Little Rimless Radium Tank - 2 years of progress
- Thread starter MammothReefer
- Start date
MammothReefer
Active member
Thanks everybody for the kind words. I'd like to take some shots of individual piece but it's a bit of a downer not having any PE. Luckily though my OSFF took a swim into the sump this weekend, so I relocated him to the frag tank to give the DT a little bit of a break and my PE is slowly returning.
It hasn't been easy but overtime it's just became routine to baste my corals with a turkey baster whenever something looks off or if i'm lurking around the the tank and then a maxijet once a week. There have been times where I slacked for a few weeks or thought everything was better cut back my basting and they came back with a vengeance.
The biggest thing for me was forcing myself not to overreact. Over the years I've lost more acros by overreacting and going into a dipping frenzy then I have from AEFW consumption. Monti eating nudis are harder to deal with IMOP unless you just have frags and even then it's a lot more labour inventive. I had them as well and wiped them out with aggressive superglueing before my montis got to big.
Tang does fine no ich or anything like that and he is pretty mellow, both him and my starkii damsel are a bit to large for this tank. At some point I'm either going to need to relocate him or upgrade the tank. Everything is in limbo atm while I figure out if I'm going to be moving back to SoCal or not.
Thanks! I've been using IO on and off for years. It's cheap the parameters are "ok", with a little buffing it works fine although I do wish the alk was lower. On the plus side It's been very consistent.
On this tank I've used hW, D+D, RSCP, natural salt water (from Scripps in San Diego), and a few others. I was really happy with hW & D+D but IO is half the price. I didn't see enough of a difference that I can attribute to the salt mix to justify twice the cost.
These are my #'s from today's water change water pre-buff (IO): Salnity-1.026 : Alk-11.536 : Calc - 420 : Mag - 1200. Normally however I mix it to 1.024-1.025 so the alk is a little lower and I buff the calc/mag higher to help offset any salinity creep from 2 part dosing.
In past experiences though I've had my best results with hW. If I were to go back to carbon dosing. I would switch back because of the lower ALK.
As far as my calcium. I usually buff my calcium with IO, but my low calcium was more the result of not having my magnesium on a dosing pump and it constantly dropping into the low 1200s. I finally got that squared away a few months ago but I need to tweak it a bit more. Some how I dropped down to 1230 today.
I slowly removed the sand as I added more flow. It became too problematic with such a short tank and it was taking up a lot of space. I still have some lurking around in the back of the tank.
Thanks! It used to grow out in just one spot and I would trim it back, but it's sticking out in a few places now. I've been meaning to cut back and then glue the frags back down around the base. The entire piece is supported from a single column and it's really wobbly.Beautiful tank, has that lime green stag top right reached the water surface yet - it's gotta be close.
It hasn't been easy but overtime it's just became routine to baste my corals with a turkey baster whenever something looks off or if i'm lurking around the the tank and then a maxijet once a week. There have been times where I slacked for a few weeks or thought everything was better cut back my basting and they came back with a vengeance.
The biggest thing for me was forcing myself not to overreact. Over the years I've lost more acros by overreacting and going into a dipping frenzy then I have from AEFW consumption. Monti eating nudis are harder to deal with IMOP unless you just have frags and even then it's a lot more labour inventive. I had them as well and wiped them out with aggressive superglueing before my montis got to big.
Patrick Cox said:
Tang does fine no ich or anything like that and he is pretty mellow, both him and my starkii damsel are a bit to large for this tank. At some point I'm either going to need to relocate him or upgrade the tank. Everything is in limbo atm while I figure out if I'm going to be moving back to SoCal or not.
Thanks! I've been using IO on and off for years. It's cheap the parameters are "ok", with a little buffing it works fine although I do wish the alk was lower. On the plus side It's been very consistent.
On this tank I've used hW, D+D, RSCP, natural salt water (from Scripps in San Diego), and a few others. I was really happy with hW & D+D but IO is half the price. I didn't see enough of a difference that I can attribute to the salt mix to justify twice the cost.
These are my #'s from today's water change water pre-buff (IO): Salnity-1.026 : Alk-11.536 : Calc - 420 : Mag - 1200. Normally however I mix it to 1.024-1.025 so the alk is a little lower and I buff the calc/mag higher to help offset any salinity creep from 2 part dosing.
In past experiences though I've had my best results with hW. If I were to go back to carbon dosing. I would switch back because of the lower ALK.
As far as my calcium. I usually buff my calcium with IO, but my low calcium was more the result of not having my magnesium on a dosing pump and it constantly dropping into the low 1200s. I finally got that squared away a few months ago but I need to tweak it a bit more. Some how I dropped down to 1230 today.
I slowly removed the sand as I added more flow. It became too problematic with such a short tank and it was taking up a lot of space. I still have some lurking around in the back of the tank.
