badAZZlars' 125 sps reef build (Updated FTS)

badAZZlars · #1 08-21-2011, 01:03 AM

Bought some new fish yesterday. 6 Banggai Cardinals, a regal tang, and a flame angel. Bought them at Ocean city and all are doing awesome. Every fish i've bought from there has done really well.

That puts the fish count up to 15 in my 125 gallon. I'm thinking that should probably be it even though i'd love to add more fish. What do you guys think should be the max for this size of reef tank? The only fish I have that will get big are the yellow tang and the regal tang.

Skimmerking · #2 08-21-2011, 01:44 AM

watch your Bangii's they will start to hit on each other ones a pair is matched up

badAZZlars · #3 09-05-2011, 11:53 PM

Here is an updated FTS. I tried my hand at coral importing and put a number of them in my tank to accelerate the growth process

. I know that starting out with frags can be satisfying once they grow out but they really take a long time to grow. I was getting good growth but am a bit impatient. The small colonies still need to grow a lot but it immediately transformed the look of my tank.

The rest of what I brought in is sitting in my frag tank in my basement. Dave at concept aquariums hooked me up with some great deals to put the frag/holding tank together.

Untitled by badAZZlars, on Flickr

badAZZlars · #4 09-05-2011, 11:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by asmodeus

watch your Bangii's they will start to hit on each other ones a pair is matched up

Not sure if its because they were picking on each other (which I didn't see much of) or they had some other issue but over the last week I have lost 5/6 of the cardinals. All of my other fish are 100% fine. The bengii's weren't showing any sign of distress but they just started dying. Can't explain it but will chalk it up to being a bad batch that Ocean City got in as these should have been the most hardy fish I have in my tank.

Its too bad really because I loved how all 6 were swimming together in the middle of the tank.

rburns24 · #5 09-12-2011, 08:34 AM

Nice FTS. The fact that you see the tank every day probably diminishes the changes, but the tank looks like it has really matured over the last 3 or 4 months. The frags have turned into mini colonies, which it pretty impressive and the rocks look a lot darker, which really helps the coral stand out more. Looking very good.

badAZZlars · #6 09-12-2011, 07:12 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by rburns24

Nice FTS. The fact that you see the tank every day probably diminishes the changes, but the tank looks like it has really matured over the last 3 or 4 months. The frags have turned into mini colonies, which it pretty impressive and the rocks look a lot darker, which really helps the coral stand out more. Looking very good.

I'll admit I cheated a bit and actually added some mini colonies. Frags are growing nicely but not that fast unfortunately.

Myka · #7 09-12-2011, 02:02 PM

Nice looking tank! You lucked out with Fragalot ordering that many in one go! Some of my nicest SPS are from Fragalot though, so there is something to be said there.

Quote:

Originally Posted by badAZZlars

Not sure if its because they were picking on each other (which I didn't see much of) or they had some other issue but over the last week I have lost 5/6 of the cardinals. All of my other fish are 100% fine. The bengii's weren't showing any sign of distress but they just started dying. Can't explain it but will chalk it up to being a bad batch that Ocean City got in as these should have been the most hardy fish I have in my tank. Its too bad really because I loved how all 6 were swimming together in the middle of the tank.

Banggai are cool fish. They are awesome when they are schooling, but they will only do that if they are unpaired, immature, or are in really large tanks. Once they start pairing up they will get territories and stick to their mate instead of schooling because our tanks are too small. If the Banggai were wild-caught the die off is not unusual at all. Ask Ocean city if they were wild or captive bred. This is one of many reasons why Banggai should always be captive bred. The trouble is that Banggai make poor candidates for profitable breeding, so mostly just hobbyist breeders are breeding them.

badAZZlars · #8 09-12-2011, 07:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Myka

Nice looking tank! You lucked out with Fragalot ordering that many in one go! Some of my nicest SPS are from Fragalot though, so there is something to be said there.

Banggai are cool fish. They are awesome when they are schooling, but they will only do that if they are unpaired, immature, or are in really large tanks. Once they start pairing up they will get territories and stick to their mate instead of schooling because our tanks are too small. If the Banggai were wild-caught the die off is not unusual at all. Ask Ocean city if they were wild or captive bred. This is one of many reasons why Banggai should always be captive bred. The trouble is that Banggai make poor candidates for profitable breeding, so mostly just hobbyist breeders are breeding them.

Thanks for the info. I think i'm going to try them again eventually but will make sure that they are captive bred. I was pretty disappointed to see them all drop off but I think my two large brittle stars were pretty happy about it. I think they ended up consuming 3 of the 6.