Our Tbs

[techreef]

just from my quick "OMG, what is that? Do I have any?" research on Eunicid worms, it looked like Dr. Shimek said that they are scavengers. Are you guys having losses in your tanks that you're attributing to these worms, or do they cross cross your "gross out" line?

And Jay, I haven't forgotten about posting those pics of my CL. Last night was busy. I'll get pics up ASAP.

 

[BrianPlankis]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7871895#post7871895 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by techreef
just from my quick "OMG, what is that? Do I have any?" research on Eunicid worms, it looked like Dr. Shimek said that they are scavengers. Are you guys having losses in your tanks that you're attributing to these worms, or do they cross cross your "gross out" line?

Mine are mostly scavengers, but I have actually seen them stretch out of their hole and take pieces of flesh out of my TBS brain corals. Then the brain extrudes mesenterial filaments out of the resulting hole, so they obviously don't like the interaction. Those are the only corals they seem to bother, but those are my favorite corals, so that is a problem.

Since I started feeding the TBS brain corals heavily they are growing and healthy. But the Eunicid worms are growing and healthy as well. The question is, can the worms do more damage to the brains than they can manage to absorb. So I try to remove the worms when I identify one in a hole near my TBS brains.

Brian

 

[elzool]

what is this?

what is this?

This tank has been setup with TBS for a few months now and about a month and half ago I noticed this. It hasn't really grown much, but I'd still like to know what it is. It's about 8" in length and is on the back wall of the tank.

Lookie here ma, I gots me some fishes!
This is, as named by my two year old, Flashlight. A Carpenters Flasher Wrasse.

This, also named by my son, is Jammie, a Pajama(Spotted) Cardinalfish.

 

[jezzeaepi]

Two of the rocks that the worms are on can easily be taken out. How would you recomend I remove them? Im not sure which hole is theres. Both rocks have tbs Cups on them so I cant be too mean to them. Both rocks are right by this open brain I just added.... Sob...

 

[BrianPlankis]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7872814#post7872814 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by jezzeaepi
Two of the rocks that the worms are on can easily be taken out. How would you recomend I remove them? Im not sure which hole is theres. Both rocks have tbs Cups on them so I cant be too mean to them. Both rocks are right by this open brain I just added.... Sob...

Don't get too sad yet, just because they attack my TBS brains, does not mean they will attack your open brain. Your open brain is probably from the pacific so it would be a completely foreign meal to them

What I do is watch for what holes they come out of frequently (this can sometimes take weeks to observe) and then I quickly remove the rock from the tank when I see them retreat into the hole. Then I squirt in the MgCl (that is my favorite, less damaging to other things than fresh water or seltzer) and let them crawl out of the rock on their own. Then I return the rock to the water immediately. If done correctly your rock is out of the water for a couple minutes at most.

Brian

 

[jezzeaepi]

Is there a common name for MgCl? Where do I get it?

How do you guys have your flow set up? While trying to set up proper flow for my open brain, it occured to me that I had wayyy to much flow. No matter where I put the brain You could see that the flesh on it was being blow too hard. It was being compressed against the skeelton, and it didnt look too happy.

**The blue squares are seio 620's. The red lines represent the approximate flow stream from the PH. The blue rectangle in the later pictures is my mj1200. The green areas indicate areas of cyano growth on the substrate.**

Heres my flow when I first set up the tank. So we have 1240 gph flow at this point. The Problem here was that I had excessive cyano growth in the areas covered in green on the diagram.

After a few months I got sick of the cyano not going away and thought it had something to do with my flow being too low in those aeras.


I re-angeled my Seios so they were pointing more towards the corners. This worked much better for the cyano along the sides, but there was still cyano growth along the back wall of the tank.

I then added a mj1200 to flow along the back wall of the tank. Now we are at 1500gph.

This was working great for the detrus and my TBS corals, but once I added the brain it appeared to be too much for the poor guy, even at the bottom with rocks surounding him partially to break some of the flow. The solution was to simply remove the seio closest. Now we have 900gph and the flow pattern is like this.

Do you think this is good? Creates a lower flow in half of the tank for some of the inhabitants, while ealving a high flow areas for the others.

 

[BrianPlankis]

Jesse,

I think that flow should work fine. But it doesn't really matter what I think keep a close eye on your tank inhabitants and see how they adjust to the new flow, that will determine if it is good or not.

