ZM's 200g build
- Thread starter zoomonster
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zoomonster
New member
Almost missed it but this morning realized the world wide corals open house was today. It's about an hour away and I took a ride. This only makes my second trip (first like a year ago). I was far from impressed the first time and had a few thoughts earlier on in this thread. I did get a few things but for the most part my opinion of the place has not changed. But hey a sale is a sale.
1) I got a replacement female bimaculatus for the one that got killed by the vortech. Nice size and $40 with discount.
2) I got one Florida Ricordia polyp. It stood out with at least 3 peachy/orange mouths. I've only paid about $8 each for Ricordia but at $20 minus discount it was worth it and something of a find. The overall color is blue & green.
3) From the farm area I got a small unmounted clipping from a Jason Fox "unknown". Absolutely beautiful dark red coral with brilliant purple tips. Its branching but it has a weird upward flat growth habit kind of like a sea fan.
4) The most expensive piece was another tiny frag cut from the farm area. Like an idiot I forget the name but something forge and I'll figure it out eventually. This one is kind of a salmon color with blue tips and another branching SPS.
I actually just glued up the cut frags and they are looking pretty good so far.
1) I got a replacement female bimaculatus for the one that got killed by the vortech. Nice size and $40 with discount.
2) I got one Florida Ricordia polyp. It stood out with at least 3 peachy/orange mouths. I've only paid about $8 each for Ricordia but at $20 minus discount it was worth it and something of a find. The overall color is blue & green.
3) From the farm area I got a small unmounted clipping from a Jason Fox "unknown". Absolutely beautiful dark red coral with brilliant purple tips. Its branching but it has a weird upward flat growth habit kind of like a sea fan.
4) The most expensive piece was another tiny frag cut from the farm area. Like an idiot I forget the name but something forge and I'll figure it out eventually. This one is kind of a salmon color with blue tips and another branching SPS.
I actually just glued up the cut frags and they are looking pretty good so far.
zoomonster
New member
Oh yeah the purple queen Anthias... doing way better than expected. The one that got separated seldom comes out but its still there and alive and I've been attempting to target feed it. The other two are together and doing great. I was a little concerned about eating but they finally started eating live brine loaded with astaxanthin. Both are now out all the time and constantly active. Even better they have also started eating frozen spirulina brine, cyclops and some freeze dried plankton.
zoomonster
New member
Here's my female Bimaculatus Anthias. This one is considerably larger than the first.
zoomonster
New member
These guys are actually some of my favorite and have been neglected picture wise. Small, peaceful, lively and school good. These are two female Tierra Anthias aka Resplendant. I now have one male and three females and they are a very close group. Actually they immediately bonded when I added two more. Just my opinion but the females are nicer than the male but maybe he just needs to mature more. For his size he really protects the females from some of my larger Anthias.
zoomonster
New member
Still don't remember the name of the frag I got from world wide but after some digging pretty sure it's a reefraft magic wand regardless of what WWC was calling it.
I grabbed a couple no name frags last week from a local shop that really stood out, nice sized branching cuts and the prices were good. I thought I recognized them and one is a Acropora aculeus/"Aussie Blue Azureus". $80 from places like UC and $30 ($24 on sale) local. Baby blue with neon green tips.
The second took some digging but its what I can only find called "Nicks Purple Passion". Also a very nice sized branching frag and $24. Its kind of a medium dark neon green with long bright purple tips.
Just wanted to catch up and will post some pics later.
I grabbed a couple no name frags last week from a local shop that really stood out, nice sized branching cuts and the prices were good. I thought I recognized them and one is a Acropora aculeus/"Aussie Blue Azureus". $80 from places like UC and $30 ($24 on sale) local. Baby blue with neon green tips.
The second took some digging but its what I can only find called "Nicks Purple Passion". Also a very nice sized branching frag and $24. Its kind of a medium dark neon green with long bright purple tips.
