Albertan22's 120g Reef

[Albertan22]

Originally Posted by lastlight

With that crop growing on him you're in for some snail-on-snail action soon. Nice rockwork...I'm jealous of all that purple you have no idea!

Yeah I've been really lucky with the coraline. I managed to find a few rocks with a good crop of it when I was putting my tank together, and it's just taken off and spread to the rest of the rockwork, the snails, powerheads, but not the glass... yet.

[Albertan22]

Well after a mini flood last night I figure it's time for an update. I was trying to disconnect the union above my pump last night and accidentally twisted the entire pipe, which spun the bulkhead of my return line, loosening the nut and creating a massive leak. Fortunately I was able to pump out the overflow quickly with a maxijet and some vinyl tubbing and prevent a major flood, most of the water followed the pipe and went into the sump anyway.

The tank is progressing nicely, but slowly. I'm leaving for a four week vacation next month so I didn't want to go crazy stocking the tank yet. I figure the more simple it is, the better the chance that my tank sitter will be able to handle things.

Current inhabitants include 2 ocellaris clowns, 4 green chromis, a skunk cleaner shrimp, an elusive peppermint shrimp, unknown # of hermit crabs, snails, and hitchhiker crabs. I'd like to add another fish soon, but want to make sure the tank is good and stable before I leave, so not sure if I'll follow through with that. I've been adding corals over the holidays and everything is looking is pretty good except an acropora frag I put in last week.... Enough talk, onto the pictures:

New brain coral in today:


Hammer coral. It's in the process of developing some new heads


Green star polyps:


Zoanthids:


Duncan coral:


This acropora frag has been in the tank for about a week, but the green patch on the coral just appeared today. I'm a bit worried about this guy, is this RTN?


And an FTS to finish it all off:


Thanks for looking.

[Leah]

Tank is looking great And that new brain is so pretty
How are the fish doing?

Leah

[Albertan22]

The fish are doing great The big clown thinks she owns the tank right now and isn't hosting to any particular area. She chases the chromis around a bit every once in awhile. I suspect she'll have a bit of a shock when I eventually start introducing some more territorial tankmates

[Albertan22]

I finally figured out how to set the white balance on my camera properly so I thought I'd post some more pics. Since I updated not to long ago, I'll just post some of the more colourful additions this round

FTS


Brain


Zoas

[Albertan22]

Managed to get some pics of the fish.







Thanks for looking.

[Albertan22]

Well it's been a couple of months since I updated this thread. Nothing much happened between my last post and the 24th of March. I was away in New Zealand for 4 weeks between the end of February and the end of March so I wanted to make sure everything was stable while I was away. Now that I'm back though, I can start building this tank for real

Since I've been back, I've added two acros, a birdsnest and a torch frag. I also added a couple of purple queen anthias a few days ago. Anyhow, on to the pictures.

This guy is still doing well, though he's lost some colour, I think my lights are too bright for him. Hopefully the SPS will grow and provide some shade in the long run, in the meantime I keep moving him to try to make him happy.






This frag grew like crazy while I was away!


The growth in that first acro frag gave me the confidence to try some other SPS






LPS




This yellow watchman seems to be doing well but has some weird rash on his scales. He likes to stick himself to the teeth of my overflow, I wonder if it's rubbing off the yellow?




FTS


That spot on the sand front and center is reserved for a clam, hopefully soon to come!

My next planned fish additions are:
Foxface
Kole Tang
Mandarin

On the maybe list:
some kind of wrasse
a smaller fish like a firefish or royal gramma

[Albertan22]

We got a new SLR cameral today and that means new pictures. I haven't really learned to use the thing yet, but I managed to get 3 decent pictures from the 100 I've taken today

[Albertan22]

I'm not sure if anyone is still reading this thread but I figure it's time for an update. No additions to report this time. The yellow watchman goby wore a hole in his side and has been in the hospital tank for 2.5 weeks now. I've been running a separate thread about him, but the short version is that he's doing much better. I expect he'll be at least another two weeks before he gets to rejoin the general population.

Before photo


Current status


I'm still in awe that he's survived this wound.

The purple anthias that I added four weeks ago are still pretty shy. Out of the three of them, one is out almost all the time, the second is out often, but disapears whenever you approach the tank, and the third only seems to come out for a couple hours when the lights turn on, and vanishes whenever anything in the room moves. They all seems to disapear around 6pm like clockwork (the lights go out at 10pm).

The downside to all of this (other than the obvious) is that only the one seems to eat regularly, though the second guy seems to get food at least every other day. I'm worried about the shyest one who never seems to get fed unless I sneak a spoon of cyclopeze into the back canopy opening from around the corner. This only works on weekends, when I'm home to do it when anthias #3 is out shortly after my lights turn on around 2pm. My wife calls this operation "stealth feeding".

I'm also battling a cyano outbreak


This started shortly after removing a sponge from my sump to use as cycled filtration in my hospital tank. I'm not sure if it's a result of removing this little bit of filtration from the DT, or a result of adding the three antias at once and overfeeding a bit to try to coax them to eat. I'm putting my money on option 2 though. Today I'm going to start a 3 day blackout of the tank and see if that does anything. If that doesn't work, I guess I may resort to red slime remover, though I'm not excited at that idea...

I also got a visual on the remaining mantis in my tank last week! He's getting big and must be 4 inches long, and black/dark in colour. He wasn't green like the mantis in my sump. I was kind of hoping that the clicking in the tank was just one of the giant hitch hiker crabs that live in the tank, but what I saw last week was definatly a mantis. That brings my count of these guys to 3 (1 removed, 1 relocated to sump, 1 in DT). He doesn't seem to be hurting much though, so I think I'll just leave this one be.

Thanks for looking.

[Albertan22]

Well, the 3 day blackout worked great. Once the lights came back on, I siphoned out the dead cyano and I've been cyano free for 3 days now. Hopefully it stays that way...

I was playing with the camera today and thought I'd post some coral growth shots

January 2010


May 2010


April 2010


May 2010


October 2009


May 2010


My tank needs more coral...