Neptune Aquatics

glee's tank journal

Interesting rock-magnet idea!
I picked up a blue clove polyp frag from you at the swap - thanks, it looks great! Question - might this go everywhere across rockwork? Should I isolate it and/or place it in a tank where I'm okay with possible takeover? My students like it a lot and the kids in charge of the QT put up a paper naming it Coral of the Week last week. I'm ignoring that they totally made up info about it.
 
Thanks Maureen. I’m so glad you and your students like it. It most likely will spread all over your tank so be wary where you place it. It grows on my tank wall, sandbed, rockwork, snail shells etc but it has never tried to kill anything. It looks peaceful, holds it color under any lights, and fills many gaps. If anyone wants “coral of the week”, I can make more frags and pay it forward.

I also picked up your Duncan frag. Thanks for glueing it to the container; looks really nice. I did that to my chalice frag entries too so they didn’t roll around. I think everyone should do that extra step if they are using frag plugs.
 
I have a few of those pump magnets sitting around, gotta say though the rubber on the suction cup end does worry me a bit as if you rub it against your hand it literally just turns your hand black, not sure how healthy that is for the tank. Might be similar to other rubberized suction cups we put in our tank, or it might be ground up with the lost souls of sweatshop children and toxic waste considering the price of those pumps :D
 
Lol these pumps crap out after a couple years so I’m not surprised if others have the magnets too. I had the back magnets on my fridge to hold up shopping lists. Any other creative ways to repurpose?
 
Some updates in my tank since my last posting. My tank stopped being cloudy so I assume the goby I picked up at the regional swap is a goner. I was dealing with some hair algae in Oct and the goby was picking at it and constantly sifting sand. All my fish seemed to get along so Im not sure what happened to it. From my short goby experience, I acknowledged that my sand bed was not getting enough flow and had a ton of detritus build up. Sand was greyish white.

I purchased and installed a Marineland Mangum Internal Polishing Filter (ugly) and turkey basted rocks and sand every few hours while the lights were on. After a few days, the filter would make rattling noises which prompted a cleaning. The filter pulled out a ton of gunk like the sludge from my skimmer. I cleaned the filter 3x and finally took it out during my last water change.

I siphoned 1/10th of my sandbed during the last water change. After a week or so, all GHA was gone, sand bed at the center area of my tank is white, and a sunset monti I inherited is coloring up. Some other things I noticed: Blue Clove Polyps receding, and Miami Hurricane Chalice is not as blue anymore. Im guessing they liked the dirty water. I now have seven anemones.

My next water change, I have a few things to do: 1. vacuum the front right side sand bed, 2. comb sand for broken shells, vermitid snail casing, and rubble, and 3. kalk two sneaky majanos.

FTS with iphone
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Left Side
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Middle
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Left
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Left Bottom
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ORA Kelly Green Psammocora fragment experiment growing well.
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Looking good, good to see you back in the forum. What lighting set up are you using?
Hi Bennett, glad to be back. Hope to see you around at the events or maybe the next SF Tank Tour as soon as @sfsuphysics gets his tank going lol (according to @Apon). I used the Chinese Black Boxes early on because everything in my hood eventually rusts. I didnt want to spend a ton of money replacing lights every couple of years. Right now I am using (2) Viparspectra Timer Control Series V165 sold on Amazon.

My photo period is all blues on at 4pm-12am, all others 6pm-10pm.

I recently semi-covered my tank with a thin polycarb green house material to cut down on humidity/evaporation. My skimmer pulls outside air so I think the tank gets enough DO. I cannot see any detrimental affects so far.

I am in line for the PAR meter and want to measure how much light loss with and without the cover.
 
Did some maintenance yesterday: 17.5g water change, siphoned right side front sand bed, siphoned sump, cleaned return pump, cleaned skimmer, killed the last of the mojanos (i hope), trimmed down some dead areas of my green lobo and pulled off some green/orange cloves that was trying to suffocate it, trimmed hammers and candy canes, shifted a few corals.

Ive been collecting zoas again with pretty good success. Only lost a Tyree Orange Sherbet out of all frags I've been buying. This was a fresh cut that floated off the plug and could not be found. I had a couple others float off but was able to find and remount them. I wish all zoa fraggers would keep some part of the original substrate to glue on to plugs but it is what it is.

Bad pics from iPhone. Need to take some underwater shots again soon....
Sunny Ds
Bowzer
AOGs
Punk Rockers
Unknown
Petroglyph
Goblins on Fire
Tutti Frutti
BBEB
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Chong Bongs
Pink Diamonds
Everlasting Gobstopper
Utter Chaos
Rainbow Incinerator
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Im not going to touch these zoas and see how they fill in over the year. I make another zoa rock soon.

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I said I wasnt going to do SPS @iCon @xcaret during the last swap but I lied lol. Starting to get the itch again and added a couple of Montis from @Bruce Spiegelman. Forest Fire Digi and Tubbs Stella are looking good Thanks Bruce! I dont plan to add too much more but will stick with Montis to fill in the gaps in my tank. German Blue Digi? Green Digi? Looking for hammers, torches, gonioporas, goniastreas.
 
After reading through Paul B's reef2reef thread, I decided I should be feeding my tank buddies better food. I typically feed nori sheets 90% of the time and 10% reef nutrition flakes. Since there are no LRS Food near me and no upcoming DIY Fish Food Making Class, I decided to make my own food. My wife joined a FB BuyNothing Group recently and got me a used blender for free. I picked up (2) mahogany clams and (1) large oyster from Sunset Super. Cost $2. I froze them immediately. After freezing, I pried open the oyster but cracked the shell. The muscle holding the top shell is very difficult to remove when frozen so I put them in the fridge to thaw. This morning, both clams were open and easily dislodged from their shell. The oyster was also easy to remove. I pour all their liquid with the meat in the blender with 1/2 sheet of red nori and 1/2 sheet of green nori. Chopped up the pieces, put in a zip lock bag, and then the freezer.
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4 oz for $2.

I put some excess food from the spatula and blender top in to my tank. Fish went nuts and coral tentacles expanded. I would have put more from the blender but the wife had already soaped it up for cleaning:D

Learning lessons:
Double weight of recipe
Find live mussels
Add fresh fish and/or shrimp
Freeze clams, then thaw in fridge
Do not freeze oysters
Skimmer bubbles depressed - needs monitoring

@sfsuphysics I could not find Felicia's fish food recipe last night so I will dive deeper when this batch runs out.
 
FYI, The Fish Doctor in Pacifica sells LRS. According to the LRS website anyway.
It was pretty easy to make so I think Im going to keep doing it myself now that I have a dedicated blender to use. Although, I do want to check out The Fish Doctor's place. I think I need more fish in the tank so I can feed the tank more lol.
 
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