PHOTOS of 180 gal Mixed Reef (Mostly SPS)

AEFW and Parasites

AEFW and Parasites

wow your corals look happy , brings back memories before my fight with the AEFW..
keep up the good work.

Thanks, they are happy, but the colors are still coming back in. So I guess that will require a new set of snappies. :spin3:


About 5 years ago I bought 42 1/2 to 2 inch frags at the local C-Sea fragswap, which is where a lion's share of every coral you see came from.

Somewhere in that mix were frags infected with redbugs and AEFW. Not sure how things survived, but I grew them out despite this. And it took me a total of 2 1/2 years to finally get rid of the AEFW. And out of the original 42 I think I lost a 1/3.
And during that time I also bought another set of 40 or so from a nice fellow in Chicago, Menard (TOTM 11-06) and I think 30 of the 2nd batch (don't ask about the dumb move I made with the 1st batch) survived the above AEFW problem. Allot of them are still in one of my grow out tanks.

The only reason I was able to lick the AEFW is that I had 3 separate growout systems to rotate the coral livestock in and out of. The big push that did it was cutting the frags off of their plug, dipping them in betadyne and tank buddies parasite removal for freshwater and remounting them on new plugs and put in a system that was clean of any SPS every month for 4 months. Boy what a chore, this was a 6 hours tour.

Everything that comes in now and I mean everything even zoas, gets revive, levasole, betadyne, and intereceptor and remounted if it's on someone elses frag or rock and I cut the frag back to fresh flesh. And I use a pair of granny glasses and a magnifying glass to inspect them. I'm in the middle of changing my growout tanks to something a bit more spacious yet not as deep (a pair of 48 x 24 x 12's). And a true blue dedicated 8 week coral quarantine is going to be a part of my total system upgrades. I have a 2o long and the beginnings of a T5 rig and such. I will set it up so I can rotate the live rock out of the thing and sterilize the tank and redip and refill with water change water from the big system. Essentially duplicating the 3 system switch thing if needed, without needing 3 systems to do it. ;)
 
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Very nice and natural looking. Everybody seems to just jam as much stuff as they can into their tanks and it looks like a coral car crash! You actually left room for growth, what a concept!
 
Powerheads and Glass thickness

Powerheads and Glass thickness

Hey there, nice tank. Love the dimensions of the 180. I think I'll move to it eventually. What are you using for powerheads? Also, how thick is the glass on the 180?


For powerheads I'm using 1 tunze 6105 set to lowest for run, and 6 second interval set at 100% output. This is in the lower left pointing at the surface towards the back. And I have 1 algae free mod Maxi-jet 1200 in the rear behind the big tipped over almost vertical table coral skeleton 1/3 from the surface on the far righthand side.

This combination is giving me a variable-laminar or streamline flow in the tank that is keeping stuff and fish from collecting in the back of the tank and slight pulse on the front. (Stops the fish that like to hide from doing so since it creates a hefty channel that's more work than the secrecy warrants.)

I need at least 1 more 6105 and maybe 1 or 2 tunze nanostreams hidden in their proprietary rock. But that's a ways off until I yank everything back out and install the liverock pillars on the left and right that will hide the overflows completely and house about 24 coral colonies between the 2 of them. But that's another story.

The glass is standard 1/2" plate that AGA uses on their 180 RR tanks.
 
Very nice and natural looking. Everybody seems to just jam as much stuff as they can into their tanks and it looks like a coral car crash! You actually left room for growth, what a concept!

Actually there's a few that are sandwhiched in there. I have major work going on another leg of the system so I hope to correct that.
I know what you mean. But of course there are the seasoned systems where it grew into a car crash. ;) And those are the tanks that make me go wow. When I dove in the GBR this past June. There was areas here and there that were that tight.

Anyway, thanks on my aqua-scaping.
 
Well, I have started to add a couple new residents. Once they settle in I should be getting around to a new photo or two.
 
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