Just wanted to catch up and will post some pics later.
zoomonster
New member
Was out in Winter park today and snagged this chunk of broken up colony of Ice Fire Echinata for the price of a typical frag. It was loose and its now at home on that rock. Not had luck in the past with this echinata but we'll see. This one sat in a store tank for years so maybe a little more established and hardier plus it was not shipped.
zoomonster
New member
I ordered a few things from BattleCorals the other day and assuming we don't get hurricane Erica Sunday/Monday they should ship Monday and be here Tuesday. First time I dealt with them and first time from any cut to order place. I ordered 5 pieces of "in stock" and right away the two main pieces were unavailable and I had to pick something else. Adam was easy to deal with and made it worth while with the subs, a good cut of Spainbow and a bonus frag of "reefers cove poison envy" which I believe is a Bali Shortcake. Already have a grow out but I'm gearing up for trading so what the hell. If I'm lucky maybe its a slightly different morph.
I started out with
Blood Red Milli
Rainbow Jewel
Rainbow's Army
Westside Rainbow Tort
Pink Lemonade
And supposed to be getting these now
Rainbows in Spain
Reef ready grape juice
reefers cove poison envy
Blood Red Milli
Westside Rainbow Tort
Pink Lemonade
I started out with
Blood Red Milli
Rainbow Jewel
Rainbow's Army
Westside Rainbow Tort
Pink Lemonade
And supposed to be getting these now
Rainbows in Spain
Reef ready grape juice
reefers cove poison envy
Blood Red Milli
Westside Rainbow Tort
Pink Lemonade
zoomonster
New member
Don't have any decent pics but I will try and post something later. Take a look at this article http://************.com/2014/05/07/bali-shortcake-rosey-colored-acropora-latistella/
Sorry the nonsense of RC blocking URL's to a legitimate article but I assume you can guess what RB is. The second image is exactly what the colony I saw looks like.
It is definitely a top shelf coral color wise but keep this in mind... I have seen prices ranging from $80-200 for frags online. In reality its a fairly common Bali coral. One local shop got a big chunk in and they sell good frags for $30. Not sure if what they had ever colored up or made it to frags. Last week I spotted an entire maricultured colony about 6-7" round for $150 at another place. That was definitely a bush. I may yet go back and grab that if its still there.
zoomonster
New member
1 Spainbow
2 Blood red
3 Poison envy
4 Rainbows army nub
5 Shades of fall
6 Pink lemonade
7 PC rainbow
8 Westside rainbow tort
Looks like my stuff from BC will ship tomorrow now that the storm has petered out. Nice touch that he sends out photos of what was cut and mounted. The list changed a little bit but he sweetened the deal.
Whats interesting is items 5/6. I ordered a Pink Lemonade and the Shades of Fall was a bonus. I think I always thought they were the same thing and there's an article about pink lemonade and its history that basically says how it (frags of original colony) made its way around and while most called it pink lemonade ATL renamed it to shades of fall. Guess that's not really correct unless 5 is not the same shades of fall. Certainly not complaining as they are both nice and different as the picture attests.
zoomonster
New member
I did add a couple utility fish this weekend. I had both before but they both managed to jump at different times and I never replaced until now. A small Lawnmower Blenny and a medium-large Diamond Watchman Goby. My sand bed was really begging to have them back. I've got a serpent star and a variety of nassarius, crabs and conchs but nothing works over the sandbed quite like the watchman. Not a lot of algae for the lawnmower but they are great at munching diatoms when they rear up. I may add another watchman or similar in the near future. This one wasted no time getting busy and actually clouded the tank a little bit.
zoomonster
New member
Been pretty busy lately with work and crunch time for a release so really have not been in the mood for much else other than sleeping and eating :hmm4:
My original Potter's Angel (~15 months) developed some sort of ailment with nothing visible like ich etc. He has always been the terror angel and I guess payback is a *****. Before I even realized he was sick/weak the rest of the angels shredded him, particularly the coral beauty. Got him out and tried to save but was too late. The ailment was perplexing and kind of reminded me of years ago when often a fish would die in the 1-2 year range from liver damage from being caught with cyanide.
