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the sun sets today on kgoldy's all natural 90


kgoldy

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Just moved a bunch of my LR from my BC into this setup... Anyone got any tips on how the hell I can get my watchman gobies and pistol shrimp out of the sand without killing them? I'm gunna have to pull ALL my LR to catch any of the fish. :closedeyes:

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These scardy-cats never leave their holes! Guess I could give the bottle trap a try... Maybe they wander when I'm not around...

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Moved all my livestock from the BC to the 90. Everything but one pistol shrimp who either got buried, or has a real good hiding spot in the rocks. Poor Yasha is gunna be sad. :tears:

 

I even got the sexies in there... They look even cuter in the monsterous tank.

 

Next time the LFS gets a some Randal's pistols in, I'm gunna buy a whole bunch. I figure that way they can all establish their territories, and any watchman gobies I add are bound to find a partner. Or maybe I'll just buy them the same time as a BSJ and some other stuff so I hit that free shipping point...

 

 

Anyway, I dug every hair worm that I possibly could out of the sandbed while I had all the rock removed. I stopped counting at like 16, then proceeded to curse myself for wasting so much money on my skimpy little order from Inland Aquatics.

 

I can totally expect a cycle from digging up all the detritus, so I'm going to have to do some WC over the next few days if I don't want a stink bomb in my room.

 

Anyway, no pics of this yet. Hands were wet, and I was dripping on the floor the whole time. Gotta say, everything looks completely AWESOME under the Mu fixtures. If only I knew how to get the camera to see what I do...

 

 

edit- Oh, and check this out:

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Liquid Mountaineering eh? Pretty bad-ass. I mean it seems like a lot for a few steps, but I suppose people will get better and eventually invent some specific gear that might make it possible to run further.

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I'm totally trying it this summer when I get up to the lake... It'll be a hell of a party trick. I figure once you get good, you could easily run across an in-ground pool.

 

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What do you guys think about keeping some mollies or guppies in an in-tank breeder in the display tank to provide occasional bursts of extra live food?

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I think I spotted some burrows under the LR in the BC this morning... There's still hope for my yasha's pistol shrimp in there!

 

The barberpoll goby lost his pistol shrimp in the 90... I saw him on the opposite side of the tank this morning.

 

YWG pair is still hiding in the rocks 99% of the time. I snapped a few pics of them the other day when I saw them poke out real quick. They're pretty cute how they're always touching, just wish they were out more. Hopefully they're eating under there...

 

Yasha was always a pansy, so I'll probably never see him again. Even in the BC I would go for weeks without knowing if he was alive or not. I have no idea how he eats enough to stay nice and fat. Must the the pods...

 

I'm broadcast feeding, and overfeeding, a lot of un-rinsed frozen PE Mysis, Cyclopeze, and Enriched Brine. While I'm away I'm going to leave instructions to just plop a cube of each into the tank every day without turning off the pumps. My hope is to flood the tank with nutrients to cause algae to grow out more, so that pod population explodes to feed the mandarins. They were pretty damn skinny at the LFS, so they need all the help they can get.

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Okay, I lied to myself. I made a reef purchase. Copy and paste the post I just made on Product Reviews forum (since far less people are probably going to chat about it here).

 

Reef Nutrition Macro Feast

 

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I'm curious if anyone else has bought a bottle and saw if it actually grew out... I figure for the $12 price tag, it was worth picking up and throwing in my tank. It was certainly cheaper and larger than most macro frags I could have gotten in the mail (when you include shipping).

 

It looks pretty awesome under actinic lighting... Just about glows orange. Definitely display worthy. When I learn how to take pictures of stuff that's fluorescent, I'll try to capture what the naked eye sees.

 

The jar was marked "Bottled on March 14th", and it's got a shelf life of 4 weeks, according to Reef-Nutrition, it's manufacturer.- so i got it half way through to "going bad" (today is April 1st). After doing a quick temperature acclimation... I pulled it out of the jar and immediately noticed that it had a healthy texture to it, not the rubbery goo that I was expecting to feel. How they keep this stuff from falling apart after no exposure to light, and in a refrigerator, I can only guess. I tossed the water out, not knowing what chemicals might be in there to preserve the stuff.

