ZM's 200g build

[zoomonster]

I went ahead and put the new light fixture together and online last night. Nice to have all the T5's working again and I took the opportunity to ditch the two Giesemann 420nm actinic. Those bulbs are so much dimmer than the blue plus 460nm and do very little for actinic pop. Between the 14k's being brighter/better color and 4 x 80w blue plus T5's online I'm finally getting more of the look I want. Crisp white with enough blue to make colors really pop and more true color rendition.

 

[zoomonster]

Well after some research and some recommendations I decided to try another online vendor, uniquecorals, that seems pretty highly rated for an assortment of frags. Avg prices, free shipping (well paid $15 for Saturday) and 10% discount. I'm not too concerned with buying known varieties vs. WYSIWYG exaggerated colors for stuff like zoo's. All my frags are doing well except that tricolor from DD so I'm replacing it with an ORA frag. About the only place I might have found all these locally is WWC which probably would have cost me more for less plus the drive.

Acropora echinata - Aussie "Ice Fire" Echinata
Acropora microclados - Strawberry Shortcake Acropora
Acropora sp. ORA "Marshall Islands Yellow Fuzzy" Acropora
Stylophora sp. - ReefGen "Joe & Laura's Orchid Stylo"
Acropora valida ORA "Tricolor Valida"
Pocillopora damicornus - "Multicolor" Pocillopora
Acropora sp.- ORA "Scripps Green Tip Staghorn"

 

[zoomonster]

uniquecorals

uniquecorals

The package from uniquecorals came at noon today. While they are a little pricey for frags I can say it was worth it and I would have to give them 5 stars. The seven sps above not the acan. That open center section of my tank got moved around a bit to be something of a frag refuge.

No brown sticks, nothing dying and it is obvious they actually keep stock under proper lighting and otherwise take care of it. Everything is fully/properly colored and after acclimation and dip most already have at least some polyp extension in tank. Even the PIA tricolor valida is full color, has new growth and some PE. The ice fire is a bit small as is the strawberry shortcake but everything else is established with new growth and pretty good size for frags. The most expensive item was the Stylo and the color is awesome and pretty good size. Also enjoying the fact that the yellow piece is actually yellow (picture came out a little more green) vs. the green bottlebush that was supposed to be yellow from elsewhere.

 

[dave.m]

Do you not quarantine your new corals for a few weeks?

Dave.M

 

[zoomonster]

Do you not quarantine your new corals for a few weeks?

Dave.M

Eventually but everything is new now anyway. Depending on the coral it gets treated with Coral Rx or Lugol's, washed and rinsed. No tank should be w/o a sixline wrasse... he carefully performs a final inspection of anything added to the tank looking for chow :lol:

 

[dave.m]

Agree with the 6-line, but in the QT, not the DT. I have found the 6-line to be one of the most belligerent towards new fish - of ANY size.

Dave.M

 

[zoomonster]

Agree with the 6-line, but in the QT, not the DT. I have found the 6-line to be one of the most belligerent towards new fish - of ANY size.

Dave.M

I've heard that time and time again (in the favorite fish thread) but never had an issue with them. The one I have now is very docile and bothers no one (he was in first group of 5 with 10 fish now). It probably helps I usually start with juvi-small fish. Its like the Potters I have which is pretty mature (and probably not happy he lost his harem). He's belligerent and the wife has named him Kong. What I should have said before about quarantine is in the last 20+ years I never really used one for corals. Sure I treat them, inspect and pick off things like bubble algae from rocks. Fish yes because quarantine is simple and inexpensive (tank, heater, powerhead and a HOB). Corals especially SPS are another matter that would require basically a whole new advanced system. The worst thing I ever got was flat worms in my Ricordia propagation system (just careless) and they were a pain to get rid of but did no harm. Eventually I will get there but not today.

 

[dave.m]

Okay. My experience with the 6-line is that it is really hostile to new additions once it gets acclimatized.

My experience with QT for SPS is with Peter's (nineball) tank - 1350 gallons of SPS decimated by acro eating worms in spite of expert selection, care, and dipping.

