my IM nuvo 20 downsize-upgrade....take 2 (.5)! 05/18 Legendary Corals order (and semi-disappointment..)

[vlangel]

Lizz, your tank is really looking nice! Good job. Was it fun transferring everything?

[Nanofreak79]

Very nice tank and equipment. Much nicer than the bio cubes. I just want to suggest one thing. Right now your tank is on the tan tear brace and the weight of the tank is being held up by the screws on each end, flip the stand and you'd have a full top that sits on top the middle and side uprights. I have same stand, just giving you an idea.

[Lizz]

Lizz, your tank is really looking nice! Good job. Was it fun transferring everything?

 

aw, thank you!

 

it was kind of stressful! i was concerned about my poor fish. every rock i'd take out, my glown goby would attach himself too and i kept having to shake him off and i felt bad! there were also about 3 times i was convinced i'd somehow crushed or trapped my neon goby while moving/positioning rocks.

 

(i didn't! she's fine, as are all my other fish!)

Very nice tank and equipment. Much nicer than the bio cubes. I just want to suggest one thing. Right now your tank is on the tan tear brace and the weight of the tank is being held up by the screws on each end, flip the stand and you'd have a full top that sits on top the middle and side uprights. I have same stand, just giving you an idea.

 

that is a good idea and i wish i'd thought of it before we installed doors/filled up the tank. haha :/

 

we did add L-brackets into each interior corner to add more stability, at least.

[Lizz]

so the original IM ghost skimmer i purchased arrived broken and marine depot was really excellent in fixing the issue and as of last night i have a new unit that works.

 

 

.....but this means i am now in microbubble hell.

 

i know there's a "break-in period" but it still sucks. even with various fixes i've found on the internet. plus this thing is LOUD. i'm going to let it run 24 hours a day for the weekend to see if it settles in and the noise improves, otherwise this thing is getting relegated to an overnight only cycle. the cup also has to sit way higher than i anticipated and is a bit of an eyesore. long story short- i really really wish my tunze 9001 fit in the back chamber of the nuvo 20. :/

 

also, i know it's off topic but i've had such a heavy heart over the paris attacks. i did a summer semester there in college (2007) and spent most of my time in the area that was targeted and its just so sad and awful.

 

the people that i know there are safe, thankfully.

 

from my last visit in 2011.

[thomas8man]

loving the tank and the macro algae piece has an amazing colour love it.

[gena]

from my last visit in 2011.

What a great pic .

 

That's an awesome macro algae. I have a sprig that is growing from the base of a coral that was in my 8g tank where I had a nice large string of pearls. It's slow growing in my new tank but I'm hoping it will eventually take off

[Lizz]

i think i'm going to have to chase down LA reefs...since my order confirmation, i've heard no word about my macroalgae order. :/

 

actually, i just took a moment from writing this post to shoot them an email.

 

so things are still good! fish seem to be doing fine, all corals seem to be doing fine...the water has been crystal clear....i'm more happy with this tank in just a couple of weeks than i ever was with my last one.

 

i am SO SO SO glad we invested in an ro/di.....maker? machine? because evap on an open top tank is no joke! it seems to need ~2 gallons a week. on that note, i am also thanking myself big time for just biting the bullet and getting an ATO system. stable tank=happy tank!

 

the skimmer is still loud as hell and microbubbly, but its fine. i decided to get an outlet timer and definitely just run it on a 12 hour night/early morning shift from 12am-12pm. i've read enough about the benefits of part-time skimming and feel good enough about the rest of my filtration/whatever that this will work for me. with the skimmer off, the tank is virtually silent.

 

anyway, i know everyone just checks threads for pics so here are a couple:

 

tricky finding an angle without a ton of glare during the day! all fish are visible, too! my ora leather in the left corner finally perked up after being pissed for ~a week. not sure where he will go. that was just a temp spot while it recovered from being ripped off its old rock. my duncan next to it was dying for unkown reasons in my old tank and i thought it was a lost cause, but i threw it in this tank anyway and it actually seems like its hanging on/might make it! i hope so.

 

wide shot of tank corner. need to decide what sort of art to hang on the wall above it.

 

and lastly, my little dude enjoying the fall. :

off topic, but oh well.

 

no macro shots today. i just submitted a repair request for my lens and i'll hopefully have it back and in working order within a week or two!

[Sunar357]

Great looking new tank! Just placed order for the 25 Lagoon myself! Gonna be breaking down my 40. Upgrade downsizing as well!

