Nebthet's 57g REEF-NEW Pix! 04-19-2011

[nebthet]

Ok.. more pix including more of my feather star.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[nebthet]

Just a few updated pics.

 

Toxic chalice growing back from the near death it had when I placed it in a bad place. It seems any chalice in my tank will only do well if placed on the sand bed.

 

Tenuis frag doing nicely still.

 

Jigsaw loving the sebae that is about the same size as he is. lol..

 

Purple Haze monti doing very well and almost beginning to encrust onto the rockwork.

 

Blue hermit on ochtodes.

 

Blue Damsel. She is blind in the eye towards the camera.

 

Couple shots of my rainbow chalice trying to catch the polyp extension

 

Omen

 

Jigsaw

 

Young berghia

 

Ice Fire under moonlights

 

BTA under moonlights

 

FTS with moonlights only

[got2envy]

Happy Birthday!!

[nebthet]

Thx for the B-Day wishes Got2envy. I appreciate them.

[nebthet]

Received a new "used" lense in the mail today. The Canon 100mm 2.8 USM macro lense. I am soooo exited.

 

I have been taking a couple of practice shots already under actinic lights and wow... just wow... I can definitely see where you must have a tripod in order to take pictures of your corals that are upfront. My hands are way to shakey to be to do without one. But for corals in the middle to back of the tank you can press the lense against the glass and get some really good shots.

 

Gimme a few hours and I will have some new shots tonight with the new lense.

[nebthet]

Dear Nano-Reef... aren't you glad you don't host all my images?

 

After a few hours of work... here are the pics taken with my new lense. Some are better than others but I think pretty good for a first go at a professional macro lense and no tripod.

 

Please let me know what you think.

 

Clams

 

 

SPS

Tricolor Valida (just moved this one higher and away from the pocci)

 

 

IceFire

 

Tenuis

 

Red MontiCap

 

Green MontiCap

 

Red w/GreenTip Digi

 

Purple Tip Digi

 

Poccilapora

 

Green Bottlebrush

 

Purple Haze Monti

 

Rainbow Monti

 

Green Unknown Acro

 

Hermits

 

Zoas

 

 

Omen who finally has a full mid bar on one side of his body.

 

Misc Shots

 

Front Tank shot. I had to take this across the room from my tank and still couldn't fit the whole thing in the shot because I was still too close.

 

[nebthet]

Bump for day time people...

 

 

 

 

I guess no one likes my tank..

[Zacktay]

wow its looking great when all the sps grow out it will look awsome

keep up the good work

[nebthet]

Just a few more pictures

 

 

 

 

 

A pic of Orion.. it is not as good as my last star pics because I was shooting this outside the window at my parents place and it was waaaaay cold and it was beginning to cloud over.

[FLNanoReefer]

This is such a cool tank. I love your new macro pictures. I need to get a better camera, so that I can take cool picture of my fish and corals. Do you see good growth rates with your Green Star Polyps? If you wouldn't mind looking at my thread and posting some comments on it that would be awesome!! i just got my first fish and corals.

[nebthet]

Yes I have really good growth rates with my gsp. I recently took my colony and ripped it in half and placed the second half in the back of my tank, then put a bunch of frag plugs around the other half in the front to make it easy for fragging them. I did that last week and there are already two plugs with gsp encrusting on it. It may take a few months for yours to get used to your tank, but once they do and your params are good they will go nuts.

[FLNanoReefer]

Awesome!! I hope to have them cover the top rock or two in my tank. It looks like they may have already taken hold of my rock. I will have to check in the morning.

[everl0ng]

i absolutely love your macro shots! it took forever for my computer to load this page haha! i love it!

[nebthet]

Thank you very much everl0ng.

I have some more monthly pix. If you go back to some pix from Oct, you can see some definite growth happening.

 

 

Tricolor Valida. I had to move this guy from where he was beside the poccilapora as he was losing the stinging battle as you can tell by the dead part on the tip.

