Project 58!! (Image intense)

[maxxII]

maxxII - sorry to hear about your go around w/ the tomini. i saw THREE yellow eye kole tangs this weekend at one of my LFS....man i had to hold myself back from buying one. two were only about the size of a silver dollar...perfect size for me. but i WANT/need to let my tank settle out again after switching the rock out...and this LFS isn't very good at ALL...lost of deaths. so i passed. i asked my other fairly responsible LFS to order me one but i have to call the head guy on monday. will take a couple weeks before i get him i bet. i bought a crocea clam and got a free blue rim dersa from my bro-in-law so i wan't too unhappy

what maxi you running your reactor on? i used a BUNCH of 90* hose fittings and i have to have a mayjet 1200 on mine.. it needs a little more umph than i can give it too. i run about 50g or phosban at a time also. i try to keep it moving weel so it doesn't channel

Eric,
Its really tough to hold off sometimes.....I know, believe me.
I bought a maxi jet 400 with the reactor....it was what was reccomended by Long Island Reef Exotics....but now you've got me wondering if this will be enough flow. I dont have it set up yet...I'm doing that tonight when I get off work. I'll have some answers for you then. How many gallons is your total system? I'm at about 75 gallons.
Congrats on the clams!! I cant wait until I can start putting them in my tank.

Nick

 

[Lunchbucket]

maxx - just see how it runs w/ the 400. i found i needed the flow w/ all the tubing and 90's i have.

i have NO idea how many total gallons i am running. 68maybe. that is excluding the water that LR takes up. my sump is a 10gal 1/2 full...plus the overflow being full might add 10gal or so.

clams are and have been one of my favs...i finally have a clam bed now!!!

Lunchbucket

 

[maxxII]

clams are and have been one of my favs...i finally have a clam bed now!!!

Lunchbucket

Talk is cheap girly man, and the proof is in the pudding.
Post up some pics!!



Nick

 

[Lunchbucket]

how bout these apples

here of the pics are here

later buddy
Lunchbucket

 

[maxxII]

Very nice!!!
I'm thinking your Derasa clam might have been expelling some zooxanthellae in attempting adjust to your lighting. Once that guy gets acclimated tho, he's gonna take off in growth. I had one in my little 20 gallon. Started out at 3 inches in size. 6 months later it was 6 inches in length. That's the one thing I miss about having a BB tank.....not really able to have Derasa clam.

I never asked you before...but what inspired you to cram a 400 watt mh over a 20 gallon tank?

Nick

 

[Lunchbucket]

maxx - yeah i am thinking that little guy was just adjusting. he look good today and has WAY better mantle extention then i saw in the bro-in-laws tank (i saw it 2days)

so this guy is most likely gonna double in size on me!!! WOW. he is pretty small at the moment. maybe 3-4" long

the new crocea looks funny. has a light band straight through the middle of it...right in the "crease" of the mantle...it is extended well though and looks healthy..haven't seen it expell anything

a 400w on my 20H LOL BECAUSE I CAN! nah was sick of everyone saying you don't have enough light. i went through 2x32w PC, 70w MH, 70w MH plus 1x36w PC, 150w DE on my 10gal tank! i was upgrading to the 20H soon so i traded my 150w DE HQI system (a NICE one too...i got the short end of the deal) for a 400w system (HQI). so i ran that on my 10gal for a couple weeks before the move over to the 20h...that was THE BEST setup i ever had (20H) it rocked and i got great growth out of that tank. sucks when i moved ot the 58 things took off but then died

Lunchbucket

 

[maxxII]

I'm a little concerned about your new Crocea's bleached out strip in the middle. Bleaching in clams is serious....more so than corals, (At least according to Daniel Knop's book on Giant Clams...) I would definately feed the two new ones on a regular basis just to get them back into swing of things. If you feel the Derasa is doing fine, then dont bother. But I would definately feed your new Crocea. Just take a shallow bowl...fill it with some tank water, dose it with phyto, and put the clam in it for about 20-30 minutes. When the water is clear...clam's done eating.
I would also reccomend setting a kitchen timer and putting your car keys by the bowl....so ya dont get sidetracked and forget about your clam in the bowl...I know your busy...and I'm that forgetful.

