Puff's 24 Gallon Aquapod Reef (December 10th Update)

[Puff]

I decided to start a thread to keep track of my reef tank and everything that it puts me through.lol

So here are the specs:

- 24 gallon Aquapod
- 150W HQI MH Sunpod
- 100W visi-therm heater
- 2 Maxijet 900s
- 2 Hydor Flo attachments
- Sapphire Aquatics HOB Refugium and Skimmer

- 21lbs Jakarta liverock
- roughly 30lbs arag-alive substrate (fiji pink)

the first thing i did was mod the aquapod. i did this by removing the sponges and bio balls and drilling a hole on the right of the overflow. then i used a 1/2" slip bulkhead. i then slid in a Maxijet 900 in the right chamber and hooked it up to the bulkhead with some 1/2" tubing. In the left chamber i removed the stock pump and inserted another maxijet 900. the two maxijets combined equal more flow than the stock pump, but with less energy consumption. i was expecting temperature problems with the sunpod on top, so i figure the lower the amount of watts the better. to the bulkhead i attached a hydor flo.

I bought the sapphire aquatics HOB fuge and skimmer combo. that fit in very easily into the back chambers, even with the added maxijets. all i had to do was trim one of the fittings.

First pic, from the top looking at the added bulkhead with the hydor flo and locline thingie


Birdseye view of the overflow


Side view of the refugium


This will be where the tank is. it's in a shoot-off of my room that used to hold my 55 gallon rhom tank.



Skimmer...in the box...


So on saturday i drove an hour across town and picked up some very nice jakarta live rock. I came home and added the liverock and aragalive to the tank. i filled the tank up partway then tried to slide the aragalive in...but it was still cloudy as hell.lol. so i hooked up a magnum HOB filter w/ micron filter to the tank and let it run for a few hours to clear the tank.

Still a bit cloudy


that night i was reading that i should have scrubbed the dead sponges off the liverock, so i went home and spent 3 hours making sure every bit was off of it. that morning i woke up and rescaped the tank. this is what i came up with.


With the blue and white LEDs on at night



when i looked at the liverock under the blue LEDs i noticed some very bright orange and pinky colours coming from some pieces. i also saw a little worm thing cruising around, and a few pods.

this pic is way out of focus, but you can kind of see the bright orange in the center(ish)-left of the pic


the tank with the MH on


this is the top piece of liverock, and also has the most life on it. today i found 2 tubeworms and some other thingies. it also has some cool planty bits on it, but they are very hard to get pics of.



FTS w/ flash



unfortunately today i also found an aiptasia. it's on a piece of the foundation rock though, so i have no friggin clue how to go about getting rid of it!

[marie]

this is the top piece of liverock, and also has the most life on it. today i found 2 tubeworms and some other thingies. it also has some cool planty bits on it,

Ah, I remember back in the day when I thought planty bits were cool
Looks like your off to a great start

[Puff]

sorry for not getting an update up here sooner, but ive been incredibly sick with some bad food poisoning for the last week and a bit...so i havent had the energy to do it.lol.

New FTS


well i recently added a small CUC. a few hermits, 5 small nassirius, 3 cerith, 3 small astrea, 1 trochus. i also bought a very small fighting conch and will be feeding it some seaweed and see if it wants to try some pellets or other bits and pieces.

everything is doing good. im getting a small amount of green algae, but the CUC is taking care of it. the water parameters are great.

i also recently added a couple of small frags. first off i got a small (3cm or so) piece of LR with some nice zoas on it, i also got a piece of live rock (around 3-4") with a few polyps of 2 or 3 types of zoas. i also got a small rock with a blue mushroom on it. i got the frags from a local reefer who i have always admired the tanks of. he gave me a great deal (also picked up some chaeto from him). when i went to put the mushroom in the tank i discovered 2 really small red mushrooms on the same piece of LR.

fast forward to today and i was at the LFS. i saw some nice stuff but wanted 1 other type of mushroom to keep to satiated for a while. i eventually found a piece of rock with 3 really nice browish coloured shrooms with bright green stripes. i asked about the price and it was 20$...which is cheap at this place. so i got them.