 

Tan Green pink rimmed MontiCap after the trimming, with the icefire beside it.

 

Sebae anemone continuing to grow and color up. It is getting a greenish tinge to the darker brown tentacles now.

 

 

 

Red Digi has really taken to growing since the RO water switchover

 

The poccilopra has really taken off and filled in nicely. This sucker packs a sting that other sps can't take so will be happy with it's ability to keep the pt digi under control in the future.

 

Rainbow encrusting Monti continues to recover.

 

Purple fusion encrusting monti continues to grow.

 

Paly's got moved from the sand bed onto the rock work where they are spreading like nuts.

 

This green acro has been growing out too.

 

Xmas Favia

 

It isn't often I get to take a pic of this blue tenuis because of it's position at the rear of the tank. It isn't easy to photograph.

 

 

 

Front Tank Shot 12-18-2010

[DudE31]

tank looks good macro shots are pretty nice as well ... just out of curiosity where do you get most of your corals?

[nebthet]

Thanks for the compliment.

 

My clams, fish and anemones, Green star Polyps, Dragoneye Zoas, Dendro frags, xenia, and candycanes came from Forty Fathoms in Gananoque, Ontario

 

Most sps, I got as frags from fellow hobbiests in the Toronto area. Shrimpchips and Reef_to_Reef and Rkelman.

 

Both Chalices came from Reef_to_Reef.

 

Acans, Favia and red colored zoas came from Oceansdirect.ca

 

One ice fire acro and duncan came from Fragalot.ca.. good prices, but terrible seller. He clips and ships.

 

Tiny toadstool frag and Green mouthed yumas I got from two different local guys.

 

I like to get stuff from all sorts of places as you can see. LOL.

[saralear]

Hey bud!

 

I just found your build, seems we got into the hobby around the same time. I'm on the west side of Toronto, but I'd love to trade some things with you if you're ever out this way visiting friends.

 

If you want to see what kind of goodies I keep, my signature has a link to my baby

[nebthet]

That would be fun to do Sara.. I don't often get down to your area but once a year if I am lucky, but I will pm when I do.

 

Time for some new pix of my new stuff.

 

Ric Yumas. I traded some of my frags for this frag of three heads.. it now has two new heads starting on the rocks and these went from half an inch in size to almost 3 inches diameter. They are very happy in my tank.

 

New firefish

 

New Bangaii cardinals.. #1 is still out and active. #2 on the other hand is MIA after 4 days.

 

Now some of the older....

Paly's are growing like wild fire.

 

McCosker's is flashing away today

 

Brown zoas improving after I snapped back some of my red monticap.

 

Sebae update.. doing well and getting darker.

 

Whatchu Looking at Foo?

[nebthet]

Guess who I caught dive bombing into my RBTA??

 

[megan]

I love your macro shots. I can't believe you haven't won a photo of the month yet with that lens. I also can't believe your growth. I've just skimmed the entire thread and at first I thought it looked a little messy, with too much going on, but the grow out has made a huge difference. This tank is going to be AMAZING in no time!

[nebthet]

Thanks megan. I appreciate it, and the switch over to the RO water really helped to take care of the algae issue in conjunction with the Turbo snails.

 

Sadly though, my clam collection has died. There is one left and hopefully I won't lose it either.

 

But once the corals start growing in more, particularly the sps, it should start looking real good, but I am thinking I am going to have to upgrade this tank to a larger one before that happens because the top corner seems on this tank are leaking

[megan]

That stinks about the clams. What do you think it is? Lighting? Water quality? I have already forgotten what you posted your equipment was.

[nebthet]

I have no idea what the cause of the clams decline was. All I can think of as a cause was a pathogen that grew in the tank that specifically targets clams. No other corals were affected by it long term. A few were obviously po'd like my encrusting montis, and as the clams declined, my pocci didn't have the polyps out, and the xenia wouldn't open all they way.

