Klarion's Tongan Scape

[ap123]

Hi Boris,

 

I just wanted to say thank you for this thread, it's fantastic.

 

Your tank is beautiful, and I think I have spent my whole day reading this.

 

If you don't mind my asking, what LFS are you using that you like? There's a new store on the upper west side that I like, Uptown Birds, (keeping in mind that I'm a total newb and don't have a tank yet), they aren't marine focused, but they have at least two young men there who seem knowledgable--and very patient with my questions. Pricey, but that goes along with retail rents in the city. Their livestock seem healthy and happy.

 

Anne

[klarion]

Hey Boris. You've been MIA for a couple of weeks and just wanted to see how things were going with your tank. Did you ever get another fixture?

 

Hope all is well with you and the tank.

 

Hey,

Things have been very busy for me lately and I havn't had time to devote to posting and picture taking. The tank is doing OK and I'm still using the light. It has been working fine with me opening the side to vent hot air. I'll try to post some updates in a couple of days when I get some time off.

[klarion]

Hi Boris,

 

I just wanted to say thank you for this thread, it's fantastic.

 

Your tank is beautiful, and I think I have spent my whole day reading this.

 

If you don't mind my asking, what LFS are you using that you like? There's a new store on the upper west side that I like, Uptown Birds, (keeping in mind that I'm a total newb and don't have a tank yet), they aren't marine focused, but they have at least two young men there who seem knowledgable--and very patient with my questions. Pricey, but that goes along with retail rents in the city. Their livestock seem healthy and happy.

 

Anne

 

Hi there.

 

The store I like on the upper west side is Petqua. I think it's on Broadway between 97 and 99th streets (on the east side of broadway). Their Fishtanks are in the basement area and I've been going there for years untill I moved back to Brooklyn.

 

Another store i like is New World Aquarium on the Midtown East side (204 E38th street). Their selection is great, but it is pricey.

 

I'm glad you enjoyed the read. I'm planning to get back into posting soon.

Best,

Boris

[divecj5]

Awesome....glad to hear that things have just been busy and the tank is still going. Would have hated to see you take this down or something.

[Deleted User 6]

Hey Boris,

 

Speaking of Brooklyn, I'm moving there in July - what stores do you recommend?

[klarion]

Hey Boris,

 

Speaking of Brooklyn, I'm moving there in July - what stores do you recommend?

 

Hey,

 

There is one that I consider pretty good and they're serious about Marine Aquariums. It's called World Class Aquarium and they're located on Flatbush avenue somewhere near avenue M and Kings Highway. (2015 Flatbush Ave, Brooklyn, NY 11234 (718) 258-0653).

 

They are reasonable too. I saw a poly piece there that had a glass anemone on it, so they agreed to give it to me for $10 because of that and all I had to do is remove the anemone! Generally, their prices are high for corals, but they also have rare fish and corals. I saw a Nautilus there once. I actually don't think that's something that should be readily available in the trade because not many people have tanks of the size needed for an animal like that, but they told me it wasn't for sale anyway. go figure.

[klarion]

Awesome....glad to hear that things have just been busy and the tank is still going. Would have hated to see you take this down or something.

 

Hey, I'm not planning to take anything down anytime soon. If I do, that's because I'm moving to a new place, but I will take all the animals with me, of course.

 

I'm planning on improving things around the tank and for that purpose, I bought a Dremel power tool. My first step will be to improve aquascaping and I'm seriously thinking about converting the Rapids Pro into a small refugium. There are a couple of problems still left to solve with that, and since I'm going on tour for about a month this summer, I will have to postpone the project probably until August.

[Monkfish]

When are ya gonna be in manhattan to play Id come and check it out for sure.

[klarion]

When are ya gonna be in manhattan to play Id come and check it out for sure.

 

Next preformances are of "Glory Denied" on

June 5 and 7, 2008 at 8:00 PM at the Jan Hus PlayhouseTheatre, located at 351 E 74 St in Manhattan. Click here to purchase tickets from the RTB website. "This story of an American family during one of our nation's most turbulent eras, is particularly relevant in our current time of war. Journalist Tom Philpott has told the true story of America's longest-held prisoner of war. Composer Tom Cipullo has made it a musical drama. RTB is combining film and live theater so you can experience Jim Thompson's thoughts, memories, dreams and nightmares. Don't miss this dramatic, theatrical event."

