Mr T-reefer
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Don't know Bob...
180 O' Fun
- Thread starter Mr T-reefer
- Start date
Mr T-reefer
New member
Oh, yeah, nevermind. The collection wasn't as impressive as I thought it would be 
Mr T-reefer
New member
Some minor updates.
First, after three weeks of waiting for the Lions to come in after I placed an order at my LFS, they died before I could pick them up. This ****ed me off. After a long period of waiting to get my lions from the store (I had credit at the store I was going to use to purchase the lions with) and from having second thoughts about doing a species tank for a long time, because there really isn't a whole lot you can put in with a full sized Volitan Lionfish, I have decided just to do a simple reef afterall. Sorry Lionbabe, but I do appreciate the help and advice that you gave me. Perhaps I'll do a lionfish tank in the future. But for now, by simple reef, I mean easy fish and mostly easy corals. This means PJ cardinals, Green Chromis etc, and soft corals of various types. The only difficult corals I plan to keep are Duncan and Elegance which are both LPS, NO SPS.
Second, my skimmer keeps having minor leaking issues near one of the bulkheads, so it has taken a lot longer to fix and get up and running with a Summer Calculus class be taken at the same time as well.
And lastly, I plan to add some crown moulding to my tank (unknown date, could be months) similar to customcolor did with his old tank. I said it to him before, and I'm saying it again, I really like the finishing touches done to the stand.
See for yourself (starts on post #180): http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1144204&highlight=foam+rock+customcolor&page=8
This is what I'm going to do. I added an image of my livestock-less tank with pics of corals I'm going to add to it. I used this image to plan out where I would place the corals based on their needs and what setup I liked before I glue them to the rocks.
(Ignore the circled numbers)
First, after three weeks of waiting for the Lions to come in after I placed an order at my LFS, they died before I could pick them up. This ****ed me off. After a long period of waiting to get my lions from the store (I had credit at the store I was going to use to purchase the lions with) and from having second thoughts about doing a species tank for a long time, because there really isn't a whole lot you can put in with a full sized Volitan Lionfish, I have decided just to do a simple reef afterall. Sorry Lionbabe, but I do appreciate the help and advice that you gave me. Perhaps I'll do a lionfish tank in the future. But for now, by simple reef, I mean easy fish and mostly easy corals. This means PJ cardinals, Green Chromis etc, and soft corals of various types. The only difficult corals I plan to keep are Duncan and Elegance which are both LPS, NO SPS.
Second, my skimmer keeps having minor leaking issues near one of the bulkheads, so it has taken a lot longer to fix and get up and running with a Summer Calculus class be taken at the same time as well.
And lastly, I plan to add some crown moulding to my tank (unknown date, could be months) similar to customcolor did with his old tank. I said it to him before, and I'm saying it again, I really like the finishing touches done to the stand.
See for yourself (starts on post #180): http://www.reefcentral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1144204&highlight=foam+rock+customcolor&page=8
This is what I'm going to do. I added an image of my livestock-less tank with pics of corals I'm going to add to it. I used this image to plan out where I would place the corals based on their needs and what setup I liked before I glue them to the rocks.
(Ignore the circled numbers)
Mr T-reefer
New member
I had to make some changes to my air duct system. I added a fan to the hood and then had to make another stop at the Home Depot to grab some air duct supplies. I need to add some valves still, but here is what I have so far.
Air duct opening in hood
Fan in hood
Air duct system. It shows up more than my original setup, but, at least it gets the job done. The left duct comes from the hood, the bottom one from the stand (refugiums) and the right one goes to the window (exhaust).
Air duct "Y"
I'll be adding my skimmer in the next day or two (I had to build a simple shelf for it) and then when the skimmer is ready I can add all of my corals and fish to the 180.
Air duct opening in hood
Fan in hood
Air duct system. It shows up more than my original setup, but, at least it gets the job done. The left duct comes from the hood, the bottom one from the stand (refugiums) and the right one goes to the window (exhaust).
Air duct "Y"
I'll be adding my skimmer in the next day or two (I had to build a simple shelf for it) and then when the skimmer is ready I can add all of my corals and fish to the 180.
Mr T-reefer
New member
Noted.
Mr T-reefer
New member
I've been so busy that I haven't had the chance to surf the site in a while. When I was ready to take more pictures my camera suddenly stopped working. It looked like the photosensor was damaged or something. So I got a new camera: Nikon L110. I'm still learning how to use it (best settings based on the settings/environment of the object). Some images are a little blue because when I used any other setting the image was either too yellow or too blue. So I used the flourescent setting on some images which gave a little bit of a blue hue to the image. But either way, this helps me get an idea of what things may look like when I change some of my T-5 bulbs to give my tank more of a blue color. But enough talk, here's some images I've been taking over the past month along with some images I thought I posted along time ago (oops!).