Cheers,

Brian

 

[jmait769]

Brian â€"œ I forgot to measure that 80 gallon tank but managed tonight. It is 48” wide â€"œ 18” deep and 22 ¾“ high. It was purchased at PetsMart.

I have been putting together my sump, it is not ready, but had to put the pump into use. Thought you all would like to see a Mag18 in action. I live in Las Cruces, New Mexico about 45 miles north of El Paso, TX. You may have seen it has been flooding. Well, Las Cruces was not immune and my neighbor’s back yard filled up within minutes after a storm and it was putting a lot of pressure on my stone wall. The water actually got higher then this but these are the only pictures I was able to take. It took the mag18 and my wife’s pond pump (Quiet One 3000) about 4 hours to bring down the water to a safe level!!

This is my daughters boyfriend, Aaron, helping me out!! Took him out to dinner the next day!!

Jay

 

[techreef]

Jay,

Here are a couple pics of my CL, finally. Sorry it took me so long. If you have any questions, fire away. Oh, and re: the pic of the supply line leading down to the Sequence Marlin pump (sitting on the floor), I also obviously plumbed a return line back up from the pump to the 90-degree elbow shown in one of the other pics, which connects the return pipe to the manifold sitting on the top of the tank. My return line has a ball valve true union in it, like the supply pipe shown in the pic.

<a href="http://photobucket.com" target="_blank"><img src="http://i100.photobucket.com/albums/m26/techreef/115-1530_IMG.jpg" border="0" alt="Photobucket - Video and Image Hosting"></a>

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two creatures I'm becoming VERY familiar with. Found 2 more mantis shrimp (couldn't get the 1/4" one out of the rock, even w/ seltzer) and one of my base rocks has 5-6 gorillas still in it. And I hear clicking that sounds bigger than the 1/4" mantis.... sigh.
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[jezzeaepi]

It has been about 4 months since the first part of the package went in. I am still batteling a few algea patches and cyano. The only things that have been added to the tank other then what TBS sent me are the open brain coral, and a tubinaria peltata.

Heres the "pic goodness":

Full tank:

Left side:

Right side:

Random shots:

cont..

 

[jezzeaepi]

Close up of one of the many tbs colonies:

My newest addition:

Peace

 

[jezzeaepi]

There are another 4 or 5 rocks with decent sized coral colonies running along the back wall.. Too much stuff too be able to have it all on the front.

 

[Alatriel]

Grrr Tank Broke

Grrr Tank Broke

Our 55 TBS reef sprang a serious leak at 3 am. We drained it and put all the rock, corals, anemone and fish into tubs. All the sand went into buckets.
We have powerheads circulating the water and tomorrow I'll be moving the lights over top the tubs. It might take a day or two to get everything back up due to the massive cleanup of the floors. How long can they be in the tubs without causing problems? I'm worried about the cup corals and anemone mostly.

I'm just glad I went to check the front door to see if it was locked up.

 

[BrianPlankis]

Re: Grrr Tank Broke

Re: Grrr Tank Broke

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=7892807#post7892807 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by Alatriel
Our 55 TBS reef sprang a serious leak at 3 am. We drained it and put all the rock, corals, anemone and fish into tubs. All the sand went into buckets.
We have powerheads circulating the water and tomorrow I'll be moving the lights over top the tubs. It might take a day or two to get everything back up due to the massive cleanup of the floors. How long can they be in the tubs without causing problems? I'm worried about the cup corals and anemone mostly.

I'm just glad I went to check the front door to see if it was locked up.

Oh wow! Sorry to hear about this I'm not sure how long things can stay in tubs, I've heard that water movement and stable temperatures are more important than lights for at least the first couple of days. Good luck in the recovery!

Brian

 

[jmait769]

techreef - Great! Thanks. Did you use 1” pipe for the manifold? Looking at the size of that pump, is there to much flow? Did you have to throttle it back some with the ball valve? For my setup I’m trying to manifold the return and then setup a closed loop something like this from Melev's site: <a href="http://www.melevsreef.com/closedloop.html" target="_blank">Closed Loop</a>

jezzeaepi â€"œ Awesome pictures!!

Alatriel â€"œ Everyone’s worst fear! Hope the cleanup goes quickly. I upgraded to a larger tank and I used the tubs for temporary storage. I went a few days with no lights. Like Brian said, I just made sure there was good flow and maintained the temperature.

