Sangheili's Innovative Marine Nuvo 24 - aka How I ruined my carpet

[sangheili]

nice addition looking good. sorry to hear about the clam.

 

It happens. Challenging keeping these clams in such a small tank. What really gets me though is the clam looked perfect for 2-3 weeks up until it just overnight croaked. It was reacting to stimulus, it wasn't gaping, no PM, no pyramid snails, no nipping, and wasn't stretching for light. Alk/Cal/Mag are all at ideal levels. Nitrate is a little high at 5-8 but clams tend to love that. Really still scratching my head on this one.

 

On a side note, I think I have sworn off ORA clams now. Of the 6 or so I have purchased over the last year only two have survived (the Derasa which is now 2x the size as when I bought it and a small Black/White one which is struggling). And reading other people's experiences tells me this is very typical.

[sangheili]

Alright guys, time for some real photos. Spent a couple hours messing with the DSLR (I still really suck) and this is what I came up with so far. Gave up trying to get the custom white balance on the camera to work so I just adjusted with Photoshop. Still 95% of the photos I took had too little exposure so when brightening them up they turned a little grainy. I have lots of experience still to gain with real photography...

 

For now here are some "not terrible" photos:

 

 

 

 

[TeamIM24]

Love the ric/yuma/zoa pic!

[lilmatty5dimes]

great pics. love those clams.

[Cameron6796]

Love the last pic your not bad at taking pics, your fts is just a little dark but then again only hype can do a fts that makes your jaw drop for 6 pages

 

Your macros are clear as glass

[sangheili]

Thanks Cam! Got some very sweet gorgonians today!

[Cameron6796]

When I mention the word sea fan or gorgonian my older sister turns into a little kid... Now I really need a tank to start getting all these cool things myself

[sangheili]

I got 4 very nice Gorgonians yesterday along with two Pederson's Cleaner Shrimp and a red brittle star. The shrimp are beyond cool but very small (roughly 1"). One of them was swimming in the middle of the water column earlier when I fed the tank. Way more control over his swimming ability then my giant Fire Shrimp has. Here's a quick video: http://1drv.ms/1rK14CU

 

Does anyone have suggestions for simple and effective software to edit photos? Lightroom works ok but the white balance correction seems to max out a ways before what I really need.

 

Pics:

[sangheili]

So my 2" blue Squamosa clam just up and disappeared. After 5mins of looking around I found it on the back of the tank wedged between the liverock and the wall. It looked like it walked about 10" on its own until I realized my Strawberry Crab has been trying to close up the "door" to his new cave (since he was apparently evicted from his old home by the Wrasse). I found two or three frag plugs in his cave. Moved the clam back and moved a bunch of sand near the entrance to his hole so maybe he will feel more closed in now.

[sangheili]

Put two healthy Yellow Assesors in my tank this morning, now they are missing. No ORP spike (so probably not food/dead), not in the overflows, not on the ground (I have the glass lid on). Just straight up vanished.

 

[sangheili]

Well I saw one of the Assessors so apparently they are just magicians when it comes to hiding.

 

Heres my current schedule.

 

Dosing/Feeding Schedule as of Sept 16th, 2014:

Daily/Every other day feed tank with random mix of:

Hikari Marine S Pellets

Hikari Crab Cuisine

New Life Spectrum 1mm Pellets

PE Mysis (frozen)

Rod's Food (frozen)

Even days:

Zeovit Coral Vitalizer (1 drop)

Zeovit Sponge Power (1 drop)

Kent Iodide (1 drop)

1-2 times per week:

Zeovit Zeobak (1 drop)

Zeovit Coral Snow (10-20 drops)

Reef Chili (small pinch)

Phyto-Feast (10-20 drops)

PhycoPure Zooxanthellae (cap full)

In ATO water:

Brightwell Kalk+2 (1/2 tsp per gallon)

[sangheili]

I made some changes to my Apex wiring tonight. About a year back I had the entire tank on an APC UPS but when I was gone for a weekend, the power went out for an hour or so and the UPS never turned itself back on when power was restored!! Long story short I came home to a tank that had no water movement for about 40 hours. I lost a few shrimp, a black squat lobster, and a fish.

 

I was so frustrated I took the UPS off the tank completely. Until tonight that is. With my new Apex (not Apex Jr) I have the option of powering the controller with an auxiliary 12v power source. So with a little planning I figured out the best thing to do is hook up my cable modem, router, Apex head unit, and one Jebao pump to the UPS. The EnergyBar and other accessories are hooked up to normal surge protected wall power.

 

So now in the event I lose main power, the Apex controller, modem, and router will continue to run for an estimated 1-3 hours. In addition, since I'm using the Apex to control one of the Jebao pumps plus power it from the UPS, the pump will continue to run as normal even though the rest of the tank shuts off. This will still give me some surface agitation while at the same time maximizing the run-time of my UPS. Sometime in the next few days i'll be doing a runtime test to see how long the UPS will power this configuration.

[Polarcollision]

Some quick cell phone pics. Picked up some zoas yesterday: Sunny D, BBEB, some orange center/green ring, and some blue/white/red.

 

My big clam died unfortunately. No idea what happened but could be it didn't like the ph swings. I hooked up a co2 scrubber to my skimmer yesterday and my ph is much better now. The two small blue squamosa clams are doing well. The small ORA Black/White Maxima has some issues with PM but I think is recovering (did a FW dip yesterday).

 

Sorry for the crappy pics as usual. I promise I will learn to use my nice Canon DLSR soon. Still dealing with high nutrients from stirring up my sand bed.

 

My new ricordia garden and random frags.

 

FTS

 

pic or link to your co2 scrubber, plz!

 

Fairy wrasse is awesome. Want

[sangheili]

pic or link to your co2 scrubber, plz!

 

Fairy wrasse is awesome. Want

 

Im just using a BRS canister and soda lime. I have the skimmer airline hooked up to the BRS canister.

 

Here's a shot of it:

 

[Polarcollision]

Is that the tunze 9002 skimmer with InTank collection cup?

 

Thanks for the pic!

[sangheili]

Yep! Although I'm not a fan of it, my options are limited.

[sangheili]

So I think the Strawberry Crab in my tank might be ape-level intelligent because he just used random rocks and snail shells to construct a jigsaw-puzzle like door to his cave.

 

Also, this is a couple days after I noticed one of my 2" clams was straight up missing. Took 5mins to finally find it, it was wedged between the rockwork and the back wall of the tank. Apparently it got stuck when Mr. Crab was on his getaway drive back to his cave with the loot.

[Dr.Brain Coral]

The Tank Is looking Really Nice.

 

That crab has a pretty complex door haha. How reef safe are Strawberry Crabs?

[sangheili]

Model citizen other then his taste for stealing frag plugs for his den.

[sangheili]

Work in progress....

 

[lilmatty5dimes]

Work in progress....

 

thats going to be awesome.

[sangheili]

I had an issue with one of the Lumia pucks and had to RMA it. I should have the replacement on Monday and then hopefully have my light mounted then! Everything else worked perfectly and holy crap is this thing bright.

 

In other news... I just placed a nice order

 

 

[lilmatty5dimes]

those clams look killer especially that second one.

[sangheili]

Added one more to the order...

 

[sangheili]

Acclimating...

 

 

Here's the hybrid in his new home...