vlangel Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 My fellow American readers: GO VOTE TODAY! I went in to the poll early today and got it out of the way. It was pretty quick and painless. Ohio has a ballot amendment regarding marijuana legalization. But tied to it, the amendment gives a monopoly on marijuana growing to the people who paid to bring the amendment to vote. There is a competing ballot amendment banning state sanctioned monopolies, which doesn't retroactively affect other state-sanctioned monopolies like casinos. It'll be interesting to see how that all shakes out at the end of the day. Tank updates: Stevie is eating his food soaked in Selcon quite well. I don't think he has any vision back yet, but he does seem perkier. It could just be that he is acclimating to being blind though. I picked up a new RFA over the weekend from a LFS. It is a black and white zebra striped one, but with a purple mouth. I'll get some photos up tonight. I voted this evening but we in PA had nothing as exciting as you in OH. I am glad Stevie at least seems perked since you added the Selcon. Link to comment
Mirya Posted November 4, 2015 Author Share Posted November 4, 2015 Here is one of my new Discosoma neglecta mushrooms that I bought when I got my sexy Indophyllia (check out the Nuvo8 thread for drool-worthy shots of that) And the new RFA I picked up. It's a heart! Zooming in on that lovely purple lipstick: Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 You sure have a pretty mouth! Link to comment
Anden Posted November 4, 2015 Share Posted November 4, 2015 You sure have a pretty mouth! And so do the rock flower. Link to comment
Bunster Posted November 14, 2015 Share Posted November 14, 2015 Wow... thats a beautiful RFA! Link to comment
gena Posted November 15, 2015 Share Posted November 15, 2015 And the new RFA I picked up. It's a heart! Zooming in on that lovely purple lipstick: I love the white zebras...and bonus lipstick!!!! Link to comment
Mirya Posted December 30, 2015 Author Share Posted December 30, 2015 Stevie Wonder the Jawfish has slowly but surely been regaining his vision. I think he is nearsighted atm. His burrow is a bit tidier, but he still isn't sealing it up at night. He will see the pipette coming and take food off the end, but isn't venturing into the water column to take floating food yet. But, definitely improving. In preparation for my upcoming move to North Carolina, this tank is going to be broken down on Saturday. The tank itself will be sold to someone here on N-R. The livestock I'm keeping though. They will live in buckets and my 15 gallon frag tank until the move on Tuesday. Once we get to North Carolina, they will get to live in my 60 gallon frag tank! It'll be a little ghetto: No sump. I'll have a skimmer and reactor in the tank. The screen cover I made isn't my finest work as the wrinkles in the mesh annoy my anal retentive nature, but it is square. Since the house we are moving to in North Carolina is only temporary (we will be buying a house of our own by the summer), I didn't want to go through all the work of setting up the new sumped tank only to tear it back down in a few months. Link to comment
vlangel Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 I am glad that Stevie is improving. I love a happy ending! I think that the compartment you made for the skimmer and reactor look pretty good, and that is not ghetto. It's about as tidy and neat looking as possible given its not hidden in a sump. Anyway i don't think the livestock will care. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted December 30, 2015 Share Posted December 30, 2015 I wish my nice tanks looked as good as your "ghetto" tank I think think it actually looks really cool. And when its full of frags its going to look like a big beautiful box of candy Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted December 31, 2015 Share Posted December 31, 2015 YEY! I like it! It looks awesome already. Link to comment
Mirya Posted January 3, 2016 Author Share Posted January 3, 2016 Broke this tank down today! and I started at 11am, right before the lights came on: I put the live rock, gorgonians, my serpent stars, and peppermint shrimp in a Brute: As I was unstacking the live rock, I saw Stevie had a lot more entrances and exits to his burrow system than I imagined: The coral that wasn't attached to large rocks and the fish went into my 15 gallon frag tank. I had thinned out the corals and my wrasse in my frag tank earlier in the week, selling them to members of my local reef club. I repurposed my wrasse's sand bed as a rubble rock bed for Stevie... only he ignored it and has been huddled next to the rubble rock bed. You can see him on the left: By noon this was the state of the tank: And at 1pm: And finally at 2pm: RIP Sebastian/Nick showed up shortly before 2pm. He came out from Pennsylvania to buy the tank and reactor. He started a thread for the tank tonight, so I can see how my tank's next life goes! I'm excited that I'll be upgrading this tank -- well in a few months. I have the new tank, I'm just going to hold stuff in the 60 gallon frag tank while we are in the rental house. I'm just also angsty wondering how the move is going to go on Tuesday. Eep! Link to comment