Jay

 

[techreef]

Jay,

Yeah, my CL is a mutant of Melev's setup from that link. I didn't like the idea of a wavemaker device in the CL though, 'cause 1)i don't need more crap to maintain/clean in this hobby, 2)i get nice random flow by using more outflow nozzles that collide w/ each other, and 3)my setup has no moving parts, ie the KISS method. The entire CL is 1" pvc. (all the black pvc in the pics) The pump is pushing around 1800gph, or would be, if I didn't have it throttled back a bit w/ the return line ball valve. (not pictured, but same as supply line ball valve) I would like to run it wide open, as it gives me near 20X turnover in the tank, but the noise, while quiet, is just too obtrusive for our living room. (The Marlin pump gets quieter as you throttle it back. I think it also uses less electricity, but i'm not sure if this feature is included in the Marlin pump. other Sequence pumps do this, for sure.) I'll just have to accept it and get stuff that doesn't need huge flow. With so many outputs, the flow is nice and random, as I've pointed most of the outputs so that the water flows collide w/ each other and create life-like randomization of the currents in the tank.

If you're interested in using black pvc, www.savko.com sells it in several different diameters. Any pvc fittings you see in my pics that are white is because savko didn't sell black versions of those fittings.

 

[jmait769]

techreef â€"œ Thanks, I agree on the KISS method!! This gives me some ideas and I appreciate it. I will post some pics as soon as I get mine up and running. I’m having a heck of a time getting this sump completed. I ordered a new skimmer and they did not send the pump! This has set me back a week. The final (I hope) plumbing pieces showed up Friday.

Post some pics of your whole tank with the TBS when you can. From the pictures you posted it looks like a nice setup!!

Jay

 

[jezzeaepi]

That sucks about the leak =( Good thing you caught it before it was too late. Thats why I went with an acrylic tank this time around. Ive had two tanks spring leaks on me in the middle of the night. I dont trust silicone anymore.
Kepp the flow good and the temp stable and they should eb fine for a few days. If you are moving your lights to your tub make sure they are not that much closer to your corals then they were on the tank, or that could cause more harm then having the lights off in the first place. Not having light will stress them a little, but it happens from time to time in the wild(i.e. storm). However, should the light intensity be stepped up all of the sudden that could cause a lot of stress.


Its too bad most of the corals closed up when I shut off the pumps to take pictures. They all are so pretty. Some are just brown, but some have some flourscent greens and reds in them.


What all do you guys feed your tanks, how much, and with what frequency?
I consider giving everything in the tank the food it needs a great challenge. With coral colonies, hermits, porcelain crabs, shrimp, snails, cucmbers, brittle stars, pods, etc, it seems like theres a lot of mouths to feed.

Lately Ive been mixing some reef chili(2 scoops) with some formula one(1 cube) and frozen mysis shrimp(1 cube). Ill throw in a few pieces of cut up shrimp as well for the brittle stars. I do this every 2 - 3 days. I was also adding a half dose of DT's pythoplankton every day till I ran out.

 

[Safir]

I was feedign everythign seperate and it was driving me nuts and i was having a hell of a time with hair algae, so I took all my fish foods, including favious frozen seeafood, reef chilli sweetwater's zooplankton, and a phytiplankton (micro-vert i believe) and made up my own food, threw the seafood and some RO water in the blender and ground it up nice and small, then threw in some of the rest and froze the whole shebang into ice cubes - i throw one cube in my sump a week and everything pigs out on it, feeding off pods, algae, etc the rest of the week - the algae has begun to subside big time and everything else seems to be doing fine. the only things i spot-feed anymore are the "big predators (anemone and serpent star) who get a piece of shrimp or krill each a few times a week.

My tbs corals dont appear to be doing any worse than when i was feeding fish food daily and filter feeder food every 2-3 days, the onyl thing suffering is nuisance algae - I say doing any worse because under my MH lighting many of them have been slowly declining from day 1

 

[jezzeaepi]

Ive been struggling with cyano and hair algea as well. My nitrates started at 30~ish after my cycle had completed. Weekly water changes of 5 gallons left the nitrates pretty stagnant. Even if I stopped feeding the nitrates didnt seem to drop much. I gave up and just started doing two water changes a week(about 3 weeks ago). I have them down to 5-10 now. Hopefully they will be gone in a week or two.

After reading Eric Bornemans take on feeding the reef I was a bit suprised by his expereinces with "heavier" feeding. This is what originally inspired me to feed more often. I figure I can test for nitrates to know if I'm over feeding, but theres no way I can test for underfeeding.