My Rebounding Reef

[revaltion131]

Thank you both for the kind words.

 

I actually got the Pyle's while I was looking for a Lineatus. I saw it on Diver's Den, right next to a Lineatus and just loved it. I'm waiting as patiently as I can for a great male to show up again for my 65 gallon tank.

 

I had planned to update the thread today, actually. Hopefully, the Potter's will be moving on and I'll be putting a Yellow Coris (H. chrysus) in here. I need to move some corals around and of course catch the angel out. I'll have new pics and an updated FTS as long as everything isn't PO'd. FTS will be at the top of the first page, fyi.

[JustReef]

You're in Dayton? Where did you get ORA frags? The Red Planet looks awesome.

[revaltion131]

I am, Bellbrook area to be exact. Dodd, the owner of North Dixie Reef, deals heavily in ORA and this is the second coral order he's done. I think the next he is doing will be in March. Instead of just ordering in a bunch for himself, he gives his customers a look at the availability list and lets us order what we want, first-come, first-serve with the limited ones. It is a very, very nice service.

[revaltion131]

Alright, skip this post if you don't want to see a ton of pictures.

 

First, my Favia is doing mean things to two different acros. It's not its fault though; one fell on it. My Red Planet, mounted poorly, is just above where I had the Favia and its underside is faded and showing little to no PE. I haven't actually seen the favia stinging it, but I know it's capable of having sweepers that long, so I've moved the coral and we'll see how the RP does.

 

 

The white areas on the back right portion of the coral are where the other acro landed on it. Happily, both seem to have made it out alright and if one is worse off than the other, it's the favia. Here's a pic of the acro in question with flash, so you can see the damaged areas.

 

 

My Rainbow Monti is growing quite nicely and is very furry. It's in an area of high flow and it's really cool to watch the polyps wave across the surface. It looks almost like GSP but shorter. However, on the front, it's got some wierd encrusting mat with no flesh or polyps. There were never anythere to begin with, but it looks like it keeps expanding down anyway. I'm certain it's not recession heading into the rest of the coral. I'm wondering if it hit some of the glue and that killed it? Anyway, polyps are retracted in this pic because a fish just swam right in front of it.

 

 

Here's a bunch of corals.

 

 

Probably my favorite. It has no name and I have no clue as to what species it is besides it probably being an Acropora of some sort. It started out very dark, nearly purple.

 

My clams seem to like each other quite a bit. There's no damage being done that I can see, so I'll let them do their thing until it looks like something's wrong.

 

 

As requested, one of the shrimp.

 

 

To finish the pics, the new H. chrysus and my Potter's.

 

 

I have a bubble issue going on, but I get my ZEOvit reactor sometime this week, so I'll have a good excuse to thoroughly clean out the back chambers and find the source.

 

Thanks for looking!

[revaltion131]

*sigh* frustrating and sad day. After running around like a madwoman between school, work, and the stables, I also had to run to the LFS to get some meds to treat my sick CBB (it's in the 65 and a good-sized issue of its own). I got the QT set up for that fish, then finally came in to look over the 34 and found the coris being drug out behind the rock work by hermits. I'm pretty sure it was dead before they started eating it.

 

Seeing as how everything in the tank is good, it looks like the cause is stress.

[quy_nquyen]

Your harlequin shrimp looks really nice.

 

i picked up my first harley today, and i was wondering how long it takes yours to eat the whole star? As of tonight mine has made a small hole on the star. Im not sure if it's full, but it is not eating anymore. The shrimp seems to be just standing on top of the star. Is that normal?

[Lalani]

Sorry about the wrasse.

Everything looks good though!

[revaltion131]

Thanks Lalani. It's been a long fish week. I lost the sick CBB that night too, still have no idea what the infection was. My vet offered to do a necropsy and take tissue samples if any were available, so hopefully I can get some idea of what it was and be able to help other people at least I.D. it if they have a similar problem.

 

Thanks for the complements, Shawn. It usually takes my shrimp 2-3 weeks in order to finish a full star. It will often look like it's just sitting on the star, but it's still eating/digesting and whatnot. Mine has left the star sometimes from an hour to 2-3 days during the course of eating. The star isn't dead, shrimp is just doing other stuff, usually molting or "checking stuff out" like if there's something new to the tank or whatever.

