My First Reef Build Journal - Follow along for the ride wave your hands and scream if I am driving off a cliff :)

[cryptics]

I am going to take the clowns off of Bobby. I am picking them up Saturday morning. I was hoping he was going to keep the tank and told him if he did keep the tank he should keep his fish but it looks like he is going to sell so I am going to get them. If you want the tank you should grab it. He lowered the price and created a package deal. The rock is real nice that I got from the guy. I have two 1.5' x 6'' flat branches. Trying to decide what to do with them. Would look crazy if i grew acans or something over the whole rock.
Good to know about the toadstool. I had read the toadstool needs high light and low flow and thought it closed up in the Antics because the par wasn't good enough . The guy I got it from had a huge one (1' wide 6-7'' high) he had it up at the top of the tank. I have the Blasto up about half way and the war coral around 1/4 way. They both seem to be happy. The war coral stung me little bastard.

 

[cryptics]

Some Pics

 

[meowzer]

Nice stuff....the little splotchs of red (cyano) on your sand....siphon it out with a baster every time you see it.....make sure you have no dead flow spots too

 

[cryptics]

Yeah I know. I am adding about 60lbs of rock tomorrow so was going to get it all at once. PH placement is the bane of my existence

I feel like I change is daily. Nothing seems to get everything. Hopefully with the more rock i can figure it out.

 

[meowzer]

Believe me..I feel your pain I always seem to have a blotch somewhere

no matter how many PH's I have or where I put them LOL

 

[btldreef]

Nice pieces!
Everyone has cyano somewhere, and those that say they don't are either a) lying or b) blind! LOL

 

[cryptics]

I FINALLY added the rock. I put like 20lbs in the refuguim and the rest in the tank. The clowns are arriving tomorrow. Here are some pics of the finished product.

 

[btldreef]

Very nice!
Good luck with the clowns. It looks like Bobby was able to sell off just about everything. Such a shame, I was really hoping he'd keep the tank.

 

[cryptics]

I was over at his house on Saturday (couldn't catch the clowns with the rock still in there) and he was telling me Jerry is giving him his 125 when upgrading in the fall so he will be back in it.
Thank you. Took me like 3 hours. I am bad with design. stick figures are creative for me.

My wife is the one that works in the art world but she has this thing about actually getting sleep before work so not willing to stay up till 1 to guide me

Now i took all the rock out and redid it. I fully expected to find the clown that was missing but no sign. I also added an emerald crab last week and a sally lightfoot this week. The emerald ran into the rock as sson as I put him in never to be seen again. The Sally Lightfoot hung about for an hour then disapeared. I checked each rock and the tank when empty no sign of them. Could one of the urchins be eating them or the coral banded shrimp. Starting to feel like I set up the Bermuda Triangle

 

[1guydude]

LOL give em time and im sure ull see em....beware sallys arent that nice though. They swipe theyre feet at everything

 

[cryptics]

I had an emerald sighting Still no Sally Lightfoot.
I got the clownfish yesterday. They appeared happy and were eating last night. I am a little worried as I didn't feel comfortable doing a proper acclimate. He had to leave them at my house and by the time I got home off the train it was 5 hours later. They had aparently eaten recently and the water was quite dirty. They were looking stressed and I was worried about ammonia so floated the bag for 10 minutes, then added 5ml of my tank water every 5 minutes for 20 more then put them in. They seemed ok with it. I figured the shock would be better than bad ammonia levels in the bag.
Also got a Triton 4 w New Impeller - 900 GPH off of him that I am going to use to overdrive my Aquac ev180 skimmer. Going to take the mag 7 from the skimmer and increase the throughput to the chiller.
Water change tonight and setting up the new pumps and a new PH monitor for the Reefkeeper. The new Phoenix 14k 250w bulbs should be here today also so that I will change after they go out tonight ( I am assuming it is bad to turn off the MH and change the bulbs then turn it back on)

 

[btldreef]

I'm sure your acclimation method was the better way to go. Especially since the water was dirty. These fish were out of someones tank, not the store, I tend to acclimate those fish differently. Clowns are fairly resilient as well so it probably didn't phase them. At least yesterday wasn't a hot day.
I like the Triton pumps, we run one on our 155 as the return, works great!

 

[cryptics]

They seem to be doing good. They are squating in the Frogspawn right now. Did a 15g water change tonight and put in the new bulbs. I got a bunch of LPS off a guy about a week ago and he gave me 2 heads of war coral as a freebie. It now has 4 heads and is looking like a 5th is coming. Is this normal? I am not getting crazy growth out of the tank so this surprised me. So far I think I got a head or two of Duncans grown (so many tenticles who can tell??) and a green nuke Zoas and a Joker Zoas have baby's on the frag now. The war coral doubling in size surprised me.

 

[btldreef]

They can grow quickly when they're happy.

 

[cryptics]

Ok I may have made a mistake. I went to a LFS who has some really nice coral tanks and decided to look for something for my clowns to squat in beside the 2 head frogspawn. The female snaps at the male to make him go away because there wasn't room in the Frogspawn. I ended up getting a large (5'' +) Long Tenticle Plate. I didn't know anything about them The LFS said it would be good for them but my trust of anyone trying to sell me anything is low so i looked it up on an iphone app that a member of a local board wrote. It is actually really good called PocketReef It is relatively new so doesn't have anything. He reviewed the short tenticle plate and says it is really hardy and a good beginner coral. So i bought it assuming it was the same I have since read these are really hard to keep alive. Wish me luck! The clowns love it and looks good in the tank. I probably wouldn't have gotten it though if I knew it was so fragile.
Here are some pics


Zoas are liking the new Phoenix bulbs (not on at the moment) Have two new Joker babies

Happy Father's day to all!

 

[btldreef]

I can't keep plate corals because my goby likes to bury them. Hopefully you have luck with yours, if nothing else, it'll save your frogspawn from being beat on .
The clowns look good.
Did you see Jakef150 is selling those Captain America Palythoas? They're amazing. I got two polyps 2 weeks ago from him, worth every penny. The guy is really nice. He's deaf and uses his wife to interpret for him, which I just find fascinating to watch people communicate through sign language.
That PocketReef is really cool!

 

[cryptics]

Didn't see them. I will have to go look. That is really cool.
The clowns are really happy love PEmysis.
I ended up grabbing 8-9 heads of King Midas the other day for $20. Couldn't believe the guy was selling it.
PocketReef is cool. Written by a guy on MR
Hopefully i will keep it alive just haven't read one success story

 

[btldreef]

I have some more brown palys if you want them, they're just sitting in my refugium, as well as some greens and the neon GSP that I still owe you.

 

[cryptics]

Here is the picture of the plate. The clowns love it

 

[cryptics]

The clowns like the plate so much they were feeding it tonight. They were grabbing mysis and spitting them at the mouth