RIP Sebastian Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 Good luck with the move, Karen! Thanks for the awesome deal! I'll take good care of your baby. Nick Link to comment
kimberbee Posted January 3, 2016 Share Posted January 3, 2016 What are you going to do with your stands? I really like them... Link to comment
Mirya Posted January 3, 2016 Author Share Posted January 3, 2016 Keeping them! When I do eventually move into to my new tank for the Florida biotope, it'll fit on this stand and use the same Nano-Box Quad. The stands are kitchen carts from Bed, Bath & Beyond. Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 It's hard to see tanks down. We take so much care to put everything in and seriously think for months on fish, coral placement , and in only an hour it's taken apart. Craziness. I'll be thinking about you when you move. I'll have to pack up everything else that isn't fish tonight, Mon- Wed so I can think only reefing Thurs onward. I have to clean this place Sun so it all has to be out Sat. I want no cleaning chemicals around. Link to comment
vlangel Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Good luck with everything! Link to comment
RIP Sebastian Posted January 4, 2016 Share Posted January 4, 2016 Ready for the big day, Karen? Link to comment
Mirya Posted January 5, 2016 Author Share Posted January 5, 2016 Ready for the big day, Karen? Moving company came and packed today, but they didn't load the truck as originally planned. (Long story...) This means they will need to load the truck in the morning. Which meant that we didn't get to load the U-Haul or do the apartment walkthrough tonight. We'll have to do those things in the morning. This means we won't be hitting the road early in the morning like we had planned. Blech. Oh well, fish have one more night in the little frag tank before their big adventure. Stevie & Co haven't been too pleased about it. Stevie is hard core pouting. Sitting in a corner, acting emo, not eating. He continues to ignore the bed of rubble rock I gave him and the barnacle cluster I gave him. Basslet and Gramma are starting to come around and poke their heads out from under the frag racks and eat a little but not as voraciously as normal. Neon Goby is back to his spastic self though. Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 5, 2016 Share Posted January 5, 2016 How exciting! Moves never go as planned, though, especially when you are relying on others to do things. Fingers crossed! Link to comment
RIP Sebastian Posted January 5, 2016 Share Posted January 5, 2016 Moving company came and packed today, but they didn't load the truck as originally planned. (Long story...) This means they will need to load the truck in the morning. Which meant that we didn't get to load the U-Haul or do the apartment walkthrough tonight. We'll have to do those things in the morning. This means we won't be hitting the road early in the morning like we had planned. Blech. Oh well, fish have one more night in the little frag tank before their big adventure. Stevie & Co haven't been too pleased about it. Stevie is hard core pouting. Sitting in a corner, acting emo, not eating. He continues to ignore the bed of rubble rock I gave him and the barnacle cluster I gave him. Basslet and Gramma are starting to come around and poke their heads out from under the frag racks and eat a little but not as voraciously as normal. Neon Goby is back to his spastic self though. I'm sorry to hear about the hiccups in the move. It'll be over soon! You already did the hardest part-saying goodbye to the 24. Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted January 6, 2016 Share Posted January 6, 2016 I understand about hiccups and things not going as planned for sure. I won't have a closing this Friday and move Sat, it'll now be closing Mon, floor installers Wed and truck move Thurs. Hoping you had a safe arrival with everything coping during this transition. Link to comment
Mirya Posted January 7, 2016 Author Share Posted January 7, 2016 Time to change my location in my profile! We are in Cary! ('Burb of Raleigh.) Long post incoming, but I figured I'd detail the move for people who need this type of info in the future! Yesterday was a looooooooooooong day. I was up for about 30 hours with all the move stuff. Woke up at 6. Managed to skin one of my fingers at first thing while loading the trunk of the car. With all the time my hands then spent in tank water over the past day, I'm just waiting to get a weird Vibrio or Mycobacterium infection in it or something.. My finger is really pissed off now. Anyway, I waited til the moving company finished loading the truck, then we loaded our U-Haul trailer, then I broke down the 8 