empresto's 18.1 gallon build

[empresto]

Tank is doing well.

Not 100% related, but my Google Pixel 6 (not pro) takes amazing tank pictures without any filters or special apps, just the stock photo app. Here are some example tank pictures:

green astreopora (notice the encrustation of the coral to the glass; need to frag this one again)

Ora ponape bird's-nest

Bubblegum montipora digitata

Purple pavona

FTS as of today!

[Christopher Marks]

Great to see all the progress @empresto! Those shots are great too, I'm impressed the camera handles the blues so well. Hopefully more smartphone cameras can improve in this regard, that's awesome you found one that's a lot less trouble to shoot with.

[empresto]

Thanks @Christopher Marks! Yeah, Pixel 6 has a 50mp camera and the stock app has great color control. Zoom shots are no issue with that many mega pixels to play with. My pixel 3 didn't do too badly either, but this one knocks it out of the park!

[empresto]

This tank keeps chugging along!  Corals are growing well, and fish seem happy, thought I mysteriously lost my tail-spot blenny a couple month ago.  In its stead I added a scooter dragonette, which has been really fun to watch.  To keep up with the dragonette's food needs, I've been adding a jar of pods from algae barn once a month and dosing live phytoplankton daily.  He seems fat and happy 🙂

 

Here's some pics...

6/20/2022

7/23/2022

Favia and Favites with tentacles out

[empresto]

So, I finally decided to join the 90 Day reno contest and dove right in this afternoon.  My main goal was to improve lighting to the lower parts of the tank and make room for more coral diversity in the future.  Over the last couple years, my two Montipora Capricornis specimens have grown a lot, and finally reached to top of the water.  This has been really cool to watch, and they are beautiful corals, but they have shaded out everything below them.  (FYI, if you want to kill GSP, just make sure something grows over the top of it and blocks the light. 🙂)

 

Here are my before picks:

FTS

Side FTS

Top Down

 

As beautiful as that top-down shot is, that is not what one sees when viewing this tank on a daily basis, and I haven't found any great options for interesting additions that don't need light and will hang out under that mass of coral, so here we are.

 

The plan was to save the rosette at the top of the column of montipora and place that lower down on the rock after removing the massive growth from the rock.  My 40-gallon tank was the recipient of the free 'live rock' that would be coming out from under the live parts at the top.  As usually happens when fragging montipora, things didn't quite go as smoothly with keeping the rosette intact, but I still managed to save some really nicely shaped lobes of the structure to rehome lower down.

 

Here are some work-in-progress shots with the dust from the reno work very much messing with the color of the photos:

 

Of course, I managed to knock over the pavona on the other rock and knock off the pocillopora next to the montis.  But, with some super glue I was able to put them back.  Wouldn't be a reno project if something wasn't broken during the process. 🙂 

 

After a water change, to help with the dust, and some reapplication of frags from the montis, this is the result (Note the added spongodes on the center rock where nothing photosynthetic would have thrived earlier this evening):

 

Next is to let the dust literally settle, add some more corals to help fill in the vacant patches, and then post some nicer 'after' shots.  All in all, a productive afternoon!

 

As a final takeaway from the day's work, one should shut off ALL the pumps when putting blobs of super glue in the tank...  I managed to have a blob of super glue get loose, go through a powerhead, and lodge itself in a, thankfully, not so visible part of the rockwork.  Amazingly, none of the glue stayed on the pump, or killed anything of importance as it moved around the tank.  I got very lucky!

[empresto]

Now that the dust has settled, here's where we're at.

 

Now to figure out which frags from my 40 should go where...

[Poliwag]

What’s your settings for the Radion?

[empresto]

The Radion XR15 pro is set as the below. I basically followed the advice from the brs video on the subject. There's probably a little more nuance to the settings than shown, but I think it was the ab+ template with a little tweaking of the whites and adjusting the start and end times of the photo period to match better with my own schedule in that room, but keeping the photo period the same length as the template. Nothing too complicated.

 

[empresto]

Happy New Year!

Now that the reno has had some time to settle in, I think the outcome has been pretty nice.  The spongodes has been a nice addition to the front of the tank, and I added a chalice to the top of the right-hand rock.  The whole tank is so much brighter looking now that light can get to the lower parts of the front of the tank.

[debbeach13]

Looks like a different tank. I really like that last picture.

[empresto]

TANK MOVE!

This year has been nuts!  Expecting child number two any day now, and we moved towns as well.  Haven't had as much time for tanks in the midst of that and everything else going on, but this tank has done really well, and tearing down my 40B was a good decision to prioritize the 'nice' tank.

About a month ago was the move, and everything went really smoothly with that!  All I can say is it really helps to make a really good plan and then have a couple backup plans, and then follow all of that to the letter.  Thankfully I had a good two weeks to transition between houses.  Right after we closed, I moved my water making station to the new house, and made 30 gallons of top-off water and a 30 gallons of new warm salt water.  Moving the tank itself was an 8hr job.  First I drained most of the water into buckets.  Each of the main rocks just fit in a 5-gallon pale along with their coral, then I caught and bagged everything that wasn't attached to a rock and placed the bags in coolers.  I left an inch of water in the display with the sandbed, and left the refugium part full of water as well to preserve as much of the biological filtration and sand biodiversity as possible.  Both tanks had plastic garbage bags taped over the top to prevent splashes.  All equipment was disassembled and placed either in buckets (for wet) or in boxes (for dry).  Then the whole works stand and all was loaded into my Rav4 and driven the hour and a half to the new house.  I then reassembled all the plumbing and equipment, added the rocks back, refilled the tank from the fresh batch of salt water, and then released all the bagged lifeforms.  I was unable to find my royal gramma or my candy cane pistol shrimp when I bagged everything, but both of them made the move without issue.  Apparently, the royal gramma has a cave I don't know about and my best theory on the pistol shrimp is that it just dug into the sand bed for the move.

So far, no deaths, no swings, no disasters (knock on wood!).  Honestly, though it was a lot of work, and I didn't get done until 2AM that night, probably was the most uneventful change I've made with a fish tank in a long time.

The best part of the move is I finally get to have the tank set as a true peninsula!  3 sided viewing is fantastic!  Here's some pics.  I'll upload more once I have a chance to clean the salt creep from the top.

 

[empresto]

Pictures as promised!

[Elizabeth94]

What a lovely little tank! Happy corals.