kien's 150g Room Divider Mixed Reef & Stuff

[kien]

Originally Posted by Delphinus

Great pictures as always!

How big are the angels now Kien? Anything that they pick at or are they behaving well? (I see they don't pick at GSP )

Thanks! The queen has grown a couple of inches since I got her a little over a year ago. I think she's about 6 inches now, tip to tail? The flame angel is your typical runt size angel, nothing unusual there and the Regal is your typical mid-sized angel at around 4 inches? I have not noticed much growth in the Regal Angel at all since I got her, also about a year ago.

They are all behaving like typical Angels LOL. When I first got them they picked at EVERYTHING. Clams, zoas, LPS, SPS. This was about a year ago when I still had the "FOWLR" so they didn't last long in the 150g Mixed Reef (yes, I did try them in there very briefly). I would occasionally put corals in the "FOWLR" and they would quickly go to town on them, of course. However, over the year they seem to have changed their ways. Towards the end days for the "FOWLR" I noticed that they stopped picking on SPS and LPS that were in there. I even put my giant squamosa clam in there for a while and they didn't touch it. The emperor angel that I had at the time loved the squamosa clam though.

Anyway, when I shut down the 131 "FOWLR" and moved those angels to the mixed reef they didn't seem to care for any of my clams in there or my sps (that I had at the time). They did however like LPS like acans, my watermellon chalice and various nuisance soft corals. I had a very serious infestation of these unidentifiable brown polyp softies that just completely took over one of my rock structures and smothered some corals, crawled on the sandbed and started to invade my other rock structures! It was horrible. My queen angel went to town on that stuff and cleaned that all up within a week. They are quite piggy angels and eat anything I throw into the tank which is nice, especially for the Regal because those guys are a brutal to get eating. It's strange because I have tonnes of sponges in my tank, and a lot of different varieties/colours yet none of the angels touch any of my sponges. Go figure

Originally Posted by Salt2Death

Love it


Sent Via The Pirate Ship...

Thanks!

Originally Posted by riceboy

is that a new acro i see in there lol

so it has begun

LOL nothing gets past you does it :-) Ya, I went to a few stores over the weekend and went dumpster (brown bin) diving. Found a few nicely browned out corals that the store owner practically gave to me I didn't take any pictures of them because, well, they are brown and not much to look at. However, I do see the potential in them and I'm hoping they will force me to keep my momentum in an effort to get them to colour up. Maybe I should take some pictures of them so that I have a record of the before and after. Or the before and just-the-same-as-before.

[kien]

weird.. just noticed that I forgot to post this pic. One of my top 3 favourites of all time. Also with me for over a year now. Very piggy and loves to get ich.

[zhasan]

Originally Posted by kien

Thanks :-) It has seen better days but it's alright. Could be worse

This tank has seen all sorts of maintenance schedules over the past 3 years. When I started the tank I was quite religious with the upkeep and would clean the glass every other day and do weekly water changes. I also emptied my skimmer cup every two or three days and frequently made batches of Calcium, Alkalinity and home made fish food.

As time went on I started to get really busy with other things and the tank maintenance took a hit. Everything got pushed back and some chores got skipped The tank still hung in there but some of my more delicate corals started to go, sadly.

This past spring I ran into some equipment failures which completely demotivated me because I just didn't have time to fix or replace the equipment and so mostly all of my corals got nuked. My fish were all still fine though so I tweaked my maintenance down to the bare minium. 1. Filling my auto fish feeder, 2. refilling the auto top off reservoir, 3. Cleaning the skimmer cup every weekend. That's pretty much all I did for the past 7 months or so. All of my fish and invertebrates did just fine on just that schedule.

I guess the moral of the story (and the answer to your question is), it depends :-) That is, it depends how complex you want your system to be and how much time and effort you *want* to put in.

Sorry to hear about all your corals... So I'm assuming you had an almost fish only tank for the past 7 months? And personally I'm hoping to have a very simple reef setup and not give in to buy fish or corals that might cause me to spend an hour or two a day on the tank. I'm expecting 15 mins everyday together with couple of hours of detailed maintenance/cleaning on weekends. Hopefully that'll suffice!

Btw, thats a very nice looking stuffed tang there! How do you treat for ich? Do you quarantine or just give meds in the main tank?

[kien]

Originally Posted by zhasan

Sorry to hear about all your corals... So I'm assuming you had an almost fish only tank for the past 7 months? And personally I'm hoping to have a very simple reef setup and not give in to buy fish or corals that might cause me to spend an hour or two a day on the tank. I'm expecting 15 mins everyday together with couple of hours of detailed maintenance/cleaning on weekends. Hopefully that'll suffice!

Btw, thats a very nice looking stuffed tang there! How do you treat for ich? Do you quarantine or just give meds in the main tank?

Ya, it was mostly fish only for the past 8 months or so :-) Well, fish only with clams, a Goniopora and a yellow gorgonia.