Hooked up the Phosban reactor....maxijet 400 seems to be operating it the way the directions stated...top level of Phosban lightly roiling and moving...several inches of clear water above it. I do kinda wonder how these fluidized reactors dont act as nitrate factories though. Do you remember the fluidized sand bed filters of the early 90's late 80s?

They gave aerobic bacteria a lot of surface area to colonize....so they produced alot of nitrate as a result.

Another annoying thing I've learned.....
In addition to being territorial, and some times aggressive, Lawn Mower blennies can squeeze through really narrow overflow box slits and get stuck in the intank overflow....which is a PITA to get into since I routed my closed loop returns through mine.

Liking this fish less and less.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

2-1-05
Update

Live Aquaria has called me (left a message) and sent me an e-mail. Both of them basically stating that they dont have the fish, they dont know when they will have the fish, but when they do get the fish, they'll cheerfully ship it out to me and send me an email and another phone call notifying me of the fishes arrival.
Yay, for my side.

I also cleaned my skimmer again today. Its the third time I've needed to clean it since its been running, and I'm guessing its all sorts of broken in by now. The skimmate was NASTY. I'm not going to post a pic since I think its kinda lame and disgusting. I dont photgraph it when I take a crap, I'm not about to post up a pic of my fishes crap in a condensed form. It stunk. I love my Euro-Reef CS6-2. Thats it. You'll just have to accept that.

I went back down to the LFS today and eyeballed the female Bellus angel. She's gorgeous, eating like a starving monkey, and well acclimated to tank life. no indications of decompression problems or swim bladder issues. She had arrived at the LFS on Jan 20th.
I also picked up a pair of chalk basslets. I had never really thought that much about them, until I saw one in the display reef at the LFS. Pretty little reef safe fish. They had two. They were both eating, and looked to be in pretty good shape. So I got them too. The basslets arrived at the LFS on the Jan 27th.
Everybone is acclimating right now. Brought them home and started acclimation around 550 PM. Its now 750 PM and I'm still drip acclimating them.
The LFS uses copper in their FO systems...so I have to remove water from the drip bucket and make sure that none of it ends up in my tank. Kind of a PITA, but I understand why they do it. When I worked at a LFS they did it too.

I will attempt to post pics of my new fish tomorrow, (lights will be off tonight) but on the off chance that I dont, or someone reading this has no idea what a Bellus angel or Chalk Bass look like....

Here is a washed pic of a female Bellus. Mine has a real pretty blue surrounding the black lines and running in a sort upside down nike swoosh pattern (Fat part of swoosh starts at pectoral fins/behind gill plate, and runs downward to anal fin) hope that makes sense...Genicanthus bellus

Here is a pic of how the male differs in coloration...again washed out since preserved.

Here are a couple of images of the Chalk Bass (Serranus tortugarum)

They color up really pretty and only get to be about 3 inches in length. The only thing they are listed as being potentially aggressive towards is the anemone shrimps of the Periclimenes species.

Here is a link to a short thread about them at Reefs.org. Scott Michael's first book on reef fishes has a great shot of them on pg 526.

Nick

 

[Lunchbucket]

hmm different fish than "normal" i like that

ahh come on post a pick of the fishes POOP!! LOL we all like seeing how good skimmers work. i can't wait till i get my 6-2+ it will kick butt. but on a side note my skimmer now is the SAME size as a 6-2 (6" tube 24" tall) and i am running a sedra 3500. i am buying a 5000 to throw on it and see what it does. maxx do me a favor and measure your riser pipe. the outside diameter. what size is it 2.5" OD or 3" OD..i would be curious as i am runing 3" OD now and have a 2.5" OD cup coming soon

later
Lunchbucket

 

[maxxII]

Eric,
Because of the location of the skimmer, its tough to get a precise measurement of the riser pipe. But doing my best guesstimation by holding the ruler up as close to the riser pipe as possible.....I believe its a 2 inch diameter pipe. Not 2 1/2, but 2. Ive been thinking about getting the gate valve mod for the Euro-reef, but the shelf my closed loop pump sits on is in the way. I wish I could run my skimmer wetter, but I've got it raised as high as possible. Dont get me wrong, its still wetter than most run, but it wasnt producing the tea colored skimmate...just the dark poo colored stuff.

Have you looked into the gate valve mod?

Nick

 

[Lunchbucket]

the gate valve mod helps a TON. i have ran that on my ES5-2 for a long time and now i run it on this skimmer i have.

