taking a new direction

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eric b 125

Guest
good stuff this morning!
ammonia: 0
trite: 0.25
trate: 20
i'm mixing up an 8 gallon w/c now that i will do later today. guess i'll be mixing up a larger w/c too, for tomorrow when i re-aquascape.
 
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eric b 125

Guest
here is my ato station as it sits right now:

i never got around to painting it or anything, plus as you can see, there is like 2' of wasted space where i have a timer and a mess of cords. not only can i not see through this side of the tank, i cant mag-float it either, which is okay for the snails i guess. my plan is to take some measurements and draw up something on graph paper; i downloaded sketch-up but dont have the patience to learn it and graph paper has always worked just fine for me. i'd like to have the trash can on the floor and a small cabinet for the switches. my ballasts and vortech backup battery are in my stand next to my sump and i will hang them somewhere on this new cabinet to free up space in my stand for my CA reactor.
 
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eric b 125

Guest
i didnt do one yet. i was going to wait for ammonia and nitrite to be undetectable and then do it.
 
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eric b 125

Guest
i realize my previous post read like i was just going to do this w/c and assume that everything would be fine for working on my tank tomorrow- but that isnt my style. i'm mixing the water changes today and if the chemistry permits, i will re aquascape my tank tomorrow. if things aren't right then i'm certainly not going to stress my system and risk the health of fish/ corals/ etc..
 
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eric b 125

Guest
last night i tested the water and ammonia and nitrite were undetectable so i did an 8 gallon water change. this morning, all three were undetectable, so do you guys think i can use this rock today?
 
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eric b 125

Guest
my thinking was that i didnt want to toss out 8 gallons of saltwater. i premixed 2 buckets just in case ammonia got too high because i've read that rock that is exposed to too high ammonia levels during the cycle are more prone to algae outbreaks- the last time i cycled a single piece of rock this was, in fact, the case. i already had a 33 gallon trash can ready for a water change and didnt want to have to fill up two more buckets just to make sure that i'm taking out the same amount of water that i'm putting in for the water change to my tank. also, whatever rock i didnt use for the new aquascape was going into that garbage can so i figured that a w/c wouldn't hurt.
 
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eric b 125

Guest
so i got everything moved last night. this might be my favorite aquascape yet. i stuck with the two island look but i was able to leave a lot of flat shelves for future coral placement. it was a pain scraping off all the coraline from the walls of the tank, but hopefully that will help seed the new rock i put in. i got rid of 3 large pj cardinals and an engineer goby. those fish no longer were of interest to me and the engineer was getting to a size that could have been problematic for my rock structures. i also found a ton of viable frags throughout my rockwork so i pulled some small rocks from my fuge and attached the frags with epoxy. i'm hoping they continue to grow. i took a bunch of pics which i will post later.
 
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eric b 125

Guest
heres a before shot:

Before Left

Before Middle

Before Right
 
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eric b 125

Guest

snail w/ colt coral on shell:

frags for 30B:


pieces of found corals epoxied to rocks:
 
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eric b 125

Guest
yeah, all the softies are on smaller rocks and arent things that will spread like the colt coral i had before. as far as softies goes, i still have two colonies (one brown, one green) of sinularia, a devils finger, and a toadstool. i also have a blue ridge coral that is technically a soft coral. i'm still working on picking out all of the colt coral that spread like crazy as well as some stray mushroom polyps. (in the sand bed i have two zoa frags, a ricordia, gsp, and some green thing that i cant ID)
as far as lps i have a torch coral tucked away on the side, a closed green brain, and a pagoda cup.
as i start getting more sps and as the sps that i do have grows-in, i will either move or get rid of the softies all together. i like the movement they add and like i said, they dont frag themselves 10X/day like that one colt.
 
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