Here's a new thread for our 50g breeder. This tank started as two AP12's. One of them cracked during the night, exactly one month into it's life. After that day, we got the upgraded 50g and combined all the rock, corals, inverts, and fish (and water).

Here is the new tank at 1 month. Keep in mind the rock is 6+ months seasoned at the lfs and 2 months in our systems dating back to the Ap12 days.

FTS

Dragon, our pink and green cuke

Duncan, blue leather/sinularia?

Blue leather/sinularia?

GSP, blue polyped montipora digitana

Superman shrooms

Actinic Zoa garden

Fire and ice?

Purple and green, dunno name

Reds, look like some form of gorilla nipple?

Cricket, our porcelain crab


More photos and updates to come. Any and all feedback and comments are appreciated!

Great tank. I really like the rockwork.

Thanks~

The tank will be a centerpiece in our living room once it's carpeted and such. The placement and rockework will ideally allow for viewing from 3 sides.

Nice, I want to get a 50br soon.. I like the added height over the 40

Yeah, the added height is nice as well as the depth allow for great aquascaping opportunities.

It is a challenge to fill the negative space up top though without mature sps colonies. I ended up getting 3 massive live rocks to serve as foundations for the 24lbs of smaller stuff we had from the AP12's. Each of the 3 live baserocks weighs 10 pounds but they allow great stability to pile on top of.

Here are the specs:

50g breeder
4x39w Nova Extreme - Fiji Purple, Actinic, Aquablue+, Powerchrome+ There's a lot of purple light in this tank but it really makes the blues and greens POP!
HOB overflow
20g long sump DIY with 5 acrylic baffles
-1st chamber overflow dump and bakpak skimmer
-2nd chamber fuge with 12lbs LRR, chaeto, ulva, red gracilaria, 200w heater
-3rd chamber 500gph return pump
Koralia 1, Koralia 2, ~500gph return for flow

Livestock:

~ 30 blue hermits
~ 3 scarlet hermits
~ 20 nerite snails (my favorite cleaners)
~ 8 cerith snails
~ 3 margarita snails
~ 5 nassarius snails
~ 2 fighting conchs
~ 1 pink & green cucumber
~ 1 tigertail cucumber
~ 5 chromis
~ 1 red scooter blenny
~ 1 peppermint shrimp
~ 1 porcelain crab

Corals:

~ 15 different varieties of zoanthids
~ Neon pineapple tree/kenya
~ blue tree leather/sinularia
~ red, flame, blue camo, green striped, purple, rhodactis, and superman mushrooms
~ Blue pulyped montipora digitana
~ 3 varieties of star polyps
~ red & green chalice
~ pulsing xenia
~ torch coral
~ duncans
~ daisy polyps
~ red & blue yuma (superman?), pink & purple yuma, 2 tiny green yumas too small to tell how they will look atm (freebie from LFS growing on crushed coral substrate), blue & green ricordia florida

Feeding:
1. Turn off return pump
2. Formula 1 flake appetizer - the chromis are ravenous and following foods will not reach the bottom unless I do this first.
3. Feeding blend of mysis, brine, coral frenzy, cyclopeeze, garlic supplement. 2ml with koralias on, 4ml with koralias off. Scooter blenny will eat frozen if it reaches the bottom.
4. 1/2 oz. DT's phyto every other day.
5. Target feeding to applicable corals once a week - chalice, duncans, yumas

I love taking pics so here you are for your viewing pleasure.

Better FTS:

Right end shot

Duncan with babies, feather duster with babies

Recovering acan. I actually bought this piece for $20 at a LFS for a colony of black and gold speckled zoa's growing on the other side of the skeleton. After a month, the flech left in the skeleton started puffing up and coloring. Should be a nice colony someday.

