my turn - 525

[porthios]

picked up 6 more tasty frags at a not-so-local fish store this weekend. they came with redbugs and flatworms (red planaria, not aefw). treated and into qt. i'm picking up another 6-8 frags from a local reefer after work today. some gorgeous stuff, imo..

i'll take some pics when i get everything into qt.

ph is starting to come up although slowly. turns out there's a known bug with the rke timer function and i still wasn't running the kalk reactor as often as i thought i was. ph is currently only getting up to about 8.1 in the evening and i'd like it around 8.3-8.4.

i'm expecting a wireless bridge from amazon today/tomorrow so when that gets here i'll have the net module running/logging/graphing full time and i should have a better idea of 24/7 levels, etc..

 

[Lightsluvr]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=14352126#post14352126 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by porthios
it occurred to me that this thread lacks a lot of the bling you find in many other build threads. since i don't have a calcium reactor, kalk reactor, or skimmer, i thought i'd show you guys a pic of my favorite piece of equipment so far.

Bam! the deltec, double utility sink!

This photo alone is worth a sunscription to the thread... fingers crossed no disasters in the tank since February...

LL

 

[Lightsluvr]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15070806#post15070806 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by porthios
here are a couple fun ones. wanted to take a pic of the sargassum before i pruned it. enjoy..

these two pics are almost exactly one month old..

and these two i took today..

Let me know if you ever want to get rid of clippings of the sargassum... my seahorses would love that in their new tank!

LL

 

[robot2222]

do you have any new updates

 

[porthios]

lightsluvr - can't believe you're gonna try and jinx me like that. my wife and i just got back from a long weekend in the mountains and if i'd read that before we left i'd have gotten no sleep at all.

can't be that hard to ship the sargassum and i'll have to look into that at some point but if you haven't already, check out www.reefcleaners.org. they have an excellent selection of macros at great prices and john is awesome when it comes to customer service imo..

robot2222 - thanks for looking, i hope this'll suffice..

so i finally got tired of apologizing for my photo skills, broke down and bought a proper camera last week and started studying a bit. i'll spare you the 4,245,231 pictures i've taken of my poor dog but here are a few decent ones i've managed of the tank so far. no macro lens or tripod yet as i haven't decided which to get.

here's a shot of the display setup atm. wife's gonna hang me if i don't get the stand skinned soon.

the two buds and a spy from..

the lyretail posse.

orange backed fairy wrasse aka - double double

one of the lyretails tryin to make me look good

left side

right side

i have ~20 frags ready to go to the display from qt as soon as i get some time. this evening if i'm lucky. i'm also getting ready to order some fish from live aquaria.

i just found out that my cousin will not be tearing down his 120g so i'll need to flush out the rest of my stocking list on my own. here are the fish i have atm.

display tank
kole tang
sailfin tang
1 male, 4 female lyretail anthias
orange backed fairy wrasse

75g macro tank
flame hawk
2 oscellaris clownfish

possible additions
purple tang - we love purples so this is quite likely
powder blue tang - little worried about sensitivity and aggression
regal tang - great fish but everyone has one
sohal tang - would absolutely LOVE to have one but think they probly ought to stay on the reefs
achilles tang - same as sohal though maybe not quite as bad
white cheek tang - one of my all time favorites
hawian flame wrasse harem - 1 male, couple females
bellus angel - mated pair?

would probly only get one of powder/sohal/achilles plus purple and white cheek. that should leave room for whatever cool 'filler' fish i come across.

anyway, would love to hear your thoughts .

 

[Brandan]

Bellus is a great choice. I highly recommend them

 

[cdeboard]

Wow... read this from page 1. Awesome build. really nice frog and hammer you have there as well.

 

[porthios]

thanks brandan. i think any genicanthus would be sweet but i've only seen the bellus in person as i recall.

cdeboard - tyvm . i'm ****ed i shattered the hammer so badly when i moved it into the new display. ah well. another 6mos and it'll be nice again..

i'm not sure anyone cares to hear husbandry updates but i'll note a few here for my reference later.

i chose to use a kalk reactor (geo) with this setup vs. mixing batches in a brute container (as i've done before) because it's a lot cleaner and less labor intensive but as expected, it isn't quite as effective either. as a result, i've never been able to get the reactor to keep up with ca/alk demands and have had to supplement ca/alk manually.

two weeks ago i added sodium carbonate dosing via litermeter3. i'm quite happy with the new arrangement as it's bumped my ph up to around 8.3 and my alk levels are relatively stable now vs. manually dosing twice a week. i think it's probly time to break down and do the same for calcium and magnesium as well. i was trying to run off kalk alone for as long as possible but hey,

i'm really lazy .

i'll post pics when i get it sorted out.

