Jon and Maureen's reef thread...finally

[Hilary]

Looking great!

[Leishman]

Looking real nice

[L8 2 RISE]

lookin great as always, I love how the yellow tang is semi-invisible in the pic

[GaryL]

 

Maureen's been asking me to post a full tank shot under actinics, so I gave it a try. There's a few corals on the sand I still need to find more permanant places for. In my tank, I mean, not in yours

 

 

maureen is right for suggesting the FTS. looks great!!!! i love the aquascaping

Edited October 19, 2008 by GaryL

[onux20]

Wow. Looks great.

Ron

Edited October 25, 2008 by onux20

[gastone]

Jon and Maureen,

 

Sorry that I've missed this as I've been incognito for quite some time. Beautiful tank and terrific aquascaping. Let me know when I can come by and check it out in person.

 

Garrett.

[rocko918]

Try getting a yellow coris wrasse to help eat the nudis. I had them for a while and tried every treatment under the sun. What worked for me was isolating the zoas in a q-tank and added a yellow coris wrasse. Only feed him once or twice a week so he is always searching for them. I also would take out each frag and rinse them under straight tap water. Match the temp as best you can and let the tap run right on the frag. I will always have a yellow coris wrasse in my tanks. I rinse most of my new zoa frags under tap water.

[Sugar Magnolia]

^^^ I give my zoa frags a freshwater bath as well. I had a problem with those nudis a few years ago in one of my nanos.

 

Tank looks fantastic!

[MisterTang]

Yeah, I really wish I could've seen the nudi you were talking about at the Bittner's tank tour. Now you've got me all paranoid and inspecting my pieces with a magnifying lens.

 

That tank is looking great. After the way Maureen described your housing situation, your fish may very well be living better than you are

[MLazar]

Jon and Maureen,

 

Sorry that I've missed this as I've been incognito for quite some time. Beautiful tank and terrific aquascaping. Let me know when I can come by and check it out in person.

 

Garrett.

 

Garrett,

 

Would love to have you stop by sometime. Do you still have our phone number? This coming weekend kind of busy, but the following weekend might work. Let us know as we get closer.

 

Great to see you back on the boards. Hope the move went really well and your new place is as awesome as the last!

 

Maureen

 

 

Yeah, I really wish I could've seen the nudi you were talking about at the Bittner's tank tour. Now you've got me all paranoid and inspecting my pieces with a magnifying lens.

 

That tank is looking great. After the way Maureen described your housing situation, your fish may very well be living better than you are

 

 

Thanks for tips everyone, very much appreciated. We'll let you know how things turn out. Yellow Coris Wrasse are one of my favorite fish so I will definitely consider adding to the tank.

 

Doug,

 

Since the housing market will keep us in this house longer I've decided I need to take steps to make me love it more. I've been looking at new flooring for the main floor for almost a year, but haven't had the courage to take the plunge as putting in engineered or real wood (which is my flooring of choice) continues to create additional challenges and scope creep. I need to find a knowledgeable person (not just a sales guy) to talk about heights of cabinets, base boards, whether wood can go over laminate, etc, etc, etc.

 

If I can get past all these hurdles and find flooring at a great price (Lumber Liquidators seems good, but I'm leary of "seconds") and hire folks to install at a reasonable price with Jon and I helping I could like this place. Then its on to replacing the counters in the kitchen, a new sink, and possibly some cabinet changes. See........the project grows, and with the market the way it is I'm scared of putting in more $ than I can get out..................

 

TMI????? Sorry.............. you're still welcome with Jennifer any time you're down this way.

[MKNTRAXX]

Amazing tank!!! I would love to have something like that one day.

 

Also glad to find people with such nice tanks and experience local, as I live in Orange county and frequent Fredericksburg and I just started a nano tank today.

[Leishman]

I think we need an update............

[MLazar]

I think we need an update............

 

 

You're right. We've had a couple of challenges recently but the tank is back on track so we'll work on getting new pictures up soon. Jon's been out of town for a couple of weeks so it needs a little TLC first. (I clean windows, not fish tanks ...................... especially really deep ones).

 

Thanks for thinking about us.............

 

M

[Jon Lazar]

 

After months and months of battling AEFWs and montipora nudibranchs, I can now say without a doubt that our tank is pest-free! We've lost many corals and frags from the stressfull process of removing all acros and montis from the DT and repeatedly treating them with Revive. Also, the QT didn't maintain parameters as well as the DT does, causing further problems. But it's been months since I've seen a nudibranch or AEFW, and I'm confident I'm cured.

 

Now the battle is with nitrates. My previous setup had a 55g tank as a combined frag tank and refugium, and I grew tons of chaeto. This time I wanted a separate refugium so I could have herbivores in the frag tank to help keep the frags clear of nusiance algae. Since the herbivores are likely to eat the chaeto, I need separate tanks. I drilled an old 55g, built and installed a toothed overflow, drilled the tank, and replaced the broken top trim. Unfortunately, this tank split a bottom seam so I still don't have a functional refugium. My nitrate plan includes weekly 50g water changes and is slowly bring the nitrates down, but I still get too much cyano in the DT and some of the sps still aren't quite happy.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[flowerseller]

Looking good Jon!

[lanman]

Looks really nice! Lots of excellent corals and colors.

 

bob

[Boret]

Looking great!!! This coral is fantastic:

 

[L8 2 RISE]

 

Looks great! This isn't a dendro is it?

[Jon Lazar]

Thanks for all the compliments and encouragement. The tank is definitely recovering from the series of plagues it suffered last fall, but isn't quite back to speed. The hair algae has all but vanished, and I'm seeing much less cyano throughout the tank.

 

Boret, that coral is a frag of cyphastrea oculina from Doug Arthur's tank. And the dendro is from reefhunter's tank breakdown.

[Jon Lazar]

My Nikon 35mm f1.8 lens has been on backorder for 8 weeks, and I finally received it today! The higher shutter speed sure makes it easier to freeze the fishes' motion. Here's some of my first fishy shots:

 

 

 

 

 

[Sugar Magnolia]

Fantastic shots!!

[Leishman]

Nice!

[zoozilla]

Awesome shots Jon!

How you liking the Nikon 35mm f1.8 lens so far?

[Jon Lazar]

Awesome shots Jon!

How you liking the Nikon 35mm f1.8 lens so far?

 

Dan,

 

I've only shot a couple of sessions with it (1 reef and 1 portraits), so I'm still learning and can't give a proper review. But considering it's a a Nikkor lens for ~$200, it's AF-S so I can shoot with my D40 body, and it's pretty fast lens...I don't see how you could go wrong. I took some pre-homecoming-dance pictures of my daughter and her friends, and they came out great with no post-processing other than cropping.

 

Jon

[Jon Lazar]

My powder blue tang has become unruly towards the copper banded butterfly, so it was time for an extended time out in the frag tank. I've pulled fish from the display tank several times before by draining the tank and cornering the fish with a Lee's speciman container. This time I wanted to do it different, so I built a fish trap. I went online to find ideas, then shamelessly reverse engineered a trap appropriate for the size of my tank and fish.

 

It took about two hours for the fish to get brave enough to go inside, but once he did I pulled the pin and the door slid shut. Now I just need to modify the trap so it's remote controlled...