Jadette's 140g Rimless Build Thread

[jadette]

Any updates Shirley?

Hmm. I guess it has been awhile since I posted an update.

I am happy with how my tank has progressed so far.

I stuck with my original plan and have only stocked my tank with reef safe fish. My anthias are fat and happy (10 dispar/ignitus, 9 lyretails, 4 randalls, and 3 evansi). I even had 2 dispars, 1 lyretail, and 1 randalls turn male in my tank. No matter how many times I see this happen, and even though I know it's common, I still get a kick out of watching the transformation!

My school of chromis (15) has defied the curse of "one by one killing each other" theory/myth. This makes me extremely happy. It has only been 7-8 months, but so far so good. The 2 that I lost were due to sores on their mouths and that was occurred during the first week of acquiring them. No deaths since. My only gripe is that they don't really "shoal". Maybe b/c I don't really have any large, aggressive fish in my tank that would encourage them to do so.

A bellus angel, a baby yellow tang, and my 5 year old pink streak wrasse complete my bioload.

Surprisingly, I am happy with how my SPS are fairing as well. I'm getting really great colors - comparable to when I was running radiums, and arguably slightly better. I started my Hydra 52s at 40% and after a course of 5 months, I slowly ramped it up to 100%. I've been running them at 100% for about 2 months now. Finally seeing some decent growth now that I'm running at 100% (650 PAR at top corals, 250 PAR on the bottom), but because it took me so long to get to this point, my overall 7 month growth is nothing to write home about. Really hoping to see some noticeable growth in the next 6 months now that I'm at the intensity that I wanted my tank at.

Don't really have much in my tank right now for corals since I'm still housing my hubby's softies which take up half of the tank. He just set up another tank this week though, so we get to transfer all of his stuff over this week - which gives me the chance to stock up again and fill that void.

I'll post pics once I move out the softies and rearrange my tank a bit. Hope to do that next week.

One change that I did that I regret is going bare bottom. Miss the look of sand. Will probably put sand in when I aquascape next week.

 

[bullitr]

Very nice

Picture helps[emoji3]

 

[Usernam Invalid]

Can't wait to see some pics. Love all the anthias

 

[s2k]

Can u post some pics of your anemone? I want to see what it looks like under your light

 

[jadette]

Very nice

Picture helps[emoji3]

Soon! We just moved over the rocks and corals on the right side of my tank into hubby's tank. Will try to set up some replacement rocks so that all the fishies will have a safe place to retire for the evening.

Can't wait to see some pics. Love all the anthias

I want to get more anthias, but will wait until I finish re-aquascaping and have things settle in my tank a bit.

Can u post some pics of your anemone? I want to see what it looks like under your light

This is the anemone (the yellow one in the back) in Lawrence's tank right before he gave it to me:


This is shortly after it settled in my tank under metal halides:


I think this is a photo with it shortly after it split, under LEDs:


Right now, it looks like the 2nd photo.

 

[Charley Diesing]

Update?

 

[bullitr]

Jadette's 140g Rimless Build Thread

The anemone look very dull in my tank too regular rainbow are 10 x brighter.

I wonder it if they just dye it [emoji22] ???



First time i got it with orange rainbow

 

[jadette]

An update. Hmm...

Would be more entertaining to say that my tank had crashed again and am out of the hobby. Or perhaps on the flip-side, that my tank is doing swimmingly well, with my acroporas growing out of the water.

But alas, neither would be the case. My tank is merely existing and that is perhaps why I don't really seem to have much inclination to update this thread.

Not that my tank has had a completely uneventful year.

Let's start with equipment. 2016 has been the year of equipment just crapping out on me. All three power supplies on my AI Hydra 52s had gone bad. The 3rd one gave out on me just a few days ago. My skimmer pump on my Aquamaxx went bad, giving me quite a shock when I was doing a water change a few months ago. I still get skittish with touching the water now - half expecting to be shocked again even after I replaced the expensive pump. My MP40s, which to be fair are a good 5+ years old, are just plain noisy now. Same with my Eheim 1260 return pump which is probably as old as my son in middle school.

I took my calcium reactor offline last year. Didn't want to deal with refilling my CO2 tank when it was depleted. Didn't want to set up my auto-doser either - The tubes were just too messy to deal with. Thought I could get away with manually dosing, but if I was too lazy to refill my CO2 tank, you can imagine how manually dosing fared for me. So my tank basically was supplemented only when I did water changes. And I rarely did water changes. About 6 gallons every 3 weeks or so. I would top off my tank only when the water got low enough to create micro-bubbles in my tank. Yes, I have been an irresponsible reefer.

And what is the end result you may ask? Surprisingly, very few of my corals died. I think I lost 3-4 frags in a tank of about ~40 pieces. One was b/c it fell over on top of my anemone. The others that died were deepwaters that probably didn't appreciate the fact that my ALK was probably down to 4 at some point. But the negative impact to this is that I practically got zero growth on 80 percent of my corals. I find it interesting that 20% were growing really rapidly but most not at all. Let me rephrase and say that it was my SPS corals that were not growing. My zoas exploded - so much so that they are currently smothering my SPS corals (probably adding to their non-growing plight). I forgot how fast zoas can spread. Was used to having angels in my tank before to keep them in check, but no more non-genicanthus angels for me now.

Must...use...more...line breaks...

And on to my fish. Ah. My fish. The only thing in my tank that keeps me going in this hobby. You see, I may neglect maintenance in my tank. I don't really feel that guilty when I see my corals die, and even though corals are living creatures too, there's just something more terrible to see your fish die.

I feed my fish every night religiously. With a tank full of anthias, you have to. They are my pride and joy. I still have my purple queens and evansi anthias that I restocked my tank with last year. I didn't lose a single randalls anthias, and my dispar/ignitus/lyretail population is healthy (I have too many of them to notice if I lost any. I am sure I did, but the fact that there's still a lot of them in tank leads me to think that I probably only lost one or two). And my school of chromis! Of the 15 that I mentioned I had 6 months ago, I only lost 1 to carpet surfing. All of my non-anthias/chromis fish in my tank are still alive and morbidly obese from all my feedings.

For some reason, I started this post with a determination to rant about how I am getting sick of this hobby, and after 10 years I was ready to throw in the towel and call it quits. But after just typing out how happy I am that my fish are doing well, maybe I'll stick around for a little while longer.

Who knows. Maybe I'll set up my doser again and hopefully get that SPS forest of a tank I once had.

 

[dodgerblew]

Love your blog

 

[MrSandman]

Hey Shirley. Good to hear you're still in the game.

Let me know when you get that doser hooked up. I'll have some frags for you.

 

[pandimus]

Havent heard from this one in forever. Just stumbled upon this thread again...

 

[waterman78]

Any new updates Shirley?

- Larry