crabs new 24" cube

[i have crabs]

this week i again added more frags &corals to the tank, i set the vortec's night mode just so i dont have to hear the noise of the damb thing while im watching tv at night, it actually makes quite the difference in sound so i think ill live with it,
havnt been able to catch the mantis yet or see him again but ill keep trying, i did catch the bicolor blennie first try, i cought him picking at the sps again to he got evicted down to the basement which kinda sucks cause they are funny fish to watch. so im back down to just 1 fish in the tank again, soon as i catch the mantis ill buy some more but im too scared untill then.
you can see where the blennie has been picking at the corals where its all white and ive actually seen him do it a few times now and it didnt seem like it was gonna stop.



other than that tanks been fine, i ordered a reefkeeper light #1 so i can get rid of the 2 timers and clean things up a bit, i think this controller will be fine for this tank unless i do some upgrade later on,

[whiteangelbw]

Hi, your rock wall looks awesome. I am wanting to do a rock wall for my seahorse tank. What kind of epoxy and silicone did you use.
Thanks for any help, Angela

[i have crabs]

i mostly used the deltec epoxy just cause thats what was easy to find, i think next time im gonna use the twolittlefishies epoxy cause its alot softer and would spred better on the back of the rocks. for silicone i used the 1200 stuff the use to build tanks with just cause i figured it probably the strongest and forshurly safe in a tank.

i havnt updated anything in a while cause i havnt been doing much in the tank.
still have flatworms even though i dosed a whole bottle of flatworm exit within 12 hours
still have a mantis i cant catch, i have a trap that looks like it would work well but i guess the mantis has to go in it for it to work and he dosent seem to want to do that im thinking i might have to rip out some rocks and that wasnt supposed to happen ever. the rocks were stacked and corals have been mounted all over and to remove the rocks im gonna have to chisle out corals aswell, might have to happen though since im too scared to buy any more livestock for this tank untill it gets resolved


corals seems to be growing but ive had an issue with color the last while, i was thinking potasium since i wasnt dosing it this tank but now im thinking it might be from heat since ive come home to the tank being around 84 degrees a few times now during the day the ac in the house is turned down a bit and alowing the tank to heat up, im gonna get some kind of fan and hook it up to the controller so it stayed around 81 and the most,
im also gonna switch the mh bulb to a more blue spectrum its a 12.5k giesman marine bulb i believe so maybe a 14-18k bulb might look better and help with the color of the corals also.

not all the corals in the tank are mounted cause i havnt decided if some are staying or not but this is how its looked for the last month or 2 now

[i have crabs]

i bought a ushio 20k bulb today to replace the 12.5k giesmann that came with the light and im much happier with the color and relieved that its not super blue like i though might happen so thats good,
i did some quick par readings before and after
top left before was 590 and droped to 380
and middle right was 360 and dropped to 250
so approx 35% drop in par which seems a bit high but i expected a drop which im fine with, the new bulb was only an hour or so old so ill test it again in a few days maybe.

[JDigital]

Originally Posted by i have crabs

i bought a ushio 20k bulb today to replace the 12.5k giesmann that came with the light and im much happier with the color and relieved that its not super blue like i though might happen so thats good,
i did some quick par readings before and after
top left before was 590 and droped to 380
and middle right was 360 and dropped to 250
so approx 35% drop in par which seems a bit high but i expected a drop which im fine with, the new bulb was only an hour or so old so ill test it again in a few days maybe.

I had the same worry when I bought my Ushio 20ks... but ended up liking alot more than the 14k...

Tank looks awesome!

[i have crabs]

Originally Posted by JDigital

I had the same worry when I bought my Ushio 20ks... but ended up liking alot more than the 14k...

Tank looks awesome!

thanks,

im not shure why im still surprised when things dont go as planned with this tank but at least i was less surprised this time.
anyway yesterday i put the ushio bulb in, i had a bit of trouble with it going deep enough to click in, a small chunk of the case porcelain maybe broke off and nolonger stoped it from going in far enough whell the bulb lit up and worked all day but this morning it wouldnt start it just made some noise and flickered a bit so after a bit of fooling around i took down the light again and pulled the bulb out which i must have broke pushing in just not enough that it didnt work yesterday the glass holding the prongs broke off, i also broke the original bulb the same way trying to get it out which was kinda a ****er since it was only a couple months old,
so obviously it was my fault i broke the bulb and not a warranty issue, i ended up getting a no name brand 20k bulb which was brand new so i figured id try it untill i feel like spending more money, im not shure where this bulb is from but the color looks identical to the 20k ushio 20k as far as i can tell without being able to compare them side by side, so i figured id better test the numbers and see how much of a drop this time.
i got 550 top left and 345 middle right which is more like a 10% drop compared to the 35% loss with the ushio bulb so things mite be better off this way, if the numbers dropp off in the next month or two ill change it out for a 20k giesmann bulb since i think the clips are a bit deeper than regular and hopfully i wont have issues with the clips again cause id rather not break a couple bulbs every time i want to change them

[Ian]

Wow nice tank. Keep this thread going I am learning a bunch