Skimmer shelf
Skimmer in place
180 left side Aug 2010
180 center Aug 2010
180 right side Aug 2010
Mushroom shelf (Aug 2010)
Lawnmower blenny
Orange eye brown zoanthids
Skimmer shelf
Skimmer in place
180 left side Aug 2010
180 center Aug 2010
180 right side Aug 2010
Mushroom shelf (Aug 2010)
Lawnmower blenny
Orange eye brown zoanthids
Mr T-reefer
New member
*Continued from above*
Spagetti worm
Rose leather
Red mushrooms
Red mushroom
Purple mushroom
Pom Pom Xenia
Purple death
PJ's and Duncan
PJ cardinal
Orange spotted mushroom
Spagetti worm
Rose leather
Red mushrooms
Red mushroom
Purple mushroom
Pom Pom Xenia
Purple death
PJ's and Duncan
PJ cardinal
Orange spotted mushroom
Mr T-reefer
New member
*Continued from above*
Orange and yellow zonathids
Orange and green zoanthids
Kenya colony
Green Polyped Toadstool
Filter feeder (sea squirt?)
Emerald crab
Duncan
Brown leather
Orange and yellow zonathids
Orange and green zoanthids
Kenya colony
Green Polyped Toadstool
Filter feeder (sea squirt?)
Emerald crab
Duncan
Brown leather
Mr T-reefer
New member
*Continued from above*
Blue tubs
Blue spotted red mushroom
Blue green chromis school
Armor of god and maybe alien eye palys
Yellow polyps
To make sure nothing could get into my overflow and clog them such as one of my nerite snails, I added some pipe with slits cut into them:
Overflow drain screen
Overflow screens added
Blue tubs
Blue spotted red mushroom
Blue green chromis school
Armor of god and maybe alien eye palys
Yellow polyps
To make sure nothing could get into my overflow and clog them such as one of my nerite snails, I added some pipe with slits cut into them:
Overflow drain screen
Overflow screens added
Mr T-reefer
New member
*Continued from above*
180 Oct 2010
180 left side Oct 2010
180 center Oct 2010
180 right side Oct 2010
180 nighttime
180 Oct 2010
180 left side Oct 2010
180 center Oct 2010
180 right side Oct 2010
180 nighttime
Mr T-reefer
New member
It's been a while since my last update, so here are some images I've taken since then. Currently working on getting more cleaners to get rid of the very short hair algae that remains in the tank.
Xenia
Torch Coral
Rose leather
Rose leather close-up
Purple death
Orange mushroom
Green striped mushroom
Green mushroom
Blue spotted mushroom
Orange and Yellow zoanthids
Xenia
Torch Coral
Rose leather
Rose leather close-up
Purple death
Orange mushroom
Green striped mushroom
Green mushroom
Blue spotted mushroom
Orange and Yellow zoanthids
Mr T-reefer
New member
*Continued From Above*
Kenya tree colony
Foxface
Coral banded shrimp
Brown leather frags
Blue tubs
Blue cloves
Yellow polyps
180 Leftside Feb 2011
180 Rightside Feb 2011
80 Overall Feb 2011
Kenya tree colony
Foxface
Coral banded shrimp
Brown leather frags
Blue tubs
Blue cloves
Yellow polyps
180 Leftside Feb 2011
180 Rightside Feb 2011
80 Overall Feb 2011
Mr T-reefer
New member
I've had some hair algae and all around other algae problems lately, so I thought I would report my results using a few things.
To first get it short enough I tried emerald crabs. I had about five in the beginning. They did a decent job, but they more of focused on certain spots and stayed in that area for a while (week or so). Although they did cleanup the medium and short hair algae in localized areas fairly well and did eliminate the little bit of bubble algae I had along with an aitapsia I found but forgot to deal with, they just were not powerful enough for my tank in the long run and I was afraid to add more since they are crabs after all.
I still have the foxface, which I tried next, and it has done a very good job at keeping the stuff at a very short height throughout the tank. After about 1.5-2 months I knew that my snail crew was not big enough, so I tried some fuzzy chiton's to cleanup the rocks to let the coralline algae grow again.
I bought seven, all about 3/4" to 1 1/4" long. After about a week they finally got used to the tank and started to move around a lot more. About another week after that I didn't need to flip them back over as often as I did before.
Overall they do an extremely good job at cleaning the rocks (the glass is so so), but they move so slow that it takes forever for an area to be cleaned, but once it is clean, nothing grows there for a while. They removed everything: detritus, hair algae, diatoms as well as other nuisance algae down to the dead coralline algae they were all growing on top of. Here is an image of the work from just one fuzzy chiton. It is about an inch long and the rock is about 9.5" long diagonally. It took about 2.5 weeks to clean it, but the areas where it first cleaned (lower left section) are now being covered again with algae, although this time 50% of the grow back is coralline.
Only trying out a few, I decided that although they work fairly well, they move too slow though the tank to be truly effective as with some, the areas that were cleaned a few days prior (about 3" away from where the fuzzy chiton is currently at), algae was already coming back.
Some have died for no apparent reason from what I can find, others are moving at only a few inches a day, and some are moving at several feet per day now.
All in all it seems to vary from fuzzy chiton to fuzzy chiton as to what it will do and how long it will survive as there doesn't seem to be much of a pattern between size, location of feeding in tank (high or low, rock, glass or PVC) or diet (One feeds almost entirely on diatoms and does quite well, others feed on the mix of junk found on the rocks where in such case some have died, yet others 6" away eating the same stuff on the same surface do perfectly fine).
