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And in the beginning


spanko

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Spanko thought :rolleyes:

My biocube 29 gallon is now about 9 months old. It is doing great. The requisite fishes and corals all of which are a hodgepodge of different things that I have come to like.

Rockwork is a wall of sorts.

I am tired of it. I am tired of islands of rock. I am tired of valleys of rock. What I do like though is those areas of the reef where the bottom is completely covered with a layer of rock on which is attached monti cap, acro, and varied encrustiing SPS.

So at that point my tank looked like this...

 

fts-2.jpg

 

I sold, traded in for store credit, or gave away to friends all the fish, LPS and softies I had. I removed all of the substrate and replace only the rockwork, snails, hermits and my pom-pom crab as well as any SPS which really wasn't much but a green slimer, superman monti, and monti cap. I then began to purchase those things I found living on the reef flats. So here are the particulars.

 

29 gallon bio cube

150 watt Sunpod

Heater and Purigen in the first chamber.

Sapphire Aquatics skimmer and Chemi Pure Elite in the second chamber

Rio 6hf and Auto top off floats in the third chamber.

Tank is bare bottom. About 35 lbs. of rock. A small ball of Chaetomorpha.

A Koralia 1 and 2.

Geometric Pygmy Hawkfish

Chrysiptera hemicyanea damsel

Chrysiptera talboti damsel

Green Chromis

Neon Goby

Sixline Wrasse

 

All fish at this point were bought tiny. The largest is the sixline at 1.25". The only fish that will be permanent residents will be the sixline, the neon goby and the hawkfish. All other will be rotated out when they reach 2.5" in length and replaced with other fish, mostly damsels.

 

Coral are

Porites worm rock

Orange monti cap

Red monti cap

Beige with orange polyped monti cap

Beige with blue berry polyps monti cap

Bright lime green monti cap

Superman monti

Blue tip acro

Tabling acro

A tiny pc of birdnest acro that may or may not make it.

Green slimer

 

Motile inverts

Various snails

Various hermits

pom-pom crab

Long spined Urchin bought to eat Caulerpa, not doing it, LFS for store credit.

Tuxedo Urchin

 

Water changes are religiously 10% per week

Dosing is Calcium, Alkalinity and Magnesium every three days or when testing warrants.

Filtrating is the skimmer, the Purigen, and the Chemipure Elite.

A stock filter frame has been modded to accept phosphate removing filter pads or any other type as needed. This is run three weeks per month changed out every week The fourth week a stock pad is used to get the carbon benefit.

Fish are fed three times per week with the normal hodgepodge of frozen, pelleted, and flake food.

The coral are target fed twice per week with a mixture of coral frenzy, reef plus, and DT's phyto.

 

Ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate are undetectable.

Calcium runs from 420 - 450

Alkalinity runs 3 - 3.5

Magnesium runs 1300 - 1400

 

So three months after ripping the tank that was apart here is a current pic or two. I am done adding things, maybe some more coral if I see something I have to have, and will be letting it grow to become the reef flat I am looking to create.

 

PICT0091-1.jpg

 

PICT0090.jpg

 

PICT0089.jpg

 

And this is the look I am hoping to copy.

 

Coral_reef_web.jpg

 

Thank you for looking. I will update as time goes on and the coral start to grow in.

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About FN time we get a peek at your master plan! Almost made the first post!

 

Cant wait too see the progression over time. I really like the substarte removed and have often thought about doing that to mine, still may.

 

 

You have been such an asset to these forums and I have always wanted a peek at your tank ever since you started posting about your idea. With all the tank karma you have stocked up helping others I hope you are rewarded with fast growth!

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Thank you Tudd, very nice of you to say those things. I think this is going to work. Just have to use some patience and let er grow out. Sorry it took so long to post it but I really wanted to get it to a point that it was about set and ready to mature.

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Thank you Weetie. Don't know if it will work yet but gonna give some time to see. My hopes are that at some point I can look into the tank and only see rocks from the side view, when looking down from the top only montis and acros. If I had a larger tank a school of Anthias, Damsels, Chromis, or a combination of those would be cool. Right now I am content with only having to change 2.5 gallons of water per week and that equaling 10%.