Its been a pretty good time lately for wrasses showing up. A few weeks back I got a red velvet fairy wrasse. They had another big shipment this last week and I grabbed a pink margin wrasse and a pair of exquisite wrasses today. The pink margin is either a female or a juvenile. All are absolutely stunning. They had others equally as nice but I excersised some restraint. If not I would have walked out with probably 6 wrasses.
My original Potter's Angel (~15 months) developed some sort of ailment with nothing visible like ich etc. He has always been the terror angel and I guess payback is a *****. Before I even realized he was sick/weak the rest of the angels shredded him, particularly the coral beauty. Got him out and tried to save but was too late. The ailment was perplexing and kind of reminded me of years ago when often a fish would die in the 1-2 year range from liver damage from being caught with cyanide.
Its been a pretty good time lately for wrasses showing up. A few weeks back I got a red velvet fairy wrasse. They had another big shipment this last week and I grabbed a pink margin wrasse and a pair of exquisite wrasses today. The pink margin is either a female or a juvenile. All are absolutely stunning. They had others equally as nice but I excersised some restraint. If not I would have walked out with probably 6 wrasses.
zoomonster
New member
I've been having a few issues related to Ca/Mg/Alk/PH stability. Perhaps the biggest issues are low PH and alkalinity issues. Low end of PH has been doable but I want more growth and a more stable tank. On the same note alkalinity issues have been more troublesome and probably the cause of some coral loss or regression.
My automated solution from day one was a GEO calcium reactor which has not exactly worked the best. Several issues like becoming gas locked, drip valve constantly clogging and of course the use of CO2 affecting PH. The clogging issue and general control could be much improved with the use of a peristaltic pump to push water through in dosing intervals vs. just drip. That may or may not be in the future. Anyway to make a long story short I decided on a modified setup.
The CaRx will stay online and provide whatever Ca/Alk/Sr/Mg it will. However to the ARM coarse mix I am adding ZEOMag.
I ordered and setup yesterday an Aquamedic KS1000 Kalc reactor. Overpriced for what it is but it works and is much simpler and less risky than the pump driven ones. So now my Tunze ATO pumps into the kalk reactor and of course the reactor outputs into the sump.
PH is definitely improved and time will tell with the rest and I will probably test this weekend and manually tweak levels and see if the new setup can maintain it. Ideally I would like to get my PH back to at least 8.2 during the day and not dip much below 8 at night (and I already have a refugium with lights on 24x7 with a mass of chaeto).
My automated solution from day one was a GEO calcium reactor which has not exactly worked the best. Several issues like becoming gas locked, drip valve constantly clogging and of course the use of CO2 affecting PH. The clogging issue and general control could be much improved with the use of a peristaltic pump to push water through in dosing intervals vs. just drip. That may or may not be in the future. Anyway to make a long story short I decided on a modified setup.
The CaRx will stay online and provide whatever Ca/Alk/Sr/Mg it will. However to the ARM coarse mix I am adding ZEOMag.
I ordered and setup yesterday an Aquamedic KS1000 Kalc reactor. Overpriced for what it is but it works and is much simpler and less risky than the pump driven ones. So now my Tunze ATO pumps into the kalk reactor and of course the reactor outputs into the sump.
PH is definitely improved and time will tell with the rest and I will probably test this weekend and manually tweak levels and see if the new setup can maintain it. Ideally I would like to get my PH back to at least 8.2 during the day and not dip much below 8 at night (and I already have a refugium with lights on 24x7 with a mass of chaeto).
ponokareefer
New member
Nice tank and anthias. My bimaculatus anthias trio are my favorite anthias. So colorful and don't seem to fight with the other anthias in my tank. You sure don't see many around though.
zoomonster
New member
Thanks... so much choice in Anthias and was fortunate to have a local shop that gets good stuff. My males a little aggressive but so are the other large Anthias I have. I always liked my male but the female has such bold and bright colors and is a favorite.
zoomonster
New member
In conjunction with the new hardware I did something I rarely due which is a large water change (~40g) to get things back in sync. Now hopefully between the CaRx and the Kalk reactor things will stay that way for an extended period. It took about a day to stabilize and with the Kalk reactor back on I'm holding a pretty steady 8.3. Probably tomorrow I will turn the CaRx back on. I'm guessing that with drip I'll be back to maintaining about 8.2. Overnight the PH didn't fall below 8.0 so much better.
