Little Rimless Radium Tank - 2 years of progress

Thanks!

I'm using the 105 gallon and the frag tank that I moved everything over to a few pages back . The 67 gallon is sitting off to the side for now. All the same equipment except for 3 things. I added a tunze 6095 in place of the mp10 so I could position it a little differently since this is a peninsula setup now and I wanted to try to limit how much viewing real estate I would have to give up for power heads. I also put a biopellet reactor online, and replace the heaters.

After a few water changes and a couple weeks of vodka dosing some of the remaining pieces started to turn around for the better. I added a couple maris, did a water change and everything is doing good, so this weekend I picked up a good number of frags that I will start to regrow my tank with. I need to finish the rescape but the biggest battle I have right now is with aptasia.

Ultimate reef is like your basic LFS. Mixed Salt/Fresh water. They did have a few interesting frags and the prices of the "unnamed" frags are good. The main reason I went there was to pick up the gigantea they have had for 3 weeks or so (and it's around the corner from my friends house where I was staying) I also got a really nice Orange/Green polyp mili that truly displays as a deep orange vs a lot of the sunset milis I have had in the past.

Diablo Coral is sort of like your online reef store that's open to the public. A bay garage/warehouse deal. Tons and tons of frags and you spend a lot of time looking in a top down box to see anything, but they did have some nice pieces and the people that worked there were nice. Maybe I'm just used to socal pricing and availability but somethings I thought would be cheap were expensive and other things I thought would be expensive were dirt cheap.
 
appreciate the info on those two stores. I will have to stop in and check them out. Now that you've described it, I think I've been to Diablo before. I'm Looking forward to the first pics of your new system and new corals :)
 
Mammoth, very sorry to see all that go down. I'm glad you're back up and running. Very beautiful tanks.

I'm positive you'll be back in action with an amazing tank in no time.

Belated grats on TOTM!
 
New tank is coming along good. I was down south the other week picked up a ton of frags and corals and met some new people and caught up with some old friends. I stopped by Steves coral farm on my way threw OC and got a lot of my old pieces that I had picked up from him originally again.

I did luck out and snag a couple really nice aussie colonies that I am praying will hold their colour. This is one of them but the colours in the photo are all funky it's more purple then pink and the polyps are red with a very light coloured base. I'm not sure on the species either.

153249552.jpg


I also lucked out and managed to pick up a Garf Bonsai, and Shades of fall colony from a tear down that I'm really happy about.

This a frag I got from a local reefer in SD it's a Vivid something (the pic again has weird purple hue to it) but it's insane.

153249555.jpg


I got this neat little white polyped blue tipped aussie horrida from a LFS in SD. He had it floating aroudn his tank for about a year.

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I also broke down and picked up a Tierra de fuego frag. It one of those pieces where in all the photos I saw online I never got what the big deal was. It just looked like a red planet, even in my photo it's doesn't look that impressive, but when I saw a grown out piece in person it was stunning and was a must have.

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Here is the frag tank it's got a bit of cyano because of my high phosphate levels but I'm working on fixing that.
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The Regal, Rhombloids, and some clowns I'm not sure what to do with.
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I'll have to take some better pictures these are in the frag tank and I'm running 2 purple+ bulbs with a 20k ushio bulb it photographs really odd.

Outside of that I picked up some glass cardinals, a nice gold rim tang, some rhombloid wrasses (which I have to have in the ft because of aggression from other fish), a small clean up crew, and a regal angel which is giving me some trouble so it's in the FT until I get it to eat mysis. I'm bit heavy on fish right now a reefer in the next town over did a tear down and I ended up with his fish as well. I lucked out that both our yellow tangs got a long but I now have an pair of percs in my FT that I don't know what to do with.

I'm battling some high nutrient issues right now, before I did my water change this weekend phosphates were up to .15 and nitrates to 2.5. I swapped rowa/carbon, and changed about 30g dropped the phosphates in half to .07 and I haven't tested nitrates yet. I ran out of vodka but am I still running a very small amount of pellets.

The gigantea is getting it's zoa back. There is a small batch of tentacles that are starting to brown. I've also started moving corals from the frag tank to the DT thanks to the CBB doing such a great job of eating my Aptasia. I haven't glued stuff down yet but I'm trying to figure out where to place things and if I need to change my rocks around. When the lights come on I'll take some pictures.