2" OD...umm the ES5-2's were 2.5" OD on the riser. measure again if you can please. take a tape measure and flex it and sit it right on top of the riser pipe and use the outside dimention.

thanks for the help buddy
Lunchbucket

 

[maxxII]

I just measured it again with a tape measure.
The Circumference of the riser tube was 6 inches.
According to Webmath the diameter of the riser tube is just under 2 inches.

http://www.webmath.com/cgi/gengine....cumference&param_value=6+&param_want=diameter

BTW, Ive found this page to be very useful when dealing with reef stuff.....Convert between the U.S. and Metric systems of measurement.


HTH,
Nick

 

[maxxII]

02-02-2005

I turned lights off on the left side of the tank last night when I released the Chalk Bass and the Bellus angel at 9 pm. I also turned off the OM unit, but left the Iwaki on so that the water flow was blowing from top left to right, which gave the left side of the tank the least amount of flow. I did this in order to encourage the fish to hang out in the left side of the tank as the Lawn Mower blenny hangs out on the right.
Everybody dissappeared almost immediately towards the left side of the tank, with the angel hiding by the overflow in the darkest part of the tank. The right side light was on for about another hour (until 10 pm) and then shut off. The chalk bass were starting to check out their surrounding area's when the lights went out. The angel had been playing peekaboo every time it saw me.

This morning at 10 am the lights came on. I started thawing out some brine shrimp plus, and mysis shrimp in RO water. The fish were still kinda shy at that point. I turned off the closed loop entirely so I could feed them. Once the food was thawed, I poured it through a brine shrimp net, and discarded the water it thawed out in....dont want to introduce any phosphates to the tank. Even though I have a Phosban reactor running, I dont want to add to what I'm already dealing with.
I rinsed the net out with some tank water and put the food back into a container to be sucked into a turkey baster. I put a little in the tank...and everyone started eating!
The chalk bass were a little unsure at first...they dont strike me as the smartest fish in the world...but the angel jumped after everything she could find. She's currently cruising around the tank, and examining everything.

I turned the closed loop back on and restarted the OM unit. The angel is still cruising, but the chalk bass have moved back into their chosen safe havens...
Once they closed loop was back on, alot of food that was missed got thrown back into the water column. The angel again went nuts and starting going after everything that looked edible, the chalk bass would look at something...think about it for awhile...then venture out and eat it.

All in all....a good start to the day. Pics will follow later. Nobody is really adjusted well enough to get clear pics, yet so maybe tomorrow.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

02-02-05

Okay, I lied.
I took a couple of quick pics today. The Bellus is kinda tough to photograph. It doesnt help that I cant adjust the focus on this camera, nor the F-stops/shutter speed.....so I'm kinda at the mercy of the Gods of Crappy Digi-Cams for getting a decent shot of whats in my tank....
Really need to buy a better camera. The Canon G-6 is looking pretty good right now. I'd really prefer a 20D...but those are a little out of my price range right now.

Any way...here are some pics of the new guys...

First are the Chalk Bass (Serranus tortugarum). First pic is with the on camera flash on...forgot to turn it off.

Without flash

The Chaetomorphia algae is only temporary. I got it from Spooda420 to seed my liverock with Pods and other critters. In a couple of days, its going as it traps a lot of detritus.


here are two pics of the female Bellus Angel (Genicanthus bellus)

Here is a pic of her picking at stuff under the lava rock on the left side of the tank.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

I noticed that my Chalk Bass have already picked out territories in the tank. They only seem to squabble with each other over hidey holes. One is a little skimmier than the other, and he's the one I'm a little concerned about. I just fed everyone again (Both Chalk Bass and Genicanthus angels are planktivores and require regular feeding).
One thing I did notice however is the Bellus angel appears to be in the early stages of Pop-eye.
This is basically caused by a bacterial infection from a scrape or small wound to the fish. It causes the affected eye to swell out and turn cloudy for about a week or two. I'm not too worried since she's still eating fine, and Ive dealt with this before in my previous tank. I had a Black Cap Basslet that developed Pop-Eye. It was ugly for a little bit, but pulled through just fine. I expect this will be the same. I didnt do anything special other than ensure it was well fed.

