Roc's 1st Big reef

[Roc]

thanks guys, it sure was rough 1st getting monti eating nudis, then having the tank break and having to completely drain it all. only to find out I had been mixing my supliments and salinity wrong for 2 years (which explained the corals always dying shortly after going in the tank).

I still have no idea if I can keep Bridsnests, put I am confident that if I can;t the reason isn't my peramiters

 

[A_Lee]

If your acro's are doing fine (judging by your pink millepora, they're doing great), I don't see why any birdsnest would die.

 

[Roc]

I know, however I have never been able to keep one alive. I think I may have a fish,crab, shrimp that picks at them.....

 

[Roc]

Well I haven't updated for a long time so here we go


Here is the tank on 11-29-09

After that pic I had a crash (which most of you know) because my skimmer pump died and some how burnt out the main powerstrip leaving my tank without a return pump, skimmer, any powerheads in the display, heaters during the nighttime. When I awoke and found it low, I rigged up some stuff for the return pump, heater and powerheads, however the skimmer didn't work and I couldn't hook up the lights.

When I came home from work that night I found the death was growing, i tried to borrow a pump but that one happened to have a broken shaft so I was still skimmerless, I did get the lights worjing but my timers were broken so I could only turn em on when I was home.

The next day I got a new pump and got the skimmer working, however at this point dying corals had plututed the water pretty bad and I did a 35 gallon water change.


here are some pics duing this time

[/quote]

So that was that, now it's been a couple of weeks, what died is gone and removed from the tank, and the color is starting to come back to what had lived but bleached out, turned grey or brown.

Here are some pics of the fish (which never seem to suffer that much during the crash...) and some LPS corals which faired well, the remaining Coral pics will come in a couple of weeks when some more stuff comes back

 

[bookfish]

Well, the tank doesn't look that bad. And stop feeding those sea cows so much or I'm coming over to fry em up! Yum recycled Sea Veggies!
Tangs are so pretty when they're not starved.

 

[Roc]

yea these tangs sure as hell ain't straving, they eat so much the Tennenti Tang has caught up to the yellow and the blue hippo.................

 

[Roc]

Well, Xmas came and went and I had nowhere near the amount of money I needed to switch out to MH. not that I won't in the future but I just couldn' t swing it. With that said I did need more light so I started looking around. Call it fate, call it luck, but I found a 4x54 watt HO T5 fixture on ebay NEW for 25.00 plus shipping which was about anohter 25.00. The guy that sold it must have made a mistake,when he listed it cuz I swa his other auctions and even the one I got saud he sells them starting at 90.00 (which is still a good deal) but this one was listed at 25.00 after 1 bid and I won......LOL.

It's not the best light going and I know that, but it will help quite a bit with spead in my tank and it's almost doubling what I had in terms of bulbs (I will now have 9 bulbs). The fact is even if the ballests burnt out I could replace them with good ones and still be way below what it woulda cost me for a new fixture.

I am gonna wait for it to show up and then get some new bulbs, it said it came with 2 03 actinic and 2 12000k bulbs, so I wanta see what they look like when everything is on. I'm thinking of doing a bulb line up that is something like

3 blue plus (need to buy)
2 12000k aquablue special 9need to buy)
1 6500k
2 pure actinic
1 10000k ultrasun

I also spent the day cleaning off the back wall of my tank, so some new pics will be coming soon.

the total losses were:

ORA green millie
ORA Stubbard Stag colony
Marshall Island Lavender colony
the Marc the Shark arco colony
Rose millie colony
Bali Green Slimer
Alfred's Mariclutured Arco
Jim's un-named Acro
ORA Rascos blue
Incrediable hulk arco colony
Orange Digi
Surf and turf
Oragen tort


Anyone that has these and won't mind parting with a frag, I would love to try and start over.....

 

[bookfish]

That's the problem with me not being into names, I have given out dozens of unnamed acro frags. But if you point it out, you're welcome to a fresh piece. It won't be all clean and white like yours though. LOL

 

[Roc]

That's the problem with me not being into names, I have given out dozens of unnamed acro frags. But if you point it out, you're welcome to a fresh piece. It won't be all clean and white like yours though. LOL

It was a purple base with tan polyps. I got it the same time as when you gave me the unnamed stag, and the green Bridsnest (both of which are still alive)

 

[Roc]

I got my new light hooked up and replaced the bulbs

Old look with 2 aquablue special, 2 blue +, 1 pure actinic

And here it is with 2 Aquablue Special, 3 blue +, 2 pure actinic, 1 fuji purple, 1 5500K

I like it a lot more, and the close up shots will show how much pop there is....

 

[Roc]

Well lets see some recovery pics Imus

You got it

this may show it the best

right after crash

last week

now for some random shots

 

[melly mel]

Nice tank you got there, Glad to see the survivors are getting better!

