monkiboy December 14, 2013 Share December 14, 2013 (edited) a lot of really pretty goodies alan. and that nem has at least doubled if not tripled in size from when you got it as a wee little thing. awesome work! Edited December 14, 2013 by monkiboy Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM December 14, 2013 Author Share December 14, 2013 Thanks, Marco. I thought about offering it to you as a partial payment/trade-in for one of your really pretty ones to see if you could get some more color out of it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkiboy December 14, 2013 Share December 14, 2013 Thanks, Marco. I thought about offering it to you as a partial payment/trade-in for one of your really pretty ones to see if you could get some more color out of it. you're doing an awesome job with it and it looks to be gaining some awesome coloration in your system and under your lights. i'm trying to focus more on treatment and qt of fish now and developing that new system. you going to be picking up new frags of fish at the january meeting or are you all settled with livestock for now ya think? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM December 14, 2013 Author Share December 14, 2013 you going to be picking up new frags of fish at the january meeting or are you all settled with livestock for now ya think? No new fish, probably. The only other fish I want in the tank is a mandarin. I have piles of pods in the sump, but am not quite ready to buy one. Actually I might also want a goby to go with my vanished but still audible pistol shrimp, and i would love a tailspot or bicolor blenny because they are apparently fun guys to watch. Possibly some new frags depending on what is offered. I am also in the market for some magic goop to make these colored sticks grow faster. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHSublime December 14, 2013 Share December 14, 2013 I am also in the market for some magic goop to make these colored sticks grow faster. When you find it lmk please! Tank looks great, Alan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM January 3, 2014 Author Share January 3, 2014 (edited) When you find it lmk please! Tank looks great, Alan. Well, I don't know if it's magic, but I will say that on the ORA Frogskin I got from Graham and the staghorn I got from chucelli I never saw any polyps before. I have seen some growth, and it isn't losing flesh or anything, but I never saw any polyps poking out of the corallites.... until adding TLF Acropower I got as an inexpensive amino acid source from QR. I dumped in 5ml of this stuff into the sump in the afternoon when the lights had been running all day and I can see heads poking out. It was really interesting to see. Not sure what that means for overall health or growth, but it seems like a good thing. Also, as I posted on Isaac's aiptasia thread, I just have one tiny one left that I'll leave in for now to see if anyone munches on it. Plus my phosphates are down to 0.16 on the Red Sea test kits after running GFO for a bit. The GFO actually shut itself off because I had the ball valve on the manifold cracked such a small amount that it must have clogged. I reopened it and will test again in the morning tomorrow. So the tl;dr version is that everything's coming up Milhouse. Edited January 3, 2014 by AlanM Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHSublime January 3, 2014 Share January 3, 2014 Everything's coming up Millhouse! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM January 4, 2014 Author Share January 4, 2014 Clownfish (from QR and MS), nem (from QR), hammer (from IC), and frogspawn (from ERC) all doing well. The clowns just started loving on the nem today. They ignored it in favor of the hammer coral until now. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHSublime January 4, 2014 Share January 4, 2014 That's pretty exciting stuff! Tank looks really good, Alan. Every time you post up things look a littler bigger and brighter. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM January 4, 2014 Author Share January 4, 2014 Thanks, Isaac. It actually is brighter at the moment. I started using carbon and floss last night and the water looks sparkly clear. Watching for bleaching now, heh. Couple more of my favorite recent pictures of the nice zoas I've gotten. These were two tiny frags from ERC that were the first things I snuck into my tank while it was still cycling. They got huge, and I like the colors. Nothing fancy. Also visible is the hermit shell discard pile. For some reason they all get left in the same spot. These zoas are nicer than those first one, I think too. Huge purple ones from BRK that I won in an auction for basically nothing. There are lots more of them now. Also some fancy ones that got included for like $5 ($1/polyp) in the reefs2go order of pods I did a while ago. They are growing like crazy but staying little. I think they're called candy apple? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM January 18, 2014 Author Share January 18, 2014 Tort from ridetheducati Various stuff to show growth. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
