The Singapore Green Tank

[FUGU!!!]

Seahorses?That would be cool!Like a brazilian red or yellow.And a few gorgs....I mean macro.

[Duncan]

nah... no fussy horsey for me. This one is a low maintenance, low bio-load tank, in short, the lazy man's tank. Top-off and bi-weekly water change only. yeah!

[FUGU!!!]

nah... no fussy horsey for me. This one is a low maintenance, low bio-load tank, in short, the lazy man's tank. Top-off and bi-weekly water change only. yeah!

Thats cool,no fish?No other inverts?

 

This is kinda like a SW planted tank!

[Duncan]

lol, you can say that again!

 

Just a couple of big shrimps and that's it. Maybe I'll stick a plastic nemo inside.

[Travis]

Invert tanks are cool.

[FUGU!!!]

I was thinking of turning my 5 into an invert tank.I still might do it.What are we tankin for shrimp,bloods?CBS?pistol?pep?

[Toomin]

good thread.i be following it closely.

[Duncan]

Invert tanks are cool.

 

Yep, inverts have great diversity in shapes and colors, behaviors.

 

I was thinking of turning my 5 into an invert tank.I still might do it.What are we tankin for shrimp,bloods?CBS?pistol?pep?

 

Good for you! Shrimp list is blood, shunk, sexy.

 

good thread.i be following it closely.

 

Thanks buddy!

[Travis]

I was thinking of doing Invert only on my 12" cube. I believe a Trio of Sexy shrimp would be cool.

 

Here's a pic of the tank.

[Duncan]

Okay, I was quite reluctant to post this pic.

 

 

My ghetto metal stand! It stands 34 inches tall and is painted a weird combo of black and gold collage.

 

Neat-looking tank, Travis! I like its cleaniness. Hope I'll be able to achieve that in my tank after the cycle period. I have 3 sexy shrimps in my 10g now, but can't really see them unless they wiggle their sexy tails. lol

 

I think a group of 5 is a better for your 12g, imo.

[Duncan]

There's a diatom bloom starting in the tank now. Bits of diatom on the sandbed and the lower sections of the rocks. I expect it will get much worse in the next few days. Time to say farewell to my tank's virginity now and hope she matures well after the initial cycle.

 

Meanwhile, I took a few shots of the colorful sponges on the live rock. There're a good variety of them in assorted colors, pink, neon green, dark green, yellow, orange, red & black etc. But I have just posted the more interesting ones due to space constraint on photobucket.

 

These yellow sponges have peculiar-looking horns all over.

 

 

I got a couple of this dried prune-like sponge grown among the macros. Looks pretty tasty!

 

 

Check out the interesting yellow sponge at the bottom of the pic. When I first saw it, I thought it's a yellow nudi or cucumber stuck in the rocks. I had to poke it to make sure it's not what it seemed to be.

 

 

Thanks for looking!

[Carinya]

Great job. Nice to see a new tank that looks both different and cool. I also like that you seem to know your limits (i.e. wanting an easier tank to maintain) and then you've gone about putting together a very smart tank to achieve those goals.

 

Love the macro...I think all the natural life should add some nice variety to your LPS.

 

C

[FUGU!!!]

Sweet

I am going on the hunt for corals tommorow.I just like to say that

Have you ever thought of Harlequin shrimp?I am gonna infect my tank with asterinas so i can get some

[tinyreef]

funky sponge! i would've thought that was a nudi too. considering the diversity and "naturalness" i wouldn't have been surprised. great setup/start!

[Carinya]

I am gonna infect my tank with asterinas

 

But asternias are so cute!

[FUGU!!!]

But asternias are so cute!

So are harlequins

[Duncan]

Great job. Nice to see a new tank that looks both different and cool. I also like that you seem to know your limits (i.e. wanting an easier tank to maintain) and then you've gone about putting together a very smart tank to achieve those goals.

 

Love the macro...I think all the natural life should add some nice variety to your LPS.

 

C

 

Carinya, thanks for your kind words! Your tanks are a continuing source of inspiration to the rest of us! I can see the amount of effort you put into them. But I can't see myself be as diligent as you, so I chose an easier route where everything is kept simple and straight (especially for lazy folks like myself! )

 

funky sponge! i would've thought that was a nudi too. considering the diversity and "naturalness" i wouldn't have been surprised. great setup/start!

 

They sure are funky, tinyreef! I hope they can all survive the cycle. I will let natural takes its course and see how my tank goes. By the way, I haven't see you updating your sunlit reef recently. How is it? (I love that tank, the way you set it on a trolley)

[Duncan]

Sweet

I am going on the hunt for corals tommorow.I just like to say that

Have you ever thought of Harlequin shrimp?I am gonna infect my tank with asterinas so i can get some

 

Thanks for the suggestion, FUGU!!!! But I don't want to have a rotting star in the tank. It won't be able to take that kind of load. And I don't think I can stomach the idea of cutting up the same star over and over again for its limbs.

