KrazyKuch's & Michika's 180Gal Tank Build

[michika]

I made a bunch of frags a couple of weeks ago, and most of them are thriving. My Red-Orange digi isn't a fan of being fragged, both pieces STNed a few days after the initial fragging.

We also have some progress on our other build!

A couple weekends ago my parents were cleaning out their garage. They found a whole bunch of duplicate power tools, and they cleaned out a pile of boxes that used to belong to my father's mother.

We came home with a bunch of sweet new (to us) power tools, which we now no longer have to purchase. I also got this awesomely eclectic tea set that used to belong to my grandmother. I think its amazingly tacky, but very endearing in an heirloom-y sort of way.

[fishytime]

Hey!, I saw one just like that on the Antiques Roadshow once....was worth like $4000

[Marlin65]

Sell buy more clams

[michika]

Some 180g shots from this morning.

T5s only


T5s and MH


We did some re-aquascaping as the brown/green cap was encroaching on one of my clams and starting to cause problems. I pulled some of the rock I was cooking in the sump out and put it into the display to make more space for frags, and growing colonies.













I have all these intentions to get rid of all the majano anemones, but I start, and then my efforts drop off after awhile. Plus my efforts seem to make no impact. I'm kind of at the end of my list of ideas for addressing it long term. Ideas?

[Delphinus]

My pair of C. ulietensis ("double saddle-back" or "false falcula") butterflies DESTROYED the majano problem in my 110.

Problem is they like anything with long little tentacles. So zoanthids for example seem untouched. But palys on the other hand, are in a contant state of "trimmed" (the polyp itself is fine, but no tentacles coming off them.)

And LPS is a problem because of the feeder tentacles. So since LPS tend to feed at night and butterflies tend to, you know, sleep, at night .. it's a very slow rate of decay with them, but now that I've had the butterflies 2 months I've had to relocate all my LPS into my smaller tank.

I don't see any LPS in your tank though so you might be OK. Just that one patch of palys there to the left? .. Mine have shown no interest in the clams so you should be OK there.

...

Something interesting I learned though. The whole legend about Chaetodon ulietensis for majano control was begat out of an article written by Terry Siegel in Advanced Aquarist a number of years ago. Going back and re-reading that article and looking at his tank pictures, he has mis-ID'd his fish, what he in fact has is Chaetodon falcula.

From a few conversations I'd have with folks on RC, C. falcula is slightly more reef safe than C. ulietensis. Also in the last year of looking for ulietensis, I passed on falcula a number of times because I was holding out for ulientensis, because the article was adamant that it was ulietensis. (It was only after I had the fish already that the mis-ID was shown to me..) So falcula may be better in a reef, and may be easier to obtain (could just be luck of the draw though). Both are spectacularly beautiful butterflies (very subtle differences in markings, in the falculas the black are smaller defined triangles, where in ulietensis it's more gradual).

[michika]

I really am leaning towards butteryflies to address the issue now. I tried shrimp, they didn't last. The problem is clearly out of control, and its only gotten worse in the past couple months as things have gotten so busy around here.

[christyf5]

I bought a raccoon to get rid of my majanos and aiptasia. After about 5 weeks or so he had finished them all off. Unfortunately now he has become quite the generalized grazer, ricordea, blastos, acans, I've even seen him nail a few sps polyps. He also cleaned one rock of its fugly browny yellow zoos (not sad to see those gone). However when I move everything to the new tank he will be going back to the LFS. I want clams more than a raccoon butterfly and I'm pretty sure they'd just be snackycakes to him.

Go for a falcula if you're looking at keeping them more long term. I love having a butterfly in the tank but I don't love the damage he does.