Newman's 10 Gallon Piece of Ocean

[jarred1]

thats good the 2 times i bought peppermint shrimp only one ate the aptasia. but both of them died within 2 days of entering the tank and i have no idea why.

[.Newman.]

yes im pretty excited that he got rid of it overnight. tho it would be horrible if the shrimp passes away from shock or something. in theory the water parameters in this 10 gal are almost identical to the ones in the 3 gal so i kinda winged it and simply netted him from one tank to the other w/o acclimation...i did the same to corals before and they seemed to be perfectly fine.

I hope he does ok in his new home

 

temps are hovering around 82F right now with lights on, mid-day hot temps, and fans on. its doing allright so far.

The clowns seem to have a diminished appetite I really hope nothing is wrong with them.

[got2envy]

Wow! the new bulb combo looks great!

 

The clown could be stressed a bit with the flux in temp...hopefully u can get a chiller soon

[.Newman.]

found out i cant get a chiller. I setup the fans just right at the moment, i think..

[animalmaster6]

Glad to hear the temp went down!

[.Newman.]

yes it is 79F at night now

though the evap is pretty crazy i think from the looks of it, I'm going to go through one gallon of RO water in three days o_o

[animalmaster6]

Wow that's a lot.

[parishilton]

This make me want to set up another tank. Always love the beginning part, decide what to put in the tank. HEHE

[.Newman.]

yes that surely is one of the best parts of the hobby, setting up new tanks and planning it

[.Newman.]

last FTS before i leave on the August vacation (taken with phone, cant find camera):

 

clowns will be fed 4 times a week, i think that will be enough.

[animalmaster6]

Looks Good.

 

I think so too.

[.Newman.]

so i am back from my 4 week vacation and i find my tanks in the exact sorry state that i expected them to be in. heres the 10 gallon reef as i saw it when i walked through the door. w/e coral was in here certainly wasnt looking so good.

 

the fatality list in this tank is unknown at this time. the only member not seen by me was my peppermint shrimp. i hope to see him at tomorrows feeding :S

[animalmaster6]

That's a lot of algae haha.

[.Newman.]

yes theres a lot of it in this tank right now. im thankful theres no bryopsis yet or bubble algae.

 

peppermint shrimp is alive so the fatality count is at 0 right now (though some zoas do looka bit bad)

[animalmaster6]

Glad to see you didn't lose anything

[.Newman.]

i still need to do a water change on this tank but pesky parent keeps interfering (dumped out the new mixed SW)

[.Newman.]

did a 4 gal water change a few days ago. I'm going to do a 1 gal water change as the usual weekly routine, this friday.

[.Newman.]

back to doing 1 gal weekly change. i am just doing this last 4 gallon water change today and then I think I have changed all of the water of this tank since I returned from vacation in August.

 

I am waiting on a couple of things:

 

1. for my chiller to arrive so i can cool this tank to a permanent 78F

2. for my newly added acant and rhodactic shroom to recover from being under the LEDs in my 3 gal (which they did not like much)

3. for Mr. Coral to have some sort of coral package available that includes shrooms, zoas and a torch/hammer/frogspawn combo. if this doesnt happen, then ill just have to use the $10 section on his site

4. for the red cyano to disappear.

[.Newman.]

Ok the tank now has an Iceprobe. tank temps are kept at 78F.

Cyano is still problematic.

I think it would be best to wait until all the cyano is gone to buy more corals for this tank? this gives me time to locate the best deal.

 

I want the following corals in this tank:

 

LPS: Torch, Hammer, Acant, Trumpet coral.

SPS: maybe some sort of easy acro, or w/e Mr. coral has I guess =/

Soft: Red and/or purple invasive shrooms, blue shroom, green shroom, maybe a yuma or ricordea..., different types of zoas, palys, some sort of waving coral like cloves, anthelia, pipe organ or maybe (BIG maybe) Xenia (>_<).

 

now finding all those on Mr. Coral's site for $10 is going to be impossible unfortunately specially the hammer and torch corals, they go for around $40 a pop!

[.Newman.]

I feel like I need to do some sort of large update on this tank so here it goes.

 

09/21/2010 FTS

still got cyano...

 

Some corals that are in here right now:

 

My favorite mushroom (and my very first coral that i ever got. I moved this from my 3 gal pico when i started this 10 gallon):

 

The other rhodactis mushroom that was moved from the 3 gal pico:

he is very small and transparent. he also has some sort of living bivalve/clam attached to his rock.

 

A GSP piece that i moved from the 3 gal. it has been growing slow but polyp extension is 100x better than in the pico(maybe it likes T-5 lighting more?):

 

A fragment of Hollywood Chalice that was made by my emerald crab back in the pico when he sat on it and it broke in half...anyway this half has been doing nicely in this tank(the other half is in the pico):

 

I also moved some zoas a while ago. they did not grow much, or at all, but they seem happy.

Watermelon zoas(3 frags total in this tank, this is one of them):

 

Nuclear green Zoas (fell while i was away on my month-long vacation and lost some color...but are still alive!):

 

There is also an Acant colony that can be seen in the FTS. it used to be all blue and orange, but bleached because of the hot summer temps. chiller now can help it recover. No picture for now since it looks so horrible...

 

And now the fish.

Male Clownfish(Fred):

 

Both Clownfish:

 

My peppermint shrimp is still in here and is doing great to this day. no picture because he hides all the time. maybe next time when i feed the tank, i'll take a pic of him.

 

 

I am trying hard to resist buying a pack of new coral for this tank. I kind of what the cyano to go away first...

[animalmaster6]

Corals and Clownfish looks good

 

I like that mushroom a lot!

[yoshii]

I love that mushroom!

The Hollywood stunner is awesome too!

[.Newman.]

ok im still fighting my self about buying more coral for this tank. my reasoning is that if i add more coral now I can try to use it to out compete the cyanobacteria for nutrients...i already have chaeto running in this tank and its started to grow very well. I think corals, because they harbor zooxanthlae algae (or however you spell it) will compete with the cyano and win.

If anyone thinks i am wrong please speak up, and prevent me from making a mistake and ordering more corals.

 

Upon inspection of my coral choices, I cannot find a perfect site that has all the corals i want for low prices, so I have decided against buying from Mr Coral (because he never gets torch coral or hammer in his $10 section >_<) and because mostly what i would buy from him would be zoas anyway...

I am going to try YourReef.com and see what kind of coral deals they have. the downside is for free shipping I have to order $250+ of coral ._. and there are no desirable invertebrates on that site that i need for this tank.

 

I was also looking to get a clam in the future, you know to just grow it out a bit and then resell for a higher price. plus i love the colors crocea and maxima clams have!

 

 

Tell me your thoughts guys, I realize not many people are following me here, but I will require any help i can get

[animalmaster6]

I think you should ask Sonny and see if they will ever get a torch in the $10 section. He might be able to sell you one! They have awesome chalices and acans too though.

[yoshii]

making a mistake and ordering more corals.

Not possible!!

 

I don't think the corals will out compete the cyano for nutrients, I have found that chaeto works pretty well, in my 10gal frag tank I used to have cyano explosions, but then I added a small bit of chaeto, the chaeto is huge now (like talking up almost half the tank) but I have no cyano! You probably don't need that much chaeto though lol I'm just too lazy to prune it