matt frizz Posted February 23, 2011 Author Share Posted February 23, 2011 Vortech claimed another victim. This time it was my BTA. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 28, 2011 Author Share Posted February 28, 2011 Vortech's third victim is the male harlequin shrimp. Do not keep harlequin's in a big tank w/ a vortech! lol And watch your placement of BTAs. Cyano is all gone and hair algae is iradicated. I'm working on getting another BTA. Link to comment
gutterguy Posted February 28, 2011 Share Posted February 28, 2011 what a bummer. could you use the sponge guard that comes with it. You would probably want to clean it weekly or so Good luck gg Link to comment
matt frizz Posted March 3, 2011 Author Share Posted March 3, 2011 what a bummer. could you use the sponge guard that comes with it. You would probably want to clean it weekly or so Good luck gg I'd honestly forget to change it and it would be bad. I'm just going to be more careful about vortech placement. I picked up a nice chalice frag today and a Lubbocks Fairy Wrasse. Next up is a male leopard wrasse and a new BTA. I'll try to get some new tank pictures. Everything is looking great except for the bryopsis I found. FML. Link to comment
jeeves Posted May 25, 2011 Share Posted May 25, 2011 any updates? this tank was looking sweet back in march Link to comment
theheaddon910 Posted May 26, 2011 Share Posted May 26, 2011 You say don't hate on the light.......I agree you have the older style odyssea light which is 100 times better than their new design. I have had that same fixture(quad t5's) for 3 years with no problem(except change the bulbs every year). Also great looking tank, I'm running a standard 45g Link to comment
matt frizz Posted December 3, 2011 Author Share Posted December 3, 2011 I kinda let my tank go for a while there and a lot of coral got eaten by a crab that i found in the tank. I'll post pics of the crab later but he's been on a rampage lately. I broke down the whole tank, did a 50% water change, ordered a replacement ballast and replacement vortech motor (they both broke recently), and re-did the rock scape. Tank was a disgrace for a while but I'm sure after the halide ballast is replaced my corals will start growing again. It was a pretty sad story before but it's so much better now that the crab is gone. I "forgot" he was in a bucket of water and flushed him down the toilet. He's caused me so much pain from the lose of expensive acans. He literally grabs them and drags them under rocks so they die. I lost half of my colonies. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted December 3, 2011 Author Share Posted December 3, 2011 I also ordered a new clean up crew from john mahoney. The crab literally ate every single snail except for 1 cerith. Link to comment
castiel Posted December 3, 2011 Share Posted December 3, 2011 HAha right, of course you 'forgot' he was in teh water you flushed. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted December 3, 2011 Author Share Posted December 3, 2011 HAha right, of course you 'forgot' he was in teh water you flushed. lol the bastard cost me hundreds of dollars!!!! Link to comment
matt frizz Posted January 16, 2012 Author Share Posted January 16, 2012 Man do i need to take some pictures. I purchased a new hammer coral and I finally bit the bullet on the mandarin. Went with the Green Mandarin, he was a chunky little guy who seemed active and was taking frozen. He's found a perfect area to hang around in where there is little water current, perfect for target feeding. I keep the clowns distracted on the right side and feed him on the left. There's a lot of pods in my tank to supplement his diet also, it's three years established now and starting to look the part in my opinion. My sunset monti has gotta be worth some serious bread by now (too bad I wouldn't sell it lol) and I have some interesting macros that have popped up out of nowhere. The bubble algae is returning with the Metal Halides revival but I'm excavating it as it gets large enough to pluck w/out popping. Just took care of a 10 gallon water change and ordered a replacement pump/impeller/venturi for my skimmer from SWC. It's been off for around 6 months due to a useless pump. Just goes to show you how stable of an ecosystem we can create though. I can get by for 6 months w/out a skimmer or any water changes and all i have to do to restore beauty is dedicate a day or two to serious cleaning and maintenence. Not that I want to let my tank go for another 6 months or anything, because it does stunt coral growth. I also wasn't dosing. Now that I'm back on that grind I'm seeing some serious growth in just a few weeks. Also, I need new chemipure elite and T5HO bulbs. Sigh, if one thing doesn't require money it's another. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted January 16, 2012 Author Share Posted January 16, 2012 Couple snaps. Hope you enjoyed. Link to comment
Builder Anthony Posted January 22, 2012 Share Posted January 22, 2012 could you get anonther shot of the pinkish acans Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 3, 2012 Author Share Posted February 3, 2012 Yeah i'll try to soon. So i got a lot of work done this week. I replaced my swc xtreme 160 pump and cleaned it out great (It's been off for 6 months w/ a broken pump) also, I replaced all my T5HO bulbs today and the chemi-pure elites (after 6 months or more gasp) yesterday. Bulbs are all ATI bulbs 2xblue+ 2xpuple+. My metal halide is fairly new 250W 14,000k bulb so the combo is alright. I'm considering another Phoenix blue 250W bulb in the near future. That thing is beautiful w/ my T5HO bulb combo. I'll probably do some water changing later next week. Can't wait to clear up this algae from the combo of no skimmer, old chemi pure, and old bulbs. Should see some extreme coral growth in the upcoming months. I've been dosing again so that's awesome. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 10, 2012 Author Share Posted February 10, 2012 My mandarin is getting so fat. It's awesome. I've realized that my tank is mature enough now and has quite a large supply of pods. They are everywhere including the refugium. We'll see if I can keep this guy for the long run without him decimating the population. He hasn't even dented it yet and it's been a month but I'm monitoring his girth and the visible pods pretty often. I'm about to just replace my return pump as well because it is also slightly damaged. I'm in the middle of upgrading to an MP40W also to combat the flow issues with my new rock scape. That should seriously solve the problem lol. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 12, 2012 Author Share Posted February 12, 2012 MP40W is on it's way. Now to fix the return pump and hopefully I can take a break from spending money on my tank for a while!! Considering switching to a 10000K metal halide though to stimulate some serious coral growth. hmmmm... Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 14, 2012 Author Share Posted February 14, 2012 MP40W showed up today. Man this thing is AWESOME. So happy with my purchase. I did a 15% change today and also dipped some rocks in a peroxide solution to deal with some red brush algae. I also did a direct apply to some spots. Also applied to some spots where i removed bubble algae outside the tank in hopes of killing the spores outside of the tank and then returning the rock, hopefully, spore free. I'll take some pics after the algae clears up to show the difference. I picked up some new SPS the other day as well and did some mini tank remodeling. The aquascape is finally coming together, it's taking me forever to figure out a setup that I love but I normally only do minor switches to help bring it together. I'll try to snap some pics tomorrow because the lights are out now. New SPS I picked up are Hydnophora and some type of blue Acropora. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 18, 2012 Author Share Posted February 18, 2012 Can't wait to post some new pics for you guys. My tank is really starting to come together now. I picked up a frogspawn to complete the trifecta of hammer/torch/frogspawn and man it's nice. I also picked up another Acropora colony (a little brown now but it's going to be blue/green when it colors up) and finally an ORA frag of green stylophora. So beautiful can't wait to show you guys. Also, I fixed the aquascape. It looks complete now with more corals in it. The SPS is more seperated and layered better. Link to comment
Bazzar1986 Posted February 18, 2012 Share Posted February 18, 2012 Tank looks great, cant wait to see what youve done. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 19, 2012 Author Share Posted February 19, 2012 FTS 2/18/12 RTS Only pics I could get of my mandarin ORA Green Stylo Christmas Favia Sunset Monti New Acro Orange/blue/green mouth rics Mr Coral Watermelon Chalice after a year Mr Coral Acans after some time New frag rack and MP40W Hydnophora New Acro colony I picked up. Seems like it's going to turn all green and blue after a little while in the sun Starry Blenny creeping Part of my mother colony of ORA green/orange pocillopora decided to make a baby colony Mother New Frogspawn not entirely open Green Monti growing with a Pink one Close ups of acans My refugium made out of a net breeder from petco. My sump is literally crawling with all sorts of pods. It's hard to tell in the photo but you can make out some. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 27, 2012 Author Share Posted February 27, 2012 Here are the pictures of the crab that was wreaking havoc. Ignore the dates, they are very incorrect. Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 28, 2012 Author Share Posted February 28, 2012 Picked up two new corals today. I went nuts this month lol. Looks like I got an awesome duncan colony for a great price. It has roughly 21 heads with some babies as well and I paid $140 for it. I'll take some pics once it's fully open in a day or two. I also got a nice little colony of green/purple acans to add to my collection. Link to comment
hooligan_78 Posted February 28, 2012 Share Posted February 28, 2012 Holy cheez!!! That crab is big and nasty looking! How did you catch that sum#####? Link to comment
matt frizz Posted February 29, 2012 Author Share Posted February 29, 2012 Holy cheez!!! That crab is big and nasty looking! How did you catch that sum#####? Total tank breakdown lol. I bought a 45 gallon container from home depot and filled it with saltwater. Let it mix a couple days and then I slowly removed each rock one by one as well as the corals. I then dipped them into another 5 gallon bucket of water to get all the sand off of each rock (I planned on using the water in the big container to do a water change after) and placed them into the large container of water. after everything was out besides my fish and a torch coral that my clowns host I looked around and sure enough he was hiding under the torch tentacles on the base while the clowns were in it lol. I picked up the torch and he started booking it. Scooped him up and flushed him down the toilet on accident in all reality. I meant to kill him painfully for dragging my corals (mainly expensive acans) under rocks for the 6 months prior to this. You can look at the before and after of my acans from last year. Two of the colonys (the purple/green and the red/white/green ones) got almost totally destroyed but I managed to get them growing again. Some of them were bleach white and are turning crazy colors again but growing slowly. Thread Update: I finished my shopping spree this month with a Phoenix 250W 14K bulb. Should be here in a day or so. Can't wait to go back to my old lighting setup, it makes the colors pop like crazy. The old ballast blew my original phoenix so I've been using a crappy oddysea 250W bulb. Should see some serious growth and coloration after the swap! I'm excited. Link to comment
Smity Posted March 2, 2012 Share Posted March 2, 2012 What a monster crab! Glad you were able to get him out, sucks you had to remove all the rocks though. Link to comment
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