 

Typical freshmen conversation in the 5 stars' hotel aka sump:

 

Noob star: Hey guys! I'm new! Glad to see so many of our kind here! Cool!

 

Elder star: *smirk* So you're the replacement for Larry, glad you came... Welcome, mate.

 

Noob star: *closer look @ the missing legs* Woo! What happened to you! Holy stars!

 

Lady star: *held up a badly eaten hand* Oh, that's nothing... We get eaten up... once in a while. Then we're back again, for recovery.

 

Noob star: *stammering* B..bbback again? back from where?

 

Emo star: Back from hell... yeah... hell...

 

*A massive hand broke in, all stars scambled away except noob star. Hand grabbed the noob star and lifted off.*

 

Baby star: Bye bye, dumb dumb.

 

*Lights dimmed out, screamings faded out*

 

 

Happy coral hunting to you!

[travisurfer]

tank is still looking awesome too

[Duncan]

Thanks, Travisurfer! The tank has more diatom today, but not as much as I expected. Guess the cycle is running pretty slow for my tank.

 

I found that there's a problem when I wrapped the powerhead intakes with filterfloss. Apparently, the filterfloss was doing its job so well that it was clogged with so much filth and prevents the powerheads from pumping out water efficiently. It was just a day I cleansed the filterfloss and it was fully clogged at the end of the day.

 

I decided to use black sponge tube and slid them over the intakes. I hope the smaller particles can flow through instead of blocking the flow. I also stuff a bit of filterfloss at the bottom of the black sponge, just to catch a bit of dirt.

 

 

Thanks for looking!

[Duncan]

Here's an old pic of my 10g 6 months ago. I'm taking it down now, so I decided to post this for the sake of memembrance.

 

 

It all went well until some hitchhiker nudi got into my tank and attacked on my zoas. I didn't do much about it and let it went on for 1 month as I had to go for an overseas training. Then the tank started looking very bad. Finally, I did a fw dip on the zoas but it's too late. Besides that, I got a boxfish and flowerpot which shouldn't even be inside the tank. Everything went downhill from there on. The tank managed to revive, but it crashed again recently due to the death of the sixline.

 

I learnt my lesson now. I'm going to keep everything simple this time round.

 

Thanks for looking!

[rickjg]

Duncan,

 

I really like the clean lines of your tank & lighting.

Singapore Green is a great idea, the Hammers & frogspawn can work together really well with the caulerpa all waving around in the tank current.

 

Do you use NSW (natural sea water) for your reef tanks? I use NSW with no additives, just 10% to 20% water changes every couple of weeks, and it has really helped to keep the coralline algae to a minimum (I know…some people pray to the coralline god & sacrifice their 1st born fish to get more, but I don’t like excess coralline growing on the glass & background). I also use a nano size sand vacuum to keep my sand bed clean. It’s just amazing how much debris that will fall out of good live rock and into your sand bed. I still have a lot of worms living in my sand bed, but I don’t worry that the nutrient load in the sand will reach critical stage.

 

Keep up the good work ...

-Rick

[echo-bravo 4-19]

sux aout your ten g but still the new tank is looking great the sexys should look great in there and y not just buy some wood ant make that stand into a cabinet

[Duncan]

rickjg, that's an awesome piece of equipment you got there! Did you diy? How does it works? I'm interested to find out about it.

 

I use Red Salt salt all the while. Don't have any issue with it. You're lucky to get NSW. The water around here is not clean enough for reefkeeping purposes. I feel that without background or algae on the wall, it gives an illusion of a very wide open scenery.

 

echo-bravo 4-19

yup, sure I'm going to get some sexy shrimp, about 9 of them! I wish i can have a wood cabinet but I don't have any carpentry skill! lol... And all I can afford is a metal stand.

[rickjg]

rickjg, that's an awesome piece of equipment you got there! Did you diy? How does it works? I'm interested to find out about it.

 

I use Red Salt salt all the while. Don't have any issue with it. You're lucky to get NSW. The water around here is not clean enough for reefkeeping purposes. I feel that without background or algae on the wall, it gives an illusion of a very wide open scenery.

Duncan

 

My nano sand vacuum is DIY. I used a plastic tube from reef epoxy & an air line, but I have seen gravel vacs for sale that were almost as small. The air line keeps the water flow low enough that the sand & worms are not pulled out when you clean, the bigger size hose on most gravel vacs flow too much water & can pull sand right out of the tank.

 

I fully agree with keeping coralline off the glass and background for the depth illusion. When the coralline starts growing the tank closes in and seems much smaller.

 

Rick