 

For now I've got most of it isolated from any possible predators in an in-tank refugium (a reef gently acclimator). It says on the bottle that it "does best under strong lighting in swift current" so I placed it relatively close to the surface of the water, near my MP-40. The acclimator diffuses the blast of the vortec, so that the strands of macro gently sways.

 

The rest, I'm going to throw in the fuge. My CUC has been devouring all the soft macro that they can possibly digest, so I'm not sure if it'll survive in there.

 

I'll try to keep this thread going with updates on whether this stuff dies or flourishes.

 

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As for other updates...

 

Haven't seen YWG pair today.

 

Barberpoll is looking angry as ever, still doesn't have his pistol shrimp.

 

Yasha is hiding in a barnacle... Part of the cluster I want my BSJ to live in.

 

Went and searched the BC, and found no pistol shrimp. Dug out a half dozen more hair worms and added them to the 90. Thought about taking my emerald crab down to the 90... But since there's no bubble algae in there, I couldn't justify it. With all the small fish I want in there, he could become a murdering @sshole.

 

Algae blenny seems happy. He loves the barnacles. Would make for a great picture if he didn't get so excited every time I go near the tank. :wub:

 

The misbar clowns and firefish pair have been chilling real close together, as if they missed being together in the BC. Black clowns have been wandering in and out of that group.

 

Anemones seem angry today, not sure why. They've always been temperamental. Sexy shrimp are following them wherever they go.

 

Coral Beauty is scared of everyone but me. He's getting real fat. Maybe too fat.

 

Blue Neon is attacking food as normal.

 

Added six Super Tongan Nassarius from the BC upstairs, so they're helping a lot with the food that makes it to the bottom. The ones from Reef Cleaners are tiny, so they aren't nearly as effective.

 

Duncan and brain coral still aren't bleached, and look better than they did in the BC... Guess that Mu and the broadcast feeding is doing them good.

 

Dendro at the bottom of the tank looks awesome under the actinic lighting...

 

And I guess that's all to report on. Picture time. Still not a good photographer... Bear with me.

 

 

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Macro feast looks about the same... It's like the stuff is made of plastic. I expected either some die off or growth. I'll take pictures right before I leave for vacation, then when I get back after 10 days I'll report on what it looks like then.

 

Changed light cycle to be about 12 hours to promote algal growth, since the pods really died back when I lost all the GHA.

 

Full API test kit readings...

 

pH......................7.8 (According to the RKL pH probe, it swings only about .12 through the day/night)

Ammonia.............0

Nitrite..................0

Nitrate.................10-20 (~15)

Phosphate............0

Calcium................500

dKH.....................7

 

Refractometer

sg (salinity)...........1.024

 

 

Just found out my flight leaves 7am on Tuesday, not Thursday morning... Told my boss I'd work half a week. Oops. :slap:

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...And I think I may make a planted tank in my room out of my 30B, now that the biocube is broken down.

 

Rimless, all in one... Maybe a mangrove biotope.

 

Clingfish, seahorses, spotted mandarin, pipefish, or gardensnake eels. Very lightly stocked.

 

Low intensity lighting. Gorgonians maybe. I'll see what John at Reef Cleaners can recommend.

 

No hard coral.

 

All brown substrate, mostly mud, possibly a DSB. I want it to have a swampy feel to it. I'll shoot for tank of the month with this one. Give me a year, it'll look sweet.

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animalmaster6

Sounds pretty much exactly what I want to do once my 125 has been running for a while.

 

Sounds like an awesome idea.

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To kill some of the bubbles in the sump there a couple ways to do it. bubble trap from a u bend into a stand pipe is the easiest.

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U bend straight up into stand pipe works best some where in the stand pipe about half way up or so tee off & send the water back down.

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What do you guys think about keeping some mollies or guppies in an in-tank breeder in the display tank to provide occasional bursts of extra live food?

