Lagoon Tank Pic

[dalbrecht]

This is a shot of the eastern perspective on my lagoon tank. The cyano behind the heliofungia is part of a grove of shoal grass I planted a few weeks ago. I'm still waiting for it to take off and do something. Once it starts growing I'll be adding manatee and star grass.

Beyond the shoal grass is a softie & LPS bommie with a space for manatee grass behind it.

 

[Stephany]

Looks great.

Can't wait until you add the manatee.

 

[dalbrecht]

I can't either, It looks a little barren in the middle without it, but I'm not getting the growth I want from the shoal grass yet. Until I do, I don't want to go spending money on a macro that might not make it.

I'll add the star grass at the same point. I really like the look of the caulerpa I'm growing as a forground plant right now but I have to prune it away from my derasa clam almost daily.

 

[fedukeford]

do you have any full lagoon pics?

 

[dalbrecht]

I'll try to get one tonight,

I'm having problems capturing it tho for a few reasons. The first is cosmetic, I don't like the composition without the seagrass growing in and tying the two ends of the tank together. The second is that I'm getting a terrible glare from the windows in the room & other ambient sources (my digi cam is extremely slow). Third, the tank is designed to have a natural sway caused by Aquaclear HOT filters. My camera isn't fast enough to overcome the blur caused by the helio, plants & softies swaying in that current.

-Don

 

[Kent E]

I like it, nice to see different things.

 

[Gary Majchrzak]

It's tough to get good pics of "lagoon" type set-ups. Please post whatever you can and give us a description of your lagoon.

 

[Stephany]

Even with the aperture up at the highest number?

Turn the pumps off a bit?

I had some beautiful halymenia floresii... agh, lost it in the great sandbed removal where it stuck to a heater and turned to mushy rubber.

 

[dalbrecht]

A bit of the back story. Up until about a month ago this was my primary reef. Then I moved most of my liverock, all of my sps & a few softies into my new tank. This left behind the bommie on the left hand side, the deep sand bed, all of my lps and a few softies. The center area is planted with shoal grass a medium height and "beginner" sea grass. I planted approx 30 starts about 3 weeks ago. I'm not getting the growth I feel I should be and will be supplementing some CO2 and adding substrate enrichments of iron to try to improve the tank.

I've also removed most of the filtration from the tank. The current primary filtration on the tank is provided by 2 mid sized aquaclear HOT filters running carbon & aerobic media.

lighting is provided by a finnex 4 bulb T5HO fixture. The mix is 2 10k, 1 actinic, 1 65k. I have a skimmer for the tank, but it hasn't pulled out anything since 3 days after the transition to lagoon. right now it simply helps circulate & aerate the water.

now for the pics...

 

[dalbrecht]

Left side ( earlier pic is from right side)

Full tank shot

 

[dalbrecht]

I apologize for the low quality of the pics. As you can see, the tank is very sparse until i get the sea grasses to do their thing in the midground & background. I'm planning on planting sargassum or codium & building up the rock work abit on the right hand side. The tank only has 3 fish ( 1 blue damsel & a clarkii pair). My general plan is to get the grasses going strong and then add a school of cardinals.

My chemistry looks perfect for corals, but I'd like a little bit more nitrate & phosphate for the plants. That said there is a pernicious patch of cyano in the middle of my shoal grass patch. This has me a bit concerned but since it is a nitrogen fixer I'm guessing it's probably a good thing for the grass in the long run.

 

[dalbrecht]

As for my camera issues, the shutter speed is SLOW i can almost achieve a 400 speed if I put my aperature wide open. When I do that, the focal length and focus goes out the window. I also don't have a decent tripod right now. Since I have a faint tremor in my hands it makes not blurry shots especially difficult

 

[Stephany]

whoaa... wait a sec, school of cardinals. ... cardinals... ?

oooh ooh there's so much you can do with it! with the rockwork, are you thinking a drastic dropoff from the far right, or a few pieces of tonga slab or something, just to break up the levels?
I was going to ask if you were dosing nitrates.

My ghetto tripod = old cigar boxes stacked on a foldable chair.

It looks great!

 

[dalbrecht]

basically, the far right needs a few rock's to keep the clarkii's from stirring too many dust storms. It will be a few pieces stacked up, basically a smaller steeper version of what you see on the left. The secondary role will be to frame the seagrass bed and provide a playground for experimenting with macro's that require a bit of a purchase to do well such as sargassum, codium, halymenia etc...

Bangai's are a natural maven of the seagrass habitat and I really think a decently sized school of them living amongst the fronds of the seagrass will be quite spectacular.