You shouldn't need to spend 15mins a day on the tank. I've never had to spend 15mins a day on my tank. There is nothing that I do every day except maybe look at the tank. Every 2 to 3 days I run the magfloat across the glass to clean it. Every 4 to 6 days I empty the skimmer cup. Every 2 weeks I do a water change. Every month I replace media (GFO and Carbon).

On a random infrequent basis:
* I top up my auto-fish feeder.
* Feed frozen foods
* Give fish a sheet of nori.

Yearly: change light bulbs, clean out skimmer body and all pumps.

Ya the Powder Blue is a fatty. I think I treated for ich with meds like 8 years ago with my first saltwater tank. Since then I have never treated for ich, ever. In my experience what has worked better is to keep the fish healthy with frequent feedings and occasionally with garlic extract. I have had a Regal/Blue Tang for over 5 years that would occasionally get ich but would never spread to other fish or get out of control. It usually clears up. They normally get ich when they are stressed and their stress coat (slime) is not as thick as it normally is. Once they are destressed and built up their stress coat again they are better able to repel ich I find. So anyway, that REgal Tang that used to get ich ALL THE TIME doesn't get ich anymore. Now a days its the Powder Blue Tang that gets ich when he is stressed. But again, I don't treat him. I just feed him more garlic and more variety of foods like flake, pellets, red and green nori, mixed fish mesh so that he continues to eat A LOT. This helps to destress him so that he can build up his stress coat again.

Having said all that, if your fish is really ill and has ich then you definitely need to do something about it, like QT and treating. Not necessarily treating the ich but treating whatever is causing the ich. You know your fish is really ill if they are not eating. If they have ich and are still eating well then you can usually ride out the ich just fine. If they are not eating and are lethargic then they definitely need attention and possibly in a QT with meds.

Many times fish will get ich, will stop eating and then die and people think, oh, my fish got ich and died from ich. In my experience this isn't the case. Usually it is something else that you can't see that is making your fish sick causing them to be severely stressed, thus losing their protective slime coat, thus letting in ich and even more parasites. It's all downhill from there if they continue to stop eating.

And also, sometimes people see spots of ich on their fish and immediately have a knee jerk reaction and think, OH CRAP I need that fish out of there now and pump him full of meds! Often this knee jerk reaction is worse and dooms the fish :-(

[kien]

Originally Posted by fishoholic

I really like the aquascape, you can really see the middle tower now and it looks cool! Love the angels!

thanks! And ya, I'm actually getting kinda used to the clean uncluttered rocks. It's amazing how much more open it is and my tank was already pretty open.

[reefwars]

you gonna go sps dominant again this time??

i could snip you a bunch of sps frags easily to get you started

[kien]

Originally Posted by reefwars

you gonna go sps dominant again this time??

i could snip you a bunch of sps frags easily to get you started

Hey thanks bro! I appreciate that! That is a good question though. Since the rehabilitation I've just been sitting back and enjoying the semi-FOWLRness of the tank and contemplating where to go with it. I do want to put some corals in to colour up the tank a bit and was initially hesitant to go full-on with the SPS again. However, the more I gaze into the tank the more I start to miss the SPS colonies that I did have in there. So ya, I think I'm going to move forward with making the tank SPS dominant again. Of course this means that in the near future I may have to make some tough decisions with my angels that may not be so compatible, but we'll see.

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by kien

Hey thanks bro! I appreciate that! That is a good question though. Since the rehabilitation I've just been sitting back and enjoying the semi-FOWLRness of the tank and contemplating where to go with it. I do want to put some corals in to colour up the tank a bit and was initially hesitant to go full-on with the SPS again. However, the more I gaze into the tank the more I start to miss the SPS colonies that I did have in there. So ya, I think I'm going to move forward with making the tank SPS dominant again. Of course this means that in the near future I may have to make some tough decisions with my angels that may not be so compatible, but we'll see.

sweet .yeah idk i think you should, when i look at the tank i still see a forest of sps in their would look weird now if it was say a lps tank or softie

could always go azoox and really stress your self out lol

when ever your out and about send me a pm and ill cut you a bunch

[kien]

Originally Posted by reefwars

sweet .yeah idk i think you should, when i look at the tank i still see a forest of sps in their would look weird now if it was say a lps tank or softie

could always go azoox and really stress your self out lol

when ever your out and about send me a pm and ill cut you a bunch

If anything, SPS might be the only corals that I'd be able to keep in there with the angels LOL. I had sps colonies in my 131g "FOWLR" with the angels and they never touched them. LPS and softies on the other hand, they LOVED them

Over 8 years in this hobby now, nothing stresses me out

Where abouts in the city are you anyway?

[reefwars]

Originally Posted by kien

If anything, SPS might be the only corals that I'd be able to keep in there with the angels LOL. I had sps colonies in my 131g "FOWLR" with the angels and they never touched them. LPS and softies on the other hand, they LOVED them

Over 8 years in this hobby now, nothing stresses me out

Where abouts in the city are you anyway?

im pretty much right next to golds aquarium ....about 5 mins away on 36street SE

i work evenings and weekends but if you have any free time in the days or in the coming days im here untill 3pm everyday