 

I hate to get into the whole "animal rights" thing, but I wonder how happy they would be if they had to be stuck in that breeder box all the time. Would they even breed? Or would you just toss the females in there when they look ready to pop?

I guess my opinion is that you are going to need to give them some living room somewhere so they can at least mate, then put them in the breeder box to birth the kids. Either that or just let them roam free in the display tank. I know there are people who would curse you for cutting them loose in the display since they are not your classic looking saltwater fish......I personally think it is no big deal if you start with nice looking mollies/guppies.

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I hate to get into the whole "animal rights" thing, but I wonder how happy they would be if they had to be stuck in that breeder box all the time. Would they even breed? Or would you just toss the females in there when they look ready to pop?

I guess my opinion is that you are going to need to give them some living room somewhere so they can at least mate, then put them in the breeder box to birth the kids. Either that or just let them roam free in the display tank. I know there are people who would curse you for cutting them loose in the display since they are not your classic looking saltwater fish......I personally think it is no big deal if you start with nice looking mollies/guppies.

 

 

Yeah, trap em when they're about to pop. I supposed trapping them wouldn't be entirely necessary. A trap with mollies would probably look worse in the tank than free roaming ones.

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New fish. His name is "Paco". Kind of a pinkish gold in real life...

 

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I'm off for vacation... Macro Feast turns out to be crap. Check review thread for details.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Came home from vacation to an explosion of coraline algae, and some seriously fat fish. Looks like the food baggies I prepared were a little too much food.

 

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"Macro Feast" is making a come-back.

 

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ORDER NUMBER: *********

Shipping Category 1: Fish/Corals/Inverts/Tank Cleaners/Algae - Ships from California

 

Item Details:

CN-86343 SW - Jawfish, Blue Dot, Qty:1, Price: $89.99 each = $89.99

p-86343-jawfish.jpg

 

CN-80053 SW - Bicolor Blenny (Indonesia) - Medium, Qty:1, Price: $6.99 each = $6.99

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CN-78530 SW - Snapping Shrimp, Red Banded- Tiny , Qty:3, Price: $13.99 each = $41.97

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CN-39414 SW - Snapping Shrimp (Eastern Asia), Qty:1, Price: $14.99 each = $14.99

p-39414-Pistol-Shrimp.jpg

 

CN-38974 SW - Sleeper Blue Dot Goby (Maldives) - Medium, Qty:1, Price: $19.99 each = $19.99

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CN-80422 SW - Tangaroa Goby, Qty:1, Price: $25.99 each = $25.99

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CN-70977 SW - Wheeler\'s Shrimp Goby, Qty:1, Price: $15.99 each = $15.99

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CN-90056 SW - Sexy Anemone Shrimp - Tiny, Qty:6, Price: $7.99 each = $47.94

p-90056-shrimp.jpg

 

CN-39334 SW - Tail Spot Blenny (Cebu), Qty:2, Price: $18.99 each = $37.98

p-39334-tail-spot-blenny.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

ORDER NUMBER: ********

Shipping Category 2: Divers Den/Coral Farm - Ships from Wisconsin

 

Item Details:

0415111398 Diver\'s DenYellow Lined Shrimp Goby with Red Banded Snapping Shrimp, Qty:1, Price: $49.99 each = $49.99

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Group buy-

 

All but one tail spot and the sleeper is for me. =]

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I've been working with acrylic at work... Invented a new super portable, very cheap, and 1 day construction photobooth to compete with the cheapo companies that are trying to undercut me and steal all my business. Time to beat those jerks at their own game. :lockdown:

 

Here's the prototype (obviously without the working parts installed):

 

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So- Now that I've learned how to mess with acrylic- I'm going to go ahead and make myself a mangrove tank to put on the back of my display tank. I think it should turn out pretty neat... Maybe I'll split the return line and pump it straight up and into the new thing.

 

Anyway, project should start sometime this spring or summer. Should be pretty awesome.

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Booo. They got Tiger Pistol shrimp in stock today, and won't switch out with the East Asia that they DIDN'T ship out today with my order. =[

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