[Lizz]

Great looking new tank! Just placed order for the 25 Lagoon myself! Gonna be breaking down my 40. Upgrade downsizing as well!

 

congrats! i hope you have the same experience i've had....no regrets and extremely happy!!

[vlangel]

It looks great Lizz. I really like the shot of your tank so I can see how it fits in the room. Such a nice bright corner.

I love my ATO too. I got it for Christmas last year and I considered it a luxury item for the tank but now I wondered how I lived without it.

[Lizz]

thank you! as soon as we're fully done getting the apartment re-settled (getting stuff done takes forever w/ a wild toddler, i swear...) i'll do a full room shot.

 

i was able to get away without having an ATO with the biocube because i had like....8-10oz of evap a week, if that. i think keeping up with topping off on this tank manually would be an absolute nightmare....and i'd be worried sick every time we traveled!

 

in other tank news....i've been kind of waffling on getting a RBA. not sure if i'm prepared for the disappointment of it not sitting where i want it to or for it to potentially take a wild ride through the MP10 and ruin the tank. i'm wondering if i could finally get a hyacinth birdsnest to survive in this setup.....??

[Lizz]

what a frustrating morning!

 

 

so the lovely gena graciously offered to send me a frag of her gorgeous turquoise trumpets. after much drama with my local post office (i'm not even going to get into it....lets just say that it has five full pages of scathing one-star reviews on yelp) it has arrived and and acclimating!

 

iphone pix:

 

 

 

the packaging professional-level and the coral is already beautiful, even in its shriveled, pissed-off state. thanks again, you're the best!

 

more photos incoming when it fluffs up.

[JKUNZ]

Very nice! Following along.

[ninjamyst]

awesome! it will look great in your tank.

 

i hate post office too. soooo much. the level of incompetence is unreal...

[Lizz]

reefer's lament: you dare to shift one rock and your entire rockscape gets messed up and no matter what you do, you can't get it back the way it was.

 

X________X

 

 

in better news, gena's trumpets kept waving their tentacles at me so i turkey basted some coral frenzy their way and they ballooned up in minutes.

[Sunar357]

That always happens to me as well! Stinkin rocks!

[Lizz]

this tank was going great but a new opportunity arose a couple months ago that will be taking our family from NYC to chicago next week. we originally tried to figure out how to move everything, but then realized it would be too difficult and put too much stress on our fish buddies, so we decided to break down the tank and re-home the inhabitants (they will be living in the big and beautiful display tank of a good LFS).

 

my three year old cried when he went with his dad to drop them off we've had them since he was a baby.

 

we're planning on taking all of our equipment and starting fresh once we are settled. i'm excited for this but i'm actually really bummed to see the fish go. you really do get attached!

[myarmolich]

this tank was going great but a new opportunity arose a couple months ago that will be taking our family from NYC to chicago next week. we originally tried to figure out how to move everything, but then realized it would be too difficult and put too much stress on our fish buddies, so we decided to break down the tank and re-home the inhabitants (they will be living in the big and beautiful display tank of a good LFS).

 

my three year old cried when he went with his dad to drop them off we've had them since he was a baby.

 

we're planning on taking all of our equipment and starting fresh once we are settled. i'm excited for this but i'm actually really bummed to see the fish go. you really do get attached!

 

Such a shame, your tank was beautiful. Wish you luck in your move!

[Lizz]

Thank you! I look forward to getting it back up and running. I'll miss my fish and corals that were with me from the beginning, though.

[Lizz]

SIGH.

 

so the bad news first:

 

my tank was broken in the move.

 

so our move was paid for through my husband's work and a couple months before our move, a guy came to inspect the contents of our apartment to assign the correct truck size and also mark down special items that needed to be packed and crated as opposed to boxed. the crate guys (separate from the moving guys) have a window of 1-3 pm on moving day and show up at 4:30 and then claim they didn't know about the aquarium and don't have approval to crate it. husband calls the coordinators and they say there IS approval to crate but then the crate guys avoid answering their phones when the supervisor tries to call them. husband eventually puts them on HIS phone at the supervisor's request/crate guys are visibly pissed.

 

then at 5pm (half hour later after they had only crated two things) husband sees them drive off. turns out they decided they were done for the day and peaced out without finishing the job.

