Felicia Posted January 6, 2016 Author Share Posted January 6, 2016 Wow, simply amazing, Felicia. The concept of a tank based on predatory fish is awesome! I can't wait to show your video to my wife. She'll love it. Thank you! The predator fish were really a great choice for this tank. I never get tired of feeding them Btw, I wanted to share a video that CoralFish12g (Youtube Channel) made using some of the clips from my TOTM video. 7 Quote Link to comment
Drew Shark Posted January 6, 2016 Share Posted January 6, 2016 Felicia I think your tank is one of the most natural looking I have seen. Awesome tank, Drew 1 Quote Link to comment
FlowerMama Posted January 7, 2016 Share Posted January 7, 2016 Looks lush, natural, you got it all in this tank. And they gave you more SSssssss. Divers's. I was like Oops. 1 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 13, 2016 Author Share Posted January 13, 2016 Felicia I think your tank is one of the most natural looking I have seen. Awesome tank, Drew Thank you so much! Such a flattering compliment I'm glad you enjoy the tank! Looks lush, natural, you got it all in this tank. And they gave you more SSssssss. Divers's. I was like Oops. Thank you, Anette! You guys are too kind Last night was water change/maintenance night. The tank is doing really well other than some minor green hair algae issues. Its much better than it was, but I'm still battling patches of it. It seems to just be a fact of life with this tank because of the excess nutrients from feeding the predators. I don't mind though because everything looks great otherwise, and it isn't hard to manually remove a bit of hair algae when I do my cleanings. 2 Quote Link to comment
vlangel Posted January 13, 2016 Share Posted January 13, 2016 I am in the same boat Felicia. I feed a whole cube of mysis every day and some times live food in addition to that and my system is only 56 gallons. I don't battle the hair algae as much as that fuzzy stuff that will build up on the glass if you don't constantly scrape it and of course bubble algae. 1 Quote Link to comment
Mirya Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 How is your hand doing? 1 Quote Link to comment
vlangel Posted January 14, 2016 Share Posted January 14, 2016 O yeah, I loved the video! 1 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 15, 2016 Author Share Posted January 15, 2016 I am in the same boat Felicia. I feed a whole cube of mysis every day and some times live food in addition to that and my system is only 56 gallons. I don't battle the hair algae as much as that fuzzy stuff that will build up on the glass if you don't constantly scrape it and of course bubble algae.Unfortunately we have nutrient heavy fish when it comes to eating, but that's the trade off of keeping something more unique. I definitely don't mind the algae too much since the lion fish are so fascinating. I haven't ever really had any bubble algae, but I have the algae on the glass and some hair algae.O yeah, I loved the video!Thanks! I thought it was a fun, quick compilation of some of my clips from the TOTM video. How is your hand doing?Thank you for asking Its doing much better. The cast is off now and they took another x-ray. It's healing but still not all the way healed so it's pretty achy at times, but so much better to have full use of my hand back. After just a few days of stiffness, I got all my range of motion back, which is great. I have another appointment in a couple weeks for another x-ray to check the healing progress. 3 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 It was time to make my predator food blend again. I go to a local seafood market and get a variety of fresh seafood. I chop it up into chunks, mix it all together, divvy it up into ice cube trays, and then freeze it. This way I can thaw a cube for feeding that has a nice variety of seafood. This time I'm using silversides, salmon, clams, scallops, squid, and prawns. Here's all the seafood I used and a picture of it all chopped up before mixing and freezing. My fish get some pretty gourmet food! This cost $18 and should last around 3 months. 8 Quote Link to comment
Rehype Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 It was time to make my predator food blend again. I go to a local seafood market and get a variety of fresh seafood. I chop it up into chunks, mix it all together, divvy it up into ice cube trays, and then freeze it. This way I can thaw a cube for feeding that has a nice variety of seafood. This time I'm using silversides, salmon, clams, scallops, squid, and prawns. Here's all the seafood I used and a picture of it all chopped up before mixing and freezing. My fish get some pretty gourmet food! This cost $18 and should last around 3 months. That looks absolutely delicious felicia....I wish I was one of your fish! 2 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 That looks absolutely delicious felicia....I wish I was one of your fish! You do not even understand how much self control it takes for me to chop all this up without just eating it all myself. My fish eat better than me! 3 Quote Link to comment
