I could do that for a cut of the action

Sooooo......nobody else with a comment about the frags.....Ain't that a slap in da face......

Just wanted to say that you have amazing corals and I plan on being a purchaser when my tank is up and running/established.

I appreciate that....where are you located? I have corals everywhere from Central Florida to far Northern California, Louisville KY to Greater Detroit MI.....Happy Corals spread all over the place!!!!!

I feel the need to comment.

Awesome rack you have there Mitch!

Gotta hand it to ya NRF....you always know how to put a smile on this grizzled old face....

but....BTW....I'm rather proud of my rack as well!

Does this guy look all puffed up and happy with himself? Or what....


and here's my Starry Blennie (named Lennie) hanging out with the Gorg....the fish is over 5 inches long now...


The colors on this Birdsnest have gone nuts on me recently....


and my Bird of Paradise is doing great.....


I'm seeing some growth from my JC's Ancient Earth chalice as well.....


The Pink Panties went into the display tonight.....


My little patch of SunFlowers.....


When I got this guy he was as purple as anything I've ever seen with the neon green mouths (6 mouths) and I put it up high under scorching light....it turned pale tan with the crazy eyes and....well....

after it grew a few more eyes in the intense light I moved it to a shady area of the tank it's just starting to color back up nicely....once colored up well I will chop it up and grow a bunch of nice frags.....

Well....after spending two days working on my old beater van I was driving home tonight and it started losing power....I believe it was overheating but the gage wasn't showing it....anyway, I limped into a drugstore parking lot and popped the hood, only to find FLAMES!!!! I guess it got so hot in there that the oily, greasy old motor just caught fire.....I ran inside and borrowed a Fire Extinguisher, put it out and called my Bride to come get me....now that's about the worst way to start an evening....

With that tragedy aside I was sitting here looking across the room at my sweet reef, with it's filthy glass, and I decided to snap a couple pics of the latest growth spurt....

This is the view of Stoney Island from my seat on the family room couch....


Softey Island....I would love to add another 20 pounds of rock to raise it up high enough to be another SPS area....


An end view.....just for fun.....


And Stoney Island from the other side of the tank....


I love my reef...it really helps my soul when I'm so upset....Now I gotta figure out what to do for transportation....a friend loaned us his son's car (son's away in college) for a short time while I figure out what to do....but I still gotta come up with a more permanent solution.....

Sorry about the recent troubles Mitch.

When all is well in the reef tank, it really is a good place to sit and stare and unwind for a bit.

Hang in there


Tank is a stunner my friend.

Yup, it's like it never stops.....Now I gotta come up with money for another recession-mobile....

I do tend to get into a funk over stuff like that, and then I neglect the reef....which is really stupid, cause, like you said, this is the time to really turn back to the reef for solace....

And...thanks again for the props....

I do the same thing.

I hope you are able to find a good solution to your vehicular dilemna.

Just now I have a saving grace from good friends...My step-daughter's X-boyfriend and his family are still really good friends...the kids are both away in college, and his car is here, for sale....as of right now they have loaned it to me for a little while, and I am going to see if I can buy it....at least I know it has been well cared for, and has given them no real problems over a year +....

I really need to get it together on my tank though, I haven't tested the water in like 3 or 4 weeks....thank goodness for my auto-dosing DIY.....

and the glass is dirty as a monkey-butt

You've been looking at Monkey Butts lately?
Dude, that's a total waste of time.
Work on your Beautiful Tank instead.
Might wanna wash your hands first though.
*ducks*

I gotta smile at that last one....thanks Weetie....

BTW...that's an amazing moth in your avatar.....it took me a minute to figure what it was.....

Clymene Moth, found in a bush in my front yard.

That is beautiful....I would have guessed it to be in Bolivia or someplace like that....I bet it was all the radiation that caused it to look like that!!!!

Lol, no they're supposed to be native to Eastern North America.
It's the first time I've ever seen one though, and I've been living in Eastern North America for a while now.

Okay...I didn't die...or slip off the edge of the earth....I got another old crappy car, but I'm still working on getting the AC working (a Must-Have item here in Florida).....

I got the camera out again this evening and am going to bombard the thread with new pictures....I just love my tank.....

The Siver Bullet Bonzai is coloring up nicely....

It still has a way to go, but look at this Blue-Green Acropora echinata....

It has colored beautifully, and so has the little ORA Blue Acropora tortuosa....

Maybe I can grow that one out to the splendor that was my original colony....the Greg Hiller's Aquadelight is doing well too....

I owe those to a member of my local club...we did a nice swap a few weeks ago....

Now for some oldies, but goodies...here is my Blueberry Lemonade Acropora nasuta....

Great growth out of that little guy lately. This is the ORA Marshall Island Blue Bottlebrush, home of my acro crab....(He's visible down low and to the left, if ya look real carefully)

The Juicycorals Quadricolor Acropora....notice green sheen, pink, through blue to purple...and as a bonus, yellow polyps!