I probably came pretty close to a crash from buffer depletion so lesson learned and will be a little more diligent with KH. If need be I'll start using buffer to tweak. Water changes have always been a PIA so I'm back to at least thinking about building an automated water change system.
I probably came pretty close to a crash from buffer depletion so lesson learned and will be a little more diligent with KH. If need be I'll start using buffer to tweak. Water changes have always been a PIA so I'm back to at least thinking about building an automated water change system.
zoomonster
New member
I've been pretty busy with work and not posted in a while. Aside from breaking my ankle pretty bad I suffered some setbacks in my reef. I suspect that had a lot to do with the addition of the kalk reactor though I cannot put my finger on the exact cause (possibly a combination of factors). In any case the tank is on the rebound now and survivors that took a hit are recovering.
It started with all my monti's including caps. digi, setosa etc. with a varied speed of demise STN-RTN. A lot of that I had gotten for free and was getting ready to give away so no huge loss. The only pieces I had paid for and was planning on keeping were forest fire digi, peach digi, setosa and a sunset monti. All gone and the only piece replaced has been a orange digi frag to test the waters. It wasn't isolated to the colonies either. I had frags of a lot of that stuff and they perished also.
Interesting enough it only affected a few frags (mostly frags of my existing stuff). The stuff I had gotten from Battlecorals was unaffected although the PC Rainbow didn't make it probably for other reasons. The painful part was the loss of some larger growouts I had. I lost a pink birdnest, bird of paradise, a high end blue/pink/green stylo, red dragon and a few older nondescript frags. My softball sized UC wild orchid had the top stn off. I clipped the bush off but all the heavy encrusting survived un-phased and has colored up and is growing rapidly. Unlike some others a frag of that I had also survived.
Of course none of the Ricordia, zoanthids or other softies were affected. My first sps in this tank was a red planet and its still cruising along with some others like strawberry shortcake. For the most part purple nana, plum crazy, garf bonsai valida, ice fire echinata, bali shortcake, pocillipora, blue tip stag and one millipora were unaffected. I only have one LPS brain these days and its also fine.
The best I can say is live and learn or like they say **** happens. Tank thriving for about 1.5 years and then smack.
It started with all my monti's including caps. digi, setosa etc. with a varied speed of demise STN-RTN. A lot of that I had gotten for free and was getting ready to give away so no huge loss. The only pieces I had paid for and was planning on keeping were forest fire digi, peach digi, setosa and a sunset monti. All gone and the only piece replaced has been a orange digi frag to test the waters. It wasn't isolated to the colonies either. I had frags of a lot of that stuff and they perished also.
Interesting enough it only affected a few frags (mostly frags of my existing stuff). The stuff I had gotten from Battlecorals was unaffected although the PC Rainbow didn't make it probably for other reasons. The painful part was the loss of some larger growouts I had. I lost a pink birdnest, bird of paradise, a high end blue/pink/green stylo, red dragon and a few older nondescript frags. My softball sized UC wild orchid had the top stn off. I clipped the bush off but all the heavy encrusting survived un-phased and has colored up and is growing rapidly. Unlike some others a frag of that I had also survived.
Of course none of the Ricordia, zoanthids or other softies were affected. My first sps in this tank was a red planet and its still cruising along with some others like strawberry shortcake. For the most part purple nana, plum crazy, garf bonsai valida, ice fire echinata, bali shortcake, pocillipora, blue tip stag and one millipora were unaffected. I only have one LPS brain these days and its also fine.
The best I can say is live and learn or like they say **** happens. Tank thriving for about 1.5 years and then smack.
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