paneubert Posted March 9, 2011 Author Share Posted March 9, 2011 (edited) Photos of the new rock and new locations for the corals. Did not turn off the pumps for some reason...also turns out my photos did not come out well this time around. EXCUSES EXCUSES EXCUSES Full shot. Then left to right. Edited March 9, 2011 by paneubert Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 10, 2011 Author Share Posted March 10, 2011 Seems like everyone likes to post tons of photos. So I am going to imitate "kgoldy" by posting a lot of photos all in one post No fancy macro shots or anything. Just what the Android phone took. Maybe I will get fancy with a real camera someday..... Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 11, 2011 Author Share Posted March 11, 2011 (edited) Today will be day 6 of vodka/bacteria dosing. Might only be day 5. I have my records at home. Hahaha. I promise I am keeping track and being careful. Method: Did .1 ml of vodka and 2 ml of bacteria for 3 days. Now doing .2 ml of vodka and the same 2 ml of bacteria for the rest of the week. Decided to follow the classic dose amount/schedule for now...which means higher and higher amounts of vodka as time goes on. Results so far: Water seems clearer. Could just be in my brain. Only have had to clean the glass once. It was last night. Usually I have to clean the glass every day. Sometimes I could go 2 days, but not longer. So that is a good sign. Seems like there has been no additional algae growth. Cannot say for sure, but existing hair algae seems to have been reduced. Any rock that looked like it might have the beginnings of cyano have gone away. Maxi-Jet 1200 that was brand new when the skimmer was added and was quickly covered in what looked like cyano is now clean. Last night I noticed that there seemed to be small patches of clear slime/crud floating on the surface. I skimmed them off with my turkey baster. One was really nasty/slimey/gross/held its shape. Looked a lot like a raw egg white consistency. I assume it is the "clear/milky/stringy" bacteria buildup that some people say they see on their rocks when they start dosing. So that is a cool thing to see happen. Makes me think it is working. Skimmer seems to be pulling out stuff. I cannot say if it is darker or smellier than before, but it is pulling things out. I would not doubt if the skimmer is not coming into play yet because the bacteria are not dying off much yet. It is still early in the whole process. Fish and corals seem really happy. If there are any pissed off looks, it is from when I added more rock and rearranged some thing. Edited March 11, 2011 by paneubert Quote Link to comment
doppelganger Posted March 11, 2011 Share Posted March 11, 2011 sweeeet. Aw your clown hosted the torch instead? I love the pic of her hosting the toadstool. Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 11, 2011 Author Share Posted March 11, 2011 Yeah.....that clown will host anything. She also sometimes tries to crush the little chunk of Xenia that is in there. She pretty much just sits on it. Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 15, 2011 Author Share Posted March 15, 2011 (edited) Vodka dosing update. All fish and coral still look good. The dose I just added was number/day 9. The formula for those who do not know it is .1 ml per 25 gallons for 3 days, then double for the rest of that week. Then you add .5ml to whatever you were already dosing. That is as far as I have gone. But I modified it a bit.... I dosed.... 3 days of .1ml 5 days of .2ml (instead of 4 days like the formula calls for). I have now jumped up to .4ml instead of .7ml just to be safe. I am going to do .6ml tomorrow and then finish the rest of the week at the .7ml that the formula calls for. I just felt like it was a huge jump to go from .2 to .7 in one day. I mean, it makes sense in a larger volume tank, but when you are dosing such a small amount, more than tripling it in one day seems sort of crazy. In a larger tank, adding .5 is not that big of a deal. In my tank, it is Anyway, I will keep updating this thread with what I see happen. Edited March 15, 2011 by paneubert Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 15, 2011 Author Share Posted March 15, 2011 (edited) YouTube'd a time lapse video of the tank after feeding time. Interesting to me at least Taken with my Android Phone. That is why the quality is not that nice. This is with the pumps off after I fed my tank. That is why it looks so nasty in there and why some of the corals are closed up I was surprised to see how much the coral move around all on their own though. The fish created a little current for sure, but you can tell that a lot of the movement is not from being blown or pushed around, but from the coral actually trying to accomplish something. Edited March 15, 2011 by paneubert Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 18, 2011 Author Share Posted March 18, 2011 Clown decided that the Duncan Coral was more fun than the torch coral.......hosting choice seems to change every day. Quote Link to comment
Gort Posted March 18, 2011 Share Posted March 18, 2011 Tough real estate market these days - clowns flipping houses like flapjacks... Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 21, 2011 Author Share Posted March 21, 2011 It would be great if the hair algae would decrease instead of increase with my vodka dosing I am starting to do some manual removal every few days to help the process along...... Full tank shot will be posted later tonight if I remember to take one before my water change. Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 22, 2011 Author Share Posted March 22, 2011 Full tank shot.... Torch starting to stretch a little bit.....much worse exposure and lighting than in real life. Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 23, 2011 Author Share Posted March 23, 2011 (edited) Started a thread for my renovated Hospital/Quarantine tank.. "Paneubert's 15 Long Macro/Molly/Mantis tank" http://www.nano-reef.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=266872 I guess I will have to make a signature line link for it sometime. Edited March 29, 2011 by paneubert Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 25, 2011 Author Share Posted March 25, 2011 Lets talk about Microbe-Lift Special-Blend for a minute......this is going to be cross posted to both my build threads due to the severity of the smell. Ohhh my freaking God! I have smelled some bad things in my time. 1. Lived in university housing for 7 years. 