 

[Roc]

Thanks Rommel

 

[Roc]

So this update I thought I would do a little more then usual. For each new tank shot I will also try to post a pic of what the coral/ tank looked like when I frist got it or started it.


FTS in May 2008

FTS Feb 2010

Now for some corals

Sunset monti from NCRC DBTC program

And here it is now after it has already been returned 2 times with larger frags then I was given

Red Planet in Jan 2009

Red Planet Feb 2010

Grenn/purple acan lord Jan 2009

Green/Purple Acan lord Feb 2010

Rainbow Acan in June 2009

Rainbow acan in Feb 2010

New Aquadics chalice from BAR DBTC program in Jan 2009

Here it is Feb 2010 after returning 2 frags to thier program

Here is my moon favia in July 2009

Here it is in Feb 2010

Rainbow acans from Craig in July 2009

Here they are in Feb 2010

I got this from Craig and it was blue colored, here it is in May 2009

and here it is Feb 2010

Here is the Prism favia from NCRC DBTC program in Aug 2009

Here it is Feb 2010

Indipandance day in June 2008

And in Feb 2010

Joker palys from BAR DBTC program in Sept 2008

Feb 2010 after returning 3 frags to their program

Random shots

GARF bonsai, Pink cats paw and candy cane

Pick up from Swap

Random Candy Canes

Zoa corner

Waming Watermellons

Tubbs blue grown from 2 heads in June 2009

Clam and Green Bridsnest

Pink stripped Acan lord

Neptunes Fire acan after fragging 8 times

Christmas Favia

Acan lord from Byran at swap

 

[GreshamH]

Nice to see sucha quick turn around from the incident Looking good.

 

[Roc]

Nice to see sucha quick turn around from the incident Looking good.

thanks, I am very happy with how things came back and colored up, testament to weekly water changes

 

[Roc]

Well looking back this tank has passed the 2 year mark, I thought I would take that chance to reflect on what I do differnetly now then I did when I had issues, which leed to crashes, and the general slow life or bad growth rates I used to get.

Water Changes -

I do 20 gallons once a week with Seachem Reef salt, the salt is mixed to 1.026 or 35ppt. The weekly changes also mean that my tank is at 1.026 when I do the change. WC water is also heated to within 2 degrees of main display.

I use a gravel vac to clean the sand bed, and about once a month use a smaller hose to clean the sump of coraline and debis.

Dosing -

I never have mag drops below 1350 so I don't dose mag at all
I use Randys recipe and get my soda ash and cal supliment at our sponser AC
I dose 150ml of both Alk and Cal per day, since I don't currently have a dosing system I just dump it in the return section of my sump, after lights out.

I also add Aquavirto Fuel to my tank once every 3 days (3 inside of the cap fulls), this product has really brought out the colors of my corals, and for the price of under 15.00 it really can't be beat in my opinion.

Feeding -

I switch hard foods every other time and feed every other day, so for instance Mon I will feed pellets and then wed I will feed frozen Mysis.

Frozen food is thawed 1st and that water is thown away.

All hard foods are soaked in Zoe, Selcon and Garlic (which I get at our sponser Vallejo Aquairum) before being given to the tank.

I also feed purple seaweed (2 little fishes brand) everyday, I feed 1 quater of a sheet

Algae control -

I use the WC as a time to suck any nusenace algae off the rocks, I also run a TLF phosban reactor (running GFO from our Sponser Neptunes)to keep any real algae break outs at bay.

The 3 Tangs in the tank all do a great job of cleaning the rocks, and the emerald crabs have done agood job with controling bubble algae which I used to have a great deal of.

Lighting -

I have 2 fixtures over my tank, 1 is a 5 bulb Aquatinics TX5 and the other is a chinese knock off of a nova extreme which is 4 bulbs. All bulbs are 54 watt HO T5's

I run the following bulbs, in the following order, for the following time peroids


Front~ aquatinics fixture
Blue plus (12PM - 6PM)
Blue Plus (11AM - 7PM)
Fiji Pink (12PM - 6PM)
Blue Plus (11AM - 7PM)
Aquablue Special (12PM -6PM)
~Knock off fixture~
Blue Plus (11AM - 7PM)
Pure Actinic (11AM - 7PM)
Aquablue Special (12PM - 6PM)
Blue Plus (12PM - 6PM)
BACK



Fish

I have the following fish and shrimp

Yellow tang
Blue Hippo Tang
Tennenti Tang (favorite fish)
Royal Gamma
Yellow tailed Damsel
Mating Pair of false Percula clowns
Starry Blenny
1 eyed Bi-color Blenny
2 green Chromis
Cleaner shrimp
MONSTER coral banned shrimp (just got a net big enough to get this out)


OK now for some pics

Whole tank and aquascaping shots

Some of the fish

And some coral shots

 

[Roc]

Man I miss when this tank was fully stocked

 

[Flagg37]

What happened to it?

 

[Roc]

I took it down before I moved, sold off what I didn't give away. I'm about to restart it as a aggressive FOWLR