New to the Nano reef

[Illuminati]

And I thought I put a pic in here with one of the actual crabs Bryan got but I must have forgotten

Cool little crab. Good thing Bryan has connections

 

[slukach]

That crab is pretty cool looking. Bryan does have the connections. I got my first ric today. Pic will be posted shortly.

 

[slukach]

Ok,

Here they are:

 

[slukach]

Hey, happy birthday brother. I missed that above (too busy checking out all the different things in the picture).

 

[Illuminati]

Thanks Steve, the best thing about my B-Day is at work the owners b-day is also on the same day. The first year I was there My boss announced on the intercom "Please join us for cake for Joyce's birthday in the conference room, Ohh it's also Colin's birthday but we didn't get the cake for him" (My boss trying to be funny)
At least now they put my name on it to

Here's a new pic:

In the top left you can see a dead candycane head. See the acan just to the right of it, I found the acan with a crazy long destroyer tentacle killing the candycane on Friday morning. The tissue was actually stretched from the candycane to the acan.
So mad, that was my nice new pink one. Luckily my buddy has always liked that acan and is gonna take it, running out of sandbed space and have no room for jerks that kill pretty pink corals

The new candycane is in the front left (Traded a tank for it today) and next to it on the right is a Sinularia (got at a LFS today), not all the polyps are out so it looks like crap but will look better when it's settled. Looks to be mounted to a dead lobo skeleton. I think it needs a lot of light and high flow so it will be moved up.


Great looking ric Steve, when you have your pumps off drop a piece of mysis onto it and it will close around it.

 

[kingfisher62]

I like everyones new stuff! My tank looks so naked compared to all of yours. I'm gonna have to get a second job so I can catch up!

Oh BTW , Happy belated B-day Colinadam!

I must have coral on the brain. Last night I was dreaming that I was re-arranging my tank and all my corals were crumbling apart in my hands . It was terrible!:eek2:

 

[Illuminati]

Oh no, my b-day is this Tuesday, still plenty of time for gifts and such, wondering why nobody has PM'd me for my address

Hey King, you need to slap a picture of your FOWLER on here, I'd love to see it.

 

[kingfisher62]

Don't worry colinadam ,I'm getting you the same thing I gave you last year!

 

[kingfisher62]

Ok, here is my 55 with its inhabitants

 

[Illuminati]

Awesome!

That blenny looks cool, I saw quite a few at the LFS today but resisted the urge

So based on the inhabitants it's a fairly aggressive tank huh?

 

[smketyr]

King great pics! The six line wrasse was one of my favorite fish, always on the go, swam in and out of every cravasse. My 55 used to back up to the kitchen divider wall on the other side it the stove, the wrasse jumped out a small hole for the returns and landed in a pan of frying bacon! True story!

Colin, where did you go today? I have been looking for an algae blenny or a bicolor blenny for the HA problem.

Just ordered the stuff for the BC29 from the good DrsF/S should be here on Tuesday. The wife is picking up the stand tommorrow. I do need some live rock yet, got all the sand. I will be going to the Rockford Frag Fest on Sat, if I am not feeling to bad from all the radiation treatment this week, got to work goofy hours on top of it, so I don't use any sick leave and vacation. So, hopefully I will be able to fill the tank and get some coral as well. I will house the coral in the frag and 10 tank until the BC is cycled.

Tom

 

[kingfisher62]

smketyr,what a way to go,poor thing! How was the bacon after that? lol
All the fish get along with very little aggression, although the tomato clown and dottyback can get nasty but it is always just display.
If you want to talk about aggression you should have seen my 8 inch red dottyback . he was a real thug. I finally traded him in because I could not get any new fish.

 

[slukach]

KF,

Those fish are excellent. I have been trying to add a few fishies into my tank, but have not seen any (or the ones I saw were sickly) at the LFS that I liked yet. The woman is pressing for a clown goby, so that may be next on the list. They also have a yellow watchman at the LFS, but he is in a tank along the top section of the store, and there haven't been any step ladders available when I was there to check him out. So, I am biding my time.

 

[Illuminati]

King, that dottyback is a monster, that thing looks like it would whoop me if I went in the tank


O.K. a few better pictures, just did a waterchange and replaced my phosban this morning.