I guess everyone needs a major catastrophe to learn the hard way.

Dave.M

 

[zoomonster]

I mostly agree but here's the point... Even with several weeks in a quarantine tank I have to question how you think you can be sure your 100% AEFW free when it goes into the main tank. A few eggs or leftover worms is all it takes and the tank is eventually infested and eaten anyway. Since none of the treatments kill eggs it involves "close inspection for eggs" which is like looking for a needle in a haystack on large specimens. That's one reason I ended up taking the approach of not including any wild/maricultured colonies and at least attempting to buy from reputable sources while still treating with iodine and Coral Rx.

Peter obviously has means (I've read his thread) and he still got burned. Quarantine or not I more than suspect that if you get an infested piece some will survive treatment and get into the main tank (that is if the quarantine tank and the treatment didn't already kill the SPS). Like I said before that may change in time but I'm not spending probably at least a thousand to build a system to quarantine a few hundred dollars worth of aquacultured SPS frags. If I had thousands tied up in colonies it would be a different story. That's just economics.

 

[zoomonster]

Here's a tank peak... funny thing is with that center overflow it makes the center look so much brighter.

Not too much going on this week other than watching the tank grow :lol:

I do have a few more ORA frags coming Wednesday and that's probably it for SPS for a while. If anything in the coming weeks I want to add some more LPS and chomping at the bit for a few more fish but not much else I really want right now other than some Anthias, mandarins and wrasses. Problem with Anthias is having a hard time deciding which I want and of course it seems like no one ever has both males and females in stock at the same time although I suppose I could get all females and wait for one to morph. Pretty much same with wrasses... seldom male and female available at same time. Mandarins well pods just not where they need to be yet.

ORA Bird of Paradise
ORA Plum Crazy
ORA Purple Nana
ORA Rose Millie
ORA Ant Insignis

 

[zoomonster]

Tested some tonight and things are looking pretty good. I overshot Mg a bit which is up from 880 and I2 is a little low. KH has come down some from 12.6 to 10.1. That coral colors test kit is a bit of a pain and I just did I2 from it and maybe I'll do potassium tomorrow. The real oddity to me is that Nitrate has dropped from 8 on 7/14 to 1 (actually probably closer to 0 than 1). I didn't trust the result and ran it twice fully expecting it to have climbed. Really surprising being the fish eat frequently and quite well. I'm not dosing vinegar/vodka or using any sort of bio pellets or denitrator. Just carbon and GFO. I can only assume its the refugium kicking in and good skimming w/ozone. Not sure if its of any relevance but I have added coral snow twice and tank is very clear. My original ball of chaeto is at least 3-4x the size and I have a few scrags of gracillaria and a tiny piece of feather in the 24x7 lit fuge. Pod wise its happening too. I noticed quite a few larger pods flipping around. No sign of any tigger pods though. They do tend to swim up and towards light so most probably ended up in tank. Time will tell on those. Noticed some spaghetti worms in fuge too.

PH 8.19
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 1
Ca 410
Alk 10.1
PO4 0.02
Mg 1600
I2 0.03
ORP 362
Sg 1.024

 

[zoomonster]

Like last time the Unique Corals order is superb and they added a bonus frag. The milli and the bird nest are a given and I'll assume the goldish in the middle is the purple nana. As far as the ant insignis and the plum crazy I'm guessing the left piece is the plum and the bigger middle piece is the ant (guess based on pics of growth patterns). As far as the bonus piece (UC frag) based on the purple color and greenish polyps I'm assuming its their Acropora exquisita which appears to be a stag. Not just UC but it would be nice if all the places labeled bags.

I decided at least for a while to use a frag rack and ordered one of the 18 hole pure flow racks off EBay which should be here Saturday. I got the extra strong magnet version for my glass.

 

[zoomonster]

A local reefer that did a tank cleanout was kind enough to hook me up with some goods this evening. Nice sized chunks of red and purple montipora capricornis, Hollywood stunner chalice (bright green/orange polyps) and a couple pieces of ponape birdsnest.

