roni

Looks great!

Sorry about the fish issues. If you need, I should be able to frag off some shortcake for you in a couple months, assuming things continue to slowly grow

Nice growth! That acro looks similar to a tricolor valida. Is the encrusting piece the rainbow monti? That stuff is beautiful but watch the area as in my experience it'll grow over anything. I have a patch in my softie tank and put rocks with coral on it to keep it contained

I am in the same boat as you. Definitely not a ton of growth but I think our systems are similar age. I think it really takes until the tank is about a year old for things to take off.. Are you getting coralline but just cleaning it off regularly? Your rock work is great... Almost like the freshwater Iwagumi layouts

That's some impressive torch growth! I'm surprised you don't have more issues with sweepers/stinging. I've got most of my euphyllia clustered together but even then I've had to move things around to keep from stinging as the tentacles extend out further.

Tank looks good! I finally got some pink skunks after wanting them for 20 years. They are great fish. You still breeding anything?

That tank looked great, and I'm with you on digis being nice. I have forest fire digi, green stylo, red dragon, yellow porites, pink pocillipora, mint pavona, rainbow nasuta, pink birdsnest, tyree purple dragon eyes, starburst cap and the lazy's blue zing birdsnest outside of some that you mentioned. Lots of things are still in the mini colony stage so not necessarily ready to frag yet. Most of them are on my "old school" island in the center of the tank. I'm at the stage where I don't really have any space for more sticks without replacing pieces and my plan will actually be to see what grows well and then get rid of pieces that either don't thrive or don't fit the aesthetic over time. I'm hoping to have the majority of the colonies in the 8-10" plus range.

Thanks, those two imperators were playing so well with each other that I briefly entertained the idea of grabbing both but that much long term bioload may be too much. Haha, bring over some bbq and come check out the tank. then you'll get all the benefit without the hassle. If all goes well, I'll hopefully have a regal angel and moorish join the copperband soon downstairs. The plan would be to continue to fatten them up and add the imperator and those three fish at the same time. At that point I'll probably be done with big fish and other then maybe adding some anthias and other small fish, will be stocked with fish. Right now feeding time is a little crazy. Despite being fed 4 times per day with the plank and then 3-4 times with frozen and flake, they are constantly stalking me whenever I pass by the tank. Also, have had crazy amounts of alk demand recently. Have turned up the feed from the deltec and also dosed some biocalcium to get the alk up a little. I run a little lower then most at 7 so there isn't much margin for error and I get antsy when it starts to dip below 6.

that rock scape looks good! I definitely put it together well and you were right that you would have an insta reef. Did you move over some sand/rock from your system to mix in with the dry? I'm a big fan of the old school SPS. I think they tolerate a lot more in terms of mistakes/fluctuations and at least personally, I find them more visually pleasing under the 14-20K spectrum I'm used to. You should have told me you were doing that when you were over, I have most of those I've also had a surge in demand, to where I was wondering if my kalkreactor or ca reactor weren't working. However, slowly adjusting daily I think I'm meeting demand again. Hopefully this portends more growth though we'll see.

Man, so sorry to see this! chemiclean is generally considered relatively safe but clearly not in every case. Glad you were able to salvage some things. I think LPS/softie tanks are severely underrated in terms of color and movement. I do have some hardy sps you are welcome to if you decide to try again. I had a similar issue but with Vibrant. Not quite as bad but pretty rough and set off a months long battle with dinos.

So, I really like the Trident. Easy to setup and it's been nice to get the measurements and watch the trends without having to manually check. Discovered that my Magnesium was higher then I had thought and the low reading was due to an expired test kit. Confirmed the higher reading with a new test kit. I would have expected Mg to be a little lower since I dose kalk in addition to the calcium reactor and it should be a little unbalanced. However, have been adding the tropic marin biomagnesium. I'll see where the number settles at and then decide if i want to dose in the future. Picked up some berghia nudibranchs for the soft coral/zoa tank and an aiptasia eating filefish for the waterbox. I've noticed more in hard to reach places. Otherwise, have an imperator going through QT at reefescape. It's a perfect small specimen. I also have a small copperband that's getting fattened up and conditioned to add at the same time, hopefully. Still looking for a few fish to complete the fish stocking. And a quick night time shot of the flame hawk in one of his favorite perches

I love my plank. kudos to avastmarine for making these types of game changing inventions. One thing I noticed is that because i feed a decent amount of small pellets and other finer foods...i have cleaning the barrel separately on my tasks list. I had a little clogging and overflow, which spilled over the tank after about 2 months so just something to watch for.

Sounds like it, though the clam nipping is a bit odd. Maybe the foxface thinks it's a treat that you put in for it or there is some algae on the mantle that is appealing?

Thanks, why did you have to move so far away!

Yeah, I can't agree more here. I had a long battle with dinos and ultimately it was following this advice from @jhOU that helped. I regularly still dose phytoplankton, though I have pretty much stopped dosing extra bacteria these days. That's fantastic that you were able to get rock that way. I miss the days of walt smith Fiji rock with corals still growing on it. My last tank was dry start and it's the first time I've ever had significant problems with algae.

Hopefully here this weekend. I was initially hesitant but now very excited. Hopefully it helps me have one iota of the success you've had! I love ricordia and having so many varieties is pretty exciting. Very thankful to pick up this rock.

looking good! i may need to get some of the gsp from you next time i see you. that might be a great back covering in the kids' softie tank instead of scraping coralline.

Sorry about the trach...that really sucks. The rest of the tank looks really good and sometimes things die for inexplicable reasons. There are other times where I wonder about the recovery ability of our corals. I had a cyanaria that was twice been badly stung by another coral falling into it in the last 6 months. I seems to die and then recover almost immediately. How are you keeping the zoas from completely taking over and overgrowing the sps or other zoas? I've found that when I have 2 colonies next to each other, the faster growing (less expensive) one dominates.

Saturday photo dump I also had a little issue with alk after thinking it was rock solid. After having to spend time correcting and then overcorrecting, I bit the bullet and ordered a Trident. Hopefully this will make monitoring a little easier. Still waiting on a few more fish and slowly moving zoas over to the other tank.

Oh man, I'm sorry about the trach. The issue with the doser is why I've become almost obsessive about double checking whenever I mess with electronics but at the same time, not being able to get to something easily makes that harder. The other thing I now do is any "preventative maintenance" on my system before a trip is done at least 3-4 days before, as that's always when I end up messing with something I don't normally mess with and cause a problem. That hammer looks really nice! It's still amazing how much you pack into such a small space. I'm already regretting how close some of the corals in my tanks are as they are starting to grow close. I can't imagine trying to navigate that in a smaller volume.

Very cool, thanks for sharing!

Had a chance to swing by Reef escape. They had another one but it had just come in. Very pretty fish so will see how it does through qt. You get your plank set up yet? I find it gamechanging in terms of increasing frequency of food and overall health of the system, imo.

That's fantastic! Good to see it doing better and I agree with the targeted feedings. For a while I was consistent about doing this Saturday night after lights were off and my lps definitely benefited. I need to go back to it based on how great your trachy looks!

Yeah, though given how long Covid has gone, it's sometimes hard to remember what anyone looks like! Hopefully we'll be able to have a meeting in person sometime in the near future. I'm bummed that I'm missing the March one due to work. I shot Dave a message. Hadn't realized he'd taken over as manager there. Thanks for the heads up!

Oh, that's good to know. I'll have to swing by sometime. They are relatively close to me.