echopiece
Member
He uses reefroids, cyclopeeze and mysis pulp.... correct me if I'm wrong biggles :hmm5:
I'm in the process of trying these products out as well. I can't wait to see some color in my SPS!
My 65 Gallon Mixed Reef
- Thread starter biggles
- Start date
I'm in the process of trying these products out as well. I can't wait to see some color in my SPS!
Bello
New member
I don't think I've ever been as pleased to see a Yellow Tang, in anyone's tang :thumbsup:. They're beautiful and highly underrated fish IMO. And I know you've been meaning to get one for a while now. And that its pretty amazing that you have no problem algae, despite feeding as much as you do, and no algae eating fish :thumbsup:. Now I just have to find that balance, like you have.
BTW, biggles, I'm gonna have to report you to GREENpeace (pun intended)
BTW, biggles, I'm gonna have to report you to GREENpeace (pun intended)
biggles
Premium Member
Yep those are the foods i use for the corals
The fish get small pellets and now i give the tang nori as well. I've never used any of the bottled liquid coral foods as friends tried them and saw nothing but dramas so i've always stayed away from those. A handy tip if you're using an iphone is to video your corals etc and then take stills from your video as you can forward it one frame at a time until you see everything in sharp focus.I'm quite certain you'll see good results if you keep things simple and maintain good solid water parameters mate, colors will come once the corals realise there's enough food to give the zoa the boot lol.
Hey Bello, i knew you'd be as pleased as me as i've been moaning about the lack of fish to you for a while now lol. Just need to find the multibar now and then get some more gold plated bloody shrimp. :rolleye1:
One of my favorites that colors better down low. This is why i always take frags from new corals and stick them in diff tank conditions as you might have a treasure languishing in the wrong light or flow and never see the true beauty it could reveal. Pale aqua colored branches with pastel purple tips.
Worm living in an acro frag.
Some of the left over frags from pieces i've glued into place, gotta get rid of these and all the others littering the tank.
YoungREEFA
New member
Do you allow temp swings? And whats your alk at !
!
biggles
Premium Member
Do you allow temp swings? And whats your alk at
My temp is 26.5 at 7 AM and 27.5 when the lights go off at 9 PM - 79.5 to 81.5 swing each day which is nothing at all to worry about.
Alk - 7.5-8.0 as long as it's in that range the corals and i are happy
Cal - 400 - 410
Mg - 1300 - 1350
Salinity - 1.0260
Nitrates and Phos - undetectable on Salifert & Hanna
Bello
New member
Biggles, your litter makes me drool.....Hmm, that sounds really weird
Seriously, things are looking great indeed :thumbsup: The pale coral on the left with in the litter pic, same as the first pic I think, with purple polyps is unlike anything I've ever seen :thumbsup:
BTW, your horrida is on Live Aquaria, starting at $200, and if I could, I'd grab it
Seriously, things are looking great indeed :thumbsup: The pale coral on the left with in the litter pic, same as the first pic I think, with purple polyps is unlike anything I've ever seen :thumbsup:
BTW, your horrida is on Live Aquaria, starting at $200, and if I could, I'd grab it
biggles
Premium Member
Biggles, your litter makes me drool.....Hmm, that sounds really weird
Seriously, things are looking great indeed :thumbsup: The pale coral on the left with in the litter pic, same as the first pic I think, with purple polyps is unlike anything I've ever seen :thumbsup:
BTW, your horrida is on Live Aquaria, starting at $200, and if I could, I'd grab it
Thanks buddy
I had a look and couldn't see it but i did see a sh*tload of ordinary looking $40- to $50- Aus acros going for $200-$250 lol. Here's the thing about the horrida, i broke the branch into 4 bits and stuck them in low ( raft ), medium and high light and it's growing great everywhere so at some point i'll swap one or two for new pieces. This pic is very close to the true colors you see on the one growing on the raft rock, the tip highlights are pale yellow but it's very hard to capture unfortunately. I'd have to rate it as an easy to keep acro and recommend it to anyone thinking about trying an Aus collected piece. It's settled now and shooting new tips everywhere. The brown seri is slowly coloring up but it's going to be a run of the mill pink seri At least it's not shrinking like that piece of sh*t seri frag......... hate that thing. The deep water acro that you can see top right is a colorless blob still but i'm hoping it does something cool ( it better for it's sake ) 
biggles
Premium Member
Thanks mate, here's the sump as requested. Skimmer and a bit more LR. I find it troubling to see so many new reefers setting up bio pellet reactors and carbon dosing etc. from day one. If you want the best bacteria that money can buy just get some good LR and throw it in the sump, put it in a mesh bag if you're worried about hitchhikers. Small rubble is no better than bio balls and doesn't have deep areas for anaerobic bacteria so i only use chunks of LR tennis ball sized or larger for nitrate reduction. A couple of times a week i turkey baste the sump to blow any settled crap into the display, i do this at coral feeding times so they can get anything useful from the filth if there's anything in it for them when they have crazy feeding polyp extension.
