I'm Back ! Please Join In With Our New 125g In-Wall Build.

[ClownBubbaJoe]

Ok, I'm back.

Starting a new tank, a in-wall 125g mixed reef that's I'll appreciate your opinions, advise, chatting and follow along.

We started in the hobby back in the 90's, sold out to go dirt sprint car racing, bought a big boat then built our 1966 Ford 427 Shelby Cobra. (my baby) lol

We sold the sprint and boat due to my bad health, but we're back to reefing !
It's a pain in the Awhen things go wrong, but when sailing smooth, it's such a beautiful and wonderful life. (yes,''life'' as it takes so much time)

Hear's what has happened.

I had a second heart attack, so I've slowed down, but not out. (I think)

A lady rear ended me on our highway going 60 mph in a 45 mph zone, I was going 30 mph. It was her fault.

I've had two surgery's on my neck & shoulder so far. They removed eight nerves next to my spine. Since I'm on blood thinners for my heart I can't have the third surgery until June, I can come off then for a week, have the surgery then back on them for 6 more months. It's very evasive and right next to my spine, so being on the thinners, if I bruised near the spine it could swell up with blood and bruise bad enough to push on my spine and could paralyzed me.

I'm diabetic, so with my brain damage from age two, I have 24/7 headaches and electrical zaps in my head constantly, which raises my blood sugar. Pain raise's everybody's so we don't go in shock when injured. Now with this added pain, I can't keep my sugar down. It ranges from 200 -450 most of the time, even sleeping all night it's very high in the morning.

Anyway, it's been hard on my "spirit of life", but just the joy of setting up this new tank gets me excited !

We have removed everything from the office to make it the "fish room" again. I removed the CARPET,....this time and laid down a roll of seamless vinyl flooring this time, and we even sealed off all the edge's !

I bought a perfect condition used "Zero Edge" sump, instead of a DIY 55g aquarium sump. I got a smoking deal on it, so I'm very happy with the price, how well it's built and works.

The next step is to install a inline GFCI outlet to cover all the electronics down the line, and a dedicated ground for it all, so to limit stray voltage. I will then use safe electrical strips where needed. And a ground probe in the tank. Power heads can leak out voltage in time. Water and salt are a hazard !

Next will be mounting the new RO/DI system.

As always, everything is difficult so working on the tank and updating my thread is slow. I can't lift over 30lbs now, but can increase 10lbs every month.

Bare with my fellow reefers. Please join me by gaining my spirit by help building our new beautiful reef ! :beer:

Kevin

 

[Dsekula]

Awesome to have you back Kevin (tho I don't remember your last time )
Reefing brings joy to my life as well, I think we all get very emotionally invested in our tanks, it's wonderful when they grow and heart breaking when disasters happen. What is your stock plan besides a mixed reef?
And of course, Good luck!!

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[ClownBubbaJoe]

Thanks. And you're right. My last name is Gilmore.

Our plan is to transfer our fish from the other small tanks, then get more. We've had these before, long time ago, you just need to buy them small, which to be first to last and some added together.

Yellow Tang
Purple Tang
Clown Trigger
Wrasses
Blonde Naso Tang.

Other small fish.

We have a rimless 93g cube that we bought to be a Clown Harem tank with several Anemone's, but we have to think if I can manage another big tank ?

If not, I'm thinking about placing a tall rock mound on the left side of the tank, about 2' out from the side, to keep the nems there.
The only problem is the nems eating small fish. We've had that happen before, 4 were nice dinner's. We had a huge Carpet that was around 1.5'. A large Maroon Clown was his buddy. Hated,...to sell them.

 

[Dsekula]

Oh, haha I auctually ment the last time you were reefing not last name
I've heard carpets are more prone than most to eat smaller fish than some anemone. Maybe post the type of nem your thinking of getting and see what experience others have had with keeping some smaller fish with them?

I know my occys won't let anyone near their bta so even having and assortment of small gobies and blennies I've yet to lose any to the nems. Also have red saddles with lta that I haven't lost fish to but those fish are also larger but not huge. It's never a guarantee but some are a bit less agressive and hosting would probably help.
That's just my experience, but I hope it helps

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[ClownBubbaJoe]

lol,...ok. On a different site I'm under 427HISS. I've been there for many years.

I built a 1966 Ford 427 Shelby Cobra, so that was my name for EVERYTHING...
including reef sites. :spin2:

Our Carpet would even wrap around my finger, and his strength was
incredible ! He ate our beloved Blue Spot Jawfish, so that was it !
We traded him when we got out of the hobby. I'll see if I still have a pic when he was young. Now I wish we kept him. A large Saddle Back and his mate would have been great.

