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StellaBlue's da Vinci Cube - RETIRED


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I think I want to start out with a toadstool and a frogspawn. I really love the xenias, but not sure as I've read about how aggressively they spread. Beyond that, I'm still learning about them! But I really love the toadstools and frogspawns. I really enjoyed looking at all of your corals!

Whats your coral stocking plans?

Thats a good start. Xenias goes nuts and gsp but i like how gsp looks. You might like yumas and ricordiea they have great colors and are easy to care for.

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My Xenia doesn't grow all that fast, faster than everything else but not not like some people say lol and get a peppermint shrimp had one and it knocked out my aptasia over night lol

 

Good to know about the Xenia! And definitely to the peppermint. Live Aquaria doesn't have any skunk cleaners in, so when they do, i'm ordering the peppermint along with them.

Thats a good start. Xenias goes nuts and gsp but i like how gsp looks. You might like yumas and ricordiea they have great colors and are easy to care for.

Nice! I like gsp's and I'm going to go research the other two!

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reefernanoman

I figured I'd start a tank page/thread! Of course, I need to figure out how to get photos in here and am hoping I can figure out how to link to google+. Google+ isn't going to work. I'm now going to figure out how to set up a Flickr account!

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First day - setting up the rockscape and adding sand

 

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Day two once the water cleared, but before LR was added

 

 

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Week three, just before clowns were added

 

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Tank on 2-10-2015

 

 

Anyway, here are the beginning stats:

 

Equipment:

Tank: Coralife BioCube 29

Sand: 20-30 lbs Nature's Ocean Bio-Activ Aragonite

Rock: 20 lbs dry rock, 10 lbs live rock

Filtration: InTank media basket in rear chamber 2

Fuge: InTank huge basket in rear chamber 2

Heater: (need to look it up)

Pump: Stock

Lights: Stock

Crazy air pump/filtration sponge combo that we got duped into "needing" that is going to go once I'm sure the clowns are fully comfortable

 

Current Livestock:

Fish:

2 DaVinci Clowns - Vit and Mona

attachicon.gifvit and mona.JPG

 

Invertebrate:

1 Feather Duster

10 Banded Trochus Snails

10 Nassarius snails (the small ones)

2 Astrea Snails

2 Spiny Star snails

6 Cerith snails

2 Scarlet Reef Hermits

 

Planned Livestock:

Goby

Pistol Shrimp

Possibly 3 Chromis if the bioload isn't too much

 

Planned Corals:

Not sure yet on this, since this is my first reef tank, I'm looking to start out slow and with some easy ones

 

 

 

More as I figure this out!

Nice start, but I think that you might have a bit too much LR in my opinion.

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Nice start, but I think that you might have a bit too much LR in my opinion.

Is there a drawback to too much? When I was researching, I had read that you should have 1-1.5 lbs per gallon, but there are a lot of different things out there for sure.

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reefernanoman

Is there a drawback to too much? When I was researching, I had read that you should have 1-1.5 lbs per gallon, but there are a lot of different things out there for sure.

That's just a ballpark figure. See when you start buying corals, some of them might come with LR. Also, having too much LR can make maintenance a little harder, like scraping algae off the glass, and it might create some dead spots too.

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That's just a ballpark figure. See when you start buying corals, some of them might come with LR. Also, having too much LR can make maintenance a little harder, like scraping algae off the glass, and it might create some dead spots too.

Thank you! Good tips!

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I finally ordered my peppermint shrimp (1) and two skunk cleaners. I also ordered a toadstool coral! Can't wait to get it.

 

I saw another aiptasia today and it is in a section that is not easy to get to or remove the rock to get to it. I figured i'm not waiting any longer for the peppermint to see if it can get rid of these things.

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Well, I added two skunk cleaner shrimp and one peppermint shrimp on Thursday. The two skunks are doing really well, but the peppermint, even after a long drip acclimation, never really seemed to be doing much. Earlier, I found him dead on the sand bed. I checked all the parameters and all look good and everyone else seems to be doing well.

 

I also got my first coral, kind of by accident. I had been researching corals on Live Aquaria and got a notification that the skunks were in stock. Since I had already missed out twice by not ordering fast enough, I placed the order quickly before they went back out of stock. Well, I had mistakenly added a brown toadstool leather into the basket and got that as well. I'm definitely loving it, but didn't mean to add a coral this soon.

 

I dipped the coral in coral RX and washed it per directions before adding to the tank. By yesterday morning, it had opened some and by mid day, it was fully open. Here's a photo I took before it was completely open, but looking more coral-ish. I was really pleased to find two on the plug and not just one!

 

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Here are a few more photos from yesterday.

 

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those clowns are sick def in my top 2 favorite designer clowns

When we saw them at our LFS, I knew I needed to have them! Amazingly, they were still there when it was time to add fish to the tank! They had some mochas as well, but all those had gone as had all the black clowns. These two guys were waiting for me ;)

 

They are really fun to watch - and I love their markings!!! The male is probably only an inch at most right now and the female has got to be 3 times his size in girth, if not length.

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michaelrzachmann

When we saw them at our LFS, I knew I needed to have them! Amazingly, they were still there when it was time to add fish to the tank! They had some mochas as well, but all those had gone as had all the black clowns. These two guys were waiting for me ;)

 

They are really fun to watch - and I love their markings!!! The male is probably only an inch at most right now and the female has got to be 3 times his size in girth, if not length.

yah the davinci markings are awesome, i really like the wyoming whites too and wish i could get a pair i just dont like them nearly enough to just kick to the curb and swap out my healthy regular ocellaris pair that has been with me for almost a year lol

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I just fed some Rod's Food to everyone and caught the hidden cup corals catching some large pieces of what looked like shrimp! Crazy to watch them stuff the shrimp in their mouths.

