Lyle's 150H in-wall build (with pics)

[jlylec]

picked up my last fish for a little while yesterday. they were real nervous last night, but did look better this morning before I left.

very shy!

i'm pretty resigned to the fact that the hippo will have/get ich and i'll have to treat her. My clowns and hawk look awesome so I'll probably just transfer them over prior to treating. The kole has a couple weird spots but i think they're just stress. I think he'll be fine. We'll see!

Since I got to the store for pick up as they were unpacking a pretty big order I found a steal and picked up a little bonus piece!

I love these gonipora's and this one is particularly beautiful. My other one really suffered in my nano but is coming back now in the bigger tank. I think it's because I'm feeding this tank more and have added Reef Chili to the menu. Hopefully this one will thrive. They're not always the easiest things to keep happy. I'll have to figure out the best spot for light and flow. Anybody out there have any experience with these and what they like when it comes to light and flow?

 

[jlylec]

So my hippo days are over I think. Lost another one! This one showed absolutely no signs of ich and actually looked great like 6 hours before I found her dead on the bottom the next morning. I got nervous that something was wrong with the QT and went ahead and moved all the new fish into the DT. I did check the water and everything was perfect in there so I have no idea what happened. The Kole Tang looks fine as well as all the others. They're settling in nicely in the main tank now and I think I'm going to hold off on any other fish for a while and probably just give up on the Hippos all together!

Question about feeding tangs. I have some nori and I like to make sure I feed enough if not too much. I put some in the tank and it doesn't look like anybody's touched it. Is it bad to leave it in there? How long should I leave it before pulling out whatever goes uneaten? Any other suggestions on good foods for Tangs? I'm only asking about this one because everybody else seems to eat whatever I put in there. I've been feeding Marine Chips twice a day with an auto feeder, Spectrum pellets with garlic here and there, and a normal rotation of one cube a day from a Saltwater Multipack of frozen food.

 

[jlylec]

just found that two of my anthias' jumped through my egg crate lid...sucks. i really loved the three of them. now i'm wondering how the one will do on it's own. should i try to replace the two so he has a couple buddies again or is there a bigger risk of aggression between them since they haven't been together?

i think i'm going to put some of this http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/store/clear-1-4-screen-netting-7-x-3.html under the egg crate. does anybody have any experience with how much this diffuses light?

man this sucks. i wonder what they were doing? they were really healthy and seemed happy. i tested the water and it's all perfect. i guess it's probably just one of those things that happens and causes you to improve the set-up. sure wish i could think of every possibility to avoid **** like this!

 

[jlylec]

well my fish losing luck took a turn last night...I was in the process of upgrading my lid with the small screen material i got from BRS and heard a little slap. look over and my last living anthias was on the floor! ran over and scooped him up and plopped him back in. he seemed a little scared but otherwise fine afterwards. he's got to have a couple cracked ribs and huge bruises (do fish bruise?!) because he jumped clean out the top and the drop is almost 6' to the concrete floor. i really dodged a bullet being right there when it happened. now my lid is all upgraded and i should be suicide-free for now on.

 

[jlylec]

i got a couple things recently that have turned out better than i imagined. figured i'd share them with you guys.

this is a veggie mag clip that i got...it's infinitely better than those shitty suction cup clips they sell. mine never stayed stuck and this one you can easily move all over the tank from the outside. not that expensive either...maybe $10 or so.

this is an acclimation box called the AccliMate. i got it because it doubles as a fish trap. this thing is so well thought out. it makes acclimating your fish and corals so easy. plus it triples as a carrying case for your fish too. it's a little pricey seeming at $60 but the build quality and features it comes with it make up for it in my opinion. i've really been impressed with this thing and used it so much more than i even thought i would.

 

[ludiNano]

I like the AccliMate, is it suction cupped to the out side of the tank?

That would scare me a little.

 

[jlylec]

I like the AccliMate, is it suction cupped to the out side of the tank?

That would scare me a little.

yeah it's suction cupped to the outside with 3 of the best suction cups i've ever seen. you just wet the glass with a wet paper towel or something and there's no way it's falling off! plus this is the big one so it holds like a gallon of water...it's really heavy. but when it's suction cupped on the outside it has a system where you run airline tubing from the tank to the AccliMate to a waste bucket and it gravity drip acclimates at whatever rate you want. super easy and convenient. then there's a box inside the main box with holes so you can "strain" your fish into the new space or whatever...or just pour them in. has a sliding door for the top too to keep jumpers in during long acclimation or for trapping. or for transporting home from the fish store, etc. great little piece of equipment to have!

 

[jlylec]

My sump/fuge is taking an interesting turn. The chaeto I got from Hunter receded for a long time and has recently held steady at about 25% of what I'd like in there. I haven't been able to meet up with him again to get more and in the interim some strange plant is starting to grow in there.

Additionally I have a TON of sponge's growing all over in the sump (good thing I think). What I'm not so sure about are these crazy tube worms that are growing like weeds down there. They have kinda pretty fans but these super long tubes and seem to grow overnight.

Are these bad?

