SoupySteve
Reefer Dadness
Yup, I said it. I am generally the one who tries to talk people into STAYING, so I'm sure that someone is bound to call me a hypocrite...
Ever since the ice storm in '07, my tank just hasn't been the same... I'd been battling water quality issues for most of last year, and things got to looking pretty nice.
Then in spring of this year I bought some "turtle grass" at an LFS. Turns out the "turtle grass" carried in some flatworms. I guess, for me at least, this flatworm infestation has got to be the most infuriating problem I've attempted to correct. I wanted to go the NATURAL route - but no one wanted to sell the wrasse (Christmas Tree wrasse - is that right) for anything short of an arm & a leg with my kid as an initial deposit. So, I treated the problem chemically - and as I suspected - had severely negative effects on a majority of my corals... but hey, the flatworms are gone, right?
wrong
they came back - i treated for them again.
Now all I am left with are some VERY hardy corals.
I've done a SMALL amount of reading on "cooking" your live rock to "re-energize" the bacterial batteries in live rock - so last week, I threw all of my live rock that had no coral in it in a rubbermaid tub.
At least now my tank looks very spacious! This morning, I noticed I still have some flatworms remaining.
I'm done. I love my fish and the few corals I have remaining - but I cannot afford to keep dosing flatworm exit, then doing the HUGE water changes to keep their dead from fruther deteriorating the quality of my display's water.
So there it is... I guess if I was making the kind of cash I was a few years back, I could cope with this a bit better... but now that I have become Mr Mom (and reduced my number of hours worked from 40 - 25 hours per week), it's generally the LUXURIES that get trimmed from a family's budget first... and this hobby is definitely a luxury.
So here is the deal, my tank is a 110g Oceanic AGA. Its measurements are 5ft across, 1.5 ft deep (front to back), and 2ft tall. I have 2 coralife 150w HQI pendants (14k bulbs) over the tank. I have a CPR HOB refugium, and a CPR Bak-Pak2 (or some such silly name) skimmer. For circulation, I have 3 SIEO M1100s.
The tank has a wooden stand (one cat liked one corner and has clawed up one corner) that will be as good as new with some of that elbow grease stuff...
The tank still has about 60lbs of rock in it (my nicer looking pieces) as well as my fish:
One Desjardini Tang
One Fox Face Lo
One Spotted Hawkfish
Two False Percs
One Mandarin
I also have the rubbermaid that has a good 90 lbs of live rock in it.
I KNOW that those who are interested would really like for me to put a price on things, or start parting out my set-up. As of right now, I'd really only part with the LR I have "cooking" - unless someone makes me an offer on the whole setup. I paid $300 for the tank and stand at Cichlids & Salt. My lighting came to right under $550. I know Dave sold his (nicer) set up for next to nothing - and it even took him awhile to sell it at his CRAZY price!
I guess technically, I'm just gauging interest in my set up but I will take all (if any) offers seriously.
Ever since the ice storm in '07, my tank just hasn't been the same... I'd been battling water quality issues for most of last year, and things got to looking pretty nice.
Then in spring of this year I bought some "turtle grass" at an LFS. Turns out the "turtle grass" carried in some flatworms. I guess, for me at least, this flatworm infestation has got to be the most infuriating problem I've attempted to correct. I wanted to go the NATURAL route - but no one wanted to sell the wrasse (Christmas Tree wrasse - is that right) for anything short of an arm & a leg with my kid as an initial deposit. So, I treated the problem chemically - and as I suspected - had severely negative effects on a majority of my corals... but hey, the flatworms are gone, right?
wrong
they came back - i treated for them again.
Now all I am left with are some VERY hardy corals.
I've done a SMALL amount of reading on "cooking" your live rock to "re-energize" the bacterial batteries in live rock - so last week, I threw all of my live rock that had no coral in it in a rubbermaid tub.
At least now my tank looks very spacious! This morning, I noticed I still have some flatworms remaining.
I'm done. I love my fish and the few corals I have remaining - but I cannot afford to keep dosing flatworm exit, then doing the HUGE water changes to keep their dead from fruther deteriorating the quality of my display's water.
So there it is... I guess if I was making the kind of cash I was a few years back, I could cope with this a bit better... but now that I have become Mr Mom (and reduced my number of hours worked from 40 - 25 hours per week), it's generally the LUXURIES that get trimmed from a family's budget first... and this hobby is definitely a luxury.
So here is the deal, my tank is a 110g Oceanic AGA. Its measurements are 5ft across, 1.5 ft deep (front to back), and 2ft tall. I have 2 coralife 150w HQI pendants (14k bulbs) over the tank. I have a CPR HOB refugium, and a CPR Bak-Pak2 (or some such silly name) skimmer. For circulation, I have 3 SIEO M1100s.
The tank has a wooden stand (one cat liked one corner and has clawed up one corner) that will be as good as new with some of that elbow grease stuff...
The tank still has about 60lbs of rock in it (my nicer looking pieces) as well as my fish:
One Desjardini Tang
One Fox Face Lo
One Spotted Hawkfish
Two False Percs
One Mandarin
I also have the rubbermaid that has a good 90 lbs of live rock in it.
I KNOW that those who are interested would really like for me to put a price on things, or start parting out my set-up. As of right now, I'd really only part with the LR I have "cooking" - unless someone makes me an offer on the whole setup. I paid $300 for the tank and stand at Cichlids & Salt. My lighting came to right under $550. I know Dave sold his (nicer) set up for next to nothing - and it even took him awhile to sell it at his CRAZY price!
I guess technically, I'm just gauging interest in my set up but I will take all (if any) offers seriously.
