tlhood's first tank - 34g RSM 130D

[tlhood]

For the first time ever, I managed to catch a decent photo of one of the two hitch hiker crabs I got on a piece of rock from Wai's back in January. They somehow managed to survive my ammonia cycle. I'm pretty sure they are porcelain crabs, and they have moved their home from one end of the tank to the other. I usually can see them hanging under small arches filtering the water.

While both have the same blueish spotted colour, this one has pink under his claws, while the other has white.







Also, here is a photo of Frank, my conch, because he is a rockstar.

[tlhood]

I think my fish is a bit anti-Semitic.... PS. Man do iPhone cameras love soaking up the blue LEDs. Yikes

[tlhood]

We just had some reno's done in our bathrooms, which is where I get my water to run through the RODI, so I had about 3 weeks of no water change. Out of desperation, I grabbed a few gallons from Walmart. Now that the bathrooms are pretty much complete, I was finally able to hook up my RODI and decided to take the opportunity to do some major tank maintenance and overhaul.

What I have planned for the afternoon/evening:

1) Splitting my GINORMOUS anemone, which has taken to shading all the other coral in my tank
2) a few of my corals have gone downhill since the renos, so I will be doing some trimming/dipping/moving of them
3) changing the rockscape a bit to better suit the corals I have, to try to avoid having a setup where the nem can umbrella over the corals, and to create some more surface space for the zoas I will be picking up tomorrow
4) Rinsing some of the detritus off the rocks while I move them
5) a large H2O change

Fingers crossed nothing dies.

[tlhood]

New equipment

I am super excited to get my new skimmer! I have been using the stock RSM 130D skimmer, and it is loud as all hell, and I find it very finicky. I placed an order at concepts for a Tunze (the cutest skimmer you will ever see!) and should hopefully get it in the next week or so.

Livestock

Lost one of my zoas =[ of course it was the most expensive, and due to unfortunate events caused partially by me, and partially by a really annoying hermit crab, it got beat up and exploded, and died. The rest of the new zoas I got are doing amazing, though!

My two halves of my nem are healing, slowly though. I had to clean out their containers (which they haven't moved out of) since their bodies were blocking some flow to the bottom, resulting in crud buildup. I did put some slits in the sides of the containers to hopefully avoid that issue reoccurring. The cuts have healed, and it looks like the discs are rounding out and the mouths are healing up too. At this rate, they should hopefully be good in the next couple weeks.

Commendations to Mr. Cerith, my invincible dwarf cerith snail! I found him alive this morning on my glass, despite thinking he was dead for over 2 weeks. He has lived through stranding himself in a bunch of accumulated salt on the lid slider bar things for 2 days, he has survived being sucked up by tubes into water change buckets, and being stuck in the crud under my nems in their containers. yay!

[jhj0112]

Very nice!! Did you get 9001 or 9002??? I'm also looking into upgrading the skimmer on my RSM 130 as well.. can you post you tank pictures??

[tlhood]

I believe I ordered the 9001, from my reading the 9002 is out of production and has been replaced by the 9001.

The 9001 is smaller, and has a square collection cup so you don't need to go buy a different one from intank. You can also move the magnet so you don't HAVE to have a media basket to connect it to.

I will post some tank pictures shortly.

[jhj0112]

yeah! I was looking at 9001 last weekend in the LFS and its cup is bigger than 9002..

Can you let me know how you install 9001 without the media basket?
I'm now leaning toward getting a new 9001..