400 gallon project

[untamed]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Yay cyano! Fun fun. But, if it's any consolation, the tank is looking good anyhow. I love the "gorg tank" look (I realize some of them are actually sponges). Actually about the sponges - are they feeding on phyto or zooplankton or anything like that?

I had not intended to create a gorg-tank, but that is the way it ended up with the LR that I got. It's a really nice benefit to have some very large coral in there while the SPS grow up.

I feed phytoplankton every day. I'm not currently feeding zooplankton, but I do intend to. I'm pretty sure that the sponges would be feeding on nothing larger than phyto, but I've not been able to find any research that confirms that this is what the sponges actually consume. It could be bacteria.

The branching orange sponges seem to be doing OK. However, the tall red sponges are dying fast. The yellow ball sponges can't seem to fend off algae...and I have two types of other red and orange sponges sheltered in the rocks that seem to be doing fine. So if one type of sponge might be getting what it needs, some other types are clearly not.

[untamed]

Yes, it has been pretty warm the last few days. The graph below shows how the high temperatures have affected the tank temperature over the past few days. No..we don't have air conditioning in the house.

You can see that it is hitting a bit above 81.5 F. That's only 2 degrees warmer than the operating goal of 79 F. The daily cycle is about 1 degree increase every 3 hours as soon as the halides come on.

[Skimmerking]

Time for a Air cond

[Red_Six]

Nice tank.

I have the package as well. I had one red sponge that dissolved away in about 4 months. After doing some research I came across this article by Randy Holmes.

http://www.advancedaquarist.com/issu...03/feature.htm

In it he says, "Sponges are the second largest consumer of dissolved silica in the ocean." I would be interested in seeing if the addition of silica to your tank lets them survive.

[untamed]

Thanks, Red Six....I watched your tank build for a long time during my planning stages.

It is interesting that Holmes-Farley wasn't able to keep his particular sponge alive for long regardless of his attempts with Silica. Nevertheless, if HF recommends Silica additions, that's enough recommendation for me!

[untamed]

Even I have a limit as to how large I let a crab get before he makes me uncomfortable. I never saw this crab kill anything that caused me concern. (just some hermit crabs, which was quite entertaining...), but he reached a size that began to worry me. I'm sure that at some point he was going to graduate to larger prey.

So...he's moved into the sump. I hope he will be OK there. Certainly food travels into the sump all the time.

Capture was pretty easy. I small piece of shrimp in a tall glass just as the lights went out. (He was obviously hungry, because he slid in in less than a few minutes)

[Corbin]

creepy, great pictures!