25gal Starfire

[lastlight]

Originally Posted by silentcivilian

Ohhh Benji's. I love mine, its the most depressed looking fish I have. Reminds me of a sad clown. Loves mysis shrimp, and will just sit there and look at flakes float by.. and be like really.. you want me to eat that, when the shrimp comes out, he is the tank bully pushing everyone out of the way for his fill.

That's exactly how mine is and the reason I feed frozen almost every night. Fussy MOFO! He's quite large and out muscles my Kole tang for the shrimp.

I see a Corky back there...nice! I have some from Greg and it's growing like a weed. I'm looking forward to having enough of it to sway like his.

[lorenz0]

I love my cardinal, cool little angry guy

So the SPS invasion has started. Added a frag (lol personal size frag) of convexa, baby blue mille, purple rim monti cap and some green birdsnest so far. Now I really need to test my PO4 and NO3 cause something is a bit off in this tank. Polyp extension is horriable and lighting and flow are not the issue. But hanna released a NO2 meter so I may look into buying a bunch of those in the future.

Have been looking at running either zeovit or biopellets again. Right now the biopellets are really looking favored due to price and less maintenance. I am also still waiting on my ATO to get here (It should be here friday) so that will determine if its the salitity fluctuation that is causing the issue.

I'm going to do a picture update once everything is re-organized. Moving some LPS over to the 60 tonight

[Delphinus]

Ooh nice, where did you score a blue milli? I need me some blue in my tank.

I found it took at least a week for my newly introduced frags to start displaying good PE. In my case as a new tank I knew it wasn't NO3 or PO4 yet, so I was all worried about not having enough flow and so on. Sort of the opposite of what you were worried about. The PE was there the first day but then not after that. But then it came back with a vengeance after a week. I should show you a picture of the RP you gave me - it's super furry now. So I dunno, could it just be that they haven't fully adapted yet but still might given a couple more days?

[lorenz0]

Got the blue milli from the 60gal. Just went snip snip. The frag I cut off the convexa should be considered colony size lol. My super grape milli needs to explode a bit more before I chop away. And I am waiting on my red planet to heal more before I go cut some more frags. Letting everyone get theirs before I get my own for the cube. But let me know about baby blue milli tony, could always cut you a frag

See tony this is where I am a bit worried. When I started up this tank at the end of November the rock I used was was dried. All I did was top up the water and when I got home from mexico after the new year I did a water change and than the transfer with as much rock from my previous system and water as well. So even after the transfer I have considered it to be a new system. I just think I need to find an equalibrium in it right now.

[lorenz0]

Oh and I keep forgetting to write my T5>MH review in here

Well I am a T5 junkie that was interested in MH in the past. In october I picked up a 150watt de and changed out the stock 10k bulb for a pheonix 14k bulb. Big reason I believe T5's blow MH out of the water:

Color - After moving the same corals from my 60 over to the cube I notice that the light is not creating enough "pop" which means that I would need to look into some supplimentals down the road (looking into retro fitting some UVL 18" actinics)

MH fixtures need supplimental. End of story, without a little help from our good old T5 friends they would just be a "meh" bulb. Now LED's... these are sparking interest in my eye

[fishytime]

ya LED is interesting.......Im still on the fence about it though...need more proof in the pudding......cant remember if you have or not...is that fancy coral in the cube yet?

[lorenz0]

Nope the fancy coral has not made it into the cube yet. A few people who bought frags off of me had some issues and I offered to get them new frags once the colony has healed up. Probably won't be for a while till I get my own into the cube, but I have some new plans.

Well my LPS craze is starting to die off. I plan to sell off some of my ultra acans so I can focus on my true passion, sps. Picked up an ATO off another member and all I need to do now is pick up a pump and tank, this should fix my issue with the salinity change which has effected the sps in the tank now to the point where one is browning out and another has what seems to be burn marks on it (this is the convexa). So back to the diagnostic board.

I also added in a bag of chemi-pure elite to the mix. More issues. After one week of running this stuff I now have brown film algae growing all over my sand and on the glass to the point that its driving me nuts. two thumbs down for you chemi-pure.

But here is the big news. After years of debating I have decided to take the dive. As some of you know I debated about running biopellets for the past few weeks but have now come to a horriable conclusion of what to do in my tank, zeovit. I have always wanted to try it and after seeing lobsterboys results in person and lerking the zeovit forums I think its time. Once the tank is a bit more stable with the addition of the ATO I will be adding a reactor and jumping on the "I have to leave the bar early to shake my zeolite stones" club.

oh and to make this thread interesting, a sweet old pic my dad took in aussie land