tako Posted July 20, 2011 Author Share Posted July 20, 2011 those little green tube things in that pic above are actually colonial hydroids....hence they are not good, probably not an issue unless you have sps which isn't the case Thank you, I believe you are correct. I haven't seen any with that coloration before and for a lot of people they seem to spread like the plague, so it never crossed my mind. As long as they continue to behave I'll let them live. I've also kept a majano nem for quite a while without it splitting; I guess I have good luck with pests. Link to comment
tako Posted July 20, 2011 Author Share Posted July 20, 2011 sweet uv shot. i used the spacer for the mp10 right away and mine is not too loud, i also have a sump and it is in the basement. glad you got the noise down some. the tank is looking great! Thanks! A few more from last night... palys and the favia duncan green kenya tree (flickr did a bad job compressing this one) Link to comment
tako Posted July 21, 2011 Author Share Posted July 21, 2011 red-eye tonight, key largo tomorrow. Going to try to do some kayaking in the mangroves and then 3-4 days of diving. Tank is going to be left unattended. ATO is running, fan blowing directly on the water, and a Fishmate auto feeder with individual trays for each meal. I've used this method twice before so I'm fairly confident in it. *fingers crossed* Link to comment
tako Posted July 28, 2011 Author Share Posted July 28, 2011 Logged over 6 hours of time underwater this trip including a night dive. Seeing massive boulder brain corals with their feeders out was awesome. Won't know the fate of the tank until tomorrow... Link to comment
yoshii Posted August 1, 2011 Share Posted August 1, 2011 Those UV shots are pretty cool! I didn't even know UV flashlights existed How'd the tank do while you were gone? Link to comment
tako Posted August 2, 2011 Author Share Posted August 2, 2011 How'd the tank do while you were gone? Everything did fine except for the echinata that I must not have secured well enough. Found it face down in the sand with a large portion of it rotted away. That's just a molt in the background haha. I need to clean up a lot of the algae as you can kind of see. My chaeto decided to stop growing in a ball and started sending out nearly two feet long strands and loops all over the place. I've never seen it grow so quickly. I was probably just too generous with the auto feeder. I don't have an underwater camera so no shots from the diving.I will say I found a condy anemone living at 65 feet underwater. I've never seen one nearly that deep in the Keys. It was a really vibrant green and purple because of it. Here's a couple shots from my favorite beach on the bay side (the glare was horrible at that time of day though)... Unknown nem hiding in the algae patch: Big hermit crab (shell was bigger than my palm): Link to comment
tako Posted November 15, 2011 Author Share Posted November 15, 2011 Been a long time since I had time to mess around on NR. Everything is going fine with the tank, but the wetside of the MP10 broke again. The pump's functions are nice and their customer service is very helpful, but I'm getting sick of the noise and all the problems. Link to comment
tako Posted January 24, 2012 Author Share Posted January 24, 2012 Things have still been crazy, but I'm finally getting around to hanging out on NR. Had an unexpected death of a very close family member over the holidays, so my tank spent essentially 3 weeks operating on its own with an ATO and auto-feeder. It was about 5 weeks before it got it's water changed, but nothing bad happened other than my calcium and alk getting pretty low. I'd like to set up a dosing system for it, but that's a lot of money. I've still been sticking with a 2.5 gallon water change every 3 weeks with an 11 hour light cycle. I can honestly say I like this a lot better than when I was dumping over a gallon a week into my biocube 8. Ordered a couple new macros from LA Reefs that should be getting here soon. Including this jewel that I'm really hoping likes my tank: I'll post some pics in a few minutes... Link to comment
tako Posted January 24, 2012 Author Share Posted January 24, 2012 The coral that was damaged badly in August has completely healed and is always hungry: Speaking of hungry... Haven't added much to the tank, but I picked up this ORA purple hammer after Thanksgiving. It had some bad tissue recession when I bought it, but it seems to be recovering. Made the mistake of not researching before I buy. A store was swamped with ORA Derasa clams and it was offered to me for $25, which sounded like a good deal for a 3+ inch clam. Turns out this clam can end up larger than this entire aquarium, but I'll deal with that later. The weird thing about clams is how they change colors depending on the viewing angle. When viewed from above this thing glows neon orange. Now I see why all the shots on websites are top down... Finally, my yasha with his buddy ready to fire: Link to comment
tako Posted January 24, 2012 Author Share Posted January 24, 2012 I caught what appeared to be a few pyramid snails on the clam last night, so the fun of clam brushing begins. I dipped the clam and cleaned it pretty well before putting it in the tank, but I remember thinking a couple were on one of my trochus a long time ago. Hopefully, this infestation isn't worse than it appears. Link to comment
Noonan Posted January 24, 2012 Share Posted January 24, 2012 Nice tank.. Inspiration for a future setup for me. Keep it up! Link to comment
tako Posted July 17, 2012 Author Share Posted July 17, 2012 Well it's been a year since the last FTS and I'm back on nano-reef again so I figured it's due time for another: It's been a crazy year of trying to finish up my thesis and the sudden and unexpected loss of my father. I'm still maintaining my 11 hour light cycle and changing ~2.5-2.75 gallons of water every three weeks. I stopped adding things in January and finally go around to buying two new corals this weekend. This tank has been very low maintenance and for the most part has done well, but there's been some highs and lows that I'll try to get into sometime later. The coral of most interest to you all is probably the ORA Grube's Gorgonian. I got a small frag of it in January and it has grown like crazy. I know some photosynthetic gorgonians are tricky, but it's been painless for me. Don't be afraid to blast it with flow; mine gets tossed everywhere when the MP10 spins up. I was worried about it getting too much light on top of my rocks beneath the PAR38, but it keeps growing closer to the light. Finally my brain coral has gone from a sickly covered in algae frag to an encrusted specimen with ~10 mouths over the course of the year. It lost some of the vibrant colors, but I think that's due to lighting. Link to comment