 

[jlylec]

I bought a starfish without doing my research.

It looks to be taking a turn for the worse...I guess the food supply already ran up. If he dies where he is (or is already dead) I may be in trouble because he's way low and under the most impossible rock to get to. We'll see what happens. Sucks cause he's beautiful and I hate to just starve and kill something. I won't make that impulse buy/mistake again.

I got a couple new coral pieces that took to their new spots right away and look really great so far. Some duncans on a stick...

And an SPS that I can't remember what it's called (in the middle)...

All-in-all the tank is looking really good. I still have some diatom and cyano issues that aren't going away quickly, but they're small and easy enough to manage. I need to figure out the cause of them, but haven't had time. The only thing I can think of is that I use filter socks every once in a while and clean them in my utility sink. I don't bleach or anything. I just dunk, squeeze, and scrub them as clean as possible and then let them dry. So they have some tap water residue in them, but I wouldn't think it would be enough to cause a problem. Maybe they are.

Fish are doing awesome so I'm not going to mess with them for a while. Just going to let everything settle in and grow. The coral I've moved home from work have been growing like crazy so anybody who tells you coral doesn't do well under LED is just wrong. My LEDs are still only maxing out at 60% and the pile of green SPS I broke is already fuzed together into one big piece again. And all the corals have tons of new growth. I've been feeding with Reef Chili too which they seem to love so maybe that helps.

 

[T Diddy]

everything is looking great. your new SPS looks like a stylophora

 

[MHG]

Nice set up.. do you have any finished shots of how the tank looks in the wall...

 

[jlylec]

updates...starfish is dead and gone.

just found this weird snail-like half oyster looking thing eating the stylo I got from hunter. in one day it cleared out half of it. luckily just the bottom, but still...***?!?! i have no idea where this thing came from as it's pretty big and i never saw it before.

it took a **** load of force to pry this bastard off. this is what the underside looks like.

this is what it did.

now it's in the trash to think long and hard about what it's done.

cyano is still around which is annoying but not much else. still have some diatoms too, but they're just annoying too.

the most annoying thing i'm dealing with is hundreds of tiny vermetids. from what i've read the only way to get rid of them is crushing them with needle nose pliers. this would be essentially impossible so i just smash them with my baster when i'm blowing off cyano and i guess i'll be living with them. unless i can find something that eats them...and nothing else!

i'll try to post some more pics soon.

 

[jlylec]

Nice set up.. do you have any finished shots of how the tank looks in the wall...

thanks man...I need to take one and post. will do.

 

[jlylec]

here's that shot of the tank in the wall in the room.

and a wider shot of the room. still have a lot to do in here as far as paint, decor, etc. all of that type of stuff is not my forte so always gets back-burnered until the wife decides to do it!

 

[MHG]

wow, great job...

 

[sharkman121]

Hey lyle whats yr psn id :lol:

 

[jlylec]

Hey lyle whats yr psn id :lol:

jlylec

I'm not very original! working on BF3 now...if you're on there too hit me up!

 

[jlylec]

Lost my Kole Tang this past weekend. Seems to have succumbed to ich. Found him on the sand on his side Friday night. In this pic he doesn't look as bad as he did in person.

So I moved him to quarantine and treated with Cupramine ASAP to try and save him. Looked like this in QT.

Saturday morning he was dead.

So I went through the internal struggle to pull all fish and run fallow yet again. Caught the clowns who were also showing ich and moved them to QT. For the life of me I couldn't catch any of the others. Sunday the clowns looked worse so I moved them back to the DT and they look better.

The reality of having to break down the whole tank to catch all the fish is keeping me from this solution. I know that ich is in 90% of tanks and just something you have to deal with and that's what I'm left with. I have no idea why the Kole went from seeming perfectly happy and healthy to dead in 48hrs. I tested all the parameters and the water seems near perfect. I still went ahead and have changed about half the water over the past few days. other fish seem fine. a couple showing signs of ich, but nothing life threatening. coral looks great so i really don't want to jeopardize that. damn i hate ich!

 

[jlylec]

ich has apparently taken over my tank. in a week i've lost my kole tang, 3 bartlett's anthias', pair of clowns, and my daughter's chromis, swirly. awesome. no idea why this has happened. the ich has been in the tank since june. why it's just now getting so bad or why the fish put their guard down makes no sense. water quality appears perfect. nothing's changed. really f*#king frustrated right now. all i have left are my pair of gold head gobies and my hawk fish. the three hardest fish i had to catch...so short of breaking the whole thing down...or purposefully killing them somehow...there's nothing i can do but just live with 3 fish. so great. life is grand.

 

[jlylec]

i'm about to set up and tie in this other 40B tank I got off CL. once that's done i'm going to move the corals in there and move my pillars to try to catch the last of my 3 fish and move them too...only thing i'm really missing now is a good light for the 40 to support the corals for a week or so. do you guys think a couple regular fluorescent strips would be ok? hopefully the moving back and forth won't shock the corals too much. i'm going to have to break the bigger colonies off the rocks but they'll reattach in time.