 

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yah the davinci markings are awesome, i really like the wyoming whites too and wish i could get a pair i just dont like them nearly enough to just kick to the curb and swap out my healthy regular ocellaris pair that has been with me for almost a year lol

your clowns are looking great! Nice colors.

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Those clowns...put my Picassos to shame. :(

I just checked out your tank thread!!! Nice - and I disagree on the clowns. Yours are beautiful!

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Well, everything seems to be going well - other than the fact that I'm battling hitchhikers! Found a crab this past weekend - kind of tan and translucent and about the size of a dime or so. He hides well in the rocks so he's going to be hard to catch:

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And then just this evening when I was feeding everyone, I spotted this red-eyed monster (well, he's about the size of a pencil eraser, so I guess he's a little monster). He seems to be living under the hidden cup corals and retracts into the rock quite far. Hopefully I can get him out as well as he doesn't look like a friendly sort of guy:

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

I haven't posted an update in a bit! Last weekend, I went to our LFS and saw a cool two-headed neon yellow/green trumpet frag. So of course I had to have it. That was the second coral to add to the tank after the toadstool leather that I added about 5 weeks prior. Then this week, Saltwaterfish.com was having a promotion where if you spent X amount (I think it was $80) you got a free three frag pack. So what did I do? I went crazy! I bought an orange skirt paly, a green star polyp frag, an ORA mint pavona and an ORA pink stylo. I ended up receiving those four along with a jasmine frag, a pinkish trumpet (I think), a large toadstool finger leather (half the size of my hand), a red and green brain frag and some sort of what I think is a maze brain frag. WAY more than I anticipated but it was a good surprise - I ended up with 5 free pieces instead of 3. I also ordered an ORA Red Sea white Xenia at the same time, a giant head neon green Duncan and a Purple Taylor's tree. So I went from almost no corals to bunch.

 

A few weeks ago, I bought a 6.25 gallon petco brand Arc tank to use as a frag/coral QT tank. I want to start fragging the toadstools and such. I'm still waiting for the dang thing to cycle. I started with some carribsea aragonite and a few pieces of LR from my BioCube. I put in a half of a square of frozen mysis to get the cycle started and Ammonia is still at about .25 ppm. So, still waiting.

 

Anyway, back to the corals! I acclimated them and then dipped them all in Coral RX. Everything pretty much polyped out within a couple hours, except the Xenia. It still doesn't look too happy and it looks purple/blue rather than white. I'm thinking it may not make it, but you never know.

 

Last week, I noticed a bump at the base of one of my toadstool leathers so I looked closely and sure enough, saw a very minuscule aiptasia at the base that was apparently stinging the toadstool, so the toadstool was growing around it. I shot the aiptasia with some Joe's Juice and it imploded, however, the toadstool was not too fond of Joe's Juice. it has a black area at the base where the Joe's came in contact with the flesh and it hasn't really polyped out as well ever since. I'm hoping it can overcome the burn from Joe's :(

 

Today's Parameters:

SG: 1.024

Ph: 8.0

Kh: 9.0

Calcium: 440

Ammonia: 0

Nitrite: 0

Nitrate: less than 5 PPM, but greater than 0

Phosphates: 0

 

Next up: some photos!

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Here's a full tank shot from today. I've taken out some of the LR over the past month and epoxied the bridge to the rock to add stability. I'm thinking of putting the GSP up on that bridge.

 

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Here's the orange skirt paly after about an hour of adding to the tank.

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Here's the big head duncan (the polyp is about an inch across). I love this thing!

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The skunks and clowns are always hanging out together. I love the skunks! They are so friendly. They've molted about 3x each since I got them in mid-late Feb and they've gotten quite large! one of them has a sack of eggs under the hind flippers, so at some point, there will be some free food in the tank.

 

They are constantly trying to clean the clowns (lunging at them pretty much) and the clowns, while not scared of the shrimp, really want nothing to do with cleaning. They hang out by the shrimp all the time, but definitely aren't into the cleaning services.

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Here's a shot of the toadstool finger leather

 

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Jasmine frag

 

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Red and green brain

 

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What I think is some sort of maze brain, but not sure given the growth form being upright

 

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ORA Mint Pavona

 

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Pinkish trumpet-like coral

 

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Here's the unhappy white pom pom xenia. Hopefully this guy will recover.

 

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And here's the ORA pink stylo. It is small so it was really hard to get a non-blurry photo. I haven't figured out where the final places will be for all of these yet, so none are affixed to the rock work.

 

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of course I also needed to post a photo of Vit and Mona.

 

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I was just scraping coralline off the glass a few moments ago and found out that there is a baby Hawaiian feather duster (or so I think) at the base of my original duster! Same coloring, same type of tube, just much smaller. I originally got the feather duster because instructions on the site where I got it said they were easy to keep. Noobie mistake. After doing research, I realized they aren't so easy to keep. I had originally been feeding Two Little Fishies PhytoPlan, but realized the particles would be way too big for the duster, so I got some Brightwell Aquatics PhytoChrom, Microvore and zooplankton. I've been rotating those three things for the past month (feeding 3x per week) and the duster has gotten much longer and bushier feathers. And now a small one! About a week and a half ago, the strangest thing happened. Right after feeding the phytochrom, the duster "smoked" a bunch of mucus into the tank. I thought for sure it was going to croak. Seemed better than ever after and after reading, it could've been spawning. Who knows. I love watching the duster though.

 

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Love the toadstool leathers! They add a lot of movement to the tank for sure.

 

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