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Nigripes' 40 something gallon cube #new fish


Nigripes

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Hi all I have been a long term member on RC and been following Nanoreef for a long time.
I have my new tank now so thought I would begin to journal it.
I plan to make it sps dominated but have an anemone addiction so who knows where this tank will end up!

I am based in Thailand so my options are always a little different to what are available to those in the states.
I can get most stuff though and some great livestock

My equipment is as follows:

24x24x18 cube
20x20x15sump with built in ro top off chamber
Eheim compact+ 2000 return
Reef octopus dc-5500 controllable pump (Retired)
Hailea Hs-66a chiller
Lumen bright pendant
Coralvue ballast 250 watt
Radium bulb
Tunze blue led
Reef octopus nwb SSS-110

JNS CO-1 Cone skimmer
Tunze 2095 nano stream
Tunze 6095 controllable nano stream x2
Powerbars
Tunze osmolator
Prodibio
Tunze coral gum and epoPutty
live rock
Kamoer Doser
tunze controller.

Apex Tube holder

Apex controller.


To get:
Apex AFS

Livestock.
Sps
Rainbow montipora
Green and red monti cap mounted side by side

green monti red polyps

purple rim monti
Pink birds nest with green polyps

purple pocci

green stylo
Blue tort
Tricolour acro
Purple deep water acro
Purple bonsai type (aquaculture)
acropora Loripes
Porites (hitchhiker)
deepwater green acro
blue (brownout) stag

Pink Milli

Green Stag blue tips

Soft coral
Organ pipe
Star polyps
Clove
Zoas (hitchhiker)

blue zoos

green zoos
pulsing xenia (the tiniest little piece left from a previous tank)

Inverts
Stromatella snails
Turbo snails
Annoying hairy crab
Pink mottled linkia star
feather dusters
vermatid snails
pistol shrimp (hitchiker)
white speckled RBTA
Purple tip RBTA

Fish
Purple Tang (1 inch)

Chevron tang
potato clown pair (hopefully)
Fishers dwarf angel
Maldives clownfish

Solar wrasse

Thanks, I will post some pics later.

 

Week one
gallery_83616_3_99828.jpg
Current FTS

gallery_83616_3_9408.jpg

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The tank was started with some live rock from a smaller holding tank, I did add one piece of 'fresh' live rock which caused an ammonia spike and wobbled a few of my snails and the one coral I had which is an organ pipe colony..

 

I waited a week and put in some sps frags, obviously after checking my parameters. All has been well with the frags, hoping their colour will hold.

 

This is my fourth sps/reef tank over the years. I have tried zeovit and had some success with that but i did not like the pastel effect or the obsession with K+.

 

I have one fish.

 

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I ordered a light stand that came with the tank, it was white wood but I was unhappy with it. I managed to get a stainless steel bracket that I am much happier with. It was fairly difficult to get the lumenbright straight, but I think I have nearly managed it. I decided to go MH with this build as really do fiddle with things too much. The radium is really nice and I know if there is a lack of success it will not be down to the lights. I do have the tunze blue submersible led strip for,dawn and. Dusk. It sits just in the water so there is no light spill.

post-83616-0-23337500-1394520682_thumb.jpg

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It is very difficult to get exactly the colour seen by the eye. The radium is a little on the blue side especially as I have it on an an eballast not a HID ballast. I am confident sps will grow at all depths of the tank.

post-83616-0-55243100-1394522467_thumb.jpg

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I've seen the radium bulbs, and the color is one of the best out there IMO.

Thanks, I am happy with them at the moment.

 

Here are a few more images from tonight and a view of the skimmer and sump pump

 

gallery_83616_3_34101.jpg

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the live rock is nice too, one or two hitchhikers good and bad.

 

I am dosing randy's recipe 3 part homemade and using prodibio.

 

 

My params are:

 

1.025 sg

ca 420 (salifert)

alk 8.9 (salifert)

Mag 1375 (Salifert)

 

Manually dosing 9 ml of alk and ca recipe number one per day.

 

I use reef crystals and aquaraise salt (a thai brand promoted by chingchai who is the president of the local reef club).