5 of those were in an all Male building. 2. Stuck my nose in a dead turbo shell after it had been dead for a few days in the tank. 3. I have a dog that likes to poop in his kennel and then let it marinade all day.... But I have NEVER smelled anything as bad as Special-Blend. NEVER. I had to rinse my syringe in boiling water 5 times and I can still smell it on the plastic. The only good thing is that is seems you only dose it every 2 weeks. I might not even dose ever again due to this smell. Someone along the line told me that "Special-Blend" and "Nite Out II" were essentially the same product. I will guarantee they are not..... "Nite Out II" is clear, smells like nothing, and is refrigerated. "Special-Blend" does not seem to need refrigeration, has a nasty film that grows on the inside of the bottle, and SMELLS LIKE DEATH!!!!! Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 27, 2011 Author Share Posted March 27, 2011 Figured it was time for an update on this tank versus my fancy new macro tank that I have been playing with. What is new.......hmmmm. Looked at my records and discovered that in the past few weeks of crazyness, I had not done a water change since 3/9/2011. Guess that is about 2.5 weeks. Not that big of a deal since some people do not even change water that often. But I have usually stuck to a weekly 5G change. So I finally got around to it today and did 10G. Guess that might be why my tank was showing some stronger signs of algae even though I had been slowly increasing my vodka dosing. Plan from here on out is to use my 5G of old water from the main tank to rotate into my macro tank. I will not do it every week since that would mean a 50% change in my 10G macro tank, but maybe once a month or something. The macro tank needs nutrients, and my vodka dosed tank is not going to really help at all with that. As for an update about the vodka and how that is impacting my tank... I am up to 1.2 ml per day. I am reading zero for nitrates and zero for phos even with feeding quite a bit of frozen every 2 days and feeding some pellets every day. I was seeing a little hair algae, but it was not exploding. Just seemed to establish a presence and then maintain a foothold. I have been doing some minor manual removal and it seems that the algae does not grow back. It does not die either though.... Have not seen a crazy increase in skimming, but the skimmer does pull out some fairly brown wet skimmate. I have it set to skim wet, so not a surprise. Quote Link to comment
redkneecoral Posted March 29, 2011 Share Posted March 29, 2011 (edited) what an outstanding looking tank. I love it how it's mostly LPS in there and still looks great. Edited March 29, 2011 by redkneecoral Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 29, 2011 Author Share Posted March 29, 2011 Haha, what are you trying to say about LPS Thanks for the complement no matter what I pretty much plan on keeping it mostly LPS......and within the LPS designation, I seem to like Euphyllia a lot. So I am always on the lookout for more hammer/torch/frogspawn. I do like the way my tank is looking. But I will be happier once more coraline starts to encrust. Right now it is pretty much only on the plastic parts of my tank. My rock is still either white, brownish, or grey. I also will be happier if my pink hammer coral starts to open up a bit more. I have a ton of it randomly placed throughout the rockwork (I broke up a huge colony of it). Seems like after I broke up the colony, the smaller groups of heads do not open as large as they used to. Only time will tell what happens! Quote Link to comment
redkneecoral Posted March 29, 2011 Share Posted March 29, 2011 Oh I wasn't saying anything bad about LPS. It was a compliment. In fact i need to get me more LPs in my tank. But my tank is packed right now. I would Kill for a nice Hammer but no room for one. Let alone for a open brain . I never heard of a pink hammer, have to see a pic of one Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 29, 2011 Author Share Posted March 29, 2011 (edited) I will see if I can post on if I have it on my PhotoBucket..... This is close, but mine has less green in the stems. Mine looks like what those tips look like all the way through. This is close... This is a real old photo of mine, but does not show what it looks like in real life. It is the one in the top center and also the one down low on the left. I have broken that up into probably 4 or 5 frags since then..... Edited March 29, 2011 by paneubert Quote Link to comment
Gort Posted March 29, 2011 Share Posted March 29, 2011 My junior hammer has a LONG way to go before it looks that good - I'm jealous. Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 29, 2011 Author Share Posted March 29, 2011 The trick was buying big. The pink one was all one big colony I got from a fellow reefer in Kirkland. His tank was being taken over. The greenish one I have was also from a local guy in Seattle who has a 40B that is 100% filled with hammer......literally filled. Quote Link to comment
seabass Posted March 29, 2011 Share Posted March 29, 2011 Sweet tank. I was laughing at the snails in your time lapse video. Quote Link to comment
Gort Posted March 29, 2011 Share Posted March 29, 2011 The trick was buying big. .. That's the tactic I plan to take when I get a frogspawn and Duncan soon Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 29, 2011 Author Share Posted March 29, 2011 That's the tactic I plan to take when I get a frogspawn and Duncan soon Let me know if you want the contact info for the guy with the green hammer tank. I think I ended up paying less than 5 bucks a head. Not bad if you spend 25 bucks for a nice 5 head hammer. Especially since all his seem to have tons of baby heads starting to sprout from the skeletons. Sweet tank. I was laughing at the snails in your time lapse video. Thanks! I need to do more time lapse. That was a crappy first try. I want to do more that show the feeding behavior of the corals. Quote Link to comment
paneubert Posted March 31, 2011 Author Share Posted March 31, 2011 New Full Tank Shot **As of 3-30-11** Quote Link to comment
Gort Posted March 31, 2011 Share Posted March 31, 2011 Let me know if you want the contact info for the guy with the green hammer tank. .... Sounds great - I'll contact you via email. I've got a line on a 10-12 head Duncan thru another reefer-pen-pal. BTW - the 40 is looking fantastic!! Quote Link to comment
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