 

After that I'm playing mostly private events and gone on tour all of July. Hope you can make it. It will be cool to meet in person!

 

 

[klarion]

Anemone Loss Confirmed

 

I sighted a boxing crab anemone wondering on its own. One of the Crabs is probably molting right now. I saw its exosceleton. The anemone wondered away on its own and this is one of the reasons why Lybia Tesselata loose their anemones in the aquarium.

[klarion]

YCG inspecting new coral

Hosting the Green Striped Mushrooms

[divecj5]

Awesome captures Boris. Did I catch a "new" coral. Nice candy cane!!!

[klarion]

Awesome captures Boris. Did I catch a "new" coral. Nice candy cane!!!

 

New indeed. I got a small one to see how an LPS would do in my mostly softie tank.

 

The baby torch didn't survive, unfortunately. It got overgrown by a fast-growing form of coraline algae of all things. I tried to free it, but it didn't do much good.

[klarion]

Update, June 11

Six months since setup.

 

It's been a busy time and now that I've got a couple of days to relax, I'm posting updates on the tank.

 

I finally got the new camera. It's a Sony Alpha 700 DSLR that fits my existing line of Konica-Minolta lenses. It's a lovely camera and here are some pics:

 

YCG Hosting Green Striped Mushrooms

 

GSP

 

 

Yellow Polyps

 

I'm still learning how to use the new camera to get the most accurate colors, but I can see that it has a wider color gamut, shadow and highlight gradations.

Equipment:

I'm still using the Sunpod PC fixture with the busted fan. It seems to be cool enough though. I'm thinking of what alternatives I could use and it's a problem because the tank is only 13" wide and there are very few options out there that would fit nicely. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

I also Modded my Rapids Pro filter by adding a more powerful Coralife Luftpump air pimp to the skimmer and I'm getting more consistent, thicker and dirtier foam out of it.

 

Water Chemistry

Earlier I wrote that my Calcium levels seemed unusually low and now I tested the water with Red Sea Calcium Pro test kit. The results came out at 420ppm- just right. So, I was getting false readings from my API test kit.

 

Magnesium is a tad low and I'm slowly going to raise that. I'm also beginning to dose small amounts of Iron to help out the macro algae to out-compete bryopsis.

 

Critters

I added 5 small blue legged hermits and a small candy cane coral as well as a small pencil urchin. There are also signs of new life in the tank. I spotted a fully grown stomatella snail and a very tiny crab (greish looking). Corals are growing nicely. The only thing that bothers me is that I'm seeing my pom-poms less and less. They found nice caves inside the setup and rarely venture out into the open.

 

Oh, and one of the nerites croaked , but the other two are doing great.

 

I'm going to start taking more pictures to post soon.

[divecj5]

Congrats on the new camera Boris. Looks like you are already putting it to great use and the pictures prove that. Great color rendition with those...makes me think I am starring right at the tank. Sometimes it's hard to get accurate color since a lot of tanks use actinic and all sorts of funky mixes of color temperatures.

 

Everything looks great in the tank and it sounds like your levels were right on all along. It really stinks sometimes when you get a faulty test kit since a lot of what we do is based off of these. If there was a company that could have 99.9% reliability they would put all others out of business. Even the big, expensive names (Salifert, Elos, etc.) have their issues that I've read about.

 

Keep up the good work Boris. Glad to see you back on here. Hope you continue to pop in and out of here as your schedule allows. Sounds like with the orchestra you are incredibly busy this time of year.

[klarion]

Congrats on the new camera Boris. Looks like you are already putting it to great use and the pictures prove that. Great color rendition with those...makes me think I am starring right at the tank. Sometimes it's hard to get accurate color since a lot of tanks use actinic and all sorts of funky mixes of color temperatures.