My new green striped mushrooms:

A good shot of the sinularia with the polyps out, it grows more verticle, will look similar to the Neon green Nepthea above. The lobo skeleton is covered in tiny aiptasia's. Gotta break out the Joes Juice.
Behind it is the Rainbow Acan i got last week from a buddy.

Full tank shot

Tonight I have another friend that's gonna stop by for the mean acan, 2 more candycane frags will show up in that trade (One a neon green, can't wait), then Tuesday I get the shipment from Bryan and Thursday I should be the new owner of an Onyx Clown from www.rods-reef.com


And I think I'm gonna get a biocube in June, the LFS I went to yesterday has a huge Fragapoloza event every year. Massive amounts of frags and deals, biggest event like it in the Chicago area during the summer months. He is supposed to have biocubes marked down big time for that.

I am planning a 100% Euphilyia tank, nothing but hammer, frogspawn and torch corals.

 

[kingfisher62]

My cube is in trouble,
just tested nitrates and it 20ppm ! All other parameters are perfect. Thats what i get for blowing off my water change. I usually do it on thursdays so I am 3 days late but it has to be some thing else to raise so much in 10 days .
I think I have been overfeeding with phytoplankton and mysis shrimp. I plan on cutting back to one phyto feeding a week and feeding the fish every two days.
It also could have been one branch of my candycane with three polyps had died and they decayed after the last 3 days
(could have been the nitrates that did them in) but that branch never looked right from day one I think they were damaged in transit . All the other polyps looks great along with everything else in the tank! Wouldn't you agree? you guys saw the photos a few days ago.
I will do a three gallon water change tonight and another in two days and again if i have to.
Oh yeah , I just put some chaeto back in the tank!
I left a shrimp molt in the tank. I heard that the calcium just goes back into the water could that raise nitrates?

 

[Illuminati]

Sounds like a phyto OD. Doing the water changes how you planned is a good idea. No reason to worry, it's not that high that fish are going to start kicking the bucket, just will make your corals angry.

Do you have any sponges or filter media in the back that need to be cleaned or replaced? That's another common cause.

No correlation to shrimp molts and calcium, shrimp molts are due to iodine levels.

 

[Hopeful Reefer]

Calcium and nitrates don't have anything to do with one another...plus, if you were experiencing some sort of "decay" event your fish and corals would be stressed ahead of the rise in the nitrates by the presence of ammonia. Did your fish or corals look stressed before this?

As for your plan of action...waters changes will certainly help with the parameters...chaeto will DEFINITELY help to absorb nutrients...

 

[Illuminati]

Funny story, when I first started this hobby I got a bottle of Coral Frenzy phyto. Heard rave reviews about it, everyone loved it, etc..
I bought a bottle and it said good food for softies, LPS and SPS, I had just gotten my first LPS (Acan Lord and some Candycane) and they were also my first corals.
So there I am spot feeding my LPS phyto with a turkey baster wondering why they never grow

Luckily I met someone who told me basically the main job of phyto is feed the copeopods which in turns feeds the corals and fish and not to overdo it. I'm down to feeding phyto once a week, I usually try to spot feed the orange gorg most of it. Then I learned, feed mysis to LPS.

 

[Hopeful Reefer]

I feed mysis shrimp to my frogspawn and also my button polyps...the buttons IMMEDIATELY close around any shrimp that I give them and they are growing like CRAZY!! They actually are starting to sprout up new polyps quickly as well...my frogspawn likes it as well, and I think I've actually got a new frogspawn head beginning to form below the 2 I already have now...

Long story short, I agree with Colin...LPS fed with Mysis...save the Phyto for SPS and your pods...

 

[kingfisher62]

HR , I never noticed any stress to speak of and colinadam good call on the sponges and filter cartridge ,pretty nasty for ten days.

To late for the LFS so I stripped my cartridge and used the frame with fishing line and the bagged polyester filter media, no carbon, haven't used that stuff for years. If you guys use these cartridges it could save us quite a bit of money over the coarse of a year. In this hobby you should save where you can. I would rather spend my money on livestock.