TFish77 Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 It was time to make my predator food blend again. I go to a local seafood market and get a variety of fresh seafood. I chop it up into chunks, mix it all together, divvy it up into ice cube trays, and then freeze it. This way I can thaw a cube for feeding that has a nice variety of seafood. This time I'm using silversides, salmon, clams, scallops, squid, and prawns. Here's all the seafood I used and a picture of it all chopped up before mixing and freezing. My fish get some pretty gourmet food! This cost $18 and should last around 3 months. What an awesome blend for your fish!! And freezing it in individual cube trays is genius as well. If only I had the time (that's a lie I have the time) or the patience :-p. 2 Quote Link to comment
RollaJase Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 Looks like those fish are getting a gourmet feast! I should really give making food a try. I always had plans on growing brine shrimp and freezing my own cubes mixed with chopped fish, prawns and clams. 2 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 What an awesome blend for your fish!! And freezing it in individual cube trays is genius as well. If only I had the time (that's a lie I have the time) or the patience :-p. Doing it this way is actually cheaper than buying cube packs of frozen aquarium food. Plus this way there is a big variety in each cube. It really doesn't take as much time as you'd think. I was able to do all of it in about an hour. The chopping just require patience, but it wouldn't if I had better knife skills Looks like those fish are getting a gourmet feast! I should really give making food a try. I always had plans on growing brine shrimp and freezing my own cubes mixed with chopped fish, prawns and clams. Its really a lot of fun to make your own food and you can personalize it to just what you need for your tank. I've got Eddie convinced he's going to start doing it once he ever gets around to starting a new tank. 3 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 I was sitting on my couch watching the tank and Mushu, Draco, and Falkor were all right up front begging for food. It was too good of a photo op to miss, so the next thing I know I'm sucked into photographing the tank. Lucky for you guys! I even took a video! Let's start with that! Watch it in HD if you can! 5 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 Ok now its photo time!!! FTS 1/21/16 And since its been a while since I've posted photos of the sump, here it is in all its dirty glory. Photo of the whole system. Like I mentioned, the fish were being total hams about begging for food tonight. I snapped a bunch of photos and then fed them after they posed for all these photos. The antennata was being shy tonight. Here she is lurking under the bonsai pillar. Mushu and Draco were being super photogenic! Falkor was also being quite the photo model tonight! I also got a few good shots of the clownfish in their BTA's. I was trying to count the BTA's and I believe we're up to like 8 or 9. My tuxedo urchin is doing really well and is helping fight the hair algae. He's actually wearing a bunch of hair algae as camouflage Not nearly as pretty as his tuxedo stripes! And to finish up, here are some coral photos. 8 Quote Link to comment
jedimasterben Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 You can actually remove the algae that the urchin is wearing lol. It looks like a species of cladophoropsis, so I would want to get as much of that stuff out of the tank as possible You can also look into getting a rabbitfish, they eat the stuff like it is candy! 1 Quote Link to comment
Mirya Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 Silly urchin! I love the video of Falcor. He looked like he was about ready to swim out of the tank to go grab some of that delicious looking seafood you prepared! 1 Quote Link to comment
vlangel Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 You really out did yourself with the awesome video and pics! I guess its easy with such a beautiful subject as spectacular as is your tank. YOUR TANK is lush and so healthy looking. It truly is inspirational. 1 Quote Link to comment
gena Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 I was sitting on my couch watching the tank and Mushu, Draco, and Falkor were all right up front begging for food. It was too good of a photo op to miss, so the next thing I know I'm sucked into photographing the tank. Lucky for you guys! I even took a video! Let's start with that! [Youtube] Watch it in HD if you can! I love your videos . Everything looks so happy and healthy. I caught a glimpse of your fox coral. How is it doing? I remember you said it was struggling. That derasa is getting huge! Looks like it's almost as big as squammy!!!! 