 

so the head mover offers to take the tank anyway and do his best to wrap/pack it himself but i just know its not going to be secure as it needs to be. at this point i actually hope it DOES get damaged in transit because i think i would have been too nervous to use it not knowing exactly how it was handled in cross-country transit. really not interested in being perpetually paranoid about a tank failure.

 

it arrives and sure enough its busted up on one of the corners. the good news is that the move was fully insured, but we have to get EVERYTHING unpacked before we can file the claim and then wait for a claim inspector and then wait for the reimbursement check....so getting stuff back up and running is going to take a lot longer than i had hoped.

 

i'm mostly irritated i spent so much time/effort cleaning out the tank before the move! cleaning out a fishtank is GROSS and hard!

[Lizz]

This tank has risen from the ashes!

 

We are finally fully moved in and back from our two weeks in Europe (planned months before we even knew we'd be moving), so I finally got the chance to get the tank set up!

 

Everything is the same as before except we got a new stand (same piece of furniture, just a new one) and added a vortech backup battery for the MP10 since we now have above ground electric wiring and we don't want to risk an unexpected blackout. I will miss our bulletproof underground wiring in Brooklyn. It made it through an earthquake, a tornado AND hurricane sandy without so much as a flicker. ah well.

 

i got some new rock rock from reeflceaners and started fresh. it took awhile to figure out how to hook up the RODI filter to one of our sinks, but we got it going finally.

 

 

here's a cruddy iphone pic of it an hour or so ago. i'm cycling it with microbacter7 and phantom feeding. i'm not especially in a rush, so i haven't even bothered testing anything yet. i'll see how its going over the weekend.

 

i feel like the scape looks boring, but i'm trying to look at the big picture and i tried to give myself plenty of surface area for corals. i think its got a lot of placement potential and room for stuff to grow into.

 

i'm also currently trying to decide if i want to get a second AI prime or a single hydra 26? i wouldn't mind trying to keep a couple of SPS...a birdsnest or two? i dunno.

[vlangel]

Hey, good to hear from you although sorry the move was such an ordeal. I am anxious to see this 'new' tank progress!

[gena]

Wow!!!! How did I even miss all of this . So you are in Chicago now? I love Chicago. I've never been to Brooklyn so I don't know how the two compare. But underground wiring sounds pretty nice. Wires are so unsightly...we have plenty above ground around here!

 

So excited for you . What stand are you using? I see it looks like it's white. I still have tons of turquoise trumpets if you decide you want to have those again .

[Lizz]

Wow!!!! How did I even miss all of this . So you are in Chicago now? I love Chicago. I've never been to Brooklyn so I don't know how the two compare. But underground wiring sounds pretty nice. Wires are so unsightly...we have plenty above ground around here!

 

So excited for you . What stand are you using? I see it looks like it's white. I still have tons of turquoise trumpets if you decide you want to have those again .

 

Chicago is much.....easier than New York! Its a nice change of pace. Plus we have more space (indoor AND outdoor!). We only had underground wiring there because we lived in a newer building. The one here in Chicago was built in the 20s...but was renovated in the past 10 years, so it has the best of both worlds...vintage charm and modern appliances! AND two bathrooms .

I'm using a 2x2 ikea expedit/kallax still, but a new one that is oriented correctly....my last one was technically sideways, which always made me nervous.

 

Lastly, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE more turquoise trumpets!! I never would have had you send them to me the first time if I'd had any idea we'd be moving. It all just came out of nowhere, really. Give me a month or so to let things get into a groove, and I'm going to take you up on that for sure!! thanks so much!! <3

[gena]

Chicago is much.....easier than New York! Its a nice change of pace. Plus we have more space (indoor AND outdoor!). We only had underground wiring there because we lived in a newer building. The one here in Chicago was built in the 20s...but was renovated in the past 10 years, so it has the best of both worlds...vintage charm and modern appliances! AND two bathrooms .

I'm using a 2x2 ikea expedit/kallax still, but a new one that is oriented correctly....my last one was technically sideways, which always made me nervous.

 

Lastly, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE more turquoise trumpets!! I never would have had you send them to me the first time if I'd had any idea we'd be moving. It all just came out of nowhere, really. Give me a month or so to let things get into a groove, and I'm going to take you up on that for sure!! thanks so much!! <3

Just let me know when . I have so many because I love them so much . I'd probably be content with just a tank full of trumpets .

 

Your new place sounds amazing!!!! I love an old charming house/building with updates inside .