280g Inwall

[muck]

Nice Tony! Will have to make it over sometime and see it in person.

[globaldesigns]

Very beautiful tank Tony, well done.

[Delphinus]

Thanks all! It's so nice to finally appreciate the tank for being something other than a "Must Get This Done" kind of thing.

The fish seem to totally appreciate it too. It was funny to see them go from "OH CRAP OH CRAP OH CRAP" mentality (of being chased with nets then having to sit in buckets while acclimating) to one of "..... oh! Hey, this is not so bad!" so quickly.

@Lance - I'm thinking on its own for now but haven't fully committed. There really isn't the space or capacity in the tank room to run both a frag tank and the FOWLR but the FOWLR is going to go in there for now to allow me to finish the rest of the basement. After that's done we may choose to take it out of the tank room and have it somewhere else but that's a while away at this point - and so too technically is the need for a frag tank so it kind of works out at least from that point of view. So I guess it's a 50/50 call to run it inline and leverage the main system's skimmer etc. in the meantime, or whether it should sit independent from the get-go.

@Greg - The Rhumphella sits at the left edge of the gorg "forest" in the back - you can sort of see a glimpse of it here behind the lavender:


I haven't taken any close ups of the gorgs since a lot of them sustained heavy damage from the butterflies and although it's evident they are recovering nicely now in the new tank, there's still enough damage that at some point I'll have to go in and snip off the dead branches before they'll really start looking good again.

It was interesting to see how the butterflies would go through different phases. I was warned they would eat "everything" by the LFS, but I foolishly thought "well, surely not EVERYthing - let me find out what they REALLY eat and then I can tailor what I keep and I what I don't" - well over time I found out that although there was never a time they ate "everything", there was never a time they weren't interested in "something." At first they went to town on the aiptasia and majano and were content with that. After those were all gone they moved in on certain LPS but left others alone. But then they've moved onto those others when the first LPS were taken out. I tried a test SPS frag, they literally started mowing it within minutes. Same with GPS gets absolutely mowed. They wouldn't harrass clams too bad normally - unless the clam would fall over and show it's byssal gland - they'd go to town on that if they could. The only things that escaped their wrath are clove polyps (which is too bad because it's such an invasive and stinky pest), then I had one colony of yellow zoas that I've had all along that they left alone (although they took care of other zoas). Ok: lesson learned: "everything" really can indeed mean "everything."

[fishytime]

Its really too bad about butterflies.....such a beautiful fish.....would love to be able to put them in a reef tank.....one question though....what are you doin puttin your GPS in the tank???

[Delphinus]

A mistake I made a long time ago! I *thought* I had gotten rid of all of it when I shut my 75g down. But it literally came out of nowhere again and by the time I noticed it was growing in spots in my 40g, the 40g had too many other things going on that I didn't care as much (caulerpa, aiptasia, clove polyps .. etc.).

The annoying thing is I see it cropping up already in the 280g. There's a frag disk with a few yellow polyps (which might have to be sacrificed to solve this, I'm not sure - at least I have a nice colony of them in another piece in a different spot) but the disk also has a few straggling survivors of some red/orange zoanthids which WOULD be worth saving. So I'll probably have to grab the disk out from its spot at some point and do some selective scraping. Actually I took a butylene torch to another frag I moved over a couple weeks ago to ensure the caulerpa was good and gone, other than the smell that worked out well so that might have to be the ticket again for this one.

[MitchM]

Tony,
Are you using bio pellets and anything else on your new setup?
Sorry if I missed that somewhere along the way.

Looks great, btw!

[Delphinus]

I am playing around with zeovit on this tank. I was running pellets on the old tank but haven't yet moved the reactor over. I will probably get around to doing so at some point this week now, but I have to reload it while I'm at it since it's gotten down pretty low in there.

I've run zeovit before so have a reasonable idea of what I'm getting into with that system. When the pellets first came out I experimented with an approach of using both and then settled on just using pellets. Pellets by themselves work not too bad. Although not quite as aggressive as the zeolite based nutrient limiting methods, they definitely do pull down NO3 (and PO4 to a lesser degree) if left to their own devices, plus the bacterial film that is continually shed off as a result of the pellets tumbing is a decent source of food for both corals and fish. What pushed me back into going full on zeovit for this tank however is water clarity. I just can't get over how clear the water gets on that system. It's a little more work daily but honestly that doesn't bother me since I look at the tank as much as I can everyday anyhow and feed the fish everyday anyhow, so it's a very small step to just say "oh ok I'll pump the reactor now and add a couple drops of this or that".

The alternative to get that much water clarity but with a more passive approach would be to run UV and/or ozone and a fair amount of GFO. Was running UV for a while on the other tank and that does seem to remove the yellowing compounds in the water but I was a bit surprised how often you have to replace the lamps. Well I guess it's no worse than the T5's or the halides but it's just yet another thing you have to budget to replace every few months.

[fishoholic]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Same with GPS

Since when do fish need navigational tools?

[Delphinus]

Heh, oops.

[fishoholic]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Heh, oops.

Sorry Tony but I couldn't resist

To bad butterfly's really do eat everything, there have been a few I've seen over the years that have been tempting but I'm glad I didn't risk one since they tend to eat any and all corals.