returning to the hobby

got the rest of my rock. 32 lbs more, 3 big awesome pieces, spent 2 hours diggin through the lfs tanks for the perfect ones lol. amd 2 circulation pumps. almost done....and super excited
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made more changes, and cycle done. rocks starting to color up now too. added a 1 gallon finnex hob refugium, cheato in the first 2 sections, and a small amount of rubble in the 3rd. and added a green chromis and a coral banded shrimp, kind of rescued, but they are doing quite well. very active and eating like pigs. and a few nassarius and bumble bee snails, and a couple small hermits. friend of mine was giving up on a 5gallon and gonna flush em all. pretty excited for life in my tank finally lol. tink i have my wish list livestock wise figured out. 2 or 3 more chromis, a firefish, maybe a smaller more docile type of clown, still undecided, and a flame angel. gonna be a while though. gonna give it another month before i begin adding anything else
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equipment wise now, im running a t5 quad fixture, 2 10000k white and 2 actnic, with 3 led moonlights, a 500 gph circulation pump, an emporer 400, and the hob refugium. still shopping for a small skimmer that doesnt make my tank too crazy, as the one i ordered was just way too much for my tank. gonna hold it for when i upgrade in the future, or do away with the emporer.
 
hmm. I say screw the little fish. Get a pair of blue jaw triggerfish. I loved my crosshatch pair. Ate out from my fingers and are definitely show fish. A flame angel too would be sick. ;)
Or look into fairy wrasses. Many are in the $20-$30 range at a well priced store. They're peaceful and colorful! Just careful cuz they like to jump out of the water.

I don't know if the HOB filter is a good choice a system this large. Most people make a sump. But that's my observations.

Those test kits hanging in your tank aren't all too accurate, more like a marketing gimic from what I heard. Get some API test. You'll feel like a chemist!

Are you still running the air bubbles? I don't think the air bubbles are necessary since I don't see them in people's tanks.

But the scape. Looking good man! Can't you imagine all that empty territory waiting to be filled with corals?! Cuz I do! You've got the T5. Shazaaaam. Do it!

Keep at it man!
 
found a zoa spider creepin around. tried to trap him last night with a champagne flute and a shrimp under his cave. caught every damn hermit and a gorilla crab,put crab in his own section in the fuge, and seen the bugger in his hole this morning. after thinking up any other possible traps and researching the things, planning on going to buy a real small frag and put it in a small spaghetti jar, ang getting 3 really small mixed up frags for next to nuthing, 15 bucks together, realize my coral banded shrimp isnt in his usual den. start lookin for him and notice a whisker stickin out from the back of the spiders rock, where the spiders cave opens on the other side. as i peer around fearing the worst, i couldnt have been more excited. CBS 1 ZOA SPIDER 0. shrimps perched up in the back and eating the little creep thing. i so need to get a really good camera, my phone just wouldnt get a discernible picture at all.. .. and i win, well for now. i got a bunch of random softies now, wich have all opened up already. and a ton of different feather duster on the rocks, as well as 2 small serpent stars and random worms. these 3 small pieces of rock are now way more interesting then my tank lol. now off to the internet to id the softies and dusters. maybe have a few pics later, my girlfriends iphone takes waay better pics than my droid
 
i tried and tried, my phones camera is horrible to begin wit and it was in the back in semi darkness. it was so cool, and now im not to worried about there being more, knowing that the shrimp enjoyed it lol
 
first real mess last nite. did away with the sea clone skimmer i had on saturday, got tired of my tank lookin like a snowglobe.monday i found a jebo 180 i had bought for my last turtle tank a year or so ago, and never got around to installing. realized it was basically the same and installed it anyway. worked better, no skim, but hardly any bubbles in my tank. 2 days of it not even trying to push water up past the neck, .......left for dinner date with my girlfriend around 8 last nite. came home around midnite, to 4 inches of my tank drained out onto my floor and the skimmer blowin bubbles out of the lids sides.....im not too thrilled lol
 