biggles
Premium Member
I dose 2 part inc Mg which i purchase from an online place here supplying bulk supplies like BRS does in the US. The white tube coming from the blue tap is my 1/2 gal alk dosing drip that i run over 20 hours or so and the other white tube is the ATO connected to a manual float valve. Nothing else goes in the water except the fish and coral food.
I always halve the skimmer baffle and create a dead water spot which i fill with LR, sort of a DSB without the sand lol. An old bloke told me about it years ago and i've done it ever since, no idea if it helps but it's supposed to encourage the anaerobic bacteria to populate the outer areas of the rock more densely than in normal well oxygenated water. You can see the section in the last pic between the baffles. That's the only thing i do that is different to everyone else and since i've always had it and always had good luck keeping SPS i'm not game to stop lol. It's prob a waste of space or toxic for all i know but the old guy was pretty convincing and his SPS were stunning. I basically copied his husbandry approach ever since, i still remember his answer when i kept asking what if's about water probs - ' stop with all the bloody what if's, get the water right and then leave it the bloody hell alone ' - he was a bit of a grumpy old bastard.
I always halve the skimmer baffle and create a dead water spot which i fill with LR, sort of a DSB without the sand lol. An old bloke told me about it years ago and i've done it ever since, no idea if it helps but it's supposed to encourage the anaerobic bacteria to populate the outer areas of the rock more densely than in normal well oxygenated water. You can see the section in the last pic between the baffles. That's the only thing i do that is different to everyone else and since i've always had it and always had good luck keeping SPS i'm not game to stop lol. It's prob a waste of space or toxic for all i know but the old guy was pretty convincing and his SPS were stunning. I basically copied his husbandry approach ever since, i still remember his answer when i kept asking what if's about water probs - ' stop with all the bloody what if's, get the water right and then leave it the bloody hell alone ' - he was a bit of a grumpy old bastard.
biggles
Premium Member
The left side of the sump is the frag tank but the blue white LED light unit is a major fail for colors so it's now got some rock and a few frag racks with forgotten acros lol. Since i've stayed at 5 coral feeds a day for weeks now the system seems to cope well with the phos and nitrates and my kits don't detect either. When i was building up the coral feeds i did get small algae outbreaks and saw low phos and nitrates which is when i would drop the carbon and GFO bags in the baffle for a week to 10 days. Never used GFO before and it's great stuff imo if used appropriately.
Btw, i'm not at all against the zeo methodology and believe it works very well if done correctly and well. Despite the more natural approach i take i can see the benefits of having almost total control over many things i simply hope are happening for me lol.
8 month FTS - did my best to get the colors accurate and desaturated the crap out of it.
Btw, i'm not at all against the zeo methodology and believe it works very well if done correctly and well. Despite the more natural approach i take i can see the benefits of having almost total control over many things i simply hope are happening for me lol.
8 month FTS - did my best to get the colors accurate and desaturated the crap out of it.
biggles
Premium Member
I normally do three or four 10% water changes a year unless something goes into the tank that needs removing fast such as fly spray or any other contaminant. I've always used natural sea water and used to collect my own when i lived near the water. I've tried weekly changes all the way to what i do now and never saw any benefits to doing them more often but that's not to say i may be missing a trace element i don't bother testing for such as potassium, who knows.
biggles
Premium Member
No probs at all on the info cugly :beer:
Running a single 250W radium with 4 x 39W T5's. 3 x B+ and 1 x KZ purple.
This is one of the five SCC colored frags i have in the tank. it has a faint green hue to the tissue but i can't catch it in a pic no matter what i do. The pink is very accurate though. Has a bluey grey tint to the edges where it's encrusting. I've had to attack that green thing behind it twice now with a chisel to keep it away from the SCC base, dirty stinging green bastard of a thing it is.........
