Foam Rockwall w/ built in refuge for a 26 gal bowfront

[Michael Hoaster]

That's an interesting idea, using star polyps in place of algae. Of course it's too late now. You'll never get rid of the caulerpa! Ha! YOUR balls!

 

[sam.basye]

That's an interesting idea, using star polyps in place of algae. Of course it's too late now. You'll never get rid of the caulerpa! Ha! YOUR balls!

Ha! Jokes on you Michael!

If you want to busta my balls you're gonna have to go through my WIFE. The gatekeeper! Lol


I'm sure the caulerpa is now a permanent fixture, but I'm going to try! It can live in the fuge - will need a fuge light though.

My wife - let me guess.. MORE LED'S?!?! Whenever I get a package in the mail. Lol
I put LED's in everything. It's that and all my little projects.
Did a sweet HID retrofit in the 4runner last week!

 

[Michael Hoaster]

Now you can build a LED fuge light! Your tank looks great, by the way.

Hey, didn't I suggest you lose those clowns about a year ago? Balls getting sore?

What's the weirded thing you've put LEDs in?

 

[sam.basye]

Now you can build a LED fuge light! Your tank looks great, by the way.

Hey, didn't I suggest you lose those clowns about a year ago? Balls getting sore?

What's the weirded thing you've put LEDs in?

Swollen and throbbing! Lol

Yeah, yeah. All I heard was blah blah blah.. there was an emotional attachment to the fish I have since gotten over. Lol
It was the nice fish I saw at the LFS last week that did it!

Weirdest thing?
Heheh. My landlords car. Haha!
2 LED strip lights on the trunk and LED's in the footwells and side markers. Lol

I put the led in that hollowed out flashlight for the mangrove that died..


Just asked the wife that question. This is what she said:
"Well, you haven't put them in the toilet yet.." lmao


Retrofit

 

[Jah2707]

Just wanted to say I have enjoyed this read. Just went from page one to 1 in a few hours. Love the DIY work you have done. The foam back really made the tank look full well before you got to this point.

I am confident I missed it but if you don't do water changes often what do you do for your calcium and alk? Dose of some type? If so how often.

Thanks again for recording your tank for others to enjoy the stages.

 

[sam.basye]

Just wanted to say I have enjoyed this read. Just went from page one to 1 in a few hours. Love the DIY work you have done. The foam back really made the tank look full well before you got to this point.

I am confident I missed it but if you don't do water changes often what do you do for your calcium and alk? Dose of some type? If so how often.

Thanks again for recording your tank for others to enjoy the stages.

Thanks, jah2707!

I wish I could get another tank just to build another wall. Lol


As far as dosing and supplements go. Nothing. I don't do water changes, I don't add supplements or dose anything, and I don't test any of it. Lol

The main reason is because I'm lazy, the second is, I'm lazy, the third reason is I found that water changes cause a big Dinoflangelate bloom in my tank, and lastly, I can test the water till the cows come home, but I have no clue what to do with the results. Lol There's Soo many different additives and what not that may or may not work in your tank, so I don't even bother.
Like the UV sterilizer I gave up on and sold.

I used to just dump a little of this and a little of that every week, or every other week, without measuring anything and eventuality got too lazy to even do that.

Every once in a while I'll add some calcium, but for the most part it stays around 400. The only thing that coraline algae grows on is my mp10 wet side.

Since I know it's been a while since dosing anything, I'm going to test the water and will post back what they read just for the fun of it.


One thing that's great about having a build thread, other than sharing experiences and how to's, is that it's a way of documenting the tanks process for yourself. Trying to remember the last time you did something, you can go back and look it up (why I posted not that long ago I still hadn't done a water change because I didn't document the previous time and I forgot when I last did it) and being able to see the tank progress from nothing to today. Everything is conveniently in one place.


I'm hoping the LFS has a fish sale in the near future because I saw the clown I want again today. Lol


Here's a fun pic: my Petco has had this deformed clown since it opened a year ago. I call it big ugly. Lol

 

[sam.basye]

Test results:

Calcium 380ppm
Phosphate 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm
Alk 6°dkh

As you can see, it basically regulates itself pretty well. Matches real ocean water by doing nothing. Lucky me! Haha

I'll probably add some alk buffer and calcium to bring them up to 440 and 8° though.

 

[sam.basye]

It's pumpkin carving time folks!

 

[Michael Hoaster]

I assume you have enough LEDs to light those bad boys, ya freak! Post pics or it didn't happen.

 

[sam.basye]

I do not disappoint!



Let's see if I can get them on the local news this year too. Lol

Clownfish - mine





Sea Turtles - my wife's



I do all the designing and drawing. My wife got to use the dremel for most of hers. Made a big mess all over the table and laptop. Lol









LED's for the win! Suck on that Michael!



For those who follow along, you may remember that this was the mangrove light v2.0


The candles just weren't cutting it and the turtles needed more light - told my wife it's a good thing for LED's!

 

[sam.basye]

Making more headway on the caulerpa eradication! It's looking possible!

Yesterday


Today

It's completely gone from the left hand side of the shell

I think a few more days of standing on a chair hand picking it off the wall and it'll be gone!
Sunday is being optimistic..

 

[Michael Hoaster]

You may find that your magically-maintained water quality goes south without it. I don't think star polyps will work as well. There are many better choices of macro algae available, that are not invasive. I also know of a small herbivorous fish that could keep it in check.