It browned out real bad when I got it, but is making a nice recovery...My Rose Acropora millepora is getting just sick with color....

An amazing piece...it too was mostly brown for the longest time....Here is the Area 51 Favia....

It seems to be growing real well lately too.....This green Acropora is an unknown, also of browned out heritage....

That one came from another club member....he's only 15 years old....My Rainbow Montipora is getting shockingly colored up too....

There is a small colony starting to spread where it was mounted to the rocks and slid off the bottom of the frag tile.....this last one is a wild Florida SPS that was growing on some aquaculture LR I got a couple years ago....

I've seen posts about this coral and most say it is nonphotosynthetic, but I gotta tell you, my nitrates never reach above 0.2, and I've never fed it...and yet it grows and grows....I vote photosynthetic....

Hope y'all enjoyed these new snaps....
Mitch

Beautiful Mitch!

Good to hear you are once again mobile.

Good luck with the AC.

Mobility is a good thing indeed....I gotta get the AC working soon though....I got off work at 6 PM today and with the windows all down and the blower on HI it got all the way down to 105 in the car by the time I got home!!!!

But...like I said....mobility is good.............

JEEEEEEEBUS!!!!!!



that rainbow monti is amazing!!!

Thanks a bunch Pismo....I just wish I had a picture of it when I got it....it was brick brown on brick brown.....I was told it was Rainbow, but almost didn't believe it at the time.....proof is in the pudding...It's a Rainbow now!!!! It was mounted to my LR until a few weeks ago when I popped it off to cut a frag....now there is a little strip of Rainbow Monti growing where the frag tile was mounted...it had grown all the way around and under the tile.....

Sorry about some of these pictures...I am reaching like 10 inches into the tank with my P&S and have real problems locking the focus sometimes....

Here are some other Encrusting Montiporae....
Superman frag.....

Where that tile was stuck down....


Sunset....


Mike Paletta Blue.....pictures just don't do this one justice....


Appleberry.....


I hope you like these others too.....

I recently got a coral that looks a LOT like that! My LFS said that it came in as a hitchhiker in their shipment, but that it was a coral called cladocora. From what I've been able to read, it is photosynthetic, but that it was strongly suggested to frequently supplement with feedings. I haven't fed mine since I got it, but it still sends out its tentacles every day. I suppose I should feed it tomorrow though...

How long have you had it?

Oh, and I love all of the SPS!

That little one has been with me since May of 2007....I've never fed it, and yet it still survives....Mine too was a hitchhiker, on Florida Aquaculture Live Rock....

Long time Mitch! The tank looks great and the frags are amazing! Let me know if you're looking for someone to keep backup copies of your frags...you know, just in case

That's cool. Well, good luck to both of us then with these odd corals.

I mentioned before that I got a few nice pieces in trade a little over a month ago, and I was just looking at the pictures of them then....well, I just had to put up pictures of Before and After.....mind you these have only been in my tank for 35 days between these shots....(8/23/09 to 9/27/09)

Hiller's AquaDelight




ORA (California) Blue Tort




Blue Green Echinata




Silver Bullet Bonzai behind the echinata




I'm quite happy with not only the coloring up they have done, but also the amount of growth over just a month.

Wow.....no comments....I'm a bit hurt....JK......

is your lighting all t5? im so in love with this tank. other than the 2part dose, what else do you do? amino acids or anything?

what do u feed

I second that notion! What kind of lights are you using?

Well done!

When I first set this tank up I decided I wanted to do the two islands of LR, one being SPS and high light LPS dominated and the other being Mushroom, Paly, Zoanthid dominated, so I set up gradient lighting.....Over "Stoney Island" I have a 250W Phoenix in a Sunlight Supply ReefOptix III pendant, and "Softey Island" has a matching 150W Phoenix in a Sunlight Supply ReefOptix III pendant....those are right about 7 inches above the water surface.....They are supplemented with 2 X 39W Geiesemann Actinic Plus T5HO's in "the good" TEC reflectors (the new generation with 29 bends)....I also have a little bit (and I mean a LITTLE bit) of DIY blue LED moonlighting....The T5's run from around noon til 11 PM, the MH's around 3:30 PM til around 10:30 PM.....

As for what I use in my water, I have used exclusively Reef Crystals since the late 80's and will stick with that salt, mainly just because it seems to work for me....I dose 2-part on my DIY dosing system (running for about 13 months now) and use ONLY Oceans Blend 2-part....I supplement Mg with Epsom Salt when needed....otherwise I really don't add much of anything....I run charcoal in my DIY media reactor occasionally, but not really often enough....maybe I will fill it up this weekend....

I am not very good about feeding actually....I was using Rods Food until I ran out a couple months ago....I feed mostly pellet food, either Hikari Marine A or Spectrum Thera + A from New Life...I also thaw out a bit of mysis and brine, maybe some frozen lobster eggs once in a while....I also like the freeze dried Cyclopees or Coral Vibrance for the filter feeders.....my biggest statement of all, regarding feeding, is that I'm really quite the slug and I intend to feed twice a week, but probably only think about it weekly most of the time....I prolly average about every 5 or 6 days, if you were to chart it out.....

