Jack's 10 year old 20g Tall

[Break]

Very impressive you kept your tank running through the years, that's some dedication!

 

Excited to see the setosa grow out - they always provide a fun surprise with their growth patterns

[jservedio]

13 hours ago, Break said:

Very impressive you kept your tank running through the years, that's some dedication!

Thanks, when it comes to reefing, I take the Rick Astley approach!

 

13 hours ago, Break said:

Excited to see the setosa grow out - they always provide a fun surprise with their growth patterns

Me too - with the big nems in the tank I never really had room for one even though they are one of my favorite corals. It's a small consolation to getting rid of the big anemones!

[Nano sapiens]

20 hours ago, jservedio said:

Thanks, when it comes to reefing, I take the Rick Astley approach!

 

Me too - with the big nems in the tank I never really had room for one even though they are one of my favorite corals. It's a small consolation to getting rid of the big anemones!

Congrats on the NTOTM! 

 

Speaking of Setosa, love them and the larger tank your planning will come in handy as they do spread out quite quickly when happy :)

[jservedio]

I ended up taking a bunch of photos while putting togethe my ToTM article, but couldn't use many of them. Here are some of the really good ones that didn't get used.

 

Latest pictures of my Right Island from the front and top:

 

 

 

A close up shot of my Mandarin Zoas and Yello Tips

 

 

My Setosa is settled in and starting to grow - halfway over the epoxy, lots of new polyps, fully extended, and a couple of new branch buds, and getting super colorful. Plus tons of little feather dusters:

 

 

The long polyp toadstool leather I don't think I've every taken a direct picture of, but after being tossed in the back of the tank and not growing for like 5 years, it's finally starting to grow again now that it has a spot and the polyps are starting to get a little longer. Still not close to what they should be, but getting better and bigger:

 

 

Side view of the tank across both islands:

 

 

And the lovely yellow tips colony, looking awesome as ever:

 

[jservedio]

Was cleaning off the glass today and caught something pretty cool. As per usual the smaller yellow tips is growing directly into other corals and got a close-in macro of the bigger axial polyp bumping into the skirt of a paly, with the paly retracting away:

 

 

[jservedio]

For whatever reason, my blasto island has been exploding with growth over the last month or two. Just a few months ago, I thought I'd have to be adding another blasto frag to fill in, now I'm considering adding more space for them!

 

 

 

 

And right below them is my acan tile that I was using as a grow-out, but it looks like I'm going to need to be adding a couple more tiles in short order.

 

[mitten_reef]

4 hours ago, jservedio said:

 

still amazed at how bright that center acan is....or is it even an acan at all?  looks a LOT like a croc island scoly.  either way, I want one!

[jservedio]

12 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

still amazed at how bright that center acan is....or is it even an acan at all?  looks a LOT like a croc island scoly.  either way, I want one!

It's 100% a lord - there are 2 polyps forming off the back. It sort of showed up out of nowhere - I got a 5 polyp frag from a local's aussie shipment he was going to aquaculture way back in the day and proceeded to kill it except for a small speck of flesh in my pico. He lost the mother shortly after I got my frag and went out of business - it didn't even have a name. I cut off the tiny bit of flesh left over and glued it to a small piece of tile and it sloooooowly grew over the years. This year I moved it up front and started feeding it and it blew up and colored up like nobody's business. I'm going to unmount it from the tile and put it on it's own for a grow out - I'd gladly send you a polyp or two in 6 months when I can frag it if you want to trade an acro frag for it. I'