Pong's 20L College Reef

[Evanski9]

Love the tank!

[awpong]

Similar to the what I posted on my 40B thread, this tank needs to be prepped for winter break too.

 

Since the semester is coming to an end, I needed to figure out how the tank would survive an entire month while I'm in Texas and Costa Rica (Dec 20 - Jan 20). Unfortunately, I had to make some difficult decisions.

 

Conclusion 1. I decided that I am not going to move the tank into the Biology Department like I had over the summer. The process requires too much time and stresses the inhabitants in the process. Additionally, I'd rather not ask my professors to spend their vacation time tending my tank. The summer is one thing, they work anyways, but winter break just seems excessive.

 

For those of you who don't know, I go to school in PA and am currently living in off campus housing. The school is a bit excessive in their attempts to prevent students from staying on campus without paying, so they change the locks on every single room over the winter break and then again before the spring semester. Therefore, it is impossible for anyone to take care of my tanks in their current location.

 

Conclusion 2. I needed to do something about the fish. They would not be able to survive an entire month without feeding and without water changes. After much deliberation, I finally decided to reach out to my local reefing community and see if anyone would be able to hold onto my fish in their QT systems or fuge/sump. Fortunately, I've had one member offer to provide refuge for my fish!

 

However, I'm still not sure if I want to move all of the fish into his holding tanks. I'd like to leave the clowns in the tank so that they might actually start breeding. It'd be really cool. Regardless, I'll probably move them anyways, because I'm not really sure I want to gamble with an auto feeder and the possibility of losing $XXXX in coral and inverts.

 

I did however purchased two eheim auto feeders just in case the fish don't want to come out of the tank (i.e. the wrasse), but I'm hoping I won't need to use them.

 

In addition to removing the fish, I'll also reduce the light cycle from 12 hours to 7-8. This tank already has an osmolator, but I'll probably connect multiple 5 gallon buckets via a siphon system to provide more than 5 gallons of water. Furthermore, I purchased an Ecotech battery back up system to ease my nerves about power failures due to snow.

 

I hope everything works out for the best.

[Macron]

Your tank looks fantastic and so do your pictures! What lens are you using? I am trying to get a T2i over christmas and after seeing your photos I am very impressed.

[northeastern]

nice tank. that 20l is what I want my next tank to resemble.

 

 

and you have a 20 and a 40 in a college dorm?! I have my 8 gallon in my little college apartment and it's hard leaving and such, luckily I'm in class year around and only like45 min from my school so I go into the city and check on the tank during long breaks.

 

i just need to get a new ato going before xmas or I'm in trouble. feeding can be done every few days but top offs need more attention!

 

nice tank. that 20l is what I want my next tank to resemble.

 

 

and you have a 20 and a 40 in a college dorm?! I have my 8 gallon in my little college apartment and it's hard leaving and such, luckily I'm in class year around and only like45 min from my school so I go into the city and check on the tank during long breaks.

 

i just need to get a new ato going before xmas or I'm in trouble. feeding can be done every few days but top offs need more attention!

[awpong]

Your tank looks fantastic and so do your pictures! What lens are you using? I am trying to get a T2i over christmas and after seeing your photos I am very impressed.

 

Thanks. I'm not using anything special really, just the lens that came with the camera: EF-S 18-55mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens.

 

However, I'm thinking I might invest in a nice macro lens in the near future. I'd like to at least get some more aperture on my photos.

 

 

nice tank. that 20l is what I want my next tank to resemble.

 

 

and you have a 20 and a 40 in a college dorm?! I have my 8 gallon in my little college apartment and it's hard leaving and such, luckily I'm in class year around and only like45 min from my school so I go into the city and check on the tank during long breaks.

 

i just need to get a new ato going before xmas or I'm in trouble. feeding can be done every few days but top offs need more attention!

 

Thanks

And yea, it's a lot of work to maintain 2 semi-large tanks in a dorm, but I'm making it work

 

I wish I lived closer to my tanks, I just have to put a lot of faith into the automated technology and hope for the best. That's why I've been trying to invest in the top of the line equipment; I try to minimize the risk of catastrophic tank failure.

[awpong]

Well in preparation for my winter break, I got a bunch of new little goodies.

 

 

#1: Ecotech Battery Backup.

 

 

#2: For the 40B: a Tunze Osmolator.

 

#3: A gigantic ATO water supply for both tanks. It's a 34 gallon brute trashcan on the dolly. I'm going to have both of my Tunze Osmolators hooked up to it, so hopefully I won't run out of ATO water while I'm gone for a month.

 

 

#4: 2x Eheim auto feeders, just in case I cant remove the fish. The plan is to move them into a local reefer's holding tanks that's hooked up to his 5000g system. However, if the fish won't come out of the tank willingly... I'm not going to tear down the 20L just to get em. So I got the auto feeders as back up.

 

#5: Food for the auto feeders.

 

And here are some pictures just for fun

 

Left side of the tank:

 

Acro Crab:

 

RBTA in the 40B feeding:

 

New Fighting Conch in the 40B:

[awpong]

CORAL GROWTH Photos!!!

