They have them at a fish store in Portland, it says it's made by Amano, and has Japanese on it so, I'm pretty sure it's originally from Japan. I can't give you any more info than that, though.



Well, we're not really in the city, more in the the suburbs, but basically, we used to always get ice storms that would take down the power lines every year. It was just annoying, so we got a generator, and we have never had an ice-storm since. Lots of snow, but no ice. It came in handy this time though!



Haha, it's not a huge commitment, just water changes every week, but thanks!

Did I miss it? what is your filtration?

just live rock and water changes.

A few more:

Is that a xenia in the second pic? It's translucent!

looks like it jacob!

NICE shots!

It's a baby sarcophyton, long polyps!




Thanks!

OMG I was going to say looks like baby leather, but then I thought everyone would say its xenia idiot lol.

Jamie, you have other set-ups correct? You should post some pics of the other ones

Well, kinda. I have four twenty gallons in my basement, but they're not displays - just holding live rock until I find the time to sell it. One of them has a mantis shrimp in it that came on the rock, but I've only seen him once. Another is an aiptasia factory, it's gross. So yeah, you don't what to see pictures. If I ever see the mantis again I'll take a picture, though.

O ok. Cool, mantis shrimp are awesome!

So you parents can take care of your tank when you are gone?

Well, we'll see. My mom offered to, but I don't know if she' actually be able to. If I premix the saltwater for while I'm away (I should be home every two or three months) I'm sure she could handle water changes, but I don't think she'd recognize coral aggression, and I'd hate for my monti cap to kill the blue tort (it's already trying, I had to frag it back a bit), or anything like that. So, I'm not sure if I'll leave it with them, or break it down. I don't think I'll be taking it to college though, that's a lot of work.

Ya I would want one in college but A) It is a lot of work like you said and B ) I plan on studying marine biology anyway lol.

Hey don't throw any of those monti frags away, the green monti is awesome looking. I would be in the same boat, I think I am going to sell all of mine

Hey, at least it contributes a little to the college fund.

Ya, not looking forward to that. The price of college just keeps going up and up lol.

But mine wouldn't look as good .

Your tank is a great inspiration for what I want to do.

What size is your Sunpod and how high is it off the tank?

Is there a lot of evaporation?

Thanks!

meh, do it anyway.



Thanks. The sunpod is 150w 20 inch, and is 12 inches above the surface of the water. At first, because it was summer and I was having temp issues, the tank was topless, and evap was pretty significant. I had to top off every day, it was maybe 2/3 gallon per week. Now I have a very tight fitting glass lid, and evap is almost nothing; maybe a cup per week. I'll have to hook up a chiller or something when it get's hot again though, which could be challenging.

My tanks are to big. The smallest is a 7g.

excuses, excuses...

2 MONTH UPDATE!!!

Yes, the tank has turned two (months). Things are getting crowded, and I've had to do some fragging, but everything is going very well.

FTS


The sand bed is getting crowded with frags, and I'm going to have to bring some stuff to my lfs so I can make room, becuase more stuff is coming in the mail tomorrow!


close-up of sandbed left (the brown digitata has sting damage from the green monti cap)


and right.


With all these frags right up against the glass, I had the opportunity to take some polyps shots of the montiporas

red


green


the zoanthids have been growing well, though I'm a little concerned about the green ones overrunning my orange acan (see fts)




the baby sarcophyton has gotten much bigger


and though the rics have not made any babies, they seem happy.


The the tank is invertless because of the bubble coral, but I guess that's okay, shrimp would probably harass the corals. This guy has been putting out some pretty long sweeper tentacles lately, but I'm not too worried about it.


Hydnophora has been moved around a bit because it was shading out my acan, but now it's in a good place.


I had to do some serious fragging on the montipora


because it thought it would be funny to sting this guy!


