My 65 Gallon Mixed Reef

[Fishy 1]

Thanks for that bello now I just need biggles and sahin to do the same
Bello how's your multibar angel going?

 

[Bello]

Multibar went off a long time ago, had it for 9 months. My fault completely. Didn't qt another stupid fish.

 

[Fishy 1]

Multibar went off a long time ago, had it for 9 months. My fault completely. Didn't qt another stupid fish.

What a shame I don't think you will do that again, are you looking to get another one some day?

 

[Bello]

Desperately!!!

But they're very difficult fish that require intense care in the initial period. Once settled, they're like flames, or regular dwarf angels, hardy and active.

The key is to acquire settled specimens, which is impossible in my case. I don't live in the US, and hardly ever see these offered for sale, let alone settled.

 

[Fishy 1]

It sounds like you have had more than one. Are you an aussie by any chance?

 

[Bello]

I wish!!! Then I wouldn't be sooooo jealous of biggles . Jealous, but not as much.

I tried them twice thus far. Second time everything was perfect except it never ate prepared foods or mysis. I suspect the specimen was too big already. Smaller ones are easier to acclimatise.

 

[1000_smiles]

Hey biggles,
Could you tell me exactly how much two part you dose (ca, alk and especially mg) daily?
I am trying to get my dosing sorted, ca and alk draw are pretty steady, but I am not sure what to do about the mg.
Thanks

 

[vivicat215]

Wow nice SPS!!!!

 

[biggles]

Damn, biggles, even your aiptasia look prettier than mine :lol:. I still have a few of those bastards in my system. Good thing you got rid of that sucker, quick. Haven't tried the boiling RO spa therapy for them yet. You could also do what I did to rid them, put in a polyp crunching butterflyfish in there for a few hours :lol:.

I finally understood what barbarism you committed to those acros . FTS looks good, freaking acros on the sandbed :lol:. Any plans to extend that left raft further towards the front? What ballast are you running with the 400w Radium? I think I've reduced my PAR a little too much over the last few months.

Colors on the SSC look good to me, at least. But I noticed the tissue is bulbous on the SSC, not on the others. What do you attribute that to?

Once i replace that stupid piece of garbage blue/white LED unit over the sump with real lights i won't have to dump acros on the sand, until then the occasional acro depth charge will be dropped into the display lol.
I'm hating the whole raft rock lately so you can bet things will change on the left sooner or later, still can't bring myself to cut the fluoro aculeus off the front tip even though it dies a little more each day
I use a cheap HPS ballast to drive the Radium, i think i paid $60- for it on ebay years ago.
That weird balling up tip growth is typical of what happens when you shut down the growth through toxic levels of something. You get the same thing on some acros when your calcium is way low and alk is at the correct levels i've found over the years although it's more pronounced under those circumstances usually.

All that effort, spot feeding and even going to the trouble of using a syringe and it gave up on life. I feel so sorry for your bellotasia lose I really do. I think you have just found the next big thing to keep, bellotasia harder to keep than sps and much prettier. I used so much sarcazim in that iv run out lol.
As for the firefish, maybe that's how they got there name, three, two, one, fire the fish!. I liked your run down on the launch of a firefish very funny lol. I hope mine is a defused misile and if he does deside to go bang I hope its too under his rock and not into space, id hate to report back here wnd say huston we have a problem

Hopefully the main burners fail to ignite on your little missile mate and he maintains a stable tank orbit.

Biggles I know you don't like wrasses much but what do you think of the one in my profile pic its a carpenters flasher wrasse.
And maybe you, bello and sahin could post on my new thread ( why do you keep marine) looking for why do we all do what we do. If you guys could do that it would be great:thumbup:

Wrasses will eat my tiny critters so they're out i think. I love that flasher wrasse and many other wrasses but they're not compatible with my idea of building up in tank food production for the corals tbh.
I posted in your thread as requested mate.

Hey biggles,
Could you tell me exactly how much two part you dose (ca, alk and especially mg) daily?
I am trying to get my dosing sorted, ca and alk draw are pretty steady, but I am not sure what to do about the mg.
Thanks

I'm dosing 115ml a day of alk and calcium and every second day i squirt 60ml of Mg in which keeps the Mg from bottoming out. I haven't actually bothered to work out an exact dose for Mg but i will if i ever actually set up the dosing unit i bought months back lol. Mg doesn't need to be super stable just keep it between 1300-1400 and everything will be cool from my experience. Try dosing about a third the amount of the alk and calcium dose the tank is receiving weekly. Once a week is fine for Mg dosing imo.

Wow nice SPS!!!!

Thanks very much mate


Last couple of acro pics for a while as i want to get back to discussing how to keep these bloody things looking good with minimal input. The last three weeks the only thing fed to the tank has been 3 pinches of flake a day to the fish and 2 mysis cubes a week. I have the front glass back to 2 day cleaning instead of daily so i won't strip the water of crap too much longer.

