of that I can attribute to prodibio as I believe it was a simple matter of light shock that caused the decline in the first place. For now I'm going back to traditional reefkeeping. No more carbon or bacteria dosing/manipulation. Heavy skimming and regular water changes has worked so well for me in the past. I don't know why I keep trying to mess with it.

Thanks Ronnie. The giant green brittle star actually died in April. I got it back in early 2004 and never had any problems with it because I've always stuck with fish that were too large for it to eat. I used to feed it pieces of krill or silverside several times a week which may have helped too. It was pretty disturbing to watch it die. It basically just started to disintegrate from the central disk outwards. Wikipedia states that brittle stars in general only live up to 5 years so I guess it might have been an old age thing. I haven't been able to find any information to make me think otherwise. Aside from the clam problem I haven't had many losses in the last few years. With automation my tank has become extremely stable and predictable. And of course the millions of tiny brittle stars that I have are still thriving and occupying every nook and cranny available.

Its been two weeks and the powder blue tang is turning out to be quite a challenge but not in the conventional way. At first it didn't get along with the ornate wrasse. But after two days of slashing at its reflection in a submersed mirror it decided that the wrasse was okay. Now its systematically sampling some of the coral that I keep with it. From day one I've been feeding it Ocean Nutrition pellets and PE mysis each day as well as a constant supply of nori on a clip. So I guess I'm going to have to up the feeding to see if that will make it behave. I've added an automatic feeder to drop pellets twice each day and I'm increasing the portion size of nori. So far its gone after Duncanopsammia, Sarcophyton and Cladiella. The trough that it is in is 4'x3'x20" and contains close to 140gal of water. Its tank mates consist of an ornate wrasse, tailspot blenny and mandarin dragonet. The tang has been very active and readily accepts any food that is offered.

I decided it was time to downsize this acropora today. I've been fragging it monthly in an attempt to keep it at a manageable size but it was still growing out of control. What I'm left with now looks 1/4 this size and kind of crappy at the moment. Needless to say I have a lot of frags and calcium reactor media...

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8468.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8602.jpg

I haven't posted anything on here since July so here is a little update. The Montipora colonies went through quite a rough patch recently and they're only now starting to look okay again. I'm sort of regretting that major fragging job I did on my big green acropora and I may have shuffled a few other things around just because. But as long as fatso is happy I guess I can be happy too.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8502.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_8505.jpg

still looks great.

thats one sweet shot of "fatso"!

I wanted some decent pictures of the clams so I dug out my scuba camera for some top down underwater pictures. Out of the 100 these turned out okay. The Maxima was from J&L's Tahiti shipment last fall. While I was at it I caught the tomato clown trying to asexually reproduce again.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_3458.jpghttp://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_3461.jpg
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_3454.jpg
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_3483.jpg

Nice shots. Love the clams. And poor clown. lol.
PS, do you need anymore shipping coolers?

I've got a decent stash of coolers right now but I'm always willing to take more if they're available.

Do you still have the Elegance coral? I don't see it in the last pics that you posted.

Yes I do actually. The butterfly fish started picking on it after a month or so in the display tank so I had to move that piece down to my frag trough. I have two of the three frags of elegance that I cut from my original colony. I sold the third piece which died shortly after in its new owners tank but that was a year ago. Its still not an easy coral to keep but I have had it for over two years at this point. I also had to build this cage around it and a few other coral because I've got a powder blue tang in my frag trough that also likes to nip at coral.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_3466.jpg

I just went through your entire thread and your tank is stunning! I'm debating lion fish and eels and this thread is both inspiring and informative. Do you still have the Fu man chu?

Yes I still have the fu manchu as well. Its been very rewarding being able to keep a fish that so often doesn't do well in captivity and isn't commonly kept. The LFS that I bought it from had already weaned it onto frozen food so getting it established in my tank was actually pretty easy. If you do decide to keep lion fish and eels do note that you probably won't be able to keep crabs or shrimp and you definitely won't be able to keep small fish.