Best shot I can get of the orange/red & blue yuma

Daisy polyps

Metallic green tipped stars

Monti's

Pulsing xenia, kenya, encrusting gorgonians, red & green chalice, zoa's

"octo mom" $8 pink zoa polyp we got at the LFS, squeezed out 8 babies at once

Zoa rock with green anemone hitcher

Radioactive dragon eyes

Dragon eyes, my favorite zoa colony atm

Love the how the lighting really accents the colors of the corals

Thanks. The fiji purple bulb really makes the greens and blues pop. It is really a sight to see in person. The 12k and actinic blues do a good job on the oranges and reds. I love the ability to customize t5HO combinations and think it's key to having great colors. The TOTM for May also uses t5HO with a fiji purple in the mix.

Some quick updates.

Came down one night to do some late night maintenance, flipped on the lights, and saw one of the blue hermits out of her shell shaking swarms of young into the water. I know survival is slim to none for young in a high flow diplay tank, but it's cool nonetheless.

Had an outbreak of zoapox which hit nearly every colony but with some aggressive furan-2, iodine, and alkalinity treatments, everything is recovering with only 2 or 3 polyps lost.

One of my zoa colonies which I have had a month or so appears to have a hitch hiking zoa or morph or something. The main colony is has green skirts with orange centers while the new polyp looks blue and pink mottled. Anyone have a name for this type?



The skirt looks blackish and the head is black and blue mottled almost like urban camo. Mouth is light pink but still glows under actinic. It would be cool if it kept the colors and patterns as it matures.

Closeup of the daisy colony. The rock probably has 200 heads. The shoots and runners are so soft, but once I can get comfortable making clippings, there will be frags galore!



Mushroom mesa. Still have 10 or so "homeless" shrooms waiting to attach and add.



Zoa garden post 'pox and dipping. Yumas in front and GSP behind.



FTS 5/29/08 - 45 days in.



Treated myself to some retail therapy after my sister's wedding this past weekend. Picked up several more zoa morphs and mushrooms and did one last round of furan-2 dips. New pics and scape updates soon.

why so many dips for the poz? shouldn't the iodide have done it?

What was your treatment regime?

We had a small outbreak of zoapox after getting some AOI/blue hornets via internet site. This happened early on before I had access to all sorts of preventative measures. The initial iodine dip didn't do much. Of the 40 heads of AOI we received, 39 melted in two days and I saved one only by fragging the strongest looking polyps.

After that, a mild wave of 'pox hit a few colonies. I did a daily iodine dip until the furan-2 arrived via internet order and by then, most had cured with no loss.

Now, I don't know if 'pox is like the flu and maybe there are stronger strains or what. Some websites mention 'pox could be a seasonal thing, or related to over-lighting, dirty power heads, thermometers, etc. This recent outbreak hit while I was out of town for three days for my sister's wedding.

Looking back at my pictures, one of the colonies wasn't fully opening and maybe it started there. I feel like an expert now at spotting the 'shrivelling' look and closed polyps signifying a coming 'pox outbreak or growth on part of the colony you can't see.

Either way, this outbreak took out 3 polyps of our purple/green morph by the time we got home. Six other colonies showed spotting also though none had started closing up and withering. I waited for the lights to go out and inspected them with a flashlight and noticed the first spots.

I started Monday evening with a 5 minute furan-2 dip followed by 5 minutes in seachem reef-dip. Tuesday the 'pox were still there with a few new spots so I did 10 min furan-2, 5 minutes iodine. Wednesday 20 minutes in furan-2, 5 minutes iodine, then into a 3rd container where I slowly added ALK buffer as per Propagator's method. Thursday, I repeated the Tuesday routine and this morning, most colonies look to be bouncing back.

this is a really beautiful tank.
i am jealous.

Thanks Toomin!

Here are some updated shots from this morning.

New zoa colony. I didn't think $65 was bad at the LFS considering it came with 75+ heads. Right now there are 3 different color variations though they may grow out to be all the same. I already made 5 frags of with 2-10 heads each from a loose growth.



Right side rock tower with new zoas.



Red and green chalice. One of my oldest and favorite pieces. My girlfriend calls him radioactive randy because his two pair of eyes look like a face hehe.

Here are some pics for your viewing pleasure~

Ricordias being photogenic for once~



Flame shrooms


Green rhodactis


Weird transparent mushroom


GSP galore


Duncans


Emerald crab


Naked hermit. Weird occurrance I caught on my lunch.

