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ccurnick

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Everything posted by ccurnick

  1. They come attached to really corse crushed coral substrate.
  2. Part one of the redesign complete! It went really smooth and these stax rocks are amazing to use! Opened up a ton of room for more growth.
  3. I’ve had one for a few years as well… craftsmanship is top notch with lots of options in terms of sizes/functions… or you can order a custom one. well worth the money in my opinion.
  4. Ever since I moved my tank from one side of my house to the other….. I hated the aqua scape and how much it turned into just being a big pile of rocks as I couldn’t put it back together correctly…. I thought I was going to be buying a bigger house in the near term, so I held off changing it until I moved and would just upgrade… but with interest rates being 7% that isn’t happening anytime soon ?. So I have decided that I am going to rebuild my entire aquascape with a custom structure, doing about 1/3 of the tank at a time. Its going to take a lot of prep work removing coral colonies, fragging, etc… But I think it will be well worth it. This should open up a lot of space in my tank for more coral growth as well as improve the general flow of tank along with the aesthetics. This should be fun! Utilizing two little fishes STAX rock and Marco rock rubble with epoxy and super glue with a bit of sand thrown in to make it look “natural”. Newest addition that came from dr Mac today! (Its on a rock under the sand)
  5. The Franks F Aptasia came in handy to nuke the remaining pieces I had stuck to rocks ?. All of my new additions to my tank get an inspection with a jewelers loupe (a trick I learned from my rare plant hobby) and a scrub down at a minimum. Corals also then get a dip. Not perfect but it helps and has prevented any issues for me pest wise. Fish get a full QT process. I unfortunately had other obligations on Saturday so I had to leave by about 1 so I didn’t get to see Nikki’s speech.
  6. It was a Hollywood stunner chalice. I removed the entire huge 22” or so colony. I plan to make that back space a bit of a torch garden I think. I also major cut back the green stag and the neon green ninja turtle Tenuis, and removed the ORA frogspawn in the lower left opening up a new rock entirely again. I cut back the tyrees pinky the bear in the middle as well. There’s still a bit of shadowing happening, which is why I added reefbrites to my XR30’s. Its definitely helped, but I plan to move some of the colonies here around a bit to better make use of the space. Just dont want to do too much at once. There’s still a few corals I want to majorly cut back, like the purple haze in the front right, and an unknown rainbow type in the center. The whole rock/coral in the top right is a bit of a mess… so That I think will be my first priority to fix… I cant decide if I am going to just remove the rock and replace it with some better shelf-type rock, or just try and cut it up as much as I can to make some room. Funny you mention a clam though….. I have a new one arriving Wednesday!
  7. Tank was a bit messy due to doing a bunch of maintenance but here it is! not drastically different, but got rid of some corals and cut some back significantly to make some room.
  8. Its been a minute since I have posted here... But going to FragFrest inspired me to update this a bit more... I ended up donating about 400 frags or so to Fragfest, which opened up some much needed space so I could pick up a few new additions. The tank has pretty much been on autopilot for the past 1-2 years, really stable with explosive growth. I finally ended up ordering a calcium reactor last night (DaStaCo) so switching over from 2 part to that will be an adventure. I also have some other minor projects like upgrading my carbon reactor setup, doing away with water changes/my AWC, etc that I will be taking on soon to overhaul the tank a bit. Ill do my best to keep this more updated! I did have a few fish disappear on me out of nowhere, so I also have some new fish additions coming soon! Heres a pre-fragfest FTS: Heres a pic of some of the goodies I got:
  9. Donated several large colonies which opened up some much needed space in my tank so I picked up these beauties from the folks selling stuff…. Just did a bunch of tank maintenance so its a bit dirty atm. Had surgery on Thursday so I couldn’t stick around until the frag giveaway, so Im curious to see what everyone got! (And who got my frags and BTAs!)
  10. I need to do some serious fragging, shadowing is becoming difficult to manage and I have lost a few corals due to it…… But I also dont have space to keep the frags…. I need a new house so I have space for a bigger tank ? Anyone want some softball sized frags at super low prices? ?
  11. Hey everyone! My tank has just been on cruise control and my corals are getting huge. Battling a little hair algae at the moment but I don’t worry about it too much. My coral ALK/CAL intake is actually getting difficult to manage via 2 part dosing, I am considering the switch to a calcium reactor. I just took some quick phone pics but I promise a better photo shoot will come soon.