well i got them home, acclimated them...and went to put them into the tank...as i turned over the rock to inspect it (as i was giving it a quick scrub) i found what i thought to be another mushroom. as i was looking at it...IT MOVED! "WTF?"...it was one of these things ive seen in another persons tank... a really flat slug/snail thing with a small shell...only the shell on this thing looked almost like an opal, and the meat on it was white. i later searched and found the name, stomatella! this thing is hilarious. works up a storm as well. i put the mushrooms into the tank and another "wtf?" they have completely changed colour! now they are full irridescent green with a purply background...?!?!?

new shrooms are on the bottom rock. blue mushroom on top.


after the shroom rock was in the tank for a bit i noticed some life popping up. about 5 more tube worms!

anyways...on the top piece of my aquascape i was having this vegetation going absolutely crazy. i got a couple of members of the CUC to try to deal with it, not expecting anything at all...but giving it a shot. well it seems to be working! they've cleared off a couple of decent sized patches so far. the main critters that seem to be doing the most on the vegetation are 1 of the ceriths, some of the hermits, and a few of the nassirius.

the fighting conch is also a hoot. there is plenty for it to eat right now, but i found him scaled one of the sloped pieces of liverock, picking away at things all the way up. i thought they were supposed to stay on the sand level?lol

[Stones]

Looks like the tank is coming along nicely. How are the hydor's working out for flow in the tank? Is it pretty random with two of them running at once and do you get any sand being stirred up as a result?

[Skimmerking]

love the tank man looks great nice rock too

[Puff]

today i actually removed the right side hydor flo. the two combined were providing excellent flow. it was good and random, but with my mushrooms and zoas just starting off, i wanted the ease up on the flow a bit, so i put back in the locline kind of thing that came stock with the tank. ill be putting the hydor back in at some point, but right now im just running the one hydor and the other return.

with the two hydors running i noticed that they both turned at different speeds. it added even more to the randomness. the top of the live rock on the top of everything got a REALLY strong flow as the hydor flos turned around...but im new to reefing so im not sure what "too much flow" would be. by removing one Flo i was trying to make an area of the tank with a bit of a weaker current, as there was a pretty decent current throughout the tank. i recently got a wavemaster Pro off of ebay, so i might even plug the MJ900 powering the locline side of the return into the wavemaster...and see if i like the results any more. i wonder what plugging a powerhead driving a hydor flo into a wavemaster would do...??lol.jk.

i think that the hydor flo gets a lot more flow coming out of it than the locline stuff...that's for sure.

i took out the top piece of liverock today and scrubbed as much of the plants as i could off of it. that stuff was going crazy. once i got the veggies off the two tubeworms (the first two i found in the tank) emerged for the first time in over a week. surprisingly one of them has grown considerably in the last two weeks. i also found a hitchhiker crab. he's tiny...sandy brown...and hides in a hole in the rock...and watches me...lol

[Puff]

i finally got the macro kind of going on my old powershot S400. so i wanted to show a couple of pics of some things i have in my tank now.

i recently bought a couple of small frags of zoas. my favourite are the Armageddon Paly. i also got two small ricordea...one of which has doubled in size in like 4 days. one is purple and yellow, the other is bright orange with a green skirt.

my "little" frogspawn frag that i got two weeks ago (from Seahorse_Fanatic) is growing really well.


Armageddon Palys


Some other zoas


Some more of the small zoas on plugs (and majano anemone on the right)


This IS a majano, isnt it?


My favourite inhabitant, my featherduster "Animal", as in Animal from the Muppets. he's been in there for a couple of weeks and has grown another row of feathers since them. he digs his corner of the tank. (got him from 9.95$ from J&L)


I chopped up the one piece of LR with the 3 green striped shroom on it, and i rearranged them with my bluey red shrooms. they seem to have benefitted from it. more colour and growing fast.


The two small ricordea.


The pulsating xenia that i got a couple of weeks ago.


I still couldnt get a really good shot of the GSP i bought, but here is one showing the polyps out.


A shot showing the orange digitata that was given to me about 3 weeks ago by Seahorse_Fanatic (thanks again anthony!)it is doing REALLY good.


Finally, a good macro of the digitata!!

[jslaney]

Looking great. As a newbie it really helps to have you describing each piece.

Jon

[nanoreefer]

nice tank puff! iam setting up a nano cube 24 realy soon with either a 70watt or 150watt metal halide iam not sure witch one yet, how is your tank with heat your light? and ware did you get the nice live rock J&L?

[Puff]

the live rock is from Ocean Aquatics in Delta.

i have the 150W MH sunpod and my temps stay at around 78-79 degrees at the peak of the day. no temperature problems so far!