Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[asylumdown]

and I know this is the main room, but I'm gonna put it in my thread because I love it and I don't want it getting lost - This is Ferdinand. Coolest. Reef. Fish. EVER.



He may or may not have a taste for corals. Time will tell, he's very curious. He's already taken a tiny nibble on one of my frogspawns, but since I don't care all that much about LPS, I'd happily let him eat it if he would be cute about doing it. Thankfully he didn't bite anything off and spit it out as soon as he put it in his mouth. However, he's eyed a few SPS pieces like they might be tasty, so time will tell if he's a permanent addition. The interwebs didn't mention anything about them being coralivores, so I'm going to chalk it up to curiosity for now.

[asylumdown]

way too many posts from me, I also forgot to mention that I got an order from Canada Corals a few days ago. UPS almost screwed that pooch beyond repair, but between me and the girl from CC calling them, they actually did deliver on the day they said they would.

I picked up a forest fire montipora frag, a rainbow montipora frag, an echinopora mammiformis frag, and some sort of Acropora secale frag. Considering that they were drunken saturday night internet shopping purchases, they turned out really well. I re-scaped half my tank to fit them in, so I'll post pics of it soon.

I also picked up a sebae anemone about a week ago. Unfortunately, the thing is bleached to within an inch of it's life. I keep hoping it will make a come back, but it won't last more than 48 hours in one spot before it launches itself in to a power head. I've got foam on all of them and I'm turning them off at night, but trying to nurse this thing back to life is exhausting. So far my true percula clowns are ignoring it, and tonight I had to shoo them away from one of my mag floats as it looked like they were about to spawn on it. I've half a mind to give up on the Sebae and track down a good sized GBTA, but they are such notorious wanderers/splitters.

[gregzz4]

Thanks for the nice offer Adam

Ferdinand is cool
Best of luck with his diet

[Delphinus]

Not sure if this helps but FWIW I found when I had a sebae anemone that it was really terrible at attaching to anything (even when it was healthy). It's like it prefers to wedge its foot into a deep crevasse and then pressure itself into place. The only place it stayed successfully was a fairly deep crevasse created by the placement of two large rocks near to each other.

Good luck. They are very nice anemones when they are healthy but they seem to only come into the hobby way too bleached.

[kien]

That cow fish is awesome! How does he manage in the flow? Does he retreat to calmer waters ? I tried a box fish once (okay maybe twice), and they just couldn't handle the flow at all. They'd get blasted around by the powerheads and when they retreated to calmer spots they were bothered by the bigger fish.

[asylumdown]

This guy is doing great, I think it's because there's so many places in my tank where there's interference so as the day progresses there are relatively calm areas. He doesn't even seem to mind the high flow spots now, as he's doing a much better job of positioning himself in them so that he controls his position instead of just getting blasted. It took him a couple of days to figure out that the sand bed and close to the rocks were calmer than right in front of the powerbeads, but he's almost (not quite) at the point where you can't tell there's current in the tank when you look at him like all the other fish.

How big were the boxfish you tried? this guy is bigger than most I've seen in stores/in people's build threads before so that might be helping. I'm really hoping for long term success with him. I never in a million years thought I could have one of these guys, then when I saw two of them at Wai's and my roommate went "Whoa! COOL!" I immediately turned to google to show him why I couldn't have one. Then Google actually suggested I might be able to have one. Now he's my favourite thing in my tank.

Honestly even if he eats a little bit of coral I might not get rid of him. I have a lot of coral, and he's cooler than most of my coral.

[kien]

Sounds like someone is attached :-). I had a fish like that once (Queen Angelfish).. Tough call between the fish and the corals.

Both boxfishes that i previously had were pretty small. Probably an inch?

[asylumdown]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Not sure if this helps but FWIW I found when I had a sebae anemone that it was really terrible at attaching to anything (even when it was healthy). It's like it prefers to wedge its foot into a deep crevasse and then pressure itself into place. The only place it stayed successfully was a fairly deep crevasse created by the placement of two large rocks near to each other.

Good luck. They are very nice anemones when they are healthy but they seem to only come into the hobby way too bleached.

Thanks for the advice, I just moved a piece of rock from my fuge up to where the nem is. I placed it in the path of the current that keeps dislodging him. It's locking in pretty well, but if the nem stays put for a day or more, I'll epoxy it in to place.

I also pried a colony of acans off the rock that the anemones tentacles could reach if the current was right. I'm sure the nem would have won if it were healthy, but I'm thinking maybe the irritation was causing it to want to wander.

[asylumdown]

I finally figured out how to fix the white balance on some of my iPhone photos. They're still not perfect, but they're waaaaay closer to real life than in the past. Ferdinand is front and centre, clearly expecting me to feed him:



Got some new goodies. The sebae anemone I picked up didn't work out. I think it was just too bleached. It wouldn't eat, wouldn't attach, wouldn't right itself (it flipped over every day for almost two weeks), and finally turned itself inside out. So I picked up what's regarded as a 'harder' anemone to keep, but so far in my tank is doing brilliantly. It attached right away, moved a couple inches, and settled down:



And some other new goodies:

Red planet, finally!


I think pocillopora, you can also see my new rainbow monti in that pic

(thanks Argentiner for the frags!)


I got a small order from Canada Corals (didn't see the group buy, oops), that's an echinopora mammiformis and an Acropora secale. Both are pretty brown at the moment, but I'm hoping uner my lights they do something magical. I also got the rainbow monti in the pic above


Terrible blown out photo of the forest fire monti, also from Canada Corals (excellent service, incredible packaging, thanks guys!)

and just some other, sort of colour corrected photos. There's still too much blue in them compared to what you see when you look at the tank, but I'm getting closer to 'as seen in real life' pictures. I'll get them perfect eventually.

[asylumdown]

(this is the most accurate colour photo I've ever been able to get of this colony)