Running a single 250W radium with 4 x 39W T5's. 3 x B+ and 1 x KZ purple.
This is one of the five SCC colored frags i have in the tank. it has a faint green hue to the tissue but i can't catch it in a pic no matter what i do. The pink is very accurate though. Has a bluey grey tint to the edges where it's encrusting. I've had to attack that green thing behind it twice now with a chisel to keep it away from the SCC base, dirty stinging green bastard of a thing it is.........
troubadour11
Member
Wow biggles. The tank is looking great! I'm digging all of the photos. I haven't been saying much lately, but I've been keeping an eye on what you're up to :strooper:
Always scouting the troop movements :uzi:
Really I've just been slammed with work for the last few weeks. So I usually read about what is going on, but don't have time to chip in any pearls of my wisdom... or lack there of. LOL.
I saw you and Bello talking about Yellow Tangs and how they're one of the most underrated fish or something? What is it about them that make them such a prize in the reef? I can get my hands on them fairly easily around me. When I get to that point, I'd think about adding one in as one of my bigger fish. But I'm very limited to in space, so I have to keep my larger fish to a minimum. And one of them will most likely be some type of pygmy angel. But I'm open to researching other options for my "large" fish on the reef.
The tank is looking sweet though :beer:
Always scouting the troop movements :uzi:
Really I've just been slammed with work for the last few weeks. So I usually read about what is going on, but don't have time to chip in any pearls of my wisdom... or lack there of. LOL.
I saw you and Bello talking about Yellow Tangs and how they're one of the most underrated fish or something? What is it about them that make them such a prize in the reef? I can get my hands on them fairly easily around me. When I get to that point, I'd think about adding one in as one of my bigger fish. But I'm very limited to in space, so I have to keep my larger fish to a minimum. And one of them will most likely be some type of pygmy angel. But I'm open to researching other options for my "large" fish on the reef.
The tank is looking sweet though :beer:
biggles
Premium Member
Hey guys,
The sand bed is only about 3/4" deep and once a week i use a plastic paint scraper or ruler and simply swish it through the bed until the water in the display is cloudy and put a filter cloth in the sump for a couple of hours to catch anything coming through. That's it and the corals get poopy for about 20 mins and then polyp back up as if nothing happened.
I have had tough red wire algae in the tank for months and it has been nibbled away completely within days of adding the tang - that and the wonderful splash of bright yellow in the tank makes yellows one of the most popular salt water fish in the hobby Troub. I've never had an SPS tank without a tang or two just for dealing with algae that is hard to get at manually and the wonderful color and temperament they have - get one !
Another piece of the horrida doing well unlike the hammer under it lol.
I hate the branch color of this acro despite the cool blue/yellow tips, it's prob going to be removed as i don't like all the tan branches.
Checkout the amazing colors on the frag under the blue tipped acro, it really is just as in the pic. Pity the stupid thing refuses to grow.
I had to darken the crap out of this shot to show you the fluoro on the aculeus - it's ridiculously glow in the dark lime yellow.
Undersaturated too far so you can see some of the purple prostrata detail, the SCC frags above it have finally joined up and are starting to shoot growing tips.
The sand bed is only about 3/4" deep and once a week i use a plastic paint scraper or ruler and simply swish it through the bed until the water in the display is cloudy and put a filter cloth in the sump for a couple of hours to catch anything coming through. That's it and the corals get poopy for about 20 mins and then polyp back up as if nothing happened.
I have had tough red wire algae in the tank for months and it has been nibbled away completely within days of adding the tang - that and the wonderful splash of bright yellow in the tank makes yellows one of the most popular salt water fish in the hobby Troub. I've never had an SPS tank without a tang or two just for dealing with algae that is hard to get at manually and the wonderful color and temperament they have - get one !
Another piece of the horrida doing well unlike the hammer under it lol.
I hate the branch color of this acro despite the cool blue/yellow tips, it's prob going to be removed as i don't like all the tan branches.
Checkout the amazing colors on the frag under the blue tipped acro, it really is just as in the pic. Pity the stupid thing refuses to grow.
I had to darken the crap out of this shot to show you the fluoro on the aculeus - it's ridiculously glow in the dark lime yellow.
Undersaturated too far so you can see some of the purple prostrata detail, the SCC frags above it have finally joined up and are starting to shoot growing tips.
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