I assume we'll get some BTA's this time, and would like to have other species but I'll have to read up on that. Do you have any ideas ?

I've had a thought for a few years of using the 93 cube. that I'd like to have A volcano shaped or an island in the center with some mangrove's all around with a pond, of type, above the water line for crabs etc. Back in the 90's we had a small Hermit Crab that grew to the size of my palm. BIG ! Even our Clown Trigger left him alone. lol

He was awesome. We had both in our in-wall 75g reef then we bought a 200g. Both were getting in trouble in the reef.

My young niece made a ''May Basket'' in school and she put a clam inside to feed ''Bubba Joe'' the trigger, after a while he ate it. After that when he was hungry, he'd swim back and forth across the 8' length of the tank begging to feed him ! lol, so much fun. At that time Bubba Joe was only 3'' long.

 

[Dsekula]

93gal? Just double checking.
If so that could be a cool size in the not huge but not tiny range. I'm thinking that may be a bit small for some of the tangs you mentioned at full grown but I know people trade out fish and upgrade tanks too, so please just take that as a heads up if you didn't realize some of those get 12".
Bubble tips are generally one of the more forgiving anemone but do tend to move around more than some stinging coral (I've also read of people having them for years without moving) so it's something to keep in mind. They will usually settle twords the upper to mid part of your rockwork depending on light.
The other I mentioned is a long tentacle, their just a touch more sensitive than a bubble tip ime. The up side of these is that if you give them an area with deeper sand they will generally plant right at the spot where sand meets the rockwork and rarely move. Both of those get dinner plate size full grown. Those would be my recommendations if your looking for ones that would host clowns but also check the type of clown with the nem since their not all symbiotic with eachother. I also have rock and minimaxi nems which are cool and smaller making them even less likely to eat fish and those host my nem shrimp. Both are easier nems to keep and smaller than the bta and lta. I'd recommend either of them as well but it depends on the goal
of your tank.

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[ClownBubbaJoe]

lol....no, the 93g cube is for the nems, the 125g is the mixed reef. :worried:

We've had Clowns and their host's before, just never the harem. We had long & short nems, just never mixing them. I did see somewhere on the web, of a list of which Clowns hosted what nems, and what nems are fine to mix, but I can't find it !

We lost our BTA when I had such a bad infection called Septic Blood. I almost died twice. I was in the hospital for a week, came home, but back again. Then I was flown via Medical Jet to the Mayo Clinic. Was there for 3 weeks.
Patty, my wife, could not care to the 4 tanks, and we lost the BTA, 6 other corals and 2 fish.

Patty waited until I came home to say what happened. She felt horrible...but I never blamed her, bless her heart !

 

[Dsekula]

Ugg.. that's horrible never delt with a septic blood infection personally but that sounds dangerous. Like pic line near death dangerous, glad you pulled out but sorry about the tank loss I wouldn't blame the hubby either, their my tanks. He likes watching and helping shop at times but would be lost caring for them.
Here's the best link I found on clown fish and natural hosts, hopefully it shows up and isn't blocked etc.

https://www.thesprucepets.com/clownfish-host-anemone-matches-2924117

As far as mixing nems, they will fight like different coral will. Most I've tried in the same system but not touching are fine but I've heard of people claiming a nem loss due to chemical waring. Since it would be impossible to prove, I guess it's a personal judgment thing. My current system is 135gal (sump only right now since dt is getting a rebuild) I have 3bta, 1lta, 2minimaxi, and 5rock nems in different areas. They share water but don't touch and I run carbon 24/7 and I haven't had issues. I also had a torch coral kill a minimaxi nem and a minimaxi kill a clam.

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[ClownBubbaJoe]

Do you have any pics ?

 

[Dsekula]

Do you have any pics ?

I don't but that's easy enough to remedy isn't it [emoji6]. Give me a second lol.

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[ClownBubbaJoe]

Yeah, that'll be cool,...when you have time.

 

[Dsekula]

First here's the sump so you can get an idea of how stuff is layout wise. Then here are the three bottom sections. The mini maxis and rocks are in with the lps clam with sps, and lta mostly with soft coral. The bta are up in the middle Rubbermaid with some hammers that were getting beat by the torch corals.
Here's one of the minis hiding under the rack currently being annoyed atm. Two rock nems, #3 is hiding way in that rock. The 4th is on the back so I turned the rock a tiny bit to show you.
And here's some random older pics when the fish weren't all in qt and it wasn't tank night (it is now so most stuff is settling for sleep).

View attachment 400360

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[Dsekula]

I'm in the final stages of algae dieing off from moving evertyhing down to the basement but overall I had one polup bail out and some annoyed coral but considering the scale of the change I'm pretty happy that everything is overall recovering.

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