cruddy fts

eek!

feeding time

slowly growing

my favorite of the two

jealous of the cam! want a dlsr so bad. well, my birthday is coming...
nice pictures and cute yasha goby

Looks awesome! I need a new camera lol

I saw this build over on RC and was contemplating doing this for a 20H..yours looks so nice...now u have me really wanting to try this DIY...I did something like this for my FBT's but used coco fiber and mopani wood the frogs love it

Sorry but, thats not an alien eye chalice. Its a chalice though and I think I know where you got it from.

Tanks looks great by the way.

Got it from Mr. Coral. I'm not ordering from them again, I'm having the worst experience dealing with that store. I've been waiting for the "alien eye" to color up but I think you are right. I think I just got screwed.

I recommend using a ton of rock, then using the foam as filler. As in, the wall is completely rock now, but I have a few cracks and I need something to hold it all together, so let's use foam. Otherwise you get a foam wall lol, and not a rock wall. Some like that look, I think it looks very unnatural.

I just got back from Cozumel and had a welcome surprise. My missing yasha is no longer missing! I have no idea where the fish was hiding before, but when I returned from my vacation, both it and my ycg had made their way behind the false wall. There isn't very many places to hide in my tank (or so I thought)...

Before I left I did a lights out day to see if it would help with some cyano I'm battling in the bottom left corner. Only grows on top of the frogspawn branch but I can't be rid of it... didn't really help.

In a weeks time I have seen some incredible growth though. It's nice not looking at the tank for a solid week, when you get back everything looks so much bigger. My dragon soul favia has a noticeable regression since I left though. Not sure what caused that.

Pics up after I get sleep. Any ideas as to what would cause the favia regression?

i really like the colors on this guy....

Thanks, yeah they are beautiful but tend to be very shy.

ive moved my dorm tank twice now (home for christmas back for spring semester) I was wondering how you went about doing your move, what you would change, and what you felt really helped


I put all my rock in a bucket with tank water, individually bagged everything, and removed as much water as possible. Then added everything back with about 1-2 new gallons of water (5.5gallon tank) and it went well both times.

Your tank looks amazing, im jealous of it actually keep up the good work

Thanks, since my rock wall is stuck in the tank I'm kinda stuck when it comes to moving the tank. I prepare new water and get everything in the car I need before I start the process of emptying the tank. I also prepare the new tank location before I move the tank.

I than empty all but a little bit of water out of the tank into a bucket and move the tank and bucket into the car. I cover the tank and buckets to avoid sloshing too much water out and drive. When I arrive I grab the tank set it in it's new home and fill with the new water. I add the old water to top off.

Everything is out of water for the duration (which is usually less than 30 minutes) and stays relatively wet due to water sloshing about. I hate moving it with the rock wall, without the rock wall would be much simpler.

Whenever I move the fish go into hiding for about 2 weeks since I can't get them out of the tank before the move. They live under a rock that is glued in place . So, the first thing I would change is I would have saved the rock wall until after I graduate. Other than that I think everything goes ok.

Home for spring break means more playing with the camera.

Nice rock wall. I also did this in my 10g and I used the less rock more foam method, and I really like it. However I think yours looks extremely good as well, better than mine anyway. I built this tank to take to college next year and just read your thread about moving it with the rock wall and realized it will be very difficult to do :/

Anyway, I think your tank looks great

The tank looks great, how difficult is having a reef in the dorms

Reefer Al: Great wall! I just visited a guys tank (tank was about 1.5 years old) who had a wall with about as much foam to rock as you do and it looked awesome. I think as Coraline covers everything and life starts to grow everywhere you won't be able to tell the difference between rock and foam anyway.

You should be fine moving it. I was doing some thinking about this. For longer trips, what you could do is still put a substantial amount of water into buckets, along with any livestock you can. And either

a: cover with that press and seal wrap (I'ved used that for buckets and it works ok, not great still some leaks but better than lots of splashing)
b: buy a small hand held spray mister from wal-mart for cheap and just mist the wall every so often. Keep the die off to a minimum.

The biggest worry I always had was die off and mini-cycle from stirring up all the sand.