 

[asmodeus]

dude love the fishroom clean and more clean. lol what about getting a few blotchy anthias in there

 

[t kish]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15070806#post15070806 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by porthios
here are a couple fun ones. wanted to take a pic of the sargassum before i pruned it. enjoy..

these two pics are almost exactly one month old..

and these two i took today..

Stunning aquarium , will only get better with age.

Can you tell me what the spiral stuff is that is growing out of the rock ?
Its in the first pic on the right hand side.

Thanks Tim

 

[porthios]

asmodeus - thank you . kind of doubt i'll add another anthias species but we'll see..

tim - it's padina aka potato algae. unfortunately, the two tangs found it quite tasty and i was too slow to save any before they ate it all. i really liked it and may have to order some more for the macro tank.

 

[t kish]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=15215512#post15215512 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by porthios
asmodeus - thank you . kind of doubt i'll add another anthias species but we'll see..

tim - it's padina aka potato algae. unfortunately, the two tangs found it quite tasty and i was too slow to save any before they ate it all. i really liked it and may have to order some more for the macro tank.

So it is a good algae?
I have it growing all over my tank and was getting worried about it ,even though I thought it looked interesting.

Tim

 

[porthios]

well, we tend to say algae is bad if it's invasive, overly toxic or ugly and a pain to get rid of. padina is not invasive, apparently tasty, very easily harvested (nutrient export) and attractive to my eyes.

so i'll call it a good one .

 

[edandsandy]

Everything look great, I like how you have organized your fish room too!

 

[porthios]

thank you sandy. i'm happy to see your tank is cruising along very well. one of my favorite threads.

so here's why i'll probly never have a tank with out calustrea. this is what my main colony looks like under normal conditions.

and here's what it looked like when i came home from work today. sorry the photo sucks..

i've decided to maintain ca/alk with just two part dosed via litermeter3 so last night i unplugged my kalk reactor and bumped my alk dosing. turns out i'd over shot a bit and my alk went from 10-11.7dkh in about 15hrs. i don't expect this to be a big issue but i'm glad i caught the error when i did.

calustrea has always been a good water quality indicator for me as it seems to be the first to complain in an obvious way about most of the mistakes i make.

thought i'd share..

 

[New Jer-Z]

Great Looking Tank

 

[porthios]

thanks man i appreciate the kind words..

an all too common moment of brilliance led to a completely flooded fish room last night and i thought i'd start a list of stupid things i've done during this build.

1. ran my 400w mh lights for 6 days before figuring out i'd forgotten to peel the protective lining from the lumen bright reflectors. 'what's that burning smell?' bought new reflectors..

2. came home last night to find that my top off pump had stuck on and dumped a bit extra into the sump. it's on a timer and float switch, the timer saved me at that point. at the same time i noticed that the main pump wasn't quite pushing like it should, 'hmm, must be a snail or some air trapped in there. i'll powercycle it!'

guess what didn't come back on and guess what happened to the extra 10g of water..

it took about 60 seconds for it to flood and i really wish i had a video of my actions/reactions for that minute. in that small amount of time i solved several plumbing issues that had been nagging me for a while and engineered two completely separate devices that would allow me to avoid what i knew was coming. it may have been the most productive moment of creativity i'll ever know.

of course, i had no time to actually implement those devices and could only stare at the mop with resignation..

go me..

i'll update when i get to #3 .

 

[mfd574]

looks great

 

[porthios]

well, i think i'm down to 4 anthias. a few days ago, two of my 4 females turned male and the aggression started between the three males. the next day the smallest male disappeared and i haven't been able to find him since.

lame.

turns out i'm not going to be able to eliminate kalk. sodium carbonate alone is only keeping the tank's ph at ~8.0 so i'll be pulling the kalk reactor back out of the closet. was worth a shot i guess ..

i added a blue spotted jawfish, squamosa and derasa from live aquaria to qt last week as well. have family in town atm but i'll throw up some pics when i can.

 

[porthios]

i'm definitely down to 4 anthias. two males and two females. little bummed about it.

orange backed fairy wrasse jumped into the overflow yesterday and i'm gonna be ****ed if i lose him so i'll try to get the new canopy done this weekend.

jawfish looks good so he'll probly move to the display in the next couple of days.

the squamy and derasa both had pyramid snails which i removed manually. it's about time for me to check them again but if they're clean they'll move up as well.

i'm back to dosing kalk from a reservoir again. i'm currently dosing ~20l/day and it's holding ca/alk steady for me without any two part. a 5g bucket would last about a week on my old 40g but i'm gonna need a bit bigger res for this get up .