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Tang Presents Tour of Tank

treesprite

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treesprite Neptune Reefer

treesprite

(edited)

I re-aquascaped since having all the sps die gave me the opportunity to do so. I wanted to give my fish more opportunities for random swimming patterns, to make the swimming area bigger. That was my goal more than anything else, so the aesthetics, well, any ugly areas will get hidden when I get some new corals growing to replace the dead stuff.  I had less rock in the tank before, since I like open rockwork with a lot of archways to swim under, but I keep rock in the sump & fuge, so I put some of that other rock in the tank and bought a couple pieces as well.

 

Now the tang has double the number of turning options and choices to make (in the video at times it seems he is thinking...), and he looks to be my idea of tang happy when swimming around with this new arrangement. So enjoy his presentation!

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQtt9PouFYM

 

(note: the monti pieces are dead, but I'm hoping for some stray now-invisible polyps that will re-populate so I kept some of the pieces in the tank)

Edited by treesprite
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AlanM Oracle Reefer

AlanM

(edited)

I really like the lots of caves and arches and columns. Seems like this would give you the opportunity to get some more territorial/agressive fish since there will be plenty of places for folks to claim and plenty of places to escape to.

 

Also, dod you stick them together with marco putty?

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treesprite Neptune Reefer

treesprite

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Wow, thanks for the compliments! It will look even better when I can replace the SPS corals I lost (see the dead monti pieces? They are my way of hanging on to hope that at some point some hidden micro polyps are going to sprout a new colony).

 

The tank is a 75g which is 4 feet long. I feel like the re-aquascaping has the tang thinking there's a whole additional foot to it.

 

This is a very cool tang.  He was only $13 from Aquarium One when I got him. He was still really small when I broke my old 75g and had to put ALL my rock and ALL my livestock in a 40 hex, and as small as the tang was then, he went totally berzerk. So I sold him to Gary who said he'd sell him back to me if I wanted him when I got a replacement for my tank. About a year later, after Gary got him feisty and fat, I bought him back and now here he is, the sunshine yellow star of the tank. He has never shown a hint of any parasites, and the tank is hair-algae free (look how fat he is, from picking the tank all day and pigging out on Jan's Food from my hand). His best friend is the fire shrimp.

 

The big arch on the side where that nasty but lovely hammer is, is the Fire Shrimp Tang Wash Facility. I was hoping to catch a servicing on the vid, but the shrimp was too busy day dreaming. (Oh, this rockwork also gave me a safe place to put the hammer - I have a horrible reaction to stings and kept having run-ins not realizing I was brushing the tips with my hand and arm. I had to go to the dr last week because putting my arms all the way in the tank to get out the big structures to scrub them down in buckets with a toothbrush for a few hours, got me hundred of stings all the way up to my armpit. OMG -  all the times I've torn my skin apart from stings and now I find out that within 20 minutes of starting prednisone, all the skin-tearing intensity level of itching  which typically lasts 2 weeks will completely stop. Funny, I put on the form the reason for the visit was euphyllia stings and the doctor asked me if euphyllia was a plant).

 

The other motive for the rockwork change was the addition of a school of 7 firefish who were waiting for me impatiently to get them out of a 10g QT. I didn't want to put them in without tons of lightening fast dart-worthy hiding holes throughout the tank, in case they decide to break up the band. They knew their presence would have stolen the tang's show, so they all hid for the duration of the recording. Adding the school is a bit of a risky endeavor, but they are doing what they would do on the reef, which is hoovering together looking very cool (especially cool when they are next to glass creating a reflection that makes it look like there are 14 of them).  They all will face the same direction in their hoovering - if one turns around, they all turn around. I think the mix of fish species I have will help keep the firefish bonded as a group. They came from BZA and each one was in a separate bag, so I don't know whether or not they came from the same tank which theoretically would have given them a pre-existing familiarity with one another to carry over with them to my tank. Believe me, I did my research and gave a lot of diligent consideration to various factors before deciding to get them. I find myself loving them more than I thought I would. I will get a picture of them up soon, but all the micro bubbles in my tank make the photos look grainy and washed out (I don't mind the micro bubbles, but for pics they are a nuisance).

 

I use Water Weld epoxy to hold the large pieces of rock together; it works better than the stuff sold for aquarium use, but not as well as Aquamend did (no longer available, sad to say). The rocks in the back corners are not epoxied, because if I do it I won't be able to move them if I drop anything in those areas that I want to keep (the good thing about the type of aquascaping is that I can basically reach any spot in the tank if I need to rescue fallen frags or floater mushrooms that get lodged into dark places). Small crossing pieces, like the one with the AOG palys on it, are not epoxied either; these crossing pieces are great places for zoas/paly colonies (I lost some of my zoas along with the SPS corals, like my lovely blues).