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JPMagyar
New member
Zero to Hero in 2.5 years. Awesome work on your part, but for me it's a true testament to the power of the Radium bulb. SPS with deep color and fantastic growth rates. You are a tribute to the hobby, my friend. Congrats on growing such a spectacular reef so quickly and efficiently!
Thanks for sharing.
Joe :beer:
Thanks for sharing.
Joe :beer:
MammothReefer
Active member
Thanks again for the all the kind words! Zero to hero, my old tank wasn't to shabby 
Then again your tank is utterly insane Joe! It makes me wish I had kept my old 5x3 setup.
Actually it's funny I always thought highly of my old tank..until I started re-looking at the pictures. Now I feel like I never did it justice. I had so many problems with it and when I finally started to figure things out I sold it. It never had the chance to really grow in and mature. It was a massive beast of tank with frags that all got lost in the FTS. Hopefully some-point soon I figure out if I'm moving or staying and can consider a larger setup again.
Brent - Yah what I did is super glued over any area that had been eaten, any holes or cracks I couldn't see or reach the underside of the corals, and any rubble/plugs they are attached to. Basically every part of the frag/coral/plug that wasn't alive or showed any signs of bites was covered in super glue. It left me with smaller pieces but the nice thing about monti nudis is they stay really close to the food source so you end up entombing them in super glue with this method.
Then again your tank is utterly insane Joe! It makes me wish I had kept my old 5x3 setup.Actually it's funny I always thought highly of my old tank..until I started re-looking at the pictures. Now I feel like I never did it justice. I had so many problems with it and when I finally started to figure things out I sold it. It never had the chance to really grow in and mature. It was a massive beast of tank with frags that all got lost in the FTS. Hopefully some-point soon I figure out if I'm moving or staying and can consider a larger setup again.
Brent - Yah what I did is super glued over any area that had been eaten, any holes or cracks I couldn't see or reach the underside of the corals, and any rubble/plugs they are attached to. Basically every part of the frag/coral/plug that wasn't alive or showed any signs of bites was covered in super glue. It left me with smaller pieces but the nice thing about monti nudis is they stay really close to the food source so you end up entombing them in super glue with this method.
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Did you ever take pics of this piece? Was curious to see it up close.
MammothReefer
Active member
No I didn't. I haven't taking any photos of individual pieces since September of last year, but here is the picture from then. I'm just waiting for my PE to come back around then I'll take some more pics. Now that the OSFF is in the frag tank it's slowly returning. With the piece grown out, side by side it looks almost exactly like an Oregon tort very similar colours but with green polyps.
You can see it right above the clown fishes head on the right in this picture (but with no PE) the bluer piece.
You can see it right above the clown fishes head on the right in this picture (but with no PE) the bluer piece.
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MammothReefer
Active member
Had the pumps off hunting for aptasias. Decided to take a couple gratuitous overly saturated top down photos. Not much luck getting the halide reflection not to show however so I gave up quickly.
JPMagyar
New member
Thanks again for the all the kind words! Zero to hero, my old tank wasn't to shabby
Totally! I just meant going from new tank to spectacular tank in so short a time. Poor choice of words, but that's what I get for trying to be funny, :hmm4:
Again killer job!
jason angel
New member
omg. full drool more dop down shots please. That yellow acro is to die for!!! Do you have a name for it?
brad65ford
New member
Great subject and awesome thinking!!!!
Monti Eating Nudi's (I call them MEN) are one of the worst things a Monti lover can get in a system. In the last 8 months I've eliminated most but not all, good news is all my montis are now getting a better chance to thrive and grow faster since they are at bay. Here's what I have learned.
Originally I started with dipping with CoralRX which works well for the adults kills but they would always come back. Next was braking off all corners of the pieces and dipping thinking there was laid eggs. This worked well but really stressed the left over corals out. Finally ended up introducing a few different types of wrasses which seemed to make the best in-pack. Unfortunately I still find small adults time to time and remove manually also I still wake up each morning look with a flash light. I really like your idea as well and will start adding CA to the open cracks/eaten areas when I find some damage occurring.
Sorry to post this in your thread since it can't stress enough to people that love Monti's and have a system with multiple favorites. Be careful with new pieces as much as you can, these Nudi's as nasty!
MammothReefer
Active member
It's a pink lemonaide. For some reason i don't really get the bright pink polyps out of mine.
MammothReefer
Active member
Thanks!
It's not to bad though they seem to only be attracted to about 5 pieces which are in places I can get to easily with a maxijet, now that I've broken them free of the rock work.
It's not to bad though they seem to only be attracted to about 5 pieces which are in places I can get to easily with a maxijet, now that I've broken them free of the rock work.
MammothReefer
Active member
Was trying to get a picture of something tonight but it didn't work so I snapped a quick FTS. Some corals moved around after I went AEFW hunting and popped some stuff off the rocks. I need to spend some time taking photos of individual pieces. I also found some pieces were starting to get shaded which was causing recession and needed to be moved.
Progress from 3/28 - Today (68 days)
Progress from 3/28 - Today (68 days)
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