All I can say is it is AMAZING.



Brad

Thanks Brad

Torches are quickly becoming a new favorite. We've had a bland pink & purple one for a while and picked up a really nice one with deep purple tentacles and neon green tips. It's taken a bit for it to fully acclimate and extend (and for me to figure out the best camera settings to snap it without motion blurs).



Now, if I can just get my hands on a head or two of a Todd's Torch without breaking the bank hehe.

Here's a massive Zoa rock fresh from a LFS. The colors are stunning and it has 3 different morphs: red & blue/purple (kedd red maybe?), neon green (kryptonite maybe), and light blue/dark blue. The rock probably has 150 heads. Not many opened for this pic but almost all were open today.




Picked up a beautiful Mandarin too, pics as soon as he becomes less shy.

High Five for the 50breeders!

Fruity Pebbles, our new Mandarin.

Started epoxying and moving over pieces from the frag tank to make room for a frag factory. Here are two small acro pieces check out the encrusting on the first one. It was broken off a large colony only 2 weeks ago. The second is growing very slowly but the green and purple in it are stunning to see in person.

Moving day!

It's nothing huge, just moving the 50g from the laundry room where it's been cooking for 2 months over to the living room which has been under construction.

50g before - in the laundry room.


Here's the stand we built. The final position is as a 3 side penninsula view room divider.


Fired up 20g of fresh saltwater this morning and picked up five 15g rubbermaids and three 5g buckets. It's go-time after work. Wish us luck!

The move went smoothly! Everything is in place and working, all fish survived and corals have opened up. Just need to finish building the stand and canopy now. Here are some pics of the move.

Here are pics of the new rockscape and some happy livestock. The new scape is a truly awesome penninsula viewable from 3 sides.

front

side

back

ghetto diy sump

flame shroom

lunar eclipse


torches

fruity pebbles

cricket

baby frogspawns

pulsing xenia

I like the mandy! I'm about to buy a male off bluezoo. Where did you get yours?

LFS.

We are lucky to have 4 dedicated saltwater/reef shops locally.

The particular one that sold me the mandarin only sells fish that are trained on frozen.

That is one sweet set-up!

thanks

your tank is awesome and not only that you are good at taking photos as well!

Thanks!

Here are some shots from today.

Our first scarlet reef hermit. He's got a feather duster stuck on his shell and I think he loves it. I caught him swapping shells once but the next day, he was back with his party hat.


Some sort of corallimorph with blue tips.


Red scooter blenny, our first fish from the ap12 days. They are very hard to get a clear picture of. My girlfriend named him "Scootscoot Munchmunch".

man you tank is pure sex !!

Thanks Pips~

Saw this today and I couldn't resist. It is no joke the brightest coral I have ever seen. I wish the pictures could capture the way it radiates and draws your eye.




Long distance actinic shot. Vaguely shows how bright it is.


Playing around with camera functions while trying to get best shots of the neon nep.
Chalice

Rhodactis

Zoas

Sadness.

The neon nephthea had some sort of infection. I noticed when I acclimated it there was some black flakes that looked like some sort of fungus. I blew them off with a turkey baster, but areas of the stalk continued to deteriorate over the past few days.

I researched the species online and the GARF site said they occasionally melt for unknown reasons.

Anyways, I chopped off all the healthy tips as the site recommended and I'm hoping some if not all survive.

Does anyone have experience fragging nephthea or treating STN in the species? I also noticed the cuttings bleed red when cut which turns to black shortly after. I am assuming it is oxidation similar to what happens with tea leaves or apples when the cells are damaged and release oxidase. Hopefully it doesn't indicate an internal infection of the tissue.

Some of the frags I rubber banded to rock and some pieces I super glued as I have never fragged a branching softie before. Anyone have some pointers for me?

New pieces...

Nice mushroom


Sweet 3 color zoanthids


Large rock with blue clover polyps

Been super busy! Did some re-scaping. Bought some new SPS, starting to get an ich to collect acros. Hooked up the new sump on the frag tank and built some new racks. Here are some new shots of the 50g for now.