 

Keep up the good work Boris. Glad to see you back on here. Hope you continue to pop in and out of here as your schedule allows. Sounds like with the orchestra you are incredibly busy this time of year.

 

Hi Dive,

 

I'm really glad to have some more time on the forums and get more inspiration from looking at people's tanks and threads. It's been such a busy season for me that I hardly had extra time to do water changes let alone post updates. But, I'm really happy that my musical career is moving in the right direction. It's hard work playing all the time, but I am a hard worker when it comes to doing what I love. I'm concerned about one thing though. This July I'm going on tour to Europe for a month and that means my tank is going to be an orphan of sorts. I just hope my family can take care of it long enough for me to get back......

 

I'm trying to figure out what are the essential instructions I should leave them....

Edited June 12, 2008 by klarion

[divecj5]

Glad to hear that your musical career seems to really be taking off. That's awesome that you get to do what you love.

 

I understand your trepidation about leaving your tank in others hands. I feel the same way when I leave and have to have someone take care of the tank. At least my wife knows enough about things when I am just out of town for a couple days. When we both left, I had my brother look after my tank and here are some of the instructions that you need to make sure are spelled out for whoever it is:

 

-I had my brother come over every other day to check on the tank. Not sure if he did or not

-Make sure to ration out feeding amounts and write out which days to feed. I used pellets which seemed to work fine for me.

-For the top offs, I just made a mark on the side of the tank and told him to fill it up with the provided water to that line. Seemed easy enough. Just make sure to make lots of water so they don't top off with tap.

-For my dosing, i knew pretty much how much I had been dosing all along so I just measured out set amounts for him to dose. I put it in individual tubes so he just had to dump it in there.

-I wasn't gone long enough for him to really need to do anything else.

 

I told him to run the mag float around every once in a while but that's not really a big deal. You can always go to town on the glass with a razor when you get.

 

A month is a long time to leave it in someone's hands. Maybe you can find someone with reefing knowledge to come by somewhere in the middle of the trip just to make sure that things aren't out of whack. Other than that, someone with little knowledge can probably take care of it.

 

You will probably be surprised...whenever I come back from a trip, things are usually doing better than when I left

Edited June 12, 2008 by divecj5

[klarion]

I took down the poll because the very popular sixline is right now my least favorite fish! He got really mean all of a sudden and is attacking my clown fish.

 

I can't catch either of them because they're hiding inside the reef. I'm going to rearrange the scape tonight and hopefully catch at least one of them and isolate it.

 

Also, the hermits are warring too. One of them attacked another and maimed it. Now it's missing the walking legs and can't move. The aggressor has tried many times to finish the job, but to no avail. What is more amazing to me is that the two crabs have switched shells and both are alive!! Go figure....

 

It has always been my intention to keep species that are compatible with each other and it looked like I was succeeding. I will have to become the policeman of my tank now...

[klarion]

I've been getting some unwanted growth in the tank, especially in the back of the scape. My thinking was that the flow was interrupted by my live rock. So, yesterday I rescaped the tank and removed yucky gunk from the back, WC'd 20% and took some FTS shots. Also, I finally got the dremel tool and used it to cut up the artificial mushroom rock I bought from pet-co a while back. Not all the corals are open yet because I just finished tinkering inside the tank.

 

FTS:

 

 

[divecj5]

Looking good Boris....every once in a while a good gunk cleaning is the perfect thing. I like how you've moved a couple of things around.

 

So are you thinking of getting a Sunpod?

[klarion]

Looking good Boris....every once in a while a good gunk cleaning is the perfect thing. I like how you've moved a couple of things around.

 

So are you thinking of getting a Sunpod?

 

Yes, the SunPod MH came into consideration once I realized that it has adjustable leg supports and also that the light emmiting area may actually fit over my tank's surface area.

[klarion]

More Photos

 

 

Edited June 15, 2008 by klarion

[lilredneckman]

Great shots! it looks great!

[Needreefunds]

Wow! Fantastic shots Boris!

 

It IS like I'm sitting next to your tank. LOL.

 

keep 'em coming.

[klarion]