Jadette's 140g Rimless Build Thread

[jadette]

rtn is painful to watch. I to have had a couple die that way. Right now I'm having algae problems and of course I was messing with it and lost some livestock. Seems every summer I get an algae outbreak, pita.
I was thinking what's strange, remember when we traded some coral? I got a bubblegum milli. It lost the blue, slowly. It grew some and was doing good. I even fragged it. It now hasn't grown at all in like a year. Looks good, good polp extension but doesn't grow. I don't get it.

Interesting what you said about the blue tipped milli I traded with you. When I first acquired the colony, it practically doubled in size in a short period of time. It outgrew my then 75gallon tank, so I started fragging it like crazy. After I fragged it, it stopped growing completely. All the corals around it grew much faster and smothered it. So don't feel bad. I experienced the same thing. It might have been that I moved it away from a high PAR area of my tank. As I recall, it LOVED being directly under my metal halides.

I just realized that I said slow RTN. Which is just simply STN. My corals were STN-ing and not RTN-ing. Which, personally, sucks even more because at least with RTN, I can toss the coral and move on. With STN, I'm just watching it slowly die -and wondering at what point can I just toss it b/c I'm just sick of seeing almost dead corals in my tank.

Now that I think about it, I really did a poor job of aquascaping. I was so concerned with making the tank look decent right off the bat, that I wasn't thinking about how the corals can grow into the empty space. All I wanted to do was plug in dead space to get the shape I wanted from my coral mounds. The corals started growing in dense clumps, which made it difficult to frag.

Oh well. I guess it's not too late to change that. It would be nice to transition away from having a tank full of random brand name corals, and just stick with perhaps 5-6 very large colonies.

Hmmm.....

 

[gveng]

Shirlry,

Pm me if you start rearranging your tank, I would love to pick up some frags from you.

 

[dodgerblew]

Still an amazing tank and I sincerely enjoy your posts, long or short.

 

[igarc009]

Updates?

 

[jadette]

Updates?

Nothing really new to report. Things have settled in my tank pretty much since my last post. No fish or coral deaths. No new fish or corals added to the tank. It's quite stocked right now. Here's a video that I posted in the reef fish forum last month:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/dud19Q6cYEA" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>​

I am surprised at how well my venustus and multibar are doing. They have successfully transitioned to eating prepared foods and swim openly around my tank.

Once disappointment I have is how cluttered my tank now looks compared to a year ago. I wanted to have two very distinct islands in my tank, but as the corals grew out, the space between the two islands is becoming obscured. While trying to push my right mound a little more to the right a couple of weeks ago, my digitata colonies broke off in several dozen pieces. I'm not sure if this is just something with my digitatas or if everyone else has the same experience, but they're VERY fragile. I reaaranged the pieces the best that I could and actually trimmed off a lot of the excess growth so I can get that "bommie" look again. I am actually going to replace my sand again this winter break and do more trimming to get a cleaner look.

Here was my uncluttered tank 2 years ago:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/Y-gNr7n6POo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>​

I'm conflicted. I like having a lot of fish and corals, but I also like having a clean look. It's hard to find that happy medium. I should probably upgrade to a larger tank.

Here's a shot of my tank from last month, and here's what I am doing with it:

​

On the bottom, I have two extension rocks that I've been adding corals too. I wanted to keep these corals growing in a low profile and outward. The point of these rocks were to add depth to the tank. I think it's silly for me to have a deep 30" tank and not take advantage of the aquascaping opportunities that the extra space can offer. I haven't done this successfully yet though. For example, refer to one of my favorite tanks below:

​

There's just so much depth here! And look how that space between the two islands is meticulously maintained. I need to be less of collection wh*re to achieve this!

I also want to add more movement in my tank via gorgonians placed on the top left hand side of my tank. However, I'll need a lot of them to keep the nipping from my angels in a concentrated area to a minimum. But a lot of them means having a cluttered tank again. ARGHHH. SO CONFLICTED.

Shirlry,

Pm me if you start rearranging your tank, I would love to pick up some frags from you.

Gene - You don't want my crap corals. They are colorful, yes, but they have zero polyp extension and have the tips nibbled off from my angels. I have not traded my corals in awhile out of shame. :wildone:

 

[billyzbear]

I don't know what your talking about it looks nice.

Did the invader frag make it?
Did you want the sea swirl?

 

[jadette]

I don't know what your talking about it looks nice.

Did the invader frag make it?
Did you want the sea swirl?

Didn't mean to say that I think my tank is ugly. I like my tank. I just think it's getting cluttered.

yes, the invade frag is doing really well! It's on the extension rock #2 on the bottom left side of the tank. Took a few weeks to get established in my tank, but it has really taken off since then and has grown a couple of eyes. Very nice green and yellow.

Yes, I'll take the sea swirl. I'll PM ya.

 

[dodgerblew]

You Shirley are a perfectionist. I empathize and admire it. I as well agree that your tank is gorgeous. I think it's totm quality and I believe one day, it will be

 

[bullitr]

Nothing really new to report. Things have settled in my tank pretty much since my last post. No fish or coral deaths. No new fish or corals added to the tank. It's quite stocked right now.


Gene - You don't want my crap corals. They are colorful, yes, but they have zero polyp extension and have the tips nibbled off from my angels. I have not traded my corals in awhile out of shame. :wildone:

If you want polyps extension send the regal this way[emoji12]

 

[MrSandman]

Looks amazing Shirley!

 

[lowbudget]

looks good a nice problem to have.

 

[duyhuynh]

beautiful set up.

 

[s2k]

time to trim some stuff for me to kill again

 

[solitude127]

Great tank Shirley. Love your fish selection.

 

[Desert Lagoon]

Beautiful!

 

[goreef65]

Your tank is beautiful Shirley. It's difficult to keep a mature tank open, clean and organized after time. Corals are always growing together, filling areas that made it look open and clean the first few years. You can only trim so much. Corals also encrust and grow together... what can you do other than keep trimming or worse case remove the entire encrusted rock? I see you attempted to move the entire right island over. Good idea but at some point it will just fill in again and now you have less room on the glass side.

But I totally get your attempts at trying to maintain the look you (and all of us) enjoy about your tank.

 

[duyhuynh]

Lost in translation. So beautiful .

 

[Raul-7]

That's one of the best aquascaped reef tanks I've seen; it reminded of that famous picture you posted of that soft coral tank. Though I agree it looked picture perfect in that 2 year old video. Negative space really makes the corals and hardscape stand out.

TOTM for sure.

 

[dg3147]

Uncanny

 

[BeanMachine]

Yeah really beautiful.

Are you dosing 3 part or do you have a calcium reactor?