Front side

Back side

Acros, stylo, SPS garden






mushroom closeup


frag tank update later...

Post-fragswap-update:

So I left the frag swap with 36 new pieces, a hole in my wallet the size of my 50g tank, and proceeded to spend 3 hours acclimating, dipping, and placing each piece. Henry is my hero for mounting his frags on nice heavy rubble and not plugs.

Here are some sneak peeks of the new pieces. Others will come as I re-mount them from discs and wait for the zoanthids to grow out in the frag tank.

Front side 07/27/09

Back side

Red Planet

Blue tort

Efflo

Pearlberry


Sunset

Hairy

Purple polyped birdsnest


Not even 1/4 of what picked up stay tuned...

So with all the new SPS frags I picked up at the swap, I didn't have enough space to place them in a fashion that pleased me.

As a solution, I re-stacked the shelves to be level instead of angled. Now, all the acros fit but the giant emerald crab is playing donkey kong with the rubble and discs. I finally gave in and epoxied all of the sps into place.

Here are shots of the new scape with secured acros across the top.

Front side

Side

Back side

Acro garden


Also picked up 6 powerbrite LED strips at the swap that I ghetto-rigged into the canopy that we just finished. They really do flouresce the colors in the corals in such a rediculous way that I really may have to look into a LED fixture in the long term.

Ok storytime. Didn't get pictures either so I apologize lol.

A few months ago, we picked up 2 emerald crabs. I much prefer watching inverts than fish any day and we weren't having any luck keeping crabs and shrimp alive. I think my nassarius snails were assassinating them in the night but that's another story.

So one of the emerald crabs stayed small, about the size of a nickel over the past two months. The other one has molted 3-4 times and become the size of a silver dollar. We named him Godzilla because he's friggin huge and green. Godzilla likes to sleep in my tallest acro at night which is also the highest formation in the tank, right under the water's surface. He climbs up and crosses his claws and sits there until morning.

This same acro that he sleeps in (also my favorite, a green and purple with yellow polyp tri-color I got for $20 at Petw@&{> *weird*) has not shown any growth in 3 months. I attributed it to the coral being in bad shape at the shop, maybe it was the crab after all.

Anyways, last night during a commercial break, I wandered over to the tank like I do every 10 minutes and saw him in the acro garden. He was actually breaking the very tips off of my new Red Planet colony ($$$ it's 4" across)! I didn't believe my eyes! I've seen the emeralds cleaning around corals, and I've read stories about them going postal on corals but oh no, not my crabs! I could actually see the branches getting shorter as they were whittled away right in front of me.

I grabbed my tongs and had a go at him. I actually grabbed him, but he is so big and strong, he reached over and pried the tongs open and skittered away. I grabbed him 3 more times and each time, his legs and claws proved stronger than my tongs and he escaped. By this point, I was having a really hard time because I value all life and I didn't want to harm him even though he cost me a couple weeks growth on that Red Planet. It was way past my bedtime and he had buried himself in the rock stack so I decided to try again in the morning.

I turned off the LED's and watched TV for another half hour trying to get sleepy. Finally I was ready to go to bed and wallked by for one last peek and I can see his massive body sleeping in my tri-color acro! I grabbed him again with the tongs and this time the slippery acro didn't give him enough to hold on to.

I put him in "time out" in the LR chamber of my frag tank sump. Now, I just need a new home for him. My frag tank is pristine so there won't be anything for him to eat. I can drop in a silverside once in a while but that's no life for a glorious crab. Guess he's going back to the shop.

Your display and frag tank both look really nice. Great job man.

Thanks!

Your tank looks amazing, but yikes! on that emerald crab.

Will your LFS give you credit for him?

Yeah we have 5 decent shops locally that sell corals and reef based products and we know all the owners quite well. I posted the story on a local site and one of the shops already wants the beast.

Well, after dealing with nitrates about 20ppm for months, I have made some modifications to the sump and seem to be making progress. Nitrates are down to 10ppm, calcium and alk are remaining stable with 2 part and aragomite top off water. I just hooked up a phosphate reactor, threw in a new batch of carbon, and 20 mangroves arrive tomorrow. I'm hoping to see even quicker growth from the acros!