  12. I have left my tank for over two week at the longest, but I have a fully automated system controlled by an apex. But I will say the most valuable tool that I have for when I leave are wyze cameras. I use two, one that points at my tank, and one that points to my sump. https://www.amazon.com/1080p-Indoor-Monitoring-Camera-MicroSD/dp/B08ZXQG4FX/ref=sr_1_2_sspa?dchild=1&keywords=wyze+camera&qid=1628089276&sr=8-2-spons&psc=1&smid=A1TGUA2LQN6J4H&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUFJRDU0NDE5OU1BWkYmZW5jcnlwdGVkSWQ9QTA2MDU3MDMyRlZJVVdaU0g3RUQ0JmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTAyNTc5MjRUQzI2QUtXN0VCN1Ymd2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9hdGYmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl
  13. Two of quite a few recent additions to the tank: And some random colony photos: Homewrecker: Red Robin... Trying to figure out where I got this one from... Also trying to ID this one... I believe its a strawberry shortcake, but I forget from whom.
  14. Glad to hear the BTA and green slimer are doing well. I hope the yellow tip acro pulls through for you. It's been fairly hardy for me and recovered from points where I thought I completely lost it. If it doesn't make it, I can hook you up with another if you ever pick up frags from me again!
  15. In DC as well, and I travel often.. probably 15 times a year at least for anywhere from 2-20 days. Longest I have gone is about 3 weeks. I have a ton of redundancy and monitoring on my tank (apex, dual redundancy heaters, leak detectors, extra ATO shut off, etc), as well as automation (auto water changes, feeding, ATO, testing, etc) but the biggest savior has been the Wyze wireless cameras (like $20 each) that I have set up that monitor my tank and sump. I do have a reefing friend who I can call in a pinch, but honestly I only needed someone to check on my tank once while I was away, and it was just to reset an apex module (un-plug, plug it back in), and I walked a non-reefing friend through doing it over FaceTime. Another plus is having a way to remotely allow someone into your house. While Im sure hiring a service was fine, and I do have one on hand that I can call in an emergency, but I don't trust people I don't know working on my tank without at least some of my oversight. Im happy to help out if needed.
  16. If you’re looking for new heaters, check out the IM Helio! I used to replace heaters yearly or so. Just got the Helio ones and I’m hoping they last quiet a while haha. Different technology that doesn’t wear out as quickly.
  17. The heater controller does have multiple redundancies built in, along with 3 thermostats in it. But I still keep it plugged into an apex port just in case. I keep everything plugged into my apex where possible.
  18. This new IM Helio heater is fantastic. Keeps my temp within .1 degree. I think you can tell when I switched from the inkbird
  19. Some photos of some colonies I took for a sales post for some frags but I thought everyone here might enjoy them as well.
  20. Been selling a bunch of frags lately, so I decided to treat myself to the new Innovative Marine Helio heater system: https://reefbuilders.com/2020/11/12/ptc-smart-heater-system-from-innovative-marine/ This thing is awesome and packed with a ton of safety features! Was about due to refresh my heaters anyways, and as you can tell I like the fancy gadgets that go along with reefing. I recently switched to an inkbird plugged into my apex for backup, with 2 Finnex titanium heaters that were about 2 years old or so. I hate the inkbird, as it caused a constant 1 degree temp swing. Previously I just had the heaters plugged into my apex for control, which worked great and kept the temperature super stable, but I was worried about wearing out my energy bar from the constant cycling. Reviews from this new system are rock solid and I am excited to see how it works. Comes in a fancy new apple-esq packaging: The heating elements on this thing are super small! Unfortunately like all heaters/controllers, the cords are really small, which unfortunately for me means that it has to remain in my tank cabinet instead of with all my other electronics... Hopefully they make extension cables in the future.
  21. Thank you! I think in all its about 5ft of tubing, I have mine maybe about 18" above and three feet to the side of my sump outside of my stand. The only time the line has clogged is when I moved my tank, other than that I haven't had any issues. I keep the line a few inches off of the bottom of my sump to keep it from sucking up anything that has settled.
  22. Welp.... as soon as I wrote the idea of replumbing my tank... I couldn’t sit still. I am much happier with the results and added a manifold which was huge and enabled me to get rid of the mj1200 hogging up room. Next up is to build a better frag rack when the legs for this rack come in and I get rid of the anemones in the box.
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