 

Thanx for looking.

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Cool idea and looking great. I've got an emty 20 gallon acrylic tank with the exact blue background thats in this pic you posted. Gives me an idea what to do with my emty tank.........hmmmmmpost-31916-1200410699_thumb.jpg

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The long spined urchin went to the LFS tonight where I picked up a 3" diameter pc. of Acropora Millepora. Nice pc. It also has at least one commensal crab in it that is a pale pick color. Great score. Just what I have been looking for. This coupled with my Acropora Cytherea will fill out the tabling acros I have been after.

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Spanko - this tank is going to look awesome when it grows out. I'm definitely going to be following this thread. I always like it when someone has a master plan and goes for the future look instead of trying to stock quickly without a plan in mind. Great creative work and please keep us updated on the progress.

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Hey Spanko. Finally got back up to date with everyone's tanks after being MIA from the forums for a bit. This is looking awesome bud. I remember when you were still throwing the idea around and I'm glad to see that it is turning out better than you thought. It is going to look amazing once everything starts growing out and some of those caps start spreading.

 

Great job. I am tagging this thread for sure to see the progression.

 

Adam

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Oh yeah, everything is perfect. Just took a little hiatus to catch up on work, life after the wedding and holidays, and devoting loads of time to the puppy we got back in December.

 

I am back and ready to cruise the forums again....

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That is an interesting thing StevieT.If you look at post #1 and see the color of the coralline on the back wall it is purple. When I tore that build down to remove the sand and LPS and softies naturally I draind the tank completely. I worked on the rock outside the tank in tupperware with the tank water in it picking off the damn viney Caulerpa. The tank was empty for about 1.5 hours. In that time the coralline all turned white. Now that it is coming back it is coming back green. Strangest thing. I like it though. Another strange thing the millepora in the last pic, center of photo brown\tan color is now only 1/4 the size shown. I dosed some b-ionic 2-part the other night and came home from work the next nigth to see a lot of stringy slime coming off the branches. Took the baster and blasted it and all the skin came off leaving a bleached white skeleton on about 3/4 of it. I took it out fragged off the good pcs. left and did a 10 % water change. I may have overdosed the alkalinity part and I have read that swings in alkalinity can cause STN and RTN to occur. Funny part about it is all the other SPS looked a tad PO'D but did not disintegrate like the milli did. Just have to be more careful dosing from now on. I also wonder why I was able to save 1/4 of it. Thinking about things like that will drive a man to drink. Oh wait, I already drink, my bad!

 

drink.gif

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crazy! I noticed the change coralline from the pictures and was surprised. Mine grows from a light green to purple, but I have never seen such a bright green. IMO it looks pretty cool! I wonder if it is going to turn purple again over time.

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That's pretty crazy about the green coralline...at first site I thought it was just the color balance of the picture but thought it was crazy since the colors of the corals were true.

 

Definitely need to be careful with the two part dosing. I know for me it took me about a good 2-3 solid weeks of dosing to get an idea of what I needed to keep up with the consumption in the tank. It seems that about 5-6 ml of both parts every other day does it for me. I still test about every week just to make sure things aren't getting too far out of whack.

 

Speaking of drinking....three hours til happy hour :)

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I don't know, it's been that color green since about the middle of Novemeber. Here is a pick from 12-Nov-06 as it started to color back up.

 

bluetipacro.jpg

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I noticed the green as well and figured you had drained the tank, killing off the purple coraline and turning it white.

 

Could the green just be algea that is growing on patches on the back wall?

 

 

 

Cool to press the reset button and watch a tank go thru all of its developing phases.

 

 

on another note.....someone traded a huge monti in at my LRS It is as big as a hub cap and has two levels on more than half of it, very impressive. He traded it it because it was shading half of his tank! Will be sweet to plan for one of these and let it grow to the edges of a tank.

 

 

The progression pics of your tank should be sweet to look back at this time next year...can't wait!

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if you want to see really bright green coraline look at my tank! Well back on topic, spanko your tank looks amazing! Can't wait to see it all grown out! :D

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