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FrankieGee Reefer

FrankieGee

Can you give a newbie any tips for aquascaping?  I have a 90 and have a mountain of rock in it.  I'm not very creative.

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treesprite Neptune Reefer

treesprite

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Can you give a newbie any tips for aquascaping?  I have a 90 and have a mountain of rock in it.  I'm not very creative.

Do you know how many hours of my life have been spent on aquascaping that I then took apart weeks later? Once I spent 5 FIVE hours STRAIGHT with no breaks standing at my old tank to re-do the rockwork. When I was done my feet were blue and fat, and at least a couple fingertips were bleeding. That was for a 45g tank and the dimensions are so crappy, I was playing with that dang rock re-doing parts of it at least once a month for several years.

 

After years of that nonsense, I got the right equipment for corals and learned that once corals grow, they fill in or hide the ugly spots.... it DOESN'T MATTER if everything is perfect or the rocks aren't all the identical type, or if there is epoxy shouting out at me looking ugly - eventually the CORALS will make the tank beautiful!

 

FINALLY I have come to the realization that the task of aquascaping (verb)in a coral reef tank isn't done and then is done. Aquascaping (noun) is not static. It is alive. It grows. It moves. 

 

Every single time you put a coral frag in the tank fixed in a permanent position, you are changing the aquascaping, because jn a coral reef tank, the aquascaping does not end with you. You may lay a foundation, but once you start permanently affixing corals to various places, the corals, if you are successful at growing them as is the reefer's goal, the corals are the ones doing the aquascaping. If you have any mental picture that you want to emulate in how your tank will look, the only power you have over it is to know the needs and growth patterns of corals before you stick them in a permanent location. This means you have to have a good idea of how the corals might be expected to look when grown out, based on the light and flow factors you will be subjecting them to (you must also know those species needs).  And it's not enough to say a coral needs this amount of light or that amount of flow. The corals, once they are in permanent places and growing encrusted on rocks, are going to change the lighting and flow in your tank. If you don't want to be destroying a beautiful grand monti in order to make a new prize frag grow into a tank centerpiece, do not put that monti up high and do not put it on the top of a rock with a result of it encrusting itself there. 

 

What does that have to do with the fish? The corals will control the fishes world too, not just where you place the rocks today.  The corals will create new passages and archways, while causing obstructions to the open passages you create today. They will give the fish new places to explore, pick for food, establish home bases,  set up shrimp cleaning stations, and places to avoid.  Before I had the recent misfortune to lose my sps corals, I had a couple of archways that were formed not by me, but by strategically placed montiporas that grew in the right directions to make it possible for them to do.  I had the beginnings of an outcropping created by a green poccilopora colony that was growing outward from the rock and simultaneously branching upward in a way that seemed odd to me (the other green pocci pieces I had weren't growing in that pattern, because, after all, they were in different places impacted differently by the characteristics of light and flow in those places.

 

I would suggest to avoid making mounds and walls. Give openings two entrances/exits - caves that might make some fish feel secure, might make other fish feel trapped when some chaser gets added to the tank (or visa versa). Create depth. I thought I was doing great with the open rockwork I had, with several open archways for my tang (and facilitated water flow, as well as making rescuing things way easier). But there was not enough of the dimension I wanted my tang to have. I wanted to give the tang more tank area to navigate without getting a longer tank (since doing it isn't an option).  I think I accomplished what I was trying to do - I know it's not perfect, and I hate seeing that epoxy, but any corals I add as I plan and am successful in growing, will change it all anyway.

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SunWyrm Grandmaster Reefer

SunWyrm

I love how the tang looks like he's really telling you all about it. Looks like it really loves the camera.

 

Very nice aquascape!

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sachabballi reef Oracle Reefer

sachabballi reef

Lol at first he looks like he's trying to lose his stalker....then he isnt sure if there's food involved and then he just chills out and is house proud lol

 

 

 

Sent from my DROID RAZR using Tapatalk 2

 

 

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treesprite Neptune Reefer

treesprite

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I thought I was the only OCD rock stacker.

Not a chance! I think we have a lot of them here who are just to lazy to act out the compulsion when the obsession is kicking them in the head.

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surf&turf Oracle Reefer

surf&turf

Not a chance! I think we have a lot of them here who are just to lazy to act out the compulsion when the obsession is kicking them in the head.

 

 

:)

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ohaverd Master Reefer

ohaverd

I wanted to thank you for posting this, its been my "moment of zen" for the last few days during some very long work hours

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