Slakkers 58RR - Continued

[sslak]

your mandarin dragonet is awesome! is mysis the only thing you feed it or does it still like brine?

I feed it a variety of foods, Mysis, Rods Food, H2O Life Spirulina/Brine/Mysis mix, Cyclopeeze, etc. She completely ignores pellets, and I suspect she always will.

I have stopped hatching the baby brine, that was used for training purposes.

I still maintain my pod cultures to infuse the system with thousands of pods every two weeks or so. I see her hunting and eating constantly, but feeding prepared is extra insurance that she gets enough to eat.

 

[sslak]

Quick Update:

My female mandarin is still doing very well! (4 months and counting)

I have added a very healthy 4" Midas Blenny, pictures to follow! It's an awesome fish to watch, lots of personality and always out in the open.

I also added a few cerith snails, and 3 small emerald crabs to replace my full grown 2" emerald the recently died of apparently natural causes...

Another addition I picked up was a golf ball sized "gold spotted nassarius snail" which I've since learned was actually a type of whelk. It should serve the same purpose...I just want something to keep my sand bed stirred up to avoid problems down the road. If it ever comes back out of the sand I will be sure to get a picture.

 

[chillnvillain]

thank you for starting this thread. i've been researching copepod and phyto culturing for awhile and until now have come up short. keep up the updates.

 

[sslak]

thank you for starting this thread. i've been researching copepod and phyto culturing for awhile and until now have come up short. keep up the updates.

I can't take credit for the process, I'm simply following the footsteps of others. Melevsreef was a good resource for phyto culturing, as well as several people from the Nano Reef forums for the pod culturing.

I just tried to put the info in my thread in case anyone decided to actually read it I'm glad it saved you some searching, some of the info was fairly old.

Expect an update (with pictures and video) this weekend!

 

[sslak]

Tank Video!

Tank Video!

Here's a short video taken on my Droid phone. It's not as blue as this in person, but the phone doesn't handle light balance.

Enjoy!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpLlgMjTC3w

I'll have to work on doing a bit better holding it still and and getting the focus for next time. Videos of feeding the mandarin and many more to come!

 

[WI reefer55]

Hey man tank looks great I got a friend that goes to white water

and I have the same tank and sump

looks great

 

[sslak]

Hey man tank looks great I got a friend that goes to white water

and I have the same tank and sump

looks great

Thanks! I went to the Discovery World Frag Swap in Milwaukee a couple weeks ago and got some REALLY nice stuff! I'll have pictures up shortly now that I have them all glued and they have had time to settle in a bit.

 

[sslak]

Big Update!

Big Update!

Lots going on since my last update. I got a great deal on a new ballast, so I've upgraded my lights!

I added a 250w IceCap ballast running a 14k Phoenix DE bulb.

This brings my total lighting to 503 watts!

I also got a not so great freebie a the Discovery World swap - Red Bugs! I performed the treatment last weekend, and here's what I did:

So I did the Interceptor treatment yesterday.

Removed all snails/hermits that I could find, put them in a bucket of tank water with a heater/powerhead. Could not catch either emerald mythrax or my cleaner shrimp. (don't worry, that Stealth time bomb heater is just used for mixing water, it's not in my tank!)

Skimmer air inlet blocked, left it on, removed collection cup.
Disconnected and emptied/drained/cleaned both reactors carbon and GFO.

1pm - Mixed 1/4 tab of interceptor with a cup of tank water. Allowed it to dissolve for 15 minutes or so.
Added it to the display.

3pm - red bugs cease movement, used turkey baster to blast them all off the corals

6pm - no red bugs visible, 20% water change, skimmer back on, carbon reactor almost full and started that back up as well.

7pm - re-introduced snails and hermits

A week later and everything looks good! Cleaner shrimp is still ok, saw one of the emerald crabs and he also appears good!

RED BUGS ELIMINATED - I cannot see any trace of them! :bounce2:

FTS 12/14/10

Here's a shot of my Midas Blenny. The coral to his left is a Red Planet frag, above him is a green birdsnest, you can see my SPS colors are way off. I'm hoping the new lighting and elimination of the bugs will allow them to color up!

Frag from the swap, really cool blue polyps on the tips of this guy!

This guy was sold to me as a "Golden Spotted Nassarius" but after some research I think it's a type of welk. Either way, he burrows in my sand bed and keeps it all stirred up, and that's what I wanted, he's very fast (for a snail) and fun to watch when he surfaces for food!

 

[reefsurfing]

Nice Tank, I cant wait to see it when everything colors back up! I am thinking of doing the 2 part dose from BRS; how do you like it?

 

[sslak]

I also can't wait for the colors to come back! I have great growth, just weak colors. I have a few sorta high end colorful frags, so once they color up it will be pretty impressive. (is that frag in your avatar red planet? its cool!)

I also need to get my black background back on the tank. I took it down to do some work and never put it back on.

The BRS 2 part is very simple. It's easy to mix, came with all the jugs with pumps and such to make it simple, and it lasts a long time with the size tank I have.

The hardest part is remembering to dose every day, but I'm getting in the habit of doing that before I feed.