 

Before (september)

 

Then (october)

 

NOW! (december)

[awpong]

Good news

 

I'm back on campus after my 1 month vacation, and both of my tanks are alive and well. I didn't have any fatalities and it appears that I've received a lot of nice growth.

 

I also ordered my first RO/DI unit before I went to Costa Rica, but since the campus post office won't be open until monday, I'll have to wait till then before I can try it out.

 

I'll post a pic of the tank tomorrow, along with updates about "refishing" the tank. I've kept in contact with my fish sitter and apparently all but one of my fish survived. Unfortunately the cinnamon clown from my 40B decided to carpet surf at the sitter's house. Oh well :'(

 

Current plan for the tank:

 

Reintroduce my ocellaris pair

Reintroduce my six line wrasse

Move my bangaii cardinal into my 40B

Add a Mandarin dragonett

Add a shark nose goby

[awpong]

Well I was at the LFS today and decided to get a neon goby instead of the shark nose. The neon just looked better for my tank. Unfortunately I haven't ben able to get a picture of the new addition, but here's the tank. I will be performing a large water change tomorrow or Tuesday when I get my RO/DI unit set up. Fortunately all of my parameters are perfect.

 

[awpong]

Alright, so here are some pictures:

 

First up is a recent picture of my FTS:

 

When you look, you'll notice that my frogspawn is HUGE! In fact, you don't even see all of it in this picture, 3-4 heads are touching the glass and behind the rock.

 

 

I'm contemplating fragging this bad boy because he's starting to wage war with the torch.

 

 

Also, with the loss of my fish for over a month, I somehow developed a montipora eating nudibranch issue....

 

 

The picture isn't the greatest of the effected area, but I did a CoralRX dip last night and plucked over 50 of those bad boys off of my monti cap. Hopefully when I pick up my fish tomorrow, my six line wrasse will be able to keep their populations under control again.

 

 

Oh PS: I have officially decided to add a yellow assessor as my 5th fish, instead of trying a mandarin. I feel like trying to train a mandarin in this tank would be too difficult. However, I might still try one in my 40B.

[awpong]

Finally got my fishes back today! All is now right in the world.

 

 

And here are some pics of the neon goby. He was really shy prior to the reintroduction of my fish. I'm glad that he's finally out in the open now.

 

 

Unfortunately, my clowns forgot that they used to reside in my frogspawn... I hope it doesn't take them too long to remember the fun they had playing in it...

[awpong]

Unfortunately, my clowns forgot that they used to reside in my frogspawn... I hope it doesn't take them too long to remember the fun they had playing in it...

 

My wish came true

 

My female clown is back in the frogspawn!

 

[eaglepilot]

Very nice looking. I've been wanting to set one up but I go to school 1000 miles from home so I still need to figure winter and summer breaks out.

[awpong]

Very nice looking. I've been wanting to set one up but I go to school 1000 miles from home so I still need to figure winter and summer breaks out.

 

Lol, I'm over 1500 miles away from home and I've been able to make it work. For winter breaks I remove my fish and take them to the tank sitter. The coral and inverts stay in the tank which is on autopilot until I return. For winters, I move my tank into my biology department and have my professors take care of the tank. Usually they only need to watch it for a week or two, because I come back to campus for most of the summer to do research.

 

Hopefully you'll figure something out and will be able to have a tank at your school too. Good luck.

[eaglepilot]

Lol, I'm over 1500 miles away from home and I've been able to make it work.

 

Hopefully you'll figure something out and will be able to have a tank at your school too. Good luck.

 

Oh yeah I see that. I went the other way, PA-FL. I should figure it out, just need to find the right people to help and I'll be in an apartment or house since I'm going into sr. year next fall so no more size limitations.

[Spencer7]

Damn ur frogspawn grew

[awpong]

Damn ur frogspawn grew

 

Haha yup. I fragged off two heads last weekend,but it didn't really change anything. The two heads that I took off were behind the rock and out of view of my FTS.

[awpong]

Hehe, here's the newest FTS where you can see the fragged frogspawn. With the frag in front of it, the colony looks even larger!

 

[iball1804]

Dat torch

[awpong]

Dat torch

 

Is awesome, I know

 

I took it off the rock and actually mounted it to the overflow box. That's why it looks like it's just floating

[Lalani]

Awesome froggy and torch, tank is looking great!

[awpong]

Awesome froggy and torch, tank is looking great!

 

Thanks

 

 

Muhahahah I'm famous, lol

[Jruberti]

Thanks

 

 

Muhahahah I'm famous, lol

 

wooooowooo!!!

[Squared]

I've prolly asked this before but how often do you feed? No sump on this, just a HOB skimmer?

 

What's your lighting schedule?

[awpong]

I've prolly asked this before but how often do you feed? No sump on this, just a HOB skimmer?

 

What's your lighting schedule?

 

I feed daily.

 

Correct, no sump. Just a HOB skimmer and a DIY HOB refuge.

 

My actinics come on at 9am until 9pm

My metal halides come on at 10:30 until 7:30

My moonlights are on 24/7

and my refuge lights come on at 9pm until 9am

 

= 12 hour actinics, 9 hour metal halides