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Viking's 20 Long -- Small crash and recovery


Viking

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The RFA seems to have taken over the area under the rock shelf I made on the right side of the tank, but it's still kind of rolled up. It's actually attached itself to the underside. Not sure if it's the light or the flow it's unhappy about.

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FlowerMama

Guess you could test and find out. I had one that did that, so I turned the rock upright and put it on it's side and it liked it better that way and stayed for a little while. Then later one on each side switched places. It's funny when they're trading places or start grouping together sometimes. I used to be bothered by the moving, now I know they're just feeling things out.

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Coral Con is coming up again in October. That was awesome last year.

 

If you want some amazing RFA a ton of vendors had a bunch of top of the line ones.

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I'm in the process of changing the crushed coral for FIji Pink sand. I was planning on doing the first 10 lb bag in 2 stages a few days apart to lessen the impact of the detritus getting loose, but a cat decided the bag o sand would make a good scratching pad. Woke up this morning to a soaked table from the water that was once inside the bag. <sigh>. Plus side, I'm 1/3 of the way done sooner than I anticipated. And I have a new rockscape to boot. ;)

http://imgur.com/O6kADkp'>O6kADkp.jpg

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I just finished adding the 2nd 10 pound bag of Fiji Pink and am hopefully done with that messy disaster. Based on the crap I saw floating free as I was pulling the rest of the crushed coral out, my hunch that it was just trapping detritus seems to be correct. I'm considering adding some Nitrobacter to give the system a boost. I think the CC substrate was too loose to let the denitrifying bacteria to really take hold, except maybe under the rocks.

Once the tank clears in a few hours, I will put the rocks back where they were and take some new photos. Hopefully I will be able to catch a couple of the new Peppermint that I got yesterday, he seems a bit shy. That might be due to one of the Cardinals stalking him :huh: .

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I lost one of my Cardinals today :(

It had been hiding most of the time away from the other Cardinal, and most recently, behind my skimmer. Yesterday, when I chased it out at feeding time, I noticed that all of its fins were less than half their size and all ragged, but it seemed to swim ok. The other cardinal didn't try to chase it unless it thought it was going after a morsel it decided it wanted. Both seemed to eat their fill and the ragged one went back into hiding. I just went to plug my skimmer back in from the off period for the microbacter, and wanted to get the fish out so it wouldn't get sucked into something by surprise. It could barely swim at all, was leaning at an almost 90 degree angle and was a purple-ish color. The Hernits started moving towards it and it trying to swim away, it went right to the emerald crab.

I really wish I knew what happened to the poor thing, everything seemed ok (other than the hiding) up until yesterday.

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I have small update for today as things are progressing calmly.

I have finally ordered some "real" lighting, an Aquaticlife dual fixture T5HO. It is scheduled for delivery on Thursday, can't wait :D.

I also made a small addition to the tank, a cute little clown ...

http://imgur.com/519FiQv'>519FiQv.jpg

 

He and the Cardinal seem to be hitting it off, they are always kinda near each other other in some part of the tank. He seems a little scared of food, but today he did eat some of the pellets that the LFS I got him from uses ( from Sustained Aquatics, as is he).

 

I am doing 20% water changes every 2 to 3 days and the Nitrates are coming down. I actually had a suggestion from the LFS I use now to rinse off my frozen food, seems the "water" it's frozen in has a high nitrate content. Bugger :angry: . Will be trying that for a bit and see what effect it has. I will update as things change, and no later than once the new light is up.

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Thats just how bad my phone is with all the Actinic from the new bulbs. I an using an ATI coral+ and the Aquaticlife Actici bulb that came with the fixture... It isn't quite that blue when you are in front of it.

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FlowerMama

Yeah, I understand that, mine turn out more blue so I have to cut down on the blue and raise the white when I take pics.

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I have been trying to get the Nitrates down still, but couldn't seem to get below 20ppm, except for briefly after a 20% water change. The thing that was confusing me the most was nothing was acting stressed, like I would think it would if it was really where my tests were showing. Granted, I've tried to stick with hardier species to avoid killing anything as I'm learning. So, on a hunch, I took a sample of my tank water to where I'm getting my freshwater (RODI). They ran 2 tests for Nitrates, API (what I've been using ) and the Red Sea. Both of them came out to less that 5ppm :angry:.

This was on Sunday, so today I retested after doing as thorough of a cleaning as I could of my testing hardware with Vinegar and RODI water. Results were between 20 and 50 ppm. Took a sample to my local Petco, the manager of which has been in the hobby for awhile, and had him test it as well, with the test again showing negligible. I think at this point I'm dealing with a set of bad nitrate test chems. I think I'm going to be ordering a Red Sea Nitrate test kit soon.

I think I have just had a HUGE load taken off my mind :D

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I'm working on adjusting my photos for the more intense blue I have now, Using my DSLR. I will try to see if I can find a new camera app for my Nexus 4, they recently took most of the adjutments out of the stock app, and gave my a Photo editing suite instead... yippee :furious:. Great idea, if only it could white balance like the old camera app did (no white balance at all, I was ready to chuck the phone out the window after about 15 minutes of trying to balance RGB and ending up with different colored acid trips).

