jglackin - thank you for the comments on my tank.

to answer a few of your questions, i did rearrange some coral pieces for the picture like the teal stag in the left middle with putty. i can assure you that 90% of my sps pieces have grown from 1 inch or less. the mini colonies you see were mere nubs of corals at one point, i have the original frag pictures somewhere in my old computer if you would like to see. if you see my tenuis picture, that was a 1 inch frag i got from rscott, who i met from this forum. he has lost his whole mini colony, while mine grew from his small frag (i gave him a frag to reseed), but he can attest to the growth of my own mini colony from his frag.
i also scraped a lot of coralline for the picture as i highly prefer the clean look, but i can assure you the rock, back wall, shells of my snails and hermits are encrusted to the max as the calcium levels in the water column are abundant. the back of my liverock are filled with sponges, mini sea fans, and a lot of creatures i cannot identify, as i try to keep the phyto and zoo plankton in the system present, though it may not be adequate in most cases.
my tank definitely doesn't look as mature as Icenine's tank, and it shouldn't be as his tank is older than mine. his tank was one of the aquapods i looked upon during the creation of my tank, but it was in the early stages that i decided i wanted to do what most wouldn't, and that is the sps route. i hope you can appreciate the time and effort i placed in my system, as sps take a considerable amount of time, effort and toil, much more so than your conventional corals. 5 clams (3 being over 5 inches), sps mini colonies and frags, 2 fish, and some other corals is a very difficult ecosystem with only 24 gallons to work with, not to mention a very expensive one to keep. there have been numerous occasions where the daily maintenance have made me reconsider what i was doing. if you take a look at my clams alone, those are some
VERY hard to come by (and horribly pricey) specimens, (black and whites, blue teardrop). Only a crazy nut would would place them in a nano unless they had the dedication and diligence to upkeep their beauty. they are the pride and joy of my nano, and i hope people here can appreciate their beauty just as much as i do.
once again, thank you for the comments, and i hope you have a better understanding of the amount of effort and care i have placed in this tank. have a nice day!
