Neptune Aquatics

90 Gallon forced upgrade no more peninsula.

Running a hair and skin care store is boring for a guy who cares nothing about his hair like me; people would ask me something and inside my head all I could think is "Alberto VO5?" well, have to care for the customers so I had to apologize for my lack of knowledge to which most people understood and knowing my sister I think they will be happy she's back tomorrow (after a canceled flight due to tropical storms)!!!

Back to reefing !!!!

Got some little frags in the tank yesterday night; I think the glass shield played a huge part on the temperature plus the previous days were scorching hot; today was pretty warm but with some wind blowing. Average temp. in the tank 80; not bad; night cools off to a nice 77-78 degrees.
Zero Nitrates, Phosphates, pH 8.2, Alk. 12Dkh, Calcium on the low side ~380 and working on it; Mag. I can't find my test kit
Skimmer barely pulling brownish stuff (no fish poo yet) Tweaking the ATO but I think a new bracket is needed, darn it. Emergency float switch is too close to the primary.
I will not worry much anymore about the rock work maybe next upgrade....
Maybe sometime next year I'll put to work an OM 4-way and ditch the power heads for a clean "Look ma, no soda cans" tank.
I was able to squeeze a 5G container for the RODI so no more square pail for the time being.
Dossing manually and then move to a dual dosser or save enough for the Vertex.
Media reactors is what I have to work on next.
Have no images to upload yet.
 
Thx Jim, is kind of my "reef away from home, home" little messy but will fix that glass tank.... some day.
Seems you are the one preventing a total meltdown of the economy.
 
Finally the firs tenants moved in today; four nice chromis and a what was the name of it? adopted from a member here; thanks iC !!

Super warm day today, temperature averaged 82, halides did not go off at all, they are set to turn off @83 degrees
 
Yellow tilefish - Hoplolatilus luteus :) Don't think I've ever seen one in a store but Jess has a knack for finding these harder to find fish. Didn't realize they were so hard to keep but I guess this is one rare specimen considering it's probably closer to 6" :D and lots of personality.

Glad it has a bigger home now..lots of garlic mysis and it'll be happy.

http://www.wetwebmedia.com/tilefishes.htm
 
Lots of diatoms on the rocks; got a clean up crew, 10 big fat chubby turbo snails but they seem to like sleeping on the rocks rather than doing their job; only three of them are grazing on the glass.
 
Sorry to hear about the tile fish, Mario. Please let me know how they did around your coral. They are catagorized as "NOT reef compatible in Live Aquaria.com" but I've always like them a LOT. I've see pairs of them cruising the reef in the South Pacific. I like the ones that are checkered, kinda like my fat blimp of a long nosed hawk fish. My tank comedian. Let's get you going with regular picture updates. Even my little snorkel camera works fine. I'll even come up and do some in tank shots for you if you want. As your new tank progresses, we ALL want to watch! :bigsmile:
 
Hi John !

As far as coral, could not tell about the behavior of the tile fish; tank is being populated with small frags. The little guy was a bit shy and spent most of the time at the bottom of the tank; we adopted it from iCon.

Yesterday I gave myself the chore of finding Yardartists' orange paly frag that fell behind the rocks; no luck finding it but rearranged one rock and am happier with the scape on that side of the tank maybe today I'll search for the frag behind the rest of the rock-work on the right of the tank.

Yesterday I met JessSRT8 and on the way back stopped at Aquarium Concepts to get some snails but price was not so convincing; locally I got 10 large turbo snails for $20 and they had them for $6.99 each !!!

Here's one image of the tank before the diatom bloom.


P1030691.jpg
 
Diatoms are going away bit by bit, coralline algae starts to show on some spots which I like but also are aware about pumps needing more attention when it comes to coralline on them.
The acan mini colony picture is the best I could take with my camera; it was completely bleached after a timer failed, now shows good colors and new heads forming all around. The other acans were too bleached and have nice red/green color. Lower right of the picture shows a skeleton from an acan but I tend to keep plugs and rock in the tank even if they seem dead; the acan is coming back, center of the skeleton shows already a growing head.

1022001708-1.jpg
 
While searching for a DBTC frag (no luck finding it) decided to swap one Radium for a 20K that PGS sells; brand new but color seems to be far from the 20K; might need to be burned in so I'll leave it for a while.
Had to move some rocks to look for the frag and the aqua-scape now I like; once the tank clears and is dark outside I'll try snapping couple images. Turbo snails seemed to have taken care of the algae but now that is gone, escargot?
I'll get an army, well a nice commando of scarlet and blue leg hermit crabs, some trochus and nassarius snails too.
Finally set the ATO today; one more thing to do is set the dossing system so maybe a few more days, weeks, months...
 
After all I decided to change the bulb on the left for one of the "generic" ones that Jeremy made a reference on another thread; so far I like it, nice blue hue.
I've placed a few DBTC SPS in the tank and growth is great. I don't have a camera (decent one) that would show some of the color of the frags, my camera won't just cut it; I think the WB is horrible.
The best grower is the Red Table; I can see the daily growth and am just waiting for it to encrust on the main piece of rock.
Bali Tri-color is encrusting on the main rock; my fish knocked it down couple of times but now is encrusting nicely.
Mycedium starting to spread on the flat piece of rock; is in the middle of the tank and although the lights are strong, it resides under another rock so it's a happy coral.
Sunset Monti seems to have halted spreading on it's own piece of rubble and not jumping to the main rock, well, I'll give it a few more weeks and if noting I'll find another spot for it.
Setosa Monti starting to branch out instead of encrusting.
Orange Paly's still missing in the back of the rock-work, oh well...
Undata Monti has a nice green-ish/white polyp contrast that's just beautiful.
Reverse Sunset does not want to grow.
Rainbow Monti seems to have teamed up with Reverse Sunset
Green Birds Nest seems to be the weed kind.
Red Acro? from Jon, looks like Red Table but no green on it, is covering well the hardened glue and is on it's way to encrusting on the rock.
Sand Dollar Monti still on it's rubble rock, need to find a spot for it.
Some other corals are in the frag tank and as soon as I'm brave enough to get wet (safely) I'll bring them over and update on their progress.

Parameters have been stable, pH 8.4, Alk. 10 dkH, Calcium 410, Mag 1400, no Nitrates or Phosphates.
Dossing two-part every other day manually (I'll dig out the dissing pumps one day)

I'm shooting for a mixed reef with a softy bottom; mushrooms, zoanthids and palys to the right of the sand bed and LPS; chalices, acans, duncans, euphylias on the left plus a sarco somewhere at the back left corner.

One of the Vortech pumps is starting to be a PITA, guess new bearings will need to go in or I might just keep one on the right and bring the big guns (6100's) out and deal with the bearings later.

I'll be adding couple T5's later and dial down the MH, at the moment run for 10hrs, five hours each alternating with three hours full blast.
 
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