Newman's 10 Gallon Piece of Ocean

[.Newman.]

yes i have missed a week or so in the past w/o water changes on my tanks. it happens when i get very busy with school and work and just get lazy/tired to work on the tank haha. but i dont think i've ever gone more than 2 weeks w/o the water changes.(aside from the time i went on vacation and left all my tanks for a month on their own...that was interesting )

[.Newman.]

I think my peppermint shrimp may have attacked a stem of my xenia a few days ago and ate some of the tops...bit surprising. what was more surprising is that I saw him attack a bristleworm and drag it into his hiding place to consume today...This pep is crazy o_o

As long as he doesn't eat my torch/hammer or other big corals/clam, i think he will be ok in the display from now on.

[.Newman.]

xenia is regrowing the polyps and w/e polyp bits were scattered on my rock, have already attached and begun to grow...truly a good pest coral i can see now. maybe it wasnt even my shrimp, maybe the xenia scattered the polyps on it own in an effort to colonize.

 

I got my camera back today, so i could takepics of my tanks. though its night time right now, i can't take a good FTS until tomorrow, which I will do. But i did notice one of my porcelain crabs out in photo range, so i turned the display light on and took a pic:

the hammer just looks odd cuz its sleeping

[steviejitsu]

I really like that picture.

[.Newman.]

I do too! Its the best picture of my porcelain crab that i have so far.

 

I have two more pictures:

 

An updated FTS

 

And a clam picture

[yoshii]

Nice, I like the crab, looks cool

 

Is it just me, or do those clowns look huge?

[Sunstar]

Very stunning tank. I get the feeling of a crevace that could go into a darker deeper area. it looks very natural. clowns look massive. I said suddenly "Hey he has two clowns!" I only have one The Great Devourer. (Yellow tailed damselfish.)

[.Newman.]

haha, i dont think the clowns are that big, they are definitely big for the tank, but in that picture they are swimming close to the glass so they might appear larger. I think the female is 2.5"+ Still has lots of growing to do to reach max, and idk about ever reaching max in a 10 gallon =/ But its likely not even a year old yet, so there is still time.

 

Thanks Sunstar and yoshii

[.Newman.]

Some more recent pictures of the nano.

 

My very first coral:

 

And some tank pics:

 

 

The greenish thing on the middle right is a sponge on a rock that has been in the back of the scape since the very start. I decided to clean it up a little and bring it to the front of the tank.

[.Newman.]

FTS has been updated

[friar1]

kewl!

[.Newman.]

Thanks! I am growing to like this tank more and more now, mostly because all the fragged corals are growing larger and this tank is looking more like a reef than a frag tank now.

 

On a happy note everything in the tank is still alive and well! A few weeks ago i thought i lost one of the porcelain crabs but today I saw both of them in the tank The feather duster is also alive and is now regrown its radiole crown and is feeding and building its mucus tube. The clam is good, moving a lot on the substrate at night, but is looking fine and is opening well.

[.Newman.]

have not been doing water changes recently, and i have been dosing much less than usual. probably as a result of all that my monti caps started to look real bad. I ordered some more salt and will start the water changes back up again along with more regular dosing. I also ordered a new Koralia nano powerhead for this tank, the 425 gph model. I feel like the tank needs more flow, the AC110 has really slowed down and there is barely any surface turbulence anymore. I think the tank needs a little more kick to it.

 

I am also contemplating removing all the macro algae from the AC filter. I have removed the fuge light from the filter a few months ago hoping that it could run on sunlight, but its not getting enough now that trees outside block most of the light anyway. I'll see if the tank can either run w/o a fuge or i may put some type of ornamental macros in the display.

 

The tank sounds like a real mess right now, but it doesn't look much different than it did before. the FTS from the first post still stands.

[seabass]

I really like this tank. I'd love to see it with a blueish bulb combination. Ever thought about changing one of those day bulbs out early for something like an ATI Blue Plus (15000K) bulb?

[.Newman.]

i used to run the ATI blue + along with some other common bulb. to tell you the truth, I was not very impressed with the effect. part of the fault goes to my ballast, the reflectors cant really blend the two bulb colors well so sections of my tank wind up whitish and other sections end up solid blue. really lame so i gave those up. I've also tried doing just the ATI blue+ and another actinic bulb. tank looked very blue lol. thats about it though, so i am still trying to find the right bulb that will give me a crisp white light. maybe i need to look for bulbs with lower than 10,000K ratings. but maybe I'll try a 14,000K bulb just for kicks at some point.

 

 

I removed all macros from my fuge today. the monti caps really are going downhill, i doubt any will survive. i'm not sure what made them die down like this, other corals seem fine including the more sensitive birdsnests that i have.

[Squared]

very nOice...

[.Newman.]

thanks squared

[animalmaster6]

Looking great!

[.Newman.]

thanks animal! I think I am going to finally switch this tank to MH. That should help my corals and clam out a bit. the T5s might be a tad weak.

[Mr. Microscope]

Wow Newman! This tank looks like something right out of nature. Very wonderlandish. Can't wait to see more.

[.Newman.]

thanks micro!

[sean.e]

please tell me what fixture you choose

[.Newman.]

i chose a fishneedit 70W MH fixture with their 20,000K bulb. the bulb will get replaced by a quality one down the road

[.Newman.]

seabass, I put the ATI bulb back on until the MH fixture gets installed. this picture shows sort of how the tank looks like with the ATI blue. Hopefully this will be the last FTS i take with this tank under T5s.

[sean.e]

seabass, I put the ATI bulb back on until the MH fixture gets installed. this picture shows sort of how the tank looks like with the ATI blue. Hopefully this will be the last FTS i take with this tank under T5s.

i like it better like with the blue this is going to be TOTM soon

 

what are you going to do with the old t5 fixture