Nick
__________________

 

[maxxII]

Well the popeye never materialized. So I guess the angel is more than able to fend off minor bacterial infections. I know it was about to get Pop-eye, because I saw the right eye protruding out slightly farther than the left, and it was clouded slightly. I'm quite happy not to have to deal with it.

Everybody is eating and the Chalk Bass are beginning to associate me turning off the water current, (OM and the Iwaki 55), with food are beginning to eat more aggressively. The Bellus angel is anything but shy when it comes to eating. She often comes flying in from wherever to snarf down food. This bothered me a little since the Chalk Bass seemed to eyeball stuff forever and didnt decide it was food until the Angel had eaten most of it. Oddly enough, when food was dispersed into the current from the chiller returns, they immediately dove on food that appeared to be moving more rapidly. I guess the food being slower moving and sorta hanging there from lack of current was something they werent used to.
Right now I'm just feeding thawed mysis shrimp. brine shrimp, and brine shrimp plus.
I thaw everything out in RO water, pour the water and the food through a brine shrimp net, and then put it an container of fresh RO water. Then I feed with a turkey baster. This is to lessen the amount of phosphates entering my tank. Even though I have the Phosban reactor running, I just want to keep from introducing anything more than necessary. I can tell the phosphate levels are lowering since the algae isnt doing as well as it used to. Even the Chaeto I got from a friend is turning yellow on the outside of the ball. I'm going to be shredding that up here soon to force as many of the critters hiding in it, into my rockwork. I dont like how the chaeto is acting like a net for any detritus that floats past it...
I pulled out a bunch of algae yesterday since we had a friend, (Spanky Stl) over for dinner last night...had to make the tank as pretty as possible. He thought it looked good...but I'm still a little embaressed. Its like having a dirty house and inviting friends over....
Still, Since the idea behind this thread is to show everything about the set up of this tank, (The good, the bad, and the ugly), I think a few shots might be in order. I'll take some after the lights turn on.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

I shredded some of the Chaeto in order to reduce the overall amount of it in my tank. Not too much...just a couple of small handfulls. The idea is to slowly reduce the amount of Chaeto in order to give the critters hiding inside it a chance to flee into the liverock, so I did this just before my lights kicked on.
I also took some pics as promised. Not really pretty as I didnt clean the glass of water spots and doggie nose prints/smears...
Ewww............dog boogers............

Anyway...on with the show.

Note the slightly fuzzy apearance of my live rock...thats the algae. Its not nearly as bad as it was a few weeks ago. I dont know exactly if the cycle of nutrients conducive to algae growth is dying down, (I hope so), or if this is just one round of the cycle of ecological succession....meaning more is on the way.

First off is the full tank shot.

Left side

Right side

I dont have three Bellus angels, I just have one really active camera hog.

I'm going to try and borrow my buddy's digital Rebel inb order to get a couple of good shots of things.

Nick

 

[maxxII]

2-10-05

Things in the tank are doing fine. The fish are all eating very well, and parameters are stable. The algae growth has slowed, but is still noticable. Instead of the dark green hair algae, I have a brownish/tan algae that almost appears like stubble when I go a couple of days without shaving. You can kinda see it in the previous pics above. The snails still eat it, and my LawnMower still chows down and always has a pot belly going, so things are okay, maybe not aesthetically attractive, but okay at this point in my tanks development. Now on to the good stuff.
I bought some clams!!!!!!
I've bought clams from Barry at Clams Direct before, (www.clamsdirect.com) and was very impressed with his service, his clams, (no way to say that w/o it sounding strange...sorry man, you've got nice clams...okay, I feel creepy now...)
and more importantly, how he's responded to various threads here in the Tridacnid forum. Barry's just an out and out class act all the way.
So anyway, I received an email that Barry had gotten some new clams in....so I took a look see and was stunned.
I dont normally like Crocea's as much as Maxima clams. The Crocea's always seem to be more green than anything. Don't get me wrong...green is nice, but after awhile, it seems like all Crocea's look pretty similar. And Crocea's were the bulk of what Barry got in.
I was stunned at what I saw...Barry got some great Crocea's.
I could ramble ad nauseum about how awesome these clams looked...but why....Barry went to all the trouble to take pictures of his clams so go look.
I copied the pics of the clams I bought, so I'll post them up as well.

