What's new with you???

[OneReef]

The board has been quiet lately. What has everyone been up to reef tank wise?

I'll get the ball rolling....

1) I set up a cube frag tank. Hopefully I'll have alot of stuff to sell this coming year, and have my own table at the swap. Right now its mostly zoanthids and a few LPS.

2) I just set up my calcium reactor on my display tank. Hopefully, it will help keep parameters stable and help all my SPS grow faster.

3) I added a bunch of chalices to my display tank. I was going to be mostly SPS, but at the moment, I'm like half SPS and half chalices......ha

Hmmm, what else? I guess my next project will be to lightly vacuum up the top 1/4" of sand and replace it with new sand to keep everything nice and shiny white clean. I keep a shallow sand bed so disturbing it should not be a problem. I personally just have never liked deep sand beds, but that a debate for another day or meeting....ha

My next purchase will probably be a Hanna phosphate meter. They make small pocket sized ones now for around $45. Better than the $200+ they used to charge for the full sized version.

Who's next?

 

[Rendos]

I'm trying to figure out how to keep the back glass of my tank and the overflow clear of coraline so it stays dark black to show the best contrast against my corals. Right now it is a losing battle. I scrape coraline once a week when I do my water change, but by midweek I see spots of coraline already coming back.
I remember when I couldn't seem to get coraline to grow in my tanks and now I can't figure out how to make it stop.
Corals are growing in and encrusting at a good rate. The growth under the LED seems to be slightly better than under the T5's, but both are actually quite good. Color is about the same under T5 and LED. I only have my highest light requiring SPS under the LED and the lesser light needy SPS and LPS under the T5's.
Got an order of pods in from reefs2go today. There doesn't look to be 1000 pods in this bag, but if they grow and reproduce I guess that is what is important. Glad you get the 2nd bag of 1000 for free.

 

[Goibot]

I have been trying to get my water back in good shape. Ca is way high and Mg is really low. The coralline is fading and a green slipper isn't looking to good. I switched salt from oceanic to instant Ocean and have started to slowly dose mg flakes. We will see.

 

[Fun $ Pit]

Not much. Been working on this here and there in my spare time.

I have a little more rock to add and should be up and cycling after the New Year. I'll open up a build thread about that time as well.

 

[nam2212]

I have been trying to dial in my LEDs so all of my corals don't look so bad. I seem to have burned everything that isn't shaded. Other than that the tank seems to be doing well.

 

[Blindside]

Re Aquascapeing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 

[OneReef]

Re Aquascapeing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I love aquascaping. I used to do it on my old tanks like every 6 months. Fortunately, I think I got it right on my first try with my new tank, so I won't have to mess with it until my SPS grow huge and might need some moving

 

[Rudolph]

Jay: What happened to the tank of the month deal? I thought we were waiting to hear about Brian's tank? That should spark some discussions?

Oh, and I am finishing up setting up my play tank. It is a 33 long. It is 48" x 12" x 12". I am going to play around and frag some things and maybe experiencement with some different kinds of corals. It replaced my 29 cube I sold. I will try to get pics up soon. I am really happy with the way it has turned out....

 

[jabo]

Jay and Carlos....When you reaquascape how do you go about keeping the corals in some what the same position? I know the obvious answer. But lets say I have a few pieces of SPS that are encrusting. DO you just make sure to leave them on the rock and place them in a suitable spot? I always seem to loose a piece or two when I have tried rescaping. Either the rock gets flipped up side down or something. I would like to remove all my corals from there spots and re do the entire thing but I dont want to mess up the encrusted pieces. Is there anyway to remove them without tearing them up?

My news years resolution is to catch this mantis and pull a leg a day off of him and watch him die a slow terrible death! (this is a joke PETA people) I have about decided the only way I am going to do this is to tear down my tank and try to find him.

 

[Blindside]

Jabo Have you tried a mantis trap, several diy's on line. Reaquascapeing takes alot of time, I personally sketch it out on paper over and over again. This will be the second time to reaquascape this tank (5yrs old). I have several large encrusted montis and sps, so this time is going to be quite challengeing. Im slowely starting to take out things I no longer want (huge colony of paythoa gigantis,neon sarco, neon sinularia, caluastrea, Euphylia) focusing on lps, zoas rics and sps. Never cared much for specific tanks aside from non photosynthetics. Having a frag tank is always good, kind of like a back up hard drive, giving friends corals is good as well always a back up if stuff happens! And stuff happens! Afraid Im gonna have a hard time like richard keeping the glass clean from coraline im exposing more of the back glass than before. Got a few new corals so Im super excited!

 

[Blindside]

Cant wait to see the growth on these led tanks (Richard,Jay,Jaybo), got them on my frag system but its very shallow. Sure is tempting to switch.

 

[jabo]

I have tried every trap imaginable, short of a dart gun he is very illusive!

Do you remove corals from each rock when aquascaping?

 

[Blindside]

no i do break the rock somtimes to get corals off.

 

[Mako Shark II]

Just working too much....

 

[insanityink2]

Looking for a job!!!

 

[OneReef]

Jay: What happened to the tank of the month deal? I thought we were waiting to hear about Brian's tank? That should spark some discussions?

Yeah, I need to get that going. I'll email him today.

 

[OneReef]

Email had been sent to the TOTM person. When I get the data and pics back, I'll creat the page. Looking forward to a new aspect to our website. I'm not sure if anyone has seen the new 'news' that I posted on the website a couple of weeks ago, but we are getting ready to add PodCasts to our website of the meetings. That way, if you miss a meeting, you can download it and listen to it later.