 

I checked for pyramid snails and there were none. Performed 20%+ water changes to determine if it was parameters, which tested A:0 Ni:0 Na:0 Sal:1.025 Alk: 8dkh, Cal: 420 Mag:1350, and that didn't help and also changed the chemi-pure and phosguard to help with any chemical warfare. Even tried a freshwater dip for the clams, but that didn't help any either.

 

So, once the last one in my system dies, I am going to give it severa months before I even attempt to add another in case it is a pathogen in there. Hopefully, that will help in the future. But the strange thing is, is that I was not the only person in Canada, from different areas having the exact same issue with their clams at the same time, which leads me to suspect there might be something "new" being added to our drinking water sources here that RO filtration is not taking out.

 

My equiptment is: mp10, mp20, Koralia 3, Ac70 for chemical filtration, AquaC Remora skimmer with drain fitting, lighting is 6x39w T5 Tek lights.

[nebthet]

Ok.. now for some end of the month pictures, mostly macros.

 

Yuma

 

Rainbow Monti

 

Blueberry Monti

 

Red and Green Monti Cap

 

Purple tipped Digi

 

Acan garden with gsp, yuma rock, gsp chalices and duncans

 

Dendro

 

Blue Tenuis

 

Another type of tenuis.... good lord tenuis are such slooooow growers.

 

Purple with White polyp unknown: Sorry for the crappy pic.. it is hard to get a pic of.

 

Green Bottlebrush

 

Toxic Chalice... this one has grown back nicely from nearly nothing.

 

Brown/Green Pocci... I really want to get a pink one.

 

Green unknown acro

 

True Tricolor growing back and liking it up there closer to the lights.

 

Unknown acro: this one hasn't done well in my tank until recently when I moved it down to the sandbed to see if that was low enough light for it.. it almost died when I had it on the side of the tank closer to the lights. So I am hoping over time it colors back up.

 

Red rimmed zoas

 

Red skirted zoas

 

 

 

Tank update: well unfortunately all my clams are dead. I am not sure of the definite cause, but I am thinking it was some sort of pathogen as only clams were affected for the most part, although some other corals were not happy when the clams started dying. They were withdrawn and the encrusting monti's started losing their colors.

 

Whatever it was, it was strange. It attacked the foot of the clam and killed it from the inside out. Right up to nearly the time of death, the clams would act normal from above, their mantles expanding and contracting, but you would have a hole you could see and mucous showing either from the side of the clam or through the foot.

 

Once I saw this I took the clams out, with one exception, and that was the clam my RBTA is attached to. It is very happy where it is and I don't want to screw that up.

 

After the two larger maximas died.. and oh how I loved my gold teardrop... ... and I did a large water change and put in new carbon the corals started improving and gaining their color back, very quickly I might add. You wouldn't know today that the encrusting monti's were almost all white.

 

My icefire is receeding now .. had rtn, but it has stopped so now I have almost all white stick in that area. Grr. But on the bright side, my green monti is darkening in color a lot. and everything else is growing just fine, especially the acans.

 

Now over the next month, I have to figure out how the heck I am going to move two juvi clowns out of this system into their own tank.. The bottle trick didn't work.. and trying to get the one from below during lights out didn't work either.. any thoughts?

[DK_Reef]

Greetings!!

 

I clicked this thread because I am going to get a similar sized tank and wanted to see someone else who had one etc. However I enjoyed the beginning so much I read all 13 pages lol.

 

Very sorry about your clams, they were so beautiful.

Unfortunately I think it is illegal to own a clam here where I live. Almost all coral is too. Except for the non reef building corals like Zoas etc.

 

I am currently delayed right now from setting up a tank because I am moving to neighbor island in a month or so. I was going to pick up a 6 bulb T5 fixture off craigslist but as of today it was sold, and i was very disappointed, but I have a lot of patience to wait until I can find another one.

 

Did your other Mandarin survive?