My Duncan, third day in the tank.

EMrhXrn.jpg

 

Zoa rock I bought when I still had the Bio Bubble, the frony 5 are red, the other 10 or so are green.

 

http://imgur.com/sQVU91E'>sQVU91E.jpg

 

My rock flower, it seems to have found it's spot. Hasn't moved in about a month.

 

http://imgur.com/WmW2y1O'>WmW2y1O.jpg

 

I need to work on angles and speed/ exposure. I was using a 50-200mm lens for these, but don't have alot of room to back of and shoot straight on. :mellow:

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Small update and things seem to be running along smoothly, although I do have a couple questions in a bit.

I bought a pair of Babylonian Snails, which should be pretty much the last stage of my CUC, and should make a great insurance policy against ANY uneaten food. Seem to be voracious. They are awesome to watch as well as they bury themselves in the substrate and come boiling out of the sand when they sense food laying nearby (some have called them Zombie snails for this behavior :D ).The only possible conflict I have read about with what I have may be my Astreas, which they could eat, but the Astreas have decimated themselves falling off the glass and not being able to right themselves.. jerks :blink: .

I also found out I have a sponge growing. Sadly, it's kinda ugly and it's taking over my Mushroom rock.

http://imgur.com/OwLodb6'>OwLodb6.jpg

I have heard that exposure to air can get rid of it, but I don't want to hurt the shrooms and featherduseter on the rock, Does anyone have any advise?

Now, the questions....

I have 2 different things growing on my rocks, 1 is an algae spot (dark green/ black and long hairish) growing just below the mushroom, they other I have no idea on.

The Algae seems to be isolated to that one spot, but I'm not sure how to get rid of it. None of my current livestock seem interested in eating it, or are busy eating other stuff.

The other stuff on the rock looks like small, white branching hairs, some are visible here above and to the left of the Palys on this rock...

http://imgur.com/vuw2VcK'>vuw2VcK.jpg

and again here, just not as in focus, but you can better see the coverage,,

http://imgur.com/q3IySRv'>q3IySRv.jpg

I really don't know if these are good or bad, so your help is appreciated. If a better shot is needed, I will be happy to work on one ( I'll get the lighting figured out eventially :wacko: )

 

Thank you for your time ;)

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  • 2 weeks later...

This thing reminds me of those Billowing Promotion thingees on the side of the road... Should have gotten my Torch sooner :D

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Went back to Top Shelf today to get some fancier zoas, and left very happy. I now have a Darth Maul, and an Utter Chaos, single polyp of each, should bring some nice color. I also got a frag of what looks like Kryptonite, about 6 of 7 polyps. I also got a sprig of Dragons Breath Macro, which I'm trying to restrain by trapping part of it between a pair of rocks.

I bought a 2nd emerald crab to go with my 1st, and he turned out to be a friggin lawnmower. He has cleared up pretty much all of the Algae on most of my smaller LR pieces, and is now working on the larger ones. He's even gotten the original one to get off it's a$$ and chip in. Maybe it thinks it's missing out on something, kinda like the old Life cereal commercials (He likes it ! Hey, Mikey!).

I finally peeled my GSP mat off it's plug and glued it to a chunk of LR I got just for that purpose. It's the rock to the right of the Torch in my video. I've seen a few bright flashes from the tips so far, but I think they are still mostly pissed off. Once things settle and everyone opens back up, I will put some pics in.

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Have a few Photos today. I was trying to see if I could get the white balance on the Nikon to do some of the Heavy lifting on killing a bit of the blue, but I got frustrated again. I WILL beat this !

Anyways, I reverted to flash for a couple of them, the 2 new single polyps still showed some nice color. :D

http://imgur.com/HzybRSv'>HzybRSv.jpg

My Birdsnest has filled back in on the tips and seems to be growing, I rotated it about 180 because it seemed like it was expanding mostly in the direction of the current flow, and I would rather it spread out more evenly. I think I may just move it towards the back a bit where the flow is less.

http://imgur.com/ltYYFlw'>ltYYFlw.jpg

My newly transplanted GSPs... didn't take them long to get over it ;)

http://imgur.com/J1uMmRx'>J1uMmRx.jpg

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Pretty color on the birdsnest. I found it difficult w/ the Nikon but it it got better when Gena told me her camera had a landscape setting. Do you have the landscape setting? Otherwise the only thing I found I could do was turn down my blues and take a picture on the P setting.

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Thanks for the advice, I'll give it a shot. I can shoot in RAW, which gives more control with Photoshop, but it feels like trying to pilot the Shuttle with the damn buttons :angry:

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My problem is I'm lazy, I don't want to spend 15 mins trying to fix it. I'd rather play around w/ settings and lower the blues every few mins and retake a photo and see what happens. If it turns out great, wonderful, if not back to the drawing board. Doesn't it make your teeth grind though when someone comes along w/ their phone and takes an amazing pic?!!!. :angry:

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Absolutely. I can actually do a little better with my phone and a free app I put on it than my DSLR can without TouchUp

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jedimasterben

DSLRs just take getting used to and figuring out the optimal settings for your light. Then you'll be able to blow away cell phone pics :)

 

 

I still usually take around 6-10 pictures for every one good one lol

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