Gerber77: Depends on the roomates. My first year was easy since people really didn't bother the tank, the second year (last semester) was a pain since my roomate kept screwing with the thermostat and the air blew right on the tank. He would get cold and turn the heat on full blast than leave, or vice versa. I would always fear coming back to a dead tank if I was out longer than a day. Fortunately this semester we are renting a house right off campus.

Awww.. dang, you posted this up for me so long ago and I just now saw it. I appreciate your info on moving the tank, I was thinking about getting one of those reptile humidifiers to constantly spray the tank. And I'm really glad that the tank you looked at looked really good. I'm hoping to have a lot of coral growth by this time next year and it will look really full and grown in.

Thanks

took me a while but i made it!

i love it! what a great little 10 gal....


updates? i know your workin on the big un now.

It's still running. Things are growing in. My frogspawn wasn't happy so I moved it just the other day. I'll try and get some pictures up in the coming days. Finals and interviews and graduation stuff going on. Me and my fiance are graduating college, my sister is graduating high school, and my grandparents are here. Not to mention normal chaos that typically happens. This will be a "fun" month

... I'll get some pics!

yikes!

busy busy

take your time.

still looking great

Thanks, here are some quick pics



Thanks!







Need to clean my glass now



nom nom

party!!!

Unfortunately my remaining yasha has not made an appearance in the past few days and I must assume the worst. He was eating fine and looking healthy, than he just stopped coming out for food. I saw the pistol today, but no yasha guarding it...

I take one of those please


What kinda of shrimp is this? Very unique!

Wow this is a really nice 10 gallon! I like the hidden nanos and the stocking has been great! Is that a 150 or 70 W halide? Skim? The yasha pair is very nice as is the sexy party.

They grow soooo slow though


It's a bumblebee shrimp. Very fun, but I haven't found him yet today.



Thanks! It's a 70w Sunpod because I haven't had a chance to finish my led project. No skimming although I do have a hot skimmer that I'm just not using. Thanks, although one yasha is confirmed dead and the remaining mia

Those rics are looking so sweet! I really wish they weren't so expensive. I like the little sexy shrimp too. What kind of macro algae is growing in the center crevice? It makes the whole tank look really nice and grown in. nice bumble bee, and so sorry about your yashas

OMG sexies! I love this tank

I'm not sure about the macro type but it is spreading like mad.

Sexies are fun to take pictures of...












Feed me...

ok



Just covered this with aquamend. I'm going to leave it covered for a month and kill it off for good.



Haven't seen this little guy for a while now, happy to see he is alive!

Food fight!

Playing with the macro lens:

Awesome piece!

Tank looks sweet!

Nice flower macros too!

Thanks! I wish I knew how to make it grow faster. Hasn't really changed since I got it . Just started feeding it regularly and it looks a bit plumper for it, so maybe that is a good sign.

You have a beautiful tank! And those flower macro pics are awesome. It looks like fireworks to me. The big white ones that trail down nearly to the ground.

Thanks! I hadn't seen that before. I like it!

I really love this coral!! And feeding corals is so much fun

hey there midna!

love the new goodie! those flower shots are stunning! cant wait to see what cha do with that new lens for the tank.

hope all is well and ttyl!

Thanks, he seems mad the past few days. Did a water change and I have another on the way. Everything else is fine though



Thanks! I need to start taking more pictures. Been working on finishing my LED lights.

Hmm.. there must be something in the air/water, because my cynaria is mad at me too. It bleached out a lot the other day ... it still eats, but just a whole lot paler. Hoping last nights water change helps.

Hey awesome tank! I was just wondering where you got the bumblebee shrimp from?

I got him from bluezooaquatics.com great store btw.

Well I got flatworms from somewhere.... I tried to use flatworm exit. A good percentage of my flatworms are still alive, all my tiny black ceriths are dead. I haven't seen one my sexies since dosing, and my other sexies appear stunned. They haven't really moved from the spots they were at when the dosing occurred. I tried prodding them and they don't really jump away like they should. I tried to feed them and they don't go to the food .

I have carbon in the tank right now and already did one 50% water change. I'm about to do another. All my corals and other inverts appear fine though. My large astrea snail closed up for a few hours, not even attached to rock, but he re-attached a few hours after the first water change.

