~450G Display (~1000G system) documentary starting

[kwl1763]

Charles my qt for SPS is pretty easy,

Totals about 7 hours.

Inceptor at 10X dose for the whole time

The last hour I add flatworm exit at at least 5x

I have just begun adding fluke tabs for AEFW the last 30 minutes.

I use a 20G bb tank and have a maxijet 1200 for circulation. No light.

I'm pretty parinoid after having red planaria and red bugs in the past. This tank is as issue free as possible. Everything wet qt'd! All fish hypo'd 3 weeks, etc. etc.

att, I use 3 10k XMs 250W SE with Lumwnmax reflectors with 2 DE 20k XM PFO pendants in between them. I also have 3 T5 actinic purely for dawn dusk since I only run the halides 7 hours.

Well the Regal has been through it. He came down with a bad bacterial infection. I tried treating with Macaryn 2 with no luck and after 5 days switch to normal Macaryn and that worked and he looked OK after 3 days of that. I removed all the meds and put some rock back in and he looks suprisingly good now. He is even starting to eat a little that I can see so I am cautiously optimistic with him.

Here is a snap over the weekend:

 

[kwl1763]

OK ots of eye candy. I took about 300 pics this weekend and saved about 80 (80 good ones and 220 bad oh well)

I'll probably trickle many of them out on this thread over several days but if you want to click through yourself.

http://kwl1763.com/Reef/Nov_06/

Everything is really rockin in the tank. Stuff is growing great. All the corals are doing well with the exception of the purple montipora above. I mentioned it was in trouble well it slowly died over about a week. I did a 80G water change today. I'm so happy I built that in. It takes like 5 minutes and is so easy!

Coralline is really taking off.

A couple eye candy pics for the road.

Side view of the tank

Encrusting Nicely!

 

[zemuron114]

gorgeous! may i ask how you got corals direct from tonga? you must have transhipped them through LA? i am interested to know if you dont mind telling

 

[melev]

First of all, don't tell him. Tell me.

Just kidding.

I'm always impressed when a coral grows like it should, in a symetrical shape. I don't see that happen to often in my tank, which annoys me.

Looking forward to getting a cavity...

 

[argo]

Keith, great looking tank. I like (and will adopt) your qt procedure - wish I did that in my tank from get go. That tri-color colony is very healthy looking. Good luck to all your tank's inhabitants.

 

[NuclearReefs]

Nice Hycianthis ,, I love those !

Looking good keith! :thumbsup:

 

[peterlin98]

Hey Keith,
You are a bad influence. You reminded me how much I missed my red sea regal angel and I ordered one this week. So far so good.. It's eating and swimming around. No qt for me. I lost fish in qt before so.. but it looked nice/healthy from day one. We'll know 2-3 months from now.
Just want to drop in and see how your fishie is doing and great looking thank you have there.. Lots of room for sps to grow out.
Peter

 

[mflamb]

Keith,
Where did you order the Tonga coral from? They look great.
Mike

 

[kwl1763]

Hi Peter, Good to hear from you. The Regal is doing great. He's really eating anything right out of the water column. He's also not scared of people at all anymore! Glad to here yours is eating well. That's about 3/4 of the battle! Where did you order him from.

All the corals came frome livestockusa.org, You have to order full boxes but it's nice stuff and the price is right. The customer service is outstanding also. Tell them I sent you.

Nothing really new to report. The regal will go into the tank next weekend. Oh I also just got some true percs and a real nice RBTA a week ago. They are also doing great. Of course they won't even look at the anemone yet. I know it's hit or miss if they host or not.

A couple more pics to fill the post out.

I still don't have the calcium reactor exactly right. IIt's close but not perfect. I'll mess with it more this week. I also was running low on the test kits so I decided to try out the Elos tets kits. They should be here early next week and I'll post my opinion on them!

 

[sivert55]

updates?

 

[NuclearReefs]

Yeah.. I want Polyps for Xmas! SPS Polyps !

 

[kwl1763]

No major updates. I'm like 600 miles form my tank the next 2 weeks so that's a little stressful!

Coralline is going nuts. The starboard surface is at least 50% covered. The corals are doing great. Encrusting like crazy. I had a slight issue with them lightining way up due to lack of nutrients (best guess) but I started feeding golden pearls and cyclopeez and oyster eggs on a rotating basis nightly and that seems to have helped. They always looked super healthy and were growing but the color was just getting extremely light.

The Regal Angel is in great shape. He is in the reef and eating literally anything out of the water column. All the fish look fat and happy. Next I'll go with some wrasses then the tangs and trigger.

If I'm lucky I'll return from Dallas with some nice frags from my buddies here.

Nathan your alive! Computer Issues taken care of???

 

[kwl1763]

OK update. The tank looks great after 2 weeks alone with only every other day feeding from someone who has no clue about aquariums so that's a huge success.

Nothing major to report. The calcium reactor is rocking and rolling. Levels are real stable at 8 dkH and 425 calcium. My Mg is a little low at about 1100 so I'll get that worked on as soon as I order something else from marine depot or premium. I also going to get some Mg medium to include in the reactor. I used to use doloite in there (about 15% of the media) but it's not easy to find anymore so I'll probably breakdown and order some of the ZeoMag or simular. Corraline is really kicking now and is at least 75% covering the starboard. I still keep scraping the back glass as I think it looks much cleaner and better that way.

Skimmer is kicking butt. I still haven't hooked up the chiller but no need this time of year!

2 things on my project list but no major hurry.

1) RDSB. I'm going to either put a 20G tub full of sand in the top sump or get a trashcan on wheels, fill it 3/4 with sand and then drill a bulkhead and feed it with a maxijet and overflow through the bulkhead back to the lower sump.

2) A clam "holder". I want to make an acrylic container for clams that will fit in a sump. Since I have 2 fish that will potentially nip them (copperband almost certainly will!) I want to make something to display them. I want to make it where I can make it a closed loop with a couple ball valve turns so I can feed the clams but keep some flow. I may make it two sections, One for clams and one as a prop/frag section. I have quite a bit of acrylic laying around so I'll have to think about it.

Other then that onto the eye candy.

Good ole full tank shot.

Left Side

Center

Right

Here is a pretty cool different kind of reflection shot. This is fro the left side behind the tank looking through the side towards the front.

One through the right side lengthwise.

 

[kwl1763]

Fish Update:

All is well. Everyone is eating great and getting along. Every once in a while the copperband will act like he doesn't like the regal and he'll flare and turn sideways but the regal just looks at him like he's crazy!

So so far there is:

Magnificent foxface
Regal Angel
Copperband Butterfly
2 True Percs
2 Neon Gobies

Some pics:

 

[kwl1763]

Corals.

I'll start with some of the small colonies and then I'll move onto the frags.

 

[kwl1763]

And I have a whopping 2 non SPS in the tank.

A suncoral (both orange and black) which is closed here and in the overflow (hence the super dirtyness)!

And a nice frogspawn

 

[kwl1763]

Well I visited several reef buddies over the holidays and got a few frags (ok well actually 20 something) They all survived the trip back (14 hours drive time plus an overnight detour to Oklahoma) and are doing great. Here is a sample:

That's it. As always any suggestions/questions are encouraged!!

 

[jnarowe]

corals look great and that foxface is totally awesome. what a great loooking fish!

 

[mflamb]

Great looking tank. The pics are awesome!!!

 

[melev]

Sweet update, Keith. Your macro shots are getting much better.

You have several nice pieces in there.