OtakuThugster's Mini-reef

[under_water_ninja]

Put me in line for a piece of that sponge! That thing is pretty sweet looking! As far as the tank how does that skimmer work for you? You thought about the sapphire skimmers that are mode for the jbj's? Mine seems to work pretty good for being such a small skimmer. you just got to drain the cup pretty often. Your tank is awesome. i have the 24gl with the hqi as well. hopefully mine will look like yours someday!!!!


Jay. What skimmer do you have in yours?

 

[badbread]

I have a modified Frankenstein of a skimmer in mine. Basically took the bottom end cap off a Biocube skimmer, stuck it on a gravel sucking tube hooked up two airpumps to it and used the JBJ collection cup. It does a decent job, runs wet but it pulls out a fair amount of gunk.

The stock JBJ skimmer is on my Biocube at the moment, not sure if it does a better job skimming vs. the Frankenstein as the bio load in the Biocube is much higher than in the JBJ. I plan on getting a Tunze 9002 for the JBJ sometime after Christmas I hope.

 

[under_water_ninja]

I heard the Tunze are pretty good! hence the price!

 

[Otakuthugster]

Hrmmm...I'd love a new skimmer, but the holidays wiped out all my cash reserves. Maybe next year.

newreefnut, what boxing school do you go to? Do you know a guy named Kris Cabebe?

 

[Otakuthugster]

12/21/08
Sponge Polyps:

Here are some of the polyps I was talking about. Never seen any of these on a sponge before. This is the second time I've seen 'em out since I've brought it home a couple weeks ago. Kinda looks like the corals in the Spongebob cartoons:

 

[70Cuda]

that is one nice sponge. very unusual.

 

[Lyn]

Do sponges have polyps?

 

[chem-e]

My friend picked up one of these the last time we were at Oceans Treasure. It was really nice looking and he got a really nice sized branch. I was always curious how well it did in his tank, but I haven't asked about it yet, so maybe now I'll check.

How long have you had yours OtakuThugster?

 

[A_Lee]

I didn't know sponges had polyps

 

[Otakuthugster]

[quote author=chem-e link=topic=5407.msg71133#msg71133 date=1229977606]
My friend picked up one of these the last time we were at Oceans Treasure. It was really nice looking and he got a really nice sized branch. I was always curious how well it did in his tank, but I haven't asked about it yet, so maybe now I'll check.

How long have you had yours OtakuThugster?
[/quote]

I got mine during the last general members meeting at Aquarium Showroom, a couple weeks ago. It's starting growing a lil' algae on it, but the Angelfish has done a good job at cleaning it. Overall, so far so good ***crossing fingers***. The polyps have been coming out a bit more now. I've been feeding it DT's, Oyster & Rotifeast. I also took extreme care not exposing it to any air.

 

[Otakuthugster]

[quote author=A_Lee link=topic=5407.msg71142#msg71142 date=1229978846]
I didn't know sponges had polyps
[/quote]

Yeah, the guy at Aquarium Showroom said it had some. I didn't know what he was talking about 'til I saw it in person. I'm guessing it might be another symbiotic type of relationship. It's extremely cool, tho'.

 

[alve]

You are right about that, that thing looks cool! I wonder how hardy it is. Guess only time will tell.

 

[Otakuthugster]

Yeah, I've had pretty good luck with sponges in my frag tank, but that's been up for >10 years. Sponges, in general, seem to like really dark areas too. I don't wanna put this one in a dark crevice, tho', so hopefully the algae won't smother this one.

 

[Lyn]

So.. the orange part is a sponge, but the white "icing" part with polyps is a symbiotic coral?

Well, what ever it is, it is really amazing and beautiful.

 

[zambavi]

Sweet Tank! I'm lovin it. I've been dissatisfied with my own 29g nano and yours has given me inspiration to change up what I'm doing. First I'll have to do a mod and add a MH. Then some reaquascaping to allow for better coral placement. Thanks for the inspiration.

 

[Otakuthugster]

[quote author=Lyn link=topic=5407.msg71414#msg71414 date=1230154355]
So.. the orange part is a sponge, but the white "icing" part with polyps is a symbiotic coral?

Well, what ever it is, it is really amazing and beautiful.
[/quote]

Yeah, bingo, the polyps only come out of the white part. I'm only guessing it's a symbiotic relationship, tho' - I'm not entirely sure. I can't find anything about this thing on the net, so I'm just feeding it whatever to get the polyps to come out more.

 

[Otakuthugster]

[quote author=zambavi link=topic=5407.msg71434#msg71434 date=1230160738]
Sweet Tank! I'm lovin it. I've been dissatisfied with my own 29g nano and yours has given me inspiration to change up what I'm doing. First I'll have to do a mod and add a MH. Then some reaquascaping to allow for better coral placement. Thanks for the inspiration.
[/quote]

Yeah, no prob. Thanks for the compliment too.

Yeah, definitely got some metal halides. It pretty much frees you up to get most corals. I'd recommend getting a chiller, tho', especially if you have a 29 gallon. The light can pump the temp up pretty high. During our recent heat streaks over the summer, it was hard bringing the temp back to acceptable. Each day that passed added additional heat, eventually making it 85-86 degrees one day. I had no choice but to fork over the cash for the chiller.

 

[zambavi]

For certain on the chiller. I don't have the MH yet and temp is already an issue in this tank with the current lighting. I think i'm going to add an ATO as well to help keep the salinity consistent here. From a cold dark tank of fresh RO/DI it should help keep the temp down a little also.

 

[Otakuthugster]

1/17/09:
New Equipment/Top Down Shots





So I did a major repositioning of some of my corals, pissing 'em off in the process. Overall, I think it looks almost the same as it did before, which sucks even more (should'a just left it the way it was). I also went to town on the structure support, reinforcing all the unstable rocks and corals with that Mighty Putty lookin' stuff (damn hermit crabs be knocking everything over like it wasn't worth hella expensive).

On the plus side, as you can see from the second pic, I recently replaced my Hydor Koralia 1 for a Vortec MP20 (shown on the right), which forced me to move more corals around even more since they were ~1-2" from the Vortec output. Definite pluses: no more dead spots in my aquarium, the wave thingy's pretty tight to watch (albeit not as functional as the reef crest mode), and feed/sleep modes. Downsides: it's an eyesore in a small tank, when comparing it to the pics and vids I've seen in bigger aquariums, and it stirs up quite a bit of sediment when on full blast. Regardless, I like it.

 

[Lyn]

I am quite amazed you got all of that in there, and left space around all the glass for the magnet cleaner! Not an easy feat. How long did it take you?