Coral reefer
Past President
This starts out at a 120 for 4.5 years and ten pages. Please go to page 11 for the 225 upgrade!
So I've been meaning to start my tank journal for awhile...the main thing holding me back besides laziness has been lack of pictures. A few months back I had a buddy take some really nice shots of the tank, but he hasn't sent me any pics yet...so now with jons urging I've taken decent iPhone pics and will post soon as I am trying to figure out the easiest way to do so.
Basically this tank was the combination of two smaller reefs, I had a 40 and a 50 show, both 3' by 15" by slightly different heights (18 and 22 I think). Neither tank was great, I moved into my house on 8/8/08, and picked up a bunch of live rock, a coral beauty, a six line wrasse, a ton of anthelia and some xenia from a tank break down shortly after. That was the 40 for a good while, the 50 was a cheaper craigslist pickup, and most ofthe livestock came from another break down. Frogspawns, pair of gold striped marroon clown, crazy gorrilla or Teddy bear crab before iknew what they were (he was in a piece of live rock and in the tank before I saw him. Still in that same piece of rock and have only seen him molt once in over a year, hardly ever leaves the rock, probably only at night. Anyhow, I joined the club right around the time that I picked up a 4x2x2 glass 120 gal with some extras and I haven't looked back since combining the two smaller tanks into one!
I've been running a coral life 2x150 hqi with 20k bulbs the whole time. It has been up since march, I added a reefbrite actinic strip and a bubble magus doser in July or august, super happy with both!
I run a euroreef skimmer, a big ball of chaeto under a led from home depot, and gfo and occasional carbon in bags in the sump. I'd like to get a reactor setup someday. I finally hooked up my ato recently, nice addition. For return I use a rio, and in tank flow is a korallia 2 and a 4 (600 and 1400 gph).
I had never played around with sps much until this tank was setup, I got a huge green slimer Frag at baymac along with an orange monti digi, and I got a few small frags from aquatic collection shortly thereafter. Needless to say the sps bug bit me and I've gone a bit nuts. I have way too many now to let them all grow out where there currently are, but I plan on removing the creepy crab rock (where a lot of sps are)and seperating those sps at some point anyhow. I also really want to try an mp40 on this tank, so I'm sort of saving up. Game 1 or 2 of the world series, or vortech? Well I didn't go to either game, so maybe a vortech is in order...
I have been using oyster feast, arctipods, frozen mysis and formula 2 flakes with spectrum pellets mixed in, seems like most stuff is happy and healthy, I've had some aiptasia but a peppermint shrimp
lurks around at night and seems to keep them from ever gettig big or spreading much.
I have 5 chromis, pair of gold stripe marroon clowns, coral beauty, six line wrasse(doesn't seem mean) and a scooter blenny. I'd like to get 1-2 orchid dotty backs, and that's probably it. Tank is bare bottom and a mix of lps, softies, and sps. I plan on upgrading to se 250's in better reflectors someday so I get better more even coverage, the coral life reflectors are poo poo, very small footprint.
Parameters are usually 1.026, 76-78, alk 10-11, ca 450, don't test mag often enough, don't trust nitrate test kit so I don't bother and just do water changes (usually at least 10 gal per week, occasionally up to 30 gal, depending on how much water I have available to me at the time). Phospate kit is tough to read, so I'll say that there is very little, but not quite zero.
So I've been meaning to start my tank journal for awhile...the main thing holding me back besides laziness has been lack of pictures. A few months back I had a buddy take some really nice shots of the tank, but he hasn't sent me any pics yet...so now with jons urging I've taken decent iPhone pics and will post soon as I am trying to figure out the easiest way to do so.
Basically this tank was the combination of two smaller reefs, I had a 40 and a 50 show, both 3' by 15" by slightly different heights (18 and 22 I think). Neither tank was great, I moved into my house on 8/8/08, and picked up a bunch of live rock, a coral beauty, a six line wrasse, a ton of anthelia and some xenia from a tank break down shortly after. That was the 40 for a good while, the 50 was a cheaper craigslist pickup, and most ofthe livestock came from another break down. Frogspawns, pair of gold striped marroon clown, crazy gorrilla or Teddy bear crab before iknew what they were (he was in a piece of live rock and in the tank before I saw him. Still in that same piece of rock and have only seen him molt once in over a year, hardly ever leaves the rock, probably only at night. Anyhow, I joined the club right around the time that I picked up a 4x2x2 glass 120 gal with some extras and I haven't looked back since combining the two smaller tanks into one!
I've been running a coral life 2x150 hqi with 20k bulbs the whole time. It has been up since march, I added a reefbrite actinic strip and a bubble magus doser in July or august, super happy with both!
I run a euroreef skimmer, a big ball of chaeto under a led from home depot, and gfo and occasional carbon in bags in the sump. I'd like to get a reactor setup someday. I finally hooked up my ato recently, nice addition. For return I use a rio, and in tank flow is a korallia 2 and a 4 (600 and 1400 gph).
I had never played around with sps much until this tank was setup, I got a huge green slimer Frag at baymac along with an orange monti digi, and I got a few small frags from aquatic collection shortly thereafter. Needless to say the sps bug bit me and I've gone a bit nuts. I have way too many now to let them all grow out where there currently are, but I plan on removing the creepy crab rock (where a lot of sps are)and seperating those sps at some point anyhow. I also really want to try an mp40 on this tank, so I'm sort of saving up. Game 1 or 2 of the world series, or vortech? Well I didn't go to either game, so maybe a vortech is in order...
I have been using oyster feast, arctipods, frozen mysis and formula 2 flakes with spectrum pellets mixed in, seems like most stuff is happy and healthy, I've had some aiptasia but a peppermint shrimp
lurks around at night and seems to keep them from ever gettig big or spreading much.
I have 5 chromis, pair of gold stripe marroon clowns, coral beauty, six line wrasse(doesn't seem mean) and a scooter blenny. I'd like to get 1-2 orchid dotty backs, and that's probably it. Tank is bare bottom and a mix of lps, softies, and sps. I plan on upgrading to se 250's in better reflectors someday so I get better more even coverage, the coral life reflectors are poo poo, very small footprint.
Parameters are usually 1.026, 76-78, alk 10-11, ca 450, don't test mag often enough, don't trust nitrate test kit so I don't bother and just do water changes (usually at least 10 gal per week, occasionally up to 30 gal, depending on how much water I have available to me at the time). Phospate kit is tough to read, so I'll say that there is very little, but not quite zero.
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