I had a problem recently with my OM 4 Way. The internal magnet wore through its plastic cover and bore a hole in the lid of the unit causing it to leak onto the floor for a few days. Once I discovered this I emailed OM in a panic and they promptly shipped me some replacement parts one week later for a nominal fee. It took over two weeks from the initial discovery until I was able to fix the unit. Moral of the story: keep an inventory of spare parts for everything.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_9360.jpg

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_9359.jpg

Apart from that minor headache things have been doing relatively well.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...o/IMG_9365.jpg

I moved a few pieces around recently but for the most part I'm just letting things grow.

Nothing much has happened with my tank in a while so I haven't bothered to post anything here. But now I've got a big change, we've purchased our first home and today is the day I move the tank. :redface: More pictures to follow.

Here is my most recent picture.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps40545187.jpg

how many people has that clown eaten? tank looks great good luck with the move!

Russell, if for some reason any of those sps break or you discover that you no longer have room for any of your corals, I'd be more than happy to take them off of your hands.

But seriously, good luck with the move.

How did I miss this? This tank is simply fabulous. Absolutely great work!

Wow, this tank is stunning. Fingers crossed for a quick and painless move!

Hope the move went well - that would be a busy day.

Very nice, I hope the move goes well. FYI use new sand, not worth crashing your tank trying to use any of the old sand.

I love fu manchu's I've had mine for 3 yrs now and he was trained on frozen at the lfs before I bought him.

Uhmmmm, I thought you were a lady..... :kev: :twised:

Have you slept yet?

:pound: I am, I meant this guy :wink: :lol:

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/i...pscdf6289c.jpg

I got to bed at 4am... I'm just hanging the lights now after spending most of the morning trying to get the Apex to work on our new home network. This evening I'll hook up the Ca Reactor and all of that other crap except for the RO/DI which might require some crawling around under the house... Most of the big coral got pretty broken up. I'll post some pictures when everything is running as it should once again.

Look good I wish my tank look like that

Later then I figured. I had guessed round 2. Were you able to get the tank positioned the way you wanted?

The tank is in a good location for now but it looks pretty crappy compared to the before picture. I decided to shuffle most of the rocks around but I wanted to keep the coral in their old locations so I had to bust up almost everything. I'll take a picture once I get around to cleaning the glass.

But here is a bucket of horn coral for now. Who wants frags?
http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps2125be8a.jpg

That sucks that you had to break everything up and that you were up so late moving it. :sad:

Here is how the tank looks now with smaller colonies and the tangs in differen't places. The powder blue is now in my display and the purple is down in the 140gal stock trough frag sump. They seem to be much happier this way and I'm enjoying the change up as well. I also took advantage of the move to remove most of the green zoanthids and a lot of pink pocillopora. The sand is also new. I didn't like how my old fine sand was chronically growing cyano so I dumped it all into the stock trough and filled the display with some crushed coral.

Unfortunately I lost two fish during the move. My 8+ year old snowflake moray which had a tumour growing just behind its head died a few days after. And the ornate wrasse that had lived in the stock trough for several years found a small gap in the netting on top to jump through. I don't know if I want to bother with another carpet surfing wrasse but I am thinking of starting over with a smaller variety of moray like a golden dwarf.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps696dc9f3.jpg

It has been a few months since the move and now that winter has set in I've finally begun on the in-wall conversion that I've been wanting to do for nearly a decade.

It may not look like much yet but I have already spent many hours working on this project. Crawling through 30' of the attic was very time consuming and simply working around a running system has me moving in slow motion so as not to trip over anything.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps42df1316.jpg

But my attic adventure paid off and now I have a ceiling exhaust fan and a second circuit to run the tank on. I've wired the fan to a humidity censor so hopefully it manages itself.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps199c6b9f.jpg

Framing has also been a big challenge as this room has in floor heating so I can't drive any fasteners into the concrete. Also, the exterior walls have 2" of ridged insulation behind the drywall so my stud finder is useless and I have to use 6" lag bolts to hit anything.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps31d12c74.jpg

But it is coming together slowly. I'm deliberately framing around the tank to allow me to easily remove some of the wall at a later date if/when I scratch the money together for an upgrade. 5'x3'x2' is what I'd really like to have but its not at the top of my priority list right now.

http://i254.photobucket.com/albums/h...ps663dea9d.jpg

As I make more progress I'll post some more pictures.