I've never seen a Teardrop Crocea before...and I've wanted a Teardrop clam for awhile. But lately all the Teardrop Maxima's I've seen have been brown...they're pretty, but if I'm paying for a Teardrop clam, I want a colorful one!

There were a couple of other clams I saw that I liked, but nothing really grabbed me like the Teardrop. I was looking for another because shipping two clams is the same cost as shipping one. I wanted Rocio to get in on this decision making also since she had just complained that my tank didnt have enough color in it....the first one she chose was this one.

I thought it was okay...but wasnt wildly impressed with it. I called Barry to ask him if he had any tiger striped Derasa clams, and if it would be a problem for me to buy the clmas now and have them shipped on Wednesday for a Thursday arrival.....he said no problem on the shipping, and that he didnt have any tiger striped Derasa clams. We started to talk about the different clams, and I asked Barry why he hadnt been getting many Maxima's in lately.
Barry said that 2 of the larger farms had gone out of business since they lost their grants, and the other farms have been shipping out what they had, which were the sub 3 inch Maxima's which required alot more care. Barry went on to say that he felt the Crocea's were hardier than the Maxima's anyway since he usually only lost 1 Crocea for every 4 Maxima's that he lost. I was surprised to hear this as I had always thought the Crocea's were more delicate than Maxima's. But with the number of clams Barry deals with on a yearly basis and because he is so knowledgable, I'm more than willing to take his word for it.
We talked for a little bit longer, and he asked why I didnt really dig the Crocea's as much. I explained its because they almost always seem to be a shade of green, and very little other color. He said that they appeared green from above, but when viewed from the side they look more blue. I remembered seeing different pics of Mike's (MPS9506) Crocea that he has as his Avatar here, and how it looks really green in one pic and blue in the next. Barry said he was looking at one clam right now that was really blue and gorgeous in person. I asked him if it was one of the ones on the Website. he said it was and gave me the number for it.....It wound up being the same clam Rocio had liked.
So I had to buy it.

They arrived this morning and I started acclimating them at 10:30 am. As soon as they are done acclimating, I will post up pics.

Nick

 

[Lunchbucket]

wow you got both of those SWEET!! now you are competing w/ me!!!! so you have 2 or three??

Lunchbucket

 

[maxxII]

Eric....I guess I am competing with you.....LOL
I just got the two I showed above. But here are some new pics of them in my tank.

I tried to take some pics showing the color shift of the clams with the change in perspective that...and my camera wasnt really showing that too well, until I was able to get a pic showing both perspectives simultaneously.

I acclimated the clams for about 6 hours. Yes, six hours. I didnt want anything to go wrong with these guys. They are acting like normal clams, but I feel better when a month has passed. Finding spots for them was a PITA. I didnt want to put them on the bottom of the tank, because they would attach to the cuttingboard, but I didnt have a lot of room to put them on the rockwork since I wanted to leave room for an anemone here in the near future. And since anemones have this annoying tendancy to wander around until they find a spot they like, (never mind how inconvienant it is to you, their caretaker...) I want to leave as much open migration room as possible.

So I compromised...blue one on the rock ledge, Teardrop on the bottom of the tank.

I had to move the Chaeto to a different spot. Its getting shredded very soon here.

Here is a close up of the Blue Crocea, (I've really gotten to like this clam...its every bit as pretty as the Teardrop)

Here is a top down of the blue one...you can kinda see the shift in color, but its not as visible here as it is in real life.

And here is the pic I was talking about earlier...Its the same blue crocea in this pic...just shown from two different angles thanks to the glass of the tank and waters ability to refract images.

And finally here is the fabled Teardrop Crocea...This thing is rockin!!

While these two were acclimating, I went to the LFS, (Clayton Pet Emporium) and had a look at their new shipment of livestock.
I came back with 2 blood shrimp....I thought they were a pair...the immediate fighting and subsequent torn off legs have me convinced otherwise now, but they will be replaced on the next molt, and I think the tank is large enough for both to hang out on different ends of the tank.
And I bought a Maze Brain coral that I've been eyeing for the last two weeks. Its gorgeous in person....I believe its a Platygyra species...but it looks a little different than my last platygyra daedela...so I'll have to do some research.

Finally, Live Aquaria emailed me and said my replacement Tomini tang will arrive tomorrow.

Clams today, Tang tomorrow...The fun never stops!
Nick