120gal mixed predatory reef tank

[whatcaneyedo]

Look who came out to pose for the camera!

[whatcaneyedo]

Not a lot to report on. I lost my big golden tear drop maxima clam last week. On the Monday its mantle looked pinched in one spot so I moved it to my frag tank because I though it may have been nipped by one of the fish. By Wednesday it looked pretty bad so I gave it a fresh water dip. By Friday it was dead. I guess I waited too long to dip but I'm not sure. I had the clam for 5 years and it died in 5 days... sucks.

Here is a picture of how the maxima looked on the Wednesday before the dip. Normally the mantle would be very well extended. Theres probably a regular picture of it in this thread.


Most of the other 6 clams are doing fine and havent had any problems. However I did freshwater dip my squamosa about 3 weeks ago when it started exhibiting signs of pinch mantle. The squamosa recovered without incident. Ironically I've never had any problems with the 'difficult' to keep crocea clams. Just the 'easier' maxima, squamosa and derasa...

March 19 FTS

[neoh]

Read the whole thread, very inspiring! That Fu Manchu is awesome. I saw one at the LFS a couple weeks ago and have vouched to get one when I can house it properly.

Very nice work.

And for the record, I too am a sawdust sweeping degree holding metalhead ;D

[whatcaneyedo]

Here are a few new interesting pictures. The small green coral is a tiny little trachyphyllia frag that accidentally came off of the larger colony that I recently sold. I've added an arrow to point to a pod for size reference. It started out as a little chunk of skeleton with some tissue attached that fell off the side after I did some cutting and has grown into a mini colony with its own mouth and feeder tentacles.



This just looks cool...



FTS May 14. I'm feeling pretty lucky these days. My only real problem is the red slime that still wont go away.



Here are a few pictures of my Australian elegance coral that I got back in December. This is a picture from the first day. Notice the location of the tissue on the skeleton...



... Here is a picture of the elegance at night all closed up. You can see here how much it has grown in the past 6 months! *note: I cut 1" of old skeleton off of the bottom so that it wouldnt sit so tall.



Here is a day time shot with the tissue fully expanded. I'm pretty excited about my success so far. The only other elegance I've tried was an Indo and it was dead within a week. If this Australian continues to thrive and grow for another six months I'll try fragging it.

[Sebae again]

Awesome colour and shot of the open brain coral.

[whatcaneyedo]

I haven't posted anything here in over a month so here are some updates on the world within my tank. Shortly after my FTOTM release the yellow coris wrasse disappeared. I suspect my eel may have eaten it but I'm not sure. I had had it for over two years and it was 3" long... There was no trace of it inside or outside of the tank so maybe I'll never know.



It seems like every month comes with a new problem/challenge and I think I may have solved this one. My beautiful blue and pink chalice has recently been showing some recession while the other chalice frag I have under identical conditions continues to grow very well. They are both in my frag tank which does not contain any fish, crabs, shrimp or anything else that could pick on them... or at least that is what I thought until I found a crab molt the other day. So I did some exploring and found a little gorilla crab hiding under a large coral that was very close to where I kept this chalice. The crab has since been removed to a fish bowl in my sump so hopefully that solves the mystery.

Before


After


Red circled crab in exile


Some good news... This coral continues to grow at an exponential rate. Here are two pictures taken one year apart.

May 2009


May 2010


I did a little system tweaking this month too and added this solenoid to my fresh water reservoir. I bought the valve on ebay from valvesforprojects and wired it to a 12VDC adapter from an old internet router that doesn't work anymore. It is on a timer to turn the flow on for an hour each day. This way my RO/DI filter doesn't have to turn on and off 40+ times a day whenever the Tunze top-off system replenishes some evaporated water.

[silentcivilian]

Thank you for that wonderful photo. I read this whole thread start to finish, and I love those two fish, and one day want to start a tank dedicated to this style of fish. I currently read about them all the time and just love everything about them.

Also, love your setup, looks wonderful and everything looks so clean and thought out.