My temporary 25 reef thread...(56k careful)

aquaknight

aquaknight

Active Member
As discussed in my 90 thread (here), my parents are moving and I got stuck with their livestock.
Here is the 25, which is setup to hold all the corals that would be lunch in my other tanks. Mostly zoas/palys, meaty LPS, and xenia. The rock is very "dirty" though. My parent bought a lot of the Tampa Bay rock, which has some great hitchhikers, like that awesome yellow sponge, and the brittle star posted below, but man are there a ton of aisptia and majano anemones and some hair algae. I'll be getting 2-3 peppermints and an emerald crab ASAP. The fish in there are a pair of misbar clowns, and an orange stripe Cardinal.
Equipment is a 30" Orbit twin 65watt PC fixture, the bio-wheel setup from my 12 eclipse, and a HOB canister filter (which is thoroughly pissing me off as it shoots a ton of microbubbles). Will be adding a powerhead once all the corals attach. No skimmer, hoping that light feeding and 10gal weekly water changes will be enough. There is a lot of rock. The 25 is quite tall, so we used as many long pieces of LR as possible. If I had to guess a number, that's at least 40lbs. in there. Just a light coating of sand, enough to make the plate happy.
FTS
Banded SerpentStar




 
aquaknight

aquaknight

Active Member
Here is Pièce de résistance....
The molted, possibly Australian favia. Caught my Blueface nipping at it (and the mushrooms), so rearranged some things it to fit. The trumpet is top left now, move one of the big polyp rocks to top left, and added the mushrooms to the bottom right. The favia is of course top right. This is without question, my favorite coral, ever. The colors are truly stunning, an aqua-teal and dark red. The poor Sony Cybershot is washing the pic out pretty bad, but should give you an idea. I think calcium has dropped 50 points since adding the piece
.

 
reefkprz

reefkprz

Active Member
Originally Posted by MaTT B
http:///forum/post/2737750
Looks good. I am 90% sure thats not a serpent star though. Looks more liek a brittle.
it is a brittle star. scientificly there is no distinction between the two. only in the hobby do we differentiate between brittle and serpent start. they are all brittle stars.
 
niskyvaulter

niskyvaulter

Member
Originally Posted by reefkprZ
http:///forum/post/2737833
it is a brittle star. scientificly there is no distinction between the two. only in the hobby do we differentiate between brittle and serpent start. they are all brittle stars.
im not sure, ive never heard that so i looked it up. they are of the same order, Ophiurida, but after that they break off. not all brittles even share the same genus, and the same goes for serpents.
 
aquaknight

aquaknight

Active Member
Update: New Pics! Now I know why everyone loves taking macro shoots, very awesome! Camera is only a Sony Cybershot, so they aren't the best, but for a point and shoot, I'm pretty astounded.
FTS (you know how I do...
)

My large acan. Not sure about this one, it's seemingly growing over itself. Not sure how these guys control themselves when they get big in the wild if this happens?

Plate Coral, nevermind the algae, too much life to keep this tank spotless...


The Brain Coral, my favorite photo in the series...

My favorite coral, the favia. Doing great, you can start to see the depth in each of the little polyps has, compared to the pic in the second post...

Shot from above hoping to capture the real colors this thing has...
And a small toadstool frag that was long abused in my 125 (angel and puffer nipped it a lot).
I did miss the big candy cane. Will grab a pic once the lights turn on.
 
aquaknight

aquaknight

Active Member
I had the mods move this thread into there, wasn't feeling the love in general reef...
Watcha nano guys think of the tank??
Here are some shots of the candy cane


Overhead...
 
subielover

subielover

Active Member
Looks like a sweet set-up, really like your brain, haha that sounds funny
Favia looks cool too, I know the two clowns but what was that other fish in there?
 
aquaknight

aquaknight

Active Member
Thanks for the comments!
subie, the other fish is a Yellow striped (commonly called Orange Striped) Cardinal -- Apogon cyanosoma. Pretty cool fish, eat's the jumbo pellets that are too big for my 4" Naso tang without a problem, and unfortunately, also eats small peppermint shrimp, d'oh!
 
aquaknight

aquaknight

Active Member
So I'm thinking of adding something to the tank, as I'll be making the stores rounds tomorrow. Not sure exactly what I want, so I'm looking for some input. I ditched that horrid idea of the bio-wheel setup. Ending up having to do 2, 5gal WC's, weekly to keep the nitrates undetectable. Just using the HOT Magnum Canister and a sweeping powerhead, WC's are down to a weekly 5gal change, and some Kalk dosing.
I thinking of two things, a pair of banded pipe fish, and/or a clam. There really isn't a tremenous amount of flow, so the pipes would still be happy. There's a ton of pods/life in there for them (about 50# of LR), and I'm sure I could get them to eat brine/prepared.
For the clam, either a smaller Deresa or a Maxima. They would go to the right of candycane, and only be about 7" total from the lights, with only about 3" of water for the light to penetrate.
Definitely wouldn't mind hearing some other suggestions or criticisms about trying the idea mentioned.
 
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