I glued up everything tonight and looking good. Also had a tiny piece of bird of paradise that broke off and a couple zoo chunks coming off the rock I glued up.

First fish loss... Royal Gramma suddenly died and before I realized it the cleaner shrimp had chowed down. It was pretty large and could have been old. In any case its replacement will be smaller.

 

[zoomonster]

Pure flow frag rack

Pure flow frag rack

Mehhh... looks nice/well built but magnets are not so "extra strength", thin Plexiglas, holes too close together, smaller than I thought and it does not fit the ORA plugs (golf tee's) too well. Good for tiny frags on small-medium plugs but that's about it.

I'll juggle some things around and maybe get more use out of it. I've got about 13 other frags not on there but I need to start placing some of the larger stuff anyway.

 

[zoomonster]

I was out today and being I was near a LFS I just had to stop by :lol: They had a nice small Royal Gramma I picked up and of course wouldn't you know it they had 20% off fish today. I've never been terribly fond of tangs (or big fish in general) but I've kept Hippo's and Yellow in the past and really was not really keen on another yellow tang (I have a yellow belly hippo now). They've had a really nice purple tang there for weeks I've been eyeballing and well 20% off the typical price for a medium pretty much sealed the deal. I also grabbed a couple zoa frags from the bargain section. One (~30 polyps) has orange tentacles, purple center and a white star with yellow mouth. Fairly common but very nice color. The real deal was the $5 frag (~8) of a gigantus people eater. Large polyp, red tentacles and a dark purple center with the large green PE mouth. Very similar to spiderman morphs.

 

[zoomonster]

Not too much going on and been pretty busy with work. I did get out Saturday night and joined FRAG a local club. I did win a bag of reef crystals and a frag of clove polyps.

Pretty much everything SPS is taking off. Great color and growing surprisingly fast. I did get the forest fire orange monti digi mounted along with the reefgen stylo to permanent homes. The Reefgen plugs are more of a pain than even the ORA golf tees. Reefgen uses something that looks like a small chess pawn. I'm probably going to start cutting off plugs bottoms before mounting. Too easy to split real liverock when trying to drill a mounting hole. I've been using superglue for some stuff but used it and waterweld this time. I'm getting good polyp extension most of the time but I don't think the red planet is ever not extended and its growing like a weed not only encrusting but in branches. That piece is going to be next up for mounting.

 

[dave.m]

Without pics it never happened.

Dave.M

 

[zoomonster]

Yeah trying to take some pics but not had a lot of time and I'm a little particular about posting crappy photo's. The old Nikon just does not cut it anymore and still looking at new cameras.

I'm loving my SPS but there is more to the reef than SPS :eek1:. This is one of my favorite Yuma's. I got lucky and got a rock with 3 small polyps (now medium)at a LFS a while back for $36 on sale. These are the super orange (and all sorts of absurd names) some of the online places are selling for 70-90 a polyp. This photo is under all actinic but it still does not do them justice. The orange is true to color and the parts that are purple. Some of the purple is actually washed out probably from flash. Note the little bit of coralline on that rock is still true to color. The rock they came on split and I have this one and one with two polyps. If I can get one good colony of these going that will be a true show piece. The beauty of these is there is no joining white line that most Yuma have. I also have 3 yellow/green tipped purple ones like this but they are further back in the tank and the pics did not come out so good.

 

[zoomonster]

Pests in many forms

Pests in many forms

Pests come in many forms with most able to do damage. One thing I've been pretty diligent about is keeping bubble algae out of my tank which I have always considered just a nuisance. Guess I missed some and it was actually killing off my green Sinularia. I noticed it seemed to have been getting smaller/opening less. I also noticed some bubble growing and pulled it out to clean. As I started cleaning I realized it had been growing into the base of the Sinularia actually pinching off the base by growing into the coral. When I got done picking it all out the coral is left with deep pockets all around the base. I dipped in an iodine solution and its looking better today.

 

[Roodler]

Say, that frag rack you bought; is the problem with the magnets that it's sagging in front, or does it want to slide down the side of your tank?