[akabryanhall]

Great looking tank man! Sorry about your fish.

[Seawolf]

Just a really nice looking tank. Really like the fish selections.

[revaltion131]

Thanks for all of the kind words. I have a few changes to update on.

 

First, the most obvious is that I finally changed my bulb and put in a Phoenix 14K. I love it. The colors look great.

 

Next, and more subtle, I started changing the system over to ZEOvit a couple of weeks ago. So far, the changes have been good. Right now, I just have a reactor with .2 L of zeolites, and am dosing ZEObac, ZEOfood7, and ZEOstart2. I think my colors have improved more from the lighting change, but PE is awesome. The reactor is custom made, from a user on the Zeo website named Bogg. Here is a picture of the rear chambers now that I have the reactor in there and one of the stuff just lined up, reactor on the left.

 

 

 

I got a couple of new corals, my first order from Atlantis (everything went great, highly recommend buying from them) and they are a Pink Lemonade and Incredible Hulk. The PL was greenish in the pictures of it under their light, so I need to play with it to yellow it up. As can be expected with SPS, the hulk was brown when it came in, though the tips are clearly green. I'm thinking it'll probably be 3-4 weeks before I see a true return of the purple, at least if it's like my Bonsai was. Here are some pictures.

 

This is the hulk. You can't see much for color, which there isn't much to see right now anyway, but you can see the good PE it's showing and the best pic I've gotten of this little tabling acro so far, lol.

 

 

This is the Pink Lemonade. It fell off of the frag rack and landed in my rics sometime last night and ended up looking like it does in the second picture. I'm thinking that it should bounce back, but it may be awhile.

 

 

 

Here are some other random pictures.

 

[Mr. Grinch]

Tanks looking good! Pardon my newboshness but what does CBB stand for?

[revaltion131]

Copperband Butterfly, and thanks.

[revaltion131]

Well, after a rather long couple of weeks in reefing (ich took 3 fish in my 65), I thought it was time for an update.

 

In this tank, I've had some big problems with acropora STN. This thread pretty much covered it all.

http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=190599

 

My solution has been to change a few dosing schedules, increase in places and decrease in others. My biggest thing to anyone using or that is interested in using the ZEOvit system is that you first read the guide thoroughly, then go to their forum and get their advice. I followed everything the guide listed, but it didn't have some crucial information. I know I should have asked before I did, but the short version is: be careful with this. I've lost 4-5 corals entirely and countless others are on the fence right now.

 

Besides that, I thought I'd just share some pictures.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[revaltion131]

I haven't updated since I started dealing with my SPS mini-crash, and I think it's time to update again. Another issue that ended up taking what was left of my SPS were a massive nitrate spike combined with two nasty, nasty alk swings. I ended up losing all but two SPS entirely: a Psammacora and a DFS Kentucky Bluegrass, which isn't looking so hot right now. Half of it is looking great and getting it's color back! ...but the other half is bone white and I'm assuming, dead. The psammacora has been looking well, but it's browning a little.

 

I reverted, getting off of ZEOvit as my nitrates had only gotten worse since going onto the system instead of better as they should have. My tank is back to having a flourescent strip light growing chaeto in chamber two. It will still take another big water change or to to assist the chaeto before the NO3 is back down to zero, I think.

 

I have since added a Red Planet and Plum Crazy frag. The RP looks fairly good. It browned after being added, but does show PE. The PC looks like it could use some help, browning immedeately then showing some tissue necrosis in spots. It now appears to be rebounding and coloring back up, so I am taking these as good signs.

 

As my last post will show, I added a Helfrich's Firefish to the tank and the little guy seems to be doing quite well. I did lose a Neon Goby. I don't know if it just died or if something else happened. I have learned from past experience that my CUC is very efficient and these gobies are excellent at hiding. I'm thinking it died overnight and got chowed pretty quickly. It was never found, and I had no spikes, so it's alright.

 

Here's a picture of the won't-sit-still Potter's:

 

 

To end the post on a more positive note, I am moving this coming fall and instead of tearing down my tanks or trying to move them, I am combining them into a 125 as a gift for my parents. The love the Blue Hippo Tang, so they can finally have their tang while all of my fish get a new, bigger home. I will of course keep the thread updated as I start the build. I'm currently searching for a used tank and stand.