I'm not really sure what to do at this point

An update that is not really an update...

I made the mistake of adding gracilaria to the tank a while back, and now it grows out of control. It out competes the cheato. Hopefully when I have some extra money I'll add an emerald crab and fuzzy chiton since they may eat the gracilaria. The only thing the gracilaria is good for is preventing my inverts from going over the false wall. It's rediculous, if I trim the gracilaria on the top by the wall, within 24 hours 50% or more of my inverts are stuck on the equipment side of the tank, and not in the display side....

Flatworms refuse to die, so I have not fed anything. Their population is dwindling, but the sexies are starting to pick on corals and the bumblebee is missing.

Had to remove my favias since something started picking on them and skeleton started showing. They are rehabilitating in another tank.

The only good thing so far, is that I added a small mexican turbo red and it has been demolishing the fuzzy algea that started popping up.

I'm also not happy with how little flow the koralia nanos are adding to my tank. I think I may get rid of them completely and add in some other type of power head in the equipment section. I think that part of my algea issues may be with flow.

Also, one of my strings of white leds doesn't turn on anymore. I can only assume that yet another buckpuck has failed on me. Interestingly, the corals don't seem to mind the missing string of whites with the exception of some newly shadowed zoanthids. And I like the bluer color. I'll reuse the leds on my 20L whenever that happens.

Hopefully this tank will start to turn around soon, I'm quite tempted to just tear it down and and chisel the rocks to get my corals off. The more I think about that idea the more it appeals to me. The rock wall I created looks really good, but seems to make things more difficult.

Loving the rock wall!

Thanks

I had planned on making this big long post yesterday in response to this ^^^, but was really tired all day and never got around to it, so I'll keep this short and sweet.
I understand your frustration with the roadblocks you've been running into, but I think this is a really special and unique tank, and I for one hope you hang in there.
I think you've done some pretty cool stuff with it.
Get rid of the Sexies.
Add a little more flow and get another Turbo if necessary.
Can you use the plastic embroidery screen type stuff to make a screen just above the surface of your rock wall overflow, to prevent your inverts from getting back there?
You could paint it black with Krylon Fusion so it didn't look tacky.
That's all I got for now.
Hang in there.

thanks for the encouragement. I'm thinking about moving the sexies to a much larger tank. Do they host with rose bubble anemones?

Ok, got most of the critters out for now. Took my lights off the tank, I plan on leaving them off for a total of three days.

I am removing the top koralia and replacing it with an outlet from a minijet. I'm also moving the bottom koralia away from the rock wall a little bit. It may end up being more visible now, but hopefully the flow should improve too.

I've done 2 90% water changes and I plan on doing a few more. When I first started doing the water changes, the tank smelled of.... rot? Now it smells as fresh as salt water can. I tried scrubbing the rocks with gracilaria on them with a toothbrush but that stuff is tough.

Also, if possible, I'm going to get rid of the buckpucks and try and run my LEDs straight off the mpja power supply via resistors. I have no idea if this is possible, but the buckpucks are really aggravating and if I can get rid of them I will.

One of my few sps got dragged into a hole by my pistol shrimp, so I have to figure out how to get that out and remounted.

Sigh... this all better work or the tank is getting scrapped.

Sry for not responding to this earlier, I didn't see it.
I honestly don't know, unfortunately.
Mebbe you could post the question on the Sexy Shrimp thread. It was started by Lalani and I think it might be in the Invert Forum.

You could try using tweezers to remove the remaining Macroalgae.
I've used em before to remove pest Macro.

I wish you were closer, I'd take this tank off your hands for you!
At any rate, I wish you luck.
I'm having to go through a lot of the same stuff you are in getting my own system restarted, and I still expect to be working on it for a few more months.

i always get so confused when i open up a tank thread and pictures of flowers stare back at me.

I'll probably try the tweezers. That will have to wait a while though and in the meantime it will all grow back. For now the sexies live in a breeder net in another tank, they seem content for the moment. Hopefully I can get them out soon.

You don't have a tank thread in your sig, and I'm search challenged .



Hehe, if my tank wasn't so @#%@#ed up right now, I'd post some more pictures.