Equipment wise I started to clean up some of the wiring but I have a lot more to do. I'm running my 2 part on my apex but everything else is still on the acjr and I'm not dosing mag automatically since I'm using so little right now. I'm at about 60ml a day and my alk is running a little low but it's OK since i'm using pellets & vodka. (or will be using Vodka again next time I go to the store). I also need to switch my tunze over to the apex so I can control it right now it's just full blast.

I also want to find some time to cut my canopy a little bit so I can raise it about an inch or so. It's to hard to reach into the tank and the spread is a bit to tight.
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Nice pieces! I wonder if that is Vivids rainbow delight? Always wanted to give that a try. That horrida is beautiful. I've always thought the Tierra is a must have. Keep us posted on the Aussie piece, I've been curious about those-my LFS here has had some nice aussie stuff but I've always been too chicken to pull the trigger on one.
 
veloboy said:
Nice pieces! I wonder if that is Vivids rainbow delight? Always wanted to give that a try. That horrida is beautiful. I've always thought the Tierra is a must have. Keep us posted on the Aussie piece, I've been curious about those-my LFS here has had some nice aussie stuff but I've always been too chicken to pull the trigger on one.
Click to expand...


That's it Vivids rainbow delight. The guy who I picked it up from had a huge colony of it. It was really stunning looked as good if not better then many of the pictures I'd seen of it in person. He really had his system dialed. He had some of the best colours I'd seen in person. It made me want to switch back to T5 ha.
 
Tanks coming along. Things are growing but slowly. The anemone has been getting it's zoas back has some brown patches and I'm seeing a yellowish tint over about half of it now.

I need to adjust my lights a bit they are to close to the top of the water and I'm not getting very good coverage side to side. Everything seems to be holding steady although I can't seem to get my nutrients under control. Phosphates are bouncing between .04-.09 and nitrates are "OK" but not ideal bouncing between 2.5-5. I'm running a fair bit of GFO, Bio Pellets, and am also dosing a little vodka. I'm not sure why they are so high. It could be stuff leaching from the rocks from the crash, or just over feeding since I have a lot more fish now and an anemone now. Colour wise things are "OK", some things look great while others are still adjusting.

I did have a minor set back the other week however with a few more delicate pieces. I picked up a couple frags and I don't think I did a good enough job rinsing the dip off before adding them back to the tank. For a few days my shrimp, and anemone looked off and a I lost a couple of the more "delicate" frags. Normally I try to time my purchases when I have a new batch of salt water ready to do a water change so I can thoroughly rinse everything off after dipping.



The biggest problem I'm having though is my camera. It seems to be having focusing issues. I can't take any macro shots with it anymore. I'll have to charge up the DSLR at some point. I really like my g11 but I guess it's getting old and has been abused, or maybe I'm just not used to shooting a tank that is open on the other side. I'm not happy with any of the photos I've taken off this tank.


These are the best I can get.. everything seems "washed out". In person it's very different.

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153650926.jpg
 
Thanks guys! Tank is coming along good everything "looks fine" but is growing really slowly. I can't get my nutrients under control. I'm 2x carbon dosing, have a ton of macro algae, switch my socks a couple times a week, siphon detritus with every water change (and baste the rocks), skimming wet, running gfo and am doing regular water changes. I can't get my nitrates below 5 and my phosphates are now between .15-.2 from .09.

I think my rocks are just to saturated from all the die off. Corals look good but alk/calc usage is very minimal. I can't wait for things to settle back down and get to where I start seeing demand again.
 
Ok, I found a big part of why I can't get ahead. I tested my new water and it came back @ .07 phosphates. Either my test kit has gone bad or my RO/DI filters finally need replacing or both.
So new RO/DI stuff on the way and new regents. I shouldn't be surprised I haven't done the proper maintenance on my RO/DI but in the past I've always had 0 phosphates and a max of 7 TDS so it wasn't an issue.
 
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It's still only coming in @ 6

buuut I haven't replaced my filters/membrane in 3 years, ooops. I was going to replace them anyways because they aren't working well anymore it takes almost a week to fill up a 45 gallons of water.
 
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