tako Posted July 17, 2012 Author Share Posted July 17, 2012 I think Kenya tree are one of the most underrated corals out there. Sure it can grow like a pest if you don't control the population, but under the right flow conditions it's beautiful. You can also see the baby plate coral I've been growing for nearly two years. It started out really tiny and I mistook it for a majano nem. I thought it had completely died under the PC lights of my biocube, but it began to regrow flesh after I upgraded to LEDs. Link to comment
Rehype Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Wow what a beautiful and natural looking setup...Awesome Job. Great pics BTW Link to comment
tako Posted July 17, 2012 Author Share Posted July 17, 2012 Wow what a beautiful and natural looking setup...Awesome Job. Great pics BTW Thanks. It's a pain to get decent shots with just a p&s camera. It's looked better in the past when there was more macro diversity, but the stuff that's in there now eats nutrients. I'm throwing away a 1/4 to 1/2 gallon sized clump of macros in my bucket every month, which is good because the Hydor skimmer is pretty crappy. I hope to write in more detail tonight about this tank if I get some time. I spend most of my time on these boards answering others' posts, so it feels weird to do this for a change. Link to comment
yoshii Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 Glad to see you back on NR tako! I think the addition of interesting corals makes up for less macro species, I love the look of the hammers and the clowns on the right side of the tank Link to comment
doppelganger Posted July 17, 2012 Share Posted July 17, 2012 yay tako's back! Still looking great! Link to comment
tako Posted July 18, 2012 Author Share Posted July 18, 2012 Glad to see you back on NR tako! I think the addition of interesting corals makes up for less macro species, I love the look of the hammers and the clowns on the right side of the tank Thanks, sorry I never got that halymenia to you. That has to do with one of the lows of this tank I'll try to describe later. Basically, I think I went a little too heavy with the iron and phyto, which lead to cyano. I stopped dosing both of those and I lost all that beautiful halymenia very quickly. I still have a tiny clump that's growing back now that I'm dosing again. You can see some of the halymenia in this old pic. At its peak, the whole back of the tank was pretty much covered. You can also see my clownifsh with the deformed jaw that should have been culled by the breeder. He came from some $7.99 special liveaquaria had, so I guess you get what you pay for. He can't open his mouth too far and used to have trouble eating even the tiny Hikari pellets, but he keeps growing and is healthy otherwise. He's the weirdest clownfish ever. He spends most of his day hiding down in the caulerpa. He won't even move his fins at all. Most people assume he's dead if they see him like that. yay tako's back! Still looking great! Glad to be back! I kept lurking from time to time and posting on topics that caught my eye. Link to comment
Mitch619 Posted July 18, 2012 Share Posted July 18, 2012 Sorry to hear about your father. I hope you are doing good. Did you ever silence your mp10? I replaced the bearings on the dry side myself with some high quality ceramic hybrid bearings and it is now truly silent. I can't even hear it in the same room at 75%! Check out my mantaray build thread for the specifications of the bearings and where to buy them if you wish to fix you mp10. Link to comment
tako Posted July 18, 2012 Author Share Posted July 18, 2012 Sorry to hear about your father. I hope you are doing good. Did you ever silence your mp10? I replaced the bearings on the dry side myself with some high quality ceramic hybrid bearings and it is now truly silent. I can't even hear it in the same room at 75%! Check out my mantaray build thread for the specifications of the bearings and where to buy them if you wish to fix you mp10. Thanks, I'm doing well. Tank survived a month unsupervised with only someone refilling the autofeeder, which is why I like this setup. A dosing pump would have been nice, but I'm too cheap. My MP10 is still loud as hell, but I don't know if it's really that much louder than others. I think some people might not notice the noise because they have forced-air heating or AC, but I have nothing. If it wasn't for my tank, the room would be dead silent. I can hear it from atleast 20ft away when it spools up at 9/12 reefcrest. I didn't know about your mods; I'll have to look into it because mine is out of warranty now and I love a little DIY. Link to comment
tako Posted July 18, 2012 Author Share Posted July 18, 2012 fire alarm is going off at work, so I might as well post some new night photos. Link to comment
tako Posted July 19, 2012 Author Share Posted July 19, 2012 Getting a package from Aquascapers (formerly Coral Morphologic) tomorrow with a couple gorgs and others Link to comment
tako Posted July 23, 2012 Author Share Posted July 23, 2012 Got my order from Aquascapers on Friday. Everything came alive and the frags were HUGE and healthier than what I'm used to getting. I don't have any shots of the St. Thomas mushroom because it decided to shade itself under a macro and my frogspawn, but it's opening nicely. I also got the Vargas pom pom xenia, but I'm not happy with its placement now. Pseudopterogorgia bipinnata Eunicea sp. I was supposed to receive Plexaura flexuosa, but they made a mistake. Colin and Jared are great and said they'd send it if I order from them in the future (which I definitely will). They also sent me a bonus frag of an unknown gorg. Link to comment
tako Posted July 25, 2012 Author Share Posted July 25, 2012 The new gorgs also convinced me to move my hammer off the sand and actually onto a wall. It seems to like the horizontal placement a lot better. Link to comment
tako Posted August 9, 2012 Author Share Posted August 9, 2012 My goby is more of a badass than yours.. "Go ahead and throw sand all over me. Look at all the ....s I give." He swims up against the glass, puffs up his chest, and tells me to bring it. "Get off my lawn!" Link to comment
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