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Cloakerpoked's 40 Breeder


cloakerpoked

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I was actually over with a guy at the Inland Reef and he told me that Bluespot Jawfish are really best suited for colder tanks (72-76) than acro tanks. He's kept 3 and basically talked me out of them based on that conversation. I'm thinking about a blenny or watchman instead now. He also said that other jawfish don't need as cold of temperatures.

 

I'm sure there are plenty of people who could anecdotally tell me that they kept a BSJ for 2 or 3 years, but I prefer fish that will make it longer, like close-ish to their natural lifespans.

 

No, no diatoms. I'm keeping the lights off for the most part to allow the rock to establish itself. Some days the blue LED moonlight is the only tank light. The sand was still damp, so it was actually live sand when I got it.

 

One of the cardinals didn't do well. He was eating at the LFS, but I never saw him eat at home, and disappeared about a week ago. I'd never misplaced a fish in an empty tank before, but I can't for the life of me find him. The other is eating like a champ but absent a school, is very shy. I can't make up my mind about whether to try to add 3-4 more to get a school, or to just keep the one.

 

 

Sorry to hear about the Cardinal. Thats odd that it just disappeared. They are not typically what i would think of as a jumper and you had something to discourage that. Hhmm, IDK.

Maybe i will get your blue spot jawfish sometime for the seahorse tank. I see KP Aquatics sells mated pairs and i always thought they would be nice. I would have to QT them a good while before adding them to the seahorse display. To do that i would need my 30g back that you aren't using, ha ha!

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cloakerpoked

Sorry to hear about the Cardinal. Thats odd that it just disappeared. They are not typically what i would think of as a jumper and you had something to discourage that. Hhmm, IDK.

Maybe i will get your blue spot jawfish sometime for the seahorse tank. I see KP Aquatics sells mated pairs and i always thought they would be nice. I would have to QT them a good while before adding them to the seahorse display. To do that i would need my 30g back that you aren't using, ha ha!

 

You can have it when we come up for Easter.

 

Jumping is impossible in my tank. The back (which is partially opened to allow airflow) is enclosed by a vinyl screen, so there is literally no way out of the tank via that route.

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  • 4 months later...
cloakerpoked

So it's been forever since I've posted. We decided to sell our house and move across town, so the tank sat with my one Cardinal all by himself for 3 months. I'm sure it cycled the tank pretty well, although the move probably killed some of my bacteria. The one benefit is that my tank has no bad actors at this point, so as long as I'm careful about what I add, I shouldn't get any of the nuisance algae. I know that this somewhat defeats the diversity and variety of live rock, but I've preferred my tanks to be a little more sterile. So this is my tank now.

 

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cloakerpoked

The tank is connected to the closet through the wall. Of course, since all of the tank bulkheads were drilled before I moved to this house, 3 of them cut through studs. I had to cut a hole in the wall, then reinforce the studs since I didn't want my steps sagging or collapsing.

 

At the moment, the "fish closet" has two 20 gallon tanks. Only one of them is connected right now. The second will be a frag tank or specimen tank sometime in the future. It still needs to be drilled. I plan to run a very slow turn over for it, to minimize the amount of overflow that I need to allow for back into the sump. I'll most likely automate a lot later in the fish closet as well. We're over a crawl space, so there's a strong likelihood that I'll have an RODI unit in there for top off and to make my own water when I get tired of going to the LFS's and buying theirs for $0.50 per gallon.

 

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The middle compartment is the skimmer compartment. I need to set it up to make sure the outflow goes back into the 1st chamber so that I don't get a bunch of bubbles back into my display.

 

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cloakerpoked

Finally, I currently have 3 fish, a Rose bubble tip, and green star polyps. The green star polyps were my canary in the coal mine. I put them in to see how they did before "branching out" (really bad coral pun) into other corals. After 2 weeks I was getting some growth, so I added the anemone. So far so good. I'll most likely try some acans next, and probably try to get my Helfrich's Firefish.

 

The 3 fish are the Bangai cardinalfish "Cruz" and a pair of Wyoming White Ocellaris Clowns "Flotsam" and "Jetsam" (Little mermaid reference for those of you old enough and maybe obsessed enough to remember.)

 

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And of course...a full tank shot. Some diatom growth, which I expected, but nothing that's been taking over the tank. Hopefully we're done moving (largely because I'm tired of painting and carrying heavy things and not knowing where things are in my heavy things I keep carrying around) so this time we'll be moving forward a little quicker...although the old mantra "nothing good happens quickly in a reef tank" definitely is still true.

 

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  • 7 months later...

It has been a while since I've posted (about 8 months.)  The tank has gone through a few phases, including a big battle with cyano.  I think I finally have that pretty much under control, and the tank is finally heading in the direction I've wanted it to be.  I've been adding more LPS and SPS frags to start to fill out the tank.  I had been struggling with micro-bubbles so I added the top frag tank, with an extremely slow flow rate and that should cut down on the microbubbles making it to the display.  I may end up using the bottom tank as the frag tank instead.  

 

Started dosing, and finally started getting coraline growth.  Added two more koralia nano's (540 gph) to boost the flow rate in the display tank.  All in all, really pleased with the tank.

 

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Full tank Shot

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6 hours ago, teenyreef said:

 :)

Tank looks good Nate!  How is the algae on the sand, still improving?  How about KB?

 

Ha ha, I am not sure why teeny's quote ended up here???

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50 minutes ago, vlangel said:

Tank looks good Nate!  How is the algae on the sand, still improving?  How about KB?

 

Ha ha, I am not sure why teeny's quote ended up here???

KB is doing great.  He and the anthias and midas blenny get into it sometimes, but nothing that's problematic.  

 

Algae continues to clear up.  The turbo snails are doing a great job cleaning up the tank, especially the rocks.  

44 minutes ago, Sharbuckle said:

Love the closet sump setup!! 

 

Thanks, me too.  I'm grateful that my wife let me steal her hall closet to do it.  

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