With more space between them, they are both happily growing again.

and that's about it, here's a couple more parting fts's!

zoomed in


zoomed out

Well, some good news and some bad new unfortunately.

the good: lani sent me tons of awesome frags (thanks!) which look great and are opening right now.

the bad: my damsel died. I have no idea why either. I noticed yesterday afternoon that he wasn't his usual self. Usually he's out and about, but he was sticking mainly to the back corner of the tank where he sleeps. That evening, I found him resting against the sand, upright, but looking very tired. My first thought was that he was starving to death (even though he wasn't looking skinny) because I never feed him, so I put some mysis in the tank, and even held him in my hand near the surface and dropped the mysis in his face, but he wouldn't react to it - normally he would be pigging out. I let him go, and he sort sank to the bottom, and then under one of the rocks. I could see him lying on his side breathing heavily. Today he's dead. I don't think it was lack of food, because he didn't look skinny, and he's been fine in the tank for a month and a half without food, so I don't know why now would be any different. I can't think of another logical explanation though. Water quality is fine (I haven't tested - test kits have expired - but all my corals, even the oregon tort, are completely open and happy, so I assume there is nothing wrong), maybe oxygen levels dropped? Seems pretty unlikely. I suppose he could have been stung by the bubble coral, but I didn't see any sting marks, and I think venom would have acted quicker. I don't know, anyone have ideas?

the ugly: some sort of infection seems to be working it's way through one of my red monti cap colonies. It looks like a parasitic sponge (do they exist?) or a fungal/bacterial infection. It's weird, because it's eating everything, skeleton and all, just leaving a big hole, filled with white flecks and spongy material, where coral once was. I did some preemptive fragging, and hopefully that took care of it - we'll see.

It hasn't been a month yet, but I decided to update anyway since I had the time.

The scape has changed a bit, I removed the big kenya tree (kept a couple frags), and, of course, there is lots of new stuff from lani (thanks!).

today is water change day, so some of the corals are a little less open then usual.

fts'




new zoas




these were for some reason hit really hard by shipping, still recovering


new ric (there are two, the other is not pictured)


froggy!


stomatella


sarco

Oh geez, yeah, those daytrippers look like crap, lol.

your tank is lookin HOT!
good job man. keep up teh good workz

yeah, they're getting there, though. They wouldn't open at all until a few days ago, now the colony is mostly open. I think the package may have overheated a little - all the zoas were pretty po'ed at first - these for some reason much more than the others.



thanks!

I love it! gl with the montis and pink zoas!

Heya, where did you pick up the lid if you don't mind my asking? I'm looking for one for My mini M, but not having much luck...

Thanks!



Made it myself, actually. I bought two 11x14 inch sheets of glass from home depot, and a glass cutter. I messed up the first one, but the second on came out perfectly. I sanded down the edges with sandpaper: 220, 360, 600(wet) or something like that. It's not sharp at all, and looks pretty decent. The handle is made of three small glass pieces siliconed together, seems pretty strong.

snails are out and about:




sick zoas Any ideas about what's wrong with them? They seem to be infected with something, or something is irritating them to the point of melting. Notice how some of them have a brown fungus-looking stuff on them.





I did an iodine dip today, we'll see how they do.

F#$@!!!!!

ok, so, I found this guy on my glass this morning. Is he a zoa eating nudi? I thought they were darker, but the daytrippers are really pale, so if he was on those, this would be an appropriate color. They look happy though, it's the darker zoas that are pissed. He's tiny, 1mm long. Can I get an ID?




Aside from that, the tank is doing well. The lid was off, so I took some top downs.

December is just a few hours away, which means it's time for the 4 MONTH UPDATE!!! [edit - actually 3 month]

For all those interested, the nudibranch turned out to be a montipora eating nudi (^*%^*#!), and it's siblings happened to be eating my new purple montipora. I dipped the montipora - freshwater dip followed by ReVive coral cleaner, per instructions on the bottle. I even let the coral sit out in the air for a few minutes to slime up beforehand. For whatever reason, the coral reacted terribly to the dip. It bleached, looked grey, moldy - polyps never came out, and then it died. I moved it to my downstairs tank just in case it wasn't completely dead - I've have monti's come back from states like this, but it doesn't look too likely. As for the other monti's - I haven't spotted any other nudibranchs, or missing tissue patches, but I'll be inspecting them closely for the next few weeks.