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Here we are at 2 weeks from startup

 

I have been using tunze coral gum in the pots and it really is the best product i have ever used it is hard in around 40 second to a minute after mixing and goes a long way, even when you are are slapdash as I.

gallery_83616_3_34101.jpg
I have 9 sps frags and a rbta now. I will let the tank sit for a few months and monitor it.
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  • 2 weeks later...

Very nice! I love those clowns, do you know where they were collected? Very nice color, I've never seen a Tomato/similar with such yellow fins and bright orange body!

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Thanks

Judging by the other fish they were with in the shipment, Indonesia but I am sure the larger fish will get darker in the body as it changes to a female.

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Yeah, Barberi and Rubrocinctus clowns are out of range and don't have the markings of a Melanopus.

Very nice pair, it'll be cool to see how their markings develop.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Updates

 

1. I had to return the tomato clowns as they were very aggressive to each other, my PT and the anemones (pulled the tentacles off and harried them). I was clownless for a while.

 

2. I purchased a new frag of a blue stag and was given a large green and purple tipped deepwater piece. I have mounted these up and they are starting to encrust the tunzecoralgum i used. Most of my other sps is good and I have seen encrusting growth from all but my loripes colony which had very slow stn but that appears to have stopped. My monties and Hystrix have put on the most growth. I purposefully added a load of coral in the first month and have not added much at all since my doser was set at 10ml of randy's for calcium and alk per day for a month but has recently been increased to 12ml of each to keep up with demand. Coralline was going crazy but has slowed at this point, all levels are the same and I have witnessed coralline cycles before.

 

3. Have a few new fish and am finished stocking for now. I bough a fishers angel from a Hawaiian shipment and it is eating like a champ, I did have an rather troublesome issue with colonial hydroids, they were taking over several spots in the tank. I manually removed a load with forceps but did not get them all. Since the fishers went in they have all gone I cannot find or see any so he must be responsible. on a less positive note i have seen him sample my monties, but i have had dwarf angels do this in the past and it did not do permanent damage. watch this space.

 

4. for many years I have been a clownfish enthusiast, posting on RC keeping many different species of clowns successfully with their host anemones. One of the smaller amphiprion species I have never managed to get hold of is the maldives clownfish. I was really excited to hear one of my LFS here in Bkk had a shipment containing some maldives clownfish (amphiprion nigripes). These fish come in from time to time but are usually comprimised with brook and come from sri lanka and have the rose coloured fins, they are usually large and on deaths door. I asked the lfs to hold me a pair and was there the day after they arrived to find 8 of the yellow finned nigripes, all smallish and healthy but absolutely stunning. I really wanted to buy all 8 and put them straight into a magnifica but decided on three with the Hope of forming a pair or small group. They are eating like champions, and have taken straight to my two RBTA anemones, it took about an hour!, They sleep together at night and I think they may have been from the same area, if not anemone in the wild. There is signs of a hierarchy developing, with the larger two forming a pair and the smaller one hanging around. They are really quiet feisty for small fish but have no signs of disease after a week together.

 

being a clown nut, I am already looking into a magnifica species tank down the line. Thing is I am really enjoying having SPS again!

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Here is a closeup of the middle size (male) Nigripes clownfish

gallery_83616_8_126963.jpg

And here is the (hopefully)female, in her Two!! BTA's

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The little one is not physically perfect and has a curved spine so looks like a stubby clownfish, but i figure it must has been healthy enough to survive in the wild so he's is good enough for me.

 

Anyway here is stubby

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Some updated coral Pics

Pink/green BN with some nice green polyps

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This is the A. Loripes with the slight, stn funny as it is growing like stink from the top!

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I dont know what you call this montipora, but it is starting to grow outwards and down my ugly epoxying work.

gallery_83616_8_50411.jpg

 

 

Blue Tort

starting to encrust downwards and good PE

gallery_83616_8_227139.jpg

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Here is a green and purple deep water piece with huge polyps

gallery_83616_8_193233.jpg

 

And a blue stag that has potential, blue with fluorescent green tips

gallery_83616_8_3877.jpg

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Last few....

purple deepwater??

gallery_83616_8_22444.jpg

 

Tricolor living up to its superfast encrusting nature.gallery_83616_8_8476.jpg

 

Don't know what this is, it went brown and is colouring up.

gallery_83616_8_212472.jpg

 

token softies apart from my huge organpipe

 

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  • 1 month later...

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