Everything seems to be appreciating the improving quality so I grabbed some shots of my acros and some growth shots. Check out the polyp extension on my happy acros.



My pink milli has developed a green growth edge and a couple green tips. Maybe it's morphing into a watermelon milli. I think I saw something like that somewhere. Check out the bottom encrusting edge.





Blue tort from Henry C. One of my favorites.





Another beaut from Henry. Rich purple with green polyps, I think he said it was nana or valida.





Red Planet





ORA Bellina





My 3 greens. First one is an insanely hairy green. The skeleton doesn't resemble a milli, maybe a prostrata? The second one has very small polyps with no tentacles, even when happy. It was broken from a local show tank and the mother looks the same. The corallites face down the branches towards the tips and the polyps are on the facing edge, not on the tips of the corallites. The third is beyond me, again broken from a large mother colony locally. Branches are lime green with blue tips.





Pearlberry





Sunset monti with stunning color. One of my favorites and can't wait to see it grow in.





I'm starting to take weekly pics of the SPS to compare for growth. Here's 3 weeks growth on a small birdsnest frag.

7/27/07



8/18/09





Thanks for reading!

Beautiful! So a 50g tank costs $180 retail...thats pretty cheap for all those corals

How do you keep up the Cal and dKH? 2 part? Mg needs as well? I found a site that has very cheap sps frags so I might be taking a dive soon.

I dose b-ionic daily along with tech-m magnesium. My ATO resevoir is filled with aragamite treated water which also adds calcium.

Small update... 20 mangroves came in last week. I made an eggcrate rack for them and mounted 18 in the main sump and 2 in the frag sump.



I also upgraded the BakPak skimmer to a Reef Octopus which I'm pretty excited about. The difference in skimmate is shocking.



I've also been dosing Microbacter7 in preparation for possibly vodka dosing. Between that, the mangroves, and new skimmer, my nitrates have gone from 20 to 5 over the past month. I'll have to take some water in to get tested for phosphates, but I may avoid vodka dosing all together.



No pics atm but some nice ones soon. I noticed some nice growth this week and added a ORA Bellina.

Man the colors on ur corals are awesome what bulb are u useing?

true actinic, kz fiji purple, aquablue+, actinic+ with 6 strips of powerbrite 460nm LED's.

Finally had some time to snap some pics tonight. Nothing spectacular, just some growth comparisons.

Meteor Shower Cyphastrea 8/01 (actinic)

8/27 ~ 4 weeks later


"Radioactive Randy" red and green chalice 8/01

8/27 ~ 4 weeks later (sorry for bad focus, his new home is hard to snap)


Sunset Monti 7/27

8/27 ~ 1 month


"Champeezy" our new Yellow Watchman


New sump design with my mangrove frags and Reef Octopus 110 skimmer (took the top off so you can see the awesome foam).

I'm finding myself with more free time as cleaning and chemistry based tasks are lessening. I took the time to take some really nice pics (I think). One of the things I really love about reefing is how so many things are happening in your tank at so many different levels. The overall squascape changing as corals grow, all sorts of critters scurring and grazing, things changing on a microscopic level and at a snail's pace. I enjoy trying to capture a fraction of the wonder we experience while gazing into our glass boxes. I hope you enjoy and I'm not boring you to pieces with my photos.

Sorry for the blues! By the time I finished cleaning and the water cleared, the daylights were long gone.

Frogspawn with striped mouth.

Green Star Polyps. So many people give them a bad rap but they are truly beautiful.

Green striped mushroom.

White sponge that's been growing over some of my daisies. Not yet decided if I will let it be or pluck it off.

Birdnest close up.

My favorite Zoanthid grouping.

Another Zoa mix.

Xenia.

My accidental Acan. This poor fella started out as a bare skeleton with some Zoanthids. The skeleton has since come back to life miraculously.

Acropora polyps and turbo snail.

Red polyp digitata recovering.

Montipora spongodes.

And I'll leave you with another of my favorite monti. Thanks for looking~