I have a decent protein skimmer, an Octopus 110 NW, and a very healthy fuge with two different chaeto balls, and a couple of mangroves, and I think that is one of my biggest positives....when I lost one of my chromis' a few weeks ago, the fuge absorbed him to <0.2 ppm Nitrates within 3 days....I have a DIY ATO, using redundant float switches on a low-voltage relay, driving an Aqualifter, replenishing RO/DI, with a reservoir by the stand, filled from my holding tank on the back porch....I use about 3 1/2 gallons of ATO per day....

In case anybody wonders about flow, I turn the volume over about 53 times per hour using a Blueline 1100 GPH return pump, 2 X Koralia 4 and a couple of powerheads on a wavemaker, just to disrupt the flow patterns.....

That's pretty much "the Nuts and Bolts" of the system, as it is currently configured....

Mitch, the growth and coloration in such a short amount of time is very impressive Sir.

I think you said it yourself here somewhere, you can flat out grow some SPS!

Great stuff!

Why thanks again...I guess sticks are my strongsuit....The SPS's just really like my tank.....I was running my MagFloat around the display couple days ago and knocked one of the branches off the AquaDelight....so, now I have a frag starting to encrust....

I would love to see a FTS. Absolutely gorgeous corals.

Thanks a bunch Hoosier....

FTS's really look like crap on this tank, because it has viewing area of 21 inches height and 9 feet wide, being two sided....the best is a series of shots, going all the way around....I will try and get a fresh set of views tomorrow evening....Stoney Island is just under T5 now....Also, Softey Island doesn't look like much, most of its good stuff is actually on the sandbed.....But, I will work on it....promise.....I might even turn off the pumps for a set of shots....I've NEVER done that before.....all the pics you see are full flow, handheld with a Point and Shoot......

Everything looks incredible mitch. I can't wait till my system is stable enough for sps. I might have you come and get my emmas Jedi mind trick. I believe it might be doing the same thing as the other monti

We need to figure this issue out.....Are you testing everything? Mg is highly recommended....how stable is your temperature? I try to never vary as much as a degree......It may just need to mature some more.....

I gotta get up and magnet the glass...I promised a FTS series......

Like I said, The tank is peninsular orientation, with two long sides showing, so for the requested FTS I took a little tour around it, snapping as I went. I even turned off all the pumps.....here ya go.....










Check it out...I even slid the frag rack out of the way for the pictures!!!!

Here are some shots of the areas around the bottoms of the Islands....











Hope those will do....a true FTS is really not very good with this setup.....Excuse the perpetually nasty glass....and all the scratches.....

I decided to snap a couple of ACTUAL full-tank shots tonight.....


This is the view from my sofa....

SUCH a beautiful tank, it's a credit to your skills Sir.
How's the little Acro Crab doing?

^^^ this^^^^^

Loaded with goodies too!

Thanks for the pics Mitch!

very nice. i love 3 sided tanks, being able to see through it makes it seem like you can almost touch everything.

The little Crab seems just fine....I see him in there, just hanging out....that coral needs to go down onto Stoney Island, but so far they are still up on the frag rack....I doubt that I will be able to hardly spot him once it is down in the rockwork....

and thanks again....the tank is a real blessing......

Thanks for the FTS! Right now I'm dreaming of a 75 after I get out of college. Your tank is certainly making me want one even more.

Great work with the SPS! Your tank looks amazing.

I got my little frag of ORA Hawkins Blue echinata tonight.....it has great potential.....



this is the last coral from the swap a little over a month ago....just took my friend a whie to get back down this way with the frag.....



Let's check back on it in a few weeks and see how it's doing.....betcha it colors up real nice by then

Beautiful!! absolutely beautiful SPS and reef Mitch! 2 wet thumbs up

I'm with Maria... BEAUTIFUL TANK MITCH!!!

Thanks a lot Maria, and David...I really need to get some corals mounted down it the rocks...I am deeply in need of space on the frag rack....I think I need to bust a big hunk off my big Orange Cap too....it's just about touching my Appleberry Monti.....maybe aI will get a chance ot work on it some this weekend....if I don't end up too nasty from working on my old car....I hate putting my hands in the tank if they have traces of grease on them.....

Our Club has a frag event (auction) in 2 weeks, maybe I will send in pics of a few pieces I have hanging out on the frag racks.....

WOW! That's an awesome coral!

Haha of course, what else was I expecting to see, given the trend of your tank!

I just love the delicate growth structure of the Acropora echinatas.....the Blue-Green one is only like an inch and a half of growth and look how tiny the branches are....



and at just under an inch tall, the Hawkins is even finer in structure than the Blue-Green....



I love the different growth forms these creatures attain.....