smallreef January 18, 2014 Share January 18, 2014 Its looking really good! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pizzaguy January 19, 2014 Share January 19, 2014 Very nice alan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Orion January 19, 2014 Share January 19, 2014 Looks great Alan. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM January 29, 2014 Author Share January 29, 2014 Thanks for the encouragement. I got lots of new frags at the last meeting. Somehow I ended up with 4 different new mille's going in. I have ridetheducati to thank for a clear explanation of how to attach frags to rocks which seems to work well for me and doesn't end up with glue all over. I did get super glue gel all over my mouth this time (was holding the lid in my teeth and the tube and frag in two hands and tried to put the lid on, but failed), but my fingers were pretty clear of it. In other news. My PO4 is creeping back up after bottoming out at 0.05. It's up to 0.12 now. I added some HC GFO that Orion gave me at the meeting (Thanks!) which was really different from the other stuff I used briefly. It was orange in the jar but once it was rinsed is basically black. The other stuff stayed orange. I've also been increasing the light slowly and extending the "high noon" portion of the light cycle which I started out at 30 minutes and is now 2 hours. It seems like the frags I had have really started growing since increasing the light because I've had to turn my alk doser up from 30 seconds per hour to 40 and now to 45. I'm trying to keep alk right at 3.2 meq/l which comes out to 9dkh. In the process of dumping lots more energy into the tank with still elevated levels of PO4 I'm getting some unwanted growth in the sand and on the glass. I need to do a glass scrub every 2 days and have a large patch of what I think is red cyanobacteria in a large open spot of sand that maybe could get a bit better flow. However, my tiger-tail sea cucumber, being the boss that he is, goes after it as soon as it appears. It looks like a big patch of purple in this photo, but you can see him going to town on it this morning. It mostly was gone overnight. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHSublime January 29, 2014 Share January 29, 2014 How about a FTS for us? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM January 29, 2014 Author Share January 29, 2014 How about a FTS for us? Sure, haha, rocks with little frag fingers stuck to it. Not too much changed yet. Hoping a good few months of nutrient export and powerful lights kick things up a notch. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BowieReefer84 January 29, 2014 Share January 29, 2014 Coral growth is so exponential. One month to the next you won't notice much, then a year down the road it will be like WOW! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 15, 2014 Author Share February 15, 2014 New FTS. Silly cloudy at the moment because I was doing maintenance on the sump and vacuuming lots of stuff out. It stirs up the sediment when I do that. The interesting thing is that the coral polyps really come out when all of the doodoo is rolling around in the system. This shot shows the cabinets that are all done around the tank. All from ikea. And here is the current frankensump with two levels. The equipment is mostly on the top and the water up there comes from feeds to the skimmer and GFO reactor and carbon reactor all fed by a manifold off the return. The two brutes have saltwater and DI water. The bottom main sump has the drains and a large center section which grows lots of chaeto and hair algae and also traps lots of detritus. Rob (zygote2k)'s old sweater box of DSB is in that one, but it's covered in algae now, heh. It's like a big ATS which I vacuum from time to time. Eventually I'll probably remove it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BowieReefer84 February 15, 2014 Share February 15, 2014 Looking good. Make sure that flame angel doesn't nip your sps. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 15, 2014 Author Share February 15, 2014 Looking good. Make sure that flame angel doesn't nip your sps. He doesn't seem to care about the SPS. He's too busy chasing the other fish around, heh. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YHSublime February 15, 2014 Share February 15, 2014 Really reminding me of how much I dig your aquascape. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
monkiboy February 15, 2014 Share February 15, 2014 thanks for the photo update. i'm digging the minimal rockwork as well and am curious how colonies began to form and grow out within the space. keep the photos coming! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AlanM February 15, 2014 Author Share February 15, 2014 By the way, I took Tom's advice and went to Michaels to get some new hermit crab homes. They went to town trying them on. This guy cracks me up lugging this big shell around. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
howaboutme February 16, 2014 Share February 16, 2014 Looks nice, Alan! I agree, the rockwork looks good. I bet it'll look super when the corals grow out! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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