Next I tried Mexican Turbo snails. Because almost all of the rock in my tank is zip-tied or cemented together or both, knocking over rocks isn't really a concern for me.
So far I have five large ones (1.75-2") and two smaller ones (1"). They have been doing a really good job so far and move reasonably fast through the tank. I tried just one big one at first and within two days it had completely cleaned the two square foot side panel and was already on the back panel of the tank on the second night leaving nothing but most of the coralline algae behind.
The side panel. It looked just as green as the rock to the right of it before the trial turbo was put in.
So far now being about three weeks after having all seven they have have continued to do a pretty good job, although I have noticed that they have slowed down a bit since I got them, but they continue to clean nonetheless. I may need to get five more large ones, but I'm waiting for now to see how things go while I continue to find ways to lower the nutrient levels in the tank.
Here are a couple other images showing the work done by the turbos. The shell was only half cleaned and so you can see what it looked like beforehand on the top right of the shell.
The algae grows back, but it takes close to a month for it to come back and never really goes away with time, so I knew that my cleanup crew was too small for my tank (which I kind of already knew in the first place as I didn't increase it much when I upgraded from a 80 to 180gal-stupid me, but wasn't sure what the best route would be, sea hare or a 1000 tiny snails sort of thing).
And now some random pictures, the first two are of chloropasts inside chaeto aerea.
To first get it short enough I tried emerald crabs. I had about five in the beginning. They did a decent job, but they more of focused on certain spots and stayed in that area for a while (week or so). Although they did cleanup the medium and short hair algae in localized areas fairly well and did eliminate the little bit of bubble algae I had along with an aitapsia I found but forgot to deal with, they just were not powerful enough for my tank in the long run and I was afraid to add more since they are crabs after all.
I still have the foxface, which I tried next, and it has done a very good job at keeping the stuff at a very short height throughout the tank. After about 1.5-2 months I knew that my snail crew was not big enough, so I tried some fuzzy chiton's to cleanup the rocks to let the coralline algae grow again.
I bought seven, all about 3/4" to 1 1/4" long. After about a week they finally got used to the tank and started to move around a lot more. About another week after that I didn't need to flip them back over as often as I did before.
Overall they do an extremely good job at cleaning the rocks (the glass is so so), but they move so slow that it takes forever for an area to be cleaned, but once it is clean, nothing grows there for a while. They removed everything: detritus, hair algae, diatoms as well as other nuisance algae down to the dead coralline algae they were all growing on top of. Here is an image of the work from just one fuzzy chiton. It is about an inch long and the rock is about 9.5" long diagonally. It took about 2.5 weeks to clean it, but the areas where it first cleaned (lower left section) are now being covered again with algae, although this time 50% of the grow back is coralline.
Only trying out a few, I decided that although they work fairly well, they move too slow though the tank to be truly effective as with some, the areas that were cleaned a few days prior (about 3" away from where the fuzzy chiton is currently at), algae was already coming back.
Some have died for no apparent reason from what I can find, others are moving at only a few inches a day, and some are moving at several feet per day now.
All in all it seems to vary from fuzzy chiton to fuzzy chiton as to what it will do and how long it will survive as there doesn't seem to be much of a pattern between size, location of feeding in tank (high or low, rock, glass or PVC) or diet (One feeds almost entirely on diatoms and does quite well, others feed on the mix of junk found on the rocks where in such case some have died, yet others 6" away eating the same stuff on the same surface do perfectly fine).
Next I tried Mexican Turbo snails. Because almost all of the rock in my tank is zip-tied or cemented together or both, knocking over rocks isn't really a concern for me.
So far I have five large ones (1.75-2") and two smaller ones (1"). They have been doing a really good job so far and move reasonably fast through the tank. I tried just one big one at first and within two days it had completely cleaned the two square foot side panel and was already on the back panel of the tank on the second night leaving nothing but most of the coralline algae behind.
The side panel. It looked just as green as the rock to the right of it before the trial turbo was put in.
So far now being about three weeks after having all seven they have have continued to do a pretty good job, although I have noticed that they have slowed down a bit since I got them, but they continue to clean nonetheless. I may need to get five more large ones, but I'm waiting for now to see how things go while I continue to find ways to lower the nutrient levels in the tank.
Here are a couple other images showing the work done by the turbos. The shell was only half cleaned and so you can see what it looked like beforehand on the top right of the shell.
The algae grows back, but it takes close to a month for it to come back and never really goes away with time, so I knew that my cleanup crew was too small for my tank (which I kind of already knew in the first place as I didn't increase it much when I upgraded from a 80 to 180gal-stupid me, but wasn't sure what the best route would be, sea hare or a 1000 tiny snails sort of thing).
And now some random pictures, the first two are of chloropasts inside chaeto aerea.
Mr T-reefer
New member
*Continued from above*
Mr T-reefer
New member
Back in post 46, someone asked me what eats chondria, so far the mexican turbo snails I have had done a good job at getting rid of it, although it was only one snail and one pass, but there is almost none left where it passed through and it was very thick on the rock beforehand.