Tip burn damage still present on the ugly little green nub but i can finally see signs that it's encrusting over the dead spots, i feel sorry for the little guy really because it's highly likely i'll cut him off at some stage and sump dump him due to ugliness.

Close up showing how some of the radial corallites on the blue polyp pale skinned acro are finally bluing up. I like how the encrusting tissue stays almost white too unlike 99% of acros which usually have color on the base at least.

 

[Fishy 1]

Thanks for posting biggles and you to sahin I don't know if I'll get a wrasse yet, mainly because I don't want my pod population being wiped out. I thinking about a kole tang as thanks to sahin I found my tank was actuly 67gal and not 60. It would be the main show piece fish in the tank, what do you think?( and don't give me the "I don't know much about fish" thing, we all know you have the tank touch ).

 

[JMorris271]

Went to the LFS for water and couldn't resist one acro branch that was glowing under their blue/white shop LED's. Pics are under 2 x B+ 39W T5's - it has insanely fluorescent yellow tips with great PE within minutes of hitting the tank. It was one branch until i slipped with the dremmel while whittling it's base down to fit in the rock hole and hit my finger with the cutting disc, dropped the branch onto the kitchen bench breaking it in two. After much swearing and cursing i ended up with two at different heights which i like and will hopefully grow out as two tabling branches

Talk about luck!:beer:

 

[Fishy 1]

Hey biggles, I got my first coral today. A green button polyp from what I can see, it will be placed on my small rock pile so it can do what it likes. Its not a sps or even a lps but I'm still proud to have it
Now I'm a "reef keeper"

 

[1000_smiles]

Thanks

 

[sahin]

Hey Sahin, i just stick the bloody things in the water and they do all the work coloring up - i just watch lol. I would place a blue echi near the top of my shopping list in regards to must have acros, right up there with SSC imo. Lots of stunning examples of blue echi's are on RC, mine has a lot of growing to do yet

Dont be so modest mate. You are certainly skilled at what you do and it shows in the highly coloured acros seen in the pics. :beer:

I could only drop $600-700 on a camera and lens so i don't think i could get much for that unfortunately When i was in my 20's i had a Nikon D90 from memory and used to shoot heaps of nature macros. I had about ten grand of equipment way back then including my own darkroom for developing and almost made it a career. I can only do so much with the phone camera but now you know why i produce half decent pics regardless lol, if i had a DSLR and macro lens you guys would get sick of the pics as i'd go nuts finally having something i could catch the beauty of the acro pigments with lol.

I bet you could do a WHOLE lot more with $600 worth of equipment than the rest of us...seriously mate, you have a wealth of photography skills. Oh imagine the beautiful eye candy we are missing out on...

I woke at 3am and found Kevin standing at the foot of my bed.......... ' think you're real smart don't ya biggles making koala jokes...... sleep well funny guy ' then the light went off...... he's a bit of a worry lately is our Kevin.

Holy crap! That would give anyone a fright seeing that face calmly sitting at the feet end of the bed watching you without even blinking an eye whilst the psychotic Kevin gives you a warning in a very calm voice...:uhoh2:

Love this acro here (no, not the boggie green one :lol: the pale white one with the blue/purple polyps:

This SSC looks pretty me thinks with the blue tips:

Well mate, it sure looks like your tank is almost back to its highly coloured state. Keep up the good work and the very useful posts. :thumbsup:

 

[biggles]

Hey guys, have to get to work but i woke this morning to the aculeus imploding with full blown RTN so i'm super impressed about that lol. All the skin is gone from the branches and by the time i get home this afternoon i expect to see a big white skeleton. Took a quick snap and tried to adjust the colors so you could see what's going on with it, it's greener than in the pic but you can sorta see the tissue loss working its way up from the branches to the tips.
I'll expand on my mood in regards to this event tonight after work but just wanted to share the joy with you guys.

Early indications are pointing towards Bello being responsible, not me dropping salinity from 1.028 to 1.026 in 48 hours or almost no flow at the colony due to not cleaning any pumps for 6 weeks.........

I don't know how you did it Bello but i know you did it mate.........:twitch:

 

[Fishy 1]

Since you have to go to work now, you must be on the eastern side of oz? Am I currect

 

[Bello]

Crap!!! I hope you're able to save it .

 

[sahin]

Ah crap man. Sorry about that mate.

I think its high time Bello was banned from this thread...I mean he makes your SPS STN/RTN without even doing anything. That Bello has skillz...

 

[Fishy 1]

Ah crap man. Sorry about that mate.

I think its high time Bello was banned from this thread...I mean he makes your SPS STN/RTN without even doing anything. That Bello has skillz...

Hahaha lol poor bello but someone must get blamed for it I suppose

 

[Montireef]

Don't blame Bello, in fact it was an attack of envy I have suffered
LOL

Biggles, that echinata is really awesome, keep it well fed and alive, please.