havent been on here in a bout a month. alot of changes have been made. replaced my bulbs to ati's. 1 aquablue special, 2 blue plus, and a purple plus. everything is much happier now. invert stock list is now a coral banded shrimp, serpent star, fighting conch, sally lightfoot, an emerald crab, a large feather duster,and countless mixed up snails and hermits. fish wise 1 percula clown, 1 blue spot goby, 1 engineer goby, 1 sixline wrasse, and one green chromis. . and many different corals, most doing very well. 7 different kinds of zoas, a few pallys, yellow colony polyps, favia, a duncan, hairy mushrooms, green mushroom, xenia, anthelia, frogspawn, purple montipora, and 2 acros. one acro is doing ok, the other, the yellow one, browned, bleached and peeled, and now has turned completely bright yellow again, and i occasionally even see the polyps now. did a faulty waterchange of half my system volume, and spiked my tank with salt...1.035.....woops. bad hydrometer. except for corals bein closed a few days and the one acro bleachin, everything seemed to recover when i got my water correct. and im not sure if it was the water change, the salt blast, or all the extra corals now, but all my nuisance algae issues have been contained to the point where they grow during the day, but not to the point of unsightly, and are nearly gone in the morning when the lights come back on, even the cyano.maybe its just that i 'm running the refugium light from dusk to dawn basically, and off durin daylight hours. either way, chaeto is goin nuts in there, as well as pods, and my water is super clear. and my skimmer seems to be doing a whole lot less now, but darker dryer skimmate. guessin thats good. it smells absolutely horrible when i open the collection cup though, and its a lingering smell. springs here so i might just start opening it outside lol. all my fish are now eating flakefood, pellets, actually anything i offer. the engineer goby is still bein difficult but hes only been in there since sunday. will eat live brine shrimp and blackworms, and will taste anything else, but spits it out.every fish except the chromis did the same thing for the first week or 2, so im not to worried. ive got the itch for bigger already though, and am saving for a 90 cube or a 125 long, still undecided. then almost all of this will move over, and this tank will eventually become a predator tank with a dwarf lion and dwarf moray. that'll be a while though, like 6 months to a year . and now a few pics
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2fish and the yellow acro that damnnear died and has come back a brighter color then when i got it. alotta stuff has drseuss names, the chromis is 1fish, the sixline wrasse is 2fish. my serpent star is thing1 and the sally lightfoot is thing 2. emerald crab got named kermit, and the clown is nemo. and my big bad coral banded shrimp, is named chuck.after chuck norris, for his roll in taking out those ninja zoa spiders that hitchhiked in
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dont know what kind of coral this is, but it started really small on valentines day and is now easily 5 times its original size. gift from my girlfriend, this and casper. since i dont know exactly what it is, we just call it the tree of life. lol, plus it seemed to come close to death more than once and as always bounced back bigger and more colorful. camera color is off, its really lavender and the polyps are a much brighter orange. not flourescent, but like pumpkin orange
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casper chilllin by the duncan. the duncan has also noticably almost doubled, along with the frogspawn, and hairy mushrooms. i think adding oysterfeast into the mix with my coral feeding has been a great idea, and since ive been using it i definately see improvement, but oddly, on the nights i use it, about 2 minutes after its in the tank, my skimmer goes completely nuts spewing microbubbles into the tank. even tried turning it off for an hour or so then back on. immediate microbubble storm for 15 to 20 minutes lol.
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thing 2!!!!! this little bugger never, ever stops foraging and munching on stuff. at least ill catch kermit taking a nap in a cave occasionally, or in the front against the glass every night, right next to nemo, who also sleeps against the glass on the sand. nemo tends to "occupy" the hairy mushrooms during the day. i'd like to see him in the frogspawn instead, but to each his own. at least he isnt having a host relationship with the heater, or feeding ring anymore lol
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