 

[sam.basye]

You may find that your magically-maintained water quality goes south without it. I don't think star polyps will work as well. There are many better choices of macro algae available, that are not invasive. I also know of a small herbivorous fish that could keep it in check.

My original intentions were chaeto for the fuge area. Posted a WTB ad and met a guy who said he had some. Show up and it was caulerpa, so I stuck it in there anyway.
It started dieing because the fuge isn't lit except the bump out in the center, so I moved it all there. It then overgrew the eggcrate and has quickly started to get out of control. (Main reason I wanted a manageable macro, like chaeto).

I don't think it really does that much for the water quality... The tank was pretty stable before adding the caulerpa, like it is now.
The caulerpa only grows in the lit areas and explodes in the high light areas. There's a small amount at the sandbed in a conch shell that barely grows at all because it gets very little light.
I'm no expert, but this tells me it grows proportionally to the amount of light, not nutrients in the water - not saying they don't absorb some nutrients. I don't think it's really making much of a difference in my tank (guess we'll find out after it's all gone).
Also, the amount of detritus and crap the caulerpa collected probably didn't help water quality either.

I'm definitely not replacing the macro algae with Star Polyps in an effort to soak up nutrients or make the water cleaner.
They are simply put; more visually appealing and more easily managed than the caulerpa, it's free, and it will grow over the eggcrate - which is the reason for putting it up there anyways.

I am contemplating refoaming it though...
This would be risky, but would yield ideal results.


I plan to build a LED fuge light for macros or the like in the near future. (Although this was the original design and I still haven't gotten around to it yet.. lol)

Side note
Getting some nibbles on the clowns, but no takers yet.
GSP rock should be gone this weekend.

Once the GSP rock is gone, I might do a water change! There's a ton of tiny foam bits everywhere - thanks snappy...
I'm either going to siphon it out with a water change or siphon it out and pump the water back in.
Removing the GSP rock will allow easy access to the sandbed and I can clean/reorganize Snappy's lair.

Also need to clean the skimmer and put a new prefilter on the intake. It's all clogged up and the skimmer doesn't do much of anything in its present state.
Canister filter also needs cleaning..


Lots to do!

 

[sam.basye]

Big day! Got rid of the big GSP rock! Now it looks empty!



Empty = more room for corals!


Going to clean up the sandbed tomorrow and give snappy his building materials back. Lol


The 1" black strip at the base of the wall is all Snappy's doing...
That's where all the little foam bits come from!

Mixed up some salt and added to the tank after removing the big rock.

This morning I picked up another rbta to go with the clowns. It's pretty much the same size as the one I have.



Set up my little 2.5g tank for it and some little frags I got.



Little forest fire digi, little monti setosa frag, small reddish monti that the rbta was attached, some birdsnest, and some tiny zoa's.

Sound like a lot, but really isn't much.

Put the setosa on the upper right ledge, going to put the red digi with the green, not sure about the rest.



Can anyone tell me what this little white ball is? (Dead center)



It's something from the beginning of the thread...

Little frag tank with my homemade nano reef light.

 

[saf1]

What thing looks like a small sponge of some type or those pineapple sponge. I'd do a few searches on those and see if they match up. worth a shot. If so, they are fine.

 

[sam.basye]

What thing looks like a small sponge of some type or those pineapple sponge. I'd do a few searches on those and see if they match up. worth a shot. If so, they are fine.

That's a good guess, but it's not a sponge.

It is actually a bacteria ball I added to start the tank cycling!
(See post #23)
I thought they were supposed to dissolve... Guess not!

 

[sam.basye]

Tank update time!

Decided to syphon the sandbed and man was it messy!

This was taken when it was starting to clear up.

Got the clowns in the 2.5g with their new rbta.



Nem has been wandering a bit. Not splitting like I originally thought..

Mr. Crab is getting bigger!



I let it pinch me (didn't think it was quite big enough to) the other day and it got me good. Lol

Here's Largo, the sheepshead minnow, checking out what going on.



3 elegance corals


Close up




FTS!


Never got around to picking off the rest of the caulerpa..

Going to just get one clown this go around. - wife's idea
Thinking about getting a yellow clown goby as well.

The damsel left last week for good.

 

[saf1]

FTS!


Never got around to picking off the rest of the caulerpa..

Going to just get one clown this go around. - wife's idea
Thinking about getting a yellow clown goby as well.

The damsel left last week for good.

If you haven't done so I'd move that power head or RBTA. Pretty soon you are going to have a pretty big mess on your hands.

 

[sam.basye]

If you haven't done so I'd move that power head or RBTA. Pretty soon you are going to have a pretty big mess on your hands.

Thanks for the concern!

Every rare once in a while I'll find a little ¼" neon pink string on the sandbed.

It's definitely close, like ½" close, when the tentacle's are fully extended on that side.
I wish it would split already, but no such luck.



I don't think it will get sucked in... It's anchored in that barnacle cluster really well and will retract rather quickly if it feels threatened.



Plus I like it there and it took quite a bit of effort to get it there in the first place. It likes the crazy high flow too.


Might do a short video of how much flow it gets. We'll see!

 

[saf1]

All good - was just a comment is all or word of cautionary based on owning one. There are times when they really stretch out and that is all I was commenting on. One of ours did it and my CPR BakPak powerhead caught one tentacle and managed to pull it. Only one or two arms but it was enough to damage it although it did recover fine. The power head is lower power and smaller intake than yours so figured I'd mention it. But you have it under control

Started with one, now six - go figure and now in progress of yet another upgrade to accommodate them - lol. Anyway good job on the tank, it is nice.