Other than that - the tank is doing well. My new fish seems happy... I'm thinking about getting another fish - a little blenny or goby or something, but I don't want to push it bioload-wise. What do you guys think? I saw the most adorable tiny two-spot blenny at the lfs today.

On to the pictures!

Any suggestions about a new fish? Would a two spot make a good addition, or any other ideas?

Wow looks great Jamie! I think your problem for the SPS was the freshwater dip, I am preeety sure you aren't supposed to do that. My directions don't say to on my CoralRevive anyway lol.

As for a fish, green banded gobies are neat. If you have some cash to spend get a flaming prawn lol.

Meh, fw *shouldn't* have killed it, because they are exposed to it in the wild (rain storms at low tide) but I think it was way too much all at once - fw then ReVive back to back. Plus it was already stressed by the nudibranchs. (no new ones spotted yet, by the way)

fishwise: I want something less than $20. I hate buying expensive things an having them die. I have no reason to think that a fish would die, but I'm just iffy on that sort of thing, you never know what could go wrong (my yasha did vanish, after all). The blenny was appealing because it was only $14. Liveaquaria has green striped gobies for 16, but I've never seen one around here - I'll have to ask at my lfs. Any other ideas? Preferably something brightly colored, easy to keep, I don't care if it's "common," I just want a fish that will look nice and do well.

I'm a big fan of the green clown gobies.

If by two spot blenny you mean twin spot, then no I don't think you should get him. The twin spot feeds off of pods and I doubt your system has enough pods to keep him fat. Although you do have those 20 gallon tanks in your basement you could probably harvest pods there.

BTW I love your tank. Do you feed any of your corals?

Very nice Jamie. I wonder who will win out in the race for space between the bubble coral and the zoas? Maybe they will live together in peace.
I agree with a nice pair of green banded gobies. IMO they would really go well in your tank.

Me too, but I've heard they can be problematic with sps corals, so I don't want to risk it.



not a twin spot, but thanks for the heads up. I'm talking about this guy:
http://www.petsolutions.com/default.aspx?I...amp;SID=FROOGLE

I don't feed the corals. I did recently start feeding flake food for my damsel though, so some of that probably gets powdered up my the koralia's and eaten.



They seem to be doing okay together so far! What really surprised me was that the bubble coral and blastomussa behind it are fine together. They are constantly physically touching, and seem to be immune to each other's stings. I would have expected them to kill each other!

A pair of green banded gobies would be really cool - you think two gobies and one damsel would be okay together in a 5 gallon? If you don't think the bioload would be too much, I might try it.

GBG are really tiny. I think it really depends on your husbandry. If you keep up on things IMO you should be fine.

alrighty then. I do wc's weekly, and I've only missed one in the past four months, so I think I'll be okay. I'll look around and see if I can find any - if not, maybe a pair of some other little goby.

Not sure how I missed this tank for so long. It looks great!

I agree. Amazing little tank!

as always I love it, but it could use a little height, maybe branching sps?

Then you will be happy to know that this weekend I picked up a couple Acro frags - a pink millepora and a yellow-green something (forgive me, I'm terrible with ID'ing individual acro species). Pics likely on or before this weekend.

A few pictures of the new corals, I haven't decided on fish yet - I think I'll wait till after christmas when I have some money :sigh:

fts


new yellow-brown-green acro on the right (ID?)


pink A. millepora (hoping this colors up a little)


New scroll coral is on the right. It's not looking super hot, but it usually has good polyp extension (not so in the picture). These guys don't require feeding, do they? It almost looks non photosynthetic.


fishy


I accidentally unplugged my lights while I was unplugging the pumps for pictures. When the bulb turns on it goes blue, so here's a picture I took while it was warming up, what it might look like in an actinics-only photo, if I had actinics.

Very nice tank Jamie, very impressive! I am fairly new to the hobby and atm only have a AP24 but I have been thinking about starting a 5 gallon. Your thread might have just put me over fence

go for it if you have the money for another tank!

Such a happy little pico!

Looks awesome Jamie!

Dat's a lotta flow!
Have any issues with that? 480gph/5.4=88.89 turnover rate!