gallon and 15 gallon frag tank. Corals on frag plugs went in the rack system I made for a Homer bucket. In there also went the fish, serpent stars, snails, and crabs. I had a battery operated air pump for the bucket and a heater. Loose corals I bagged and placed in a styrofoam container with heat packs. I ended up buying an impulse sealer cheap on Amazon so was able to pack up the corals like a vendor. Conveniently I had found this video by Legendary Corals that explained how they pack things, which is pretty much what I followed: My live rock -- some of which had coral attached -- I put in a Rubbermaid Brute Tote. While it had circulation and heat in it while we were still in the apartment, on the road it didn't have heat or circulation. So, by the time all of that was complete, we did a final cleaning of the apartment, then we did the walk through with the apartment complex management, etc... it was close to 5pm before we left Columbus! The fish/coral bucket was on the floor behind the passenger seat. Heater was plugged into a power inverter. We laid down blankets, then a tarp in the back seat. Then the Brute Tote and Styrofoam box were seatbelted into the back seat. Before we even got on the highway (while on a roundabout) we learned that the Brute Tote lid while it snaps on was not watertight... Fortunately the tarp collected all the water that spilled. Rebalanced the Brute which had tilted in the seat and it was good for the rest of the trip. The drive took 9.5 hours. My husband and I traded off driving every 2 hrs or so. We rolled in to the rental house around 3am. Unloaded the livestock, U-Haul, and the trunk of the car. Then my husband passed out since he had had a headache all day. I set up the tank and unpacked the fish and coral... I checked temperatures. The bucket was around 75 degrees. The live rock tote was 65 degrees! Not sure the coral temperature, but they had polyp extension in their bags, so looked pretty happy. I had 35 gallons of saltwater heated to 78 and circulating in a Brute that I had set-up the last time I was in NC. I added the live rock and preheated water to the tank. Floated the coral bags in the tanks and started acclimating the fish in their bucket. The coral on the live rock, even though it had gotten down to 65, seemed pretty happy and started opening up in the tank. Everything -- fish, coral, and inverts -- survived the trip! I finished unpacking at setting up the tank by 7am. My big issue is that I had leaking around my bulkheads. I ended up just dropping the water level below the bulkheads for now, since I had been awake for over 24 hrs at that point and figured I would deal with it later. The movers showed up a little after 8am and unloaded all the rest of our stuff. Then my husband and I went out to eat (breakfast? lunch? I'm not even sure what that meal was), then I came back to the house and finally got to pass out for awhile. Here is my ghetto fabulous disaster as it currently stands. Everything is in the tank except my candy pistol shrimp who is still in the Homer bucket, since I worry he'd get lost in the big tank. I'll get the 8 gallon set up for him in a day or so. Link to comment
ReefWeeds Posted January 7, 2016 Share Posted January 7, 2016 wow, I am tired just reading that! Great to hear about everything making it Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted January 7, 2016 Share Posted January 7, 2016 Wow. You did awesome. 65, that's really good considering you probably just drove w/ the temp that made you feel comfortable in the car. So glad everything made it. But I'm feeling so tired for you. I've been feeling so tired myself. I've moved 8 car loads to the town home already since the 1st and finally got USDA final approval today so closing Mon or Tues at the latest for sure, then flooring Wed, and truck move Thurs. Reading what you had to do was inspirational for me. With my delay it will allow me to bring over one of my 2 Brutes like yours on Saturday and fill it, heat it and circulate it. I could probably throw in rock only that has been in the tanks but has no coral on it to get the bacteria going throughout the water. Seeing it takes like 8 hrs to fill that thing I can make the drop off, connect & go back to the cleaning here at the apt on Sat & check it later. Thank God I have one more 25g Brute which I need to clean. Glad you both made it safely. Congrats!!! Link to comment
teenyreef Posted January 7, 2016 Share Posted January 7, 2016 Wow, great job and congratulations! I'm tired now Also, thanks for posting the Legendary packing video. I just started shipping frags a month or two ago according to a post I found here on N-R. I really like the idea of making multiple pockets out of one bag - it never occured to me to use the heat sealer on the wet part of the bag - for some reason I assumed you could only use it above the water line. My coral shipping life is about to get a lot easier Link to comment
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