1 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 You can actually remove the algae that the urchin is wearing lol. It looks like a species of cladophoropsis, so I would want to get as much of that stuff out of the tank as possible You can also look into getting a rabbitfish, they eat the stuff like it is candy! Yeah when I do my cleaning this weekend, I'll scrub down the urchin. Its part of my algae removal routine at this point because he likes to wear it Last night was just lazy in between cleanings photos though. Gotta show that even TOTM's have algae problems. I just looked up cladophoropsis and I'm not sure if that's it. I have a couple different varieties that look similar. I think most of it is hair algae, but then some of it actually looks like bryopsis. I'd panic except that this algae has been in the tank since the crash in the 30 gallon (since I reused the rock as it was). It seems to not become too huge of an issue. When I keep up on maintenance, its just a tiny amount that the urchin, mitrax crab, and turbo snails keep at bay. If I slack on maintenance and nitrates spike, then I get blobs of if. However, they're easy to manually remove and as soon as I get back on my water change routine it goes back to being almost nothing. I got the tang because I figured having an algae grazer in there would help. My starry blenny was a beast and really demolished any and all algae, but then he also decided to start eating clam mantle I just don't really want to get a big fish to add to my already high bioload right now. Also, I don't want to get something that I'd have to rehome in a short time because its gotten too big or aggressive. I'd really like a long term solution. Right now that seems to be me keeping up with maintenance and my urchin doing his job at keeping it at bay. Silly urchin! I love the video of Falcor. He looked like he was about ready to swim out of the tank to go grab some of that delicious looking seafood you prepared! The urchin is an algae eating beast so I tolerate his antics. I'm just glad he picks random trash as his decoration instead of stealing my corals to wear He may look ugly, but he does his job and doesn't bother my corals. Falkor is the best! I am really glad one of the guys at my LFS talked me into getting him. He has a ton of personality and is so fascinating to watch. He actually has almost fallen out of the tank before because he flails about at the surface of the water at feeding time. One day he flopped half his body over the rim and started to slide towards the floor. I was about to grab him, but he flipped himself back into the tank. At least its only a risk when I'm standing there watching, so it wouldn't be a big deal to rescue him. You really out did yourself with the awesome video and pics! I guess its easy with such a beautiful subject as spectacular as is your tank. YOUR TANK is lush and so healthy looking. It truly is inspirational. Thank you so much, Dawn! I think we definitely inspire each other! Your tank made me miss my seahorse tank and all the gorgonians and softies. I didn't want to do an all softie tank, but I'm loving the mixed reef compromise I have now. Gorgonians and soft corals are so underrated! Your tank is one of the ones that makes people realize that the underrated corals can actually be beautiful! They really help with that lush, natural look. I love your videos . Everything looks so happy and healthy. I caught a glimpse of your fox coral. How is it doing? I remember you said it was struggling. That derasa is getting huge! Looks like it's almost as big as squammy!!!! Thank you, Gena! How do you feel about this song choice? That song is on the radio so much that it is like perpetually stuck in my head This was my tank in its "unplanned, not cleaned up for a photo/video shoot" state, so I'm glad it still looks healthy and happy. Just a bit of dirty glass and algae The fox coral is hanging in there but not really doing great. Its been trying to recover, but some algae took hold on its skeleton and that seems to irritate it. I've tried scrubbing it off, but that seems to bother the coral more. LPS are so touchy. My local store keeps having them in stock though, so I may just consider getting a new one to try at some point. I think they're beautiful, unique corals, so I'd like a bit bigger one. The derasa has been growing like crazy lately! It really is getting huge. I'm so going to have space issues soon with these clams! I love them as the centerpiece though, so I'll just rearrange to accommodate them if needed 2 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 Speaking of the urchin doing a good job of eating algae. See this patch that was near him in the photo from last night? When I left for work this morning, that whole area of rock was 100% algae free! 1 Quote Link to comment
vlangel Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 I could not agree with you more about softies and gorgonians. There is such an exquisite loveliness about the flow through their polyps. And it was your 30g seahorse tank that made me want gorgs so I guess we have inspired one another. 1 Quote Link to comment
Felicia Posted January 21, 2016 Author Share Posted January 21, 2016 I could not agree with you more about softies and gorgonians. There is such an exquisite loveliness about the flow through their polyps. And it was your 30g seahorse tank that made me want gorgs so I guess we have inspired one another. In this case, we can just give all the credit to Eddie (zia) for inspiring the softie/gorg forest tank trend. At least that's how I ended up going that route. I don't think I could have a tank without gorgonians now! 2 Quote Link to comment
Lizzie1324 Posted January 21, 2016 Share Posted January 21, 2016 Okay so I've been working my way through this feed....your tank is beautiful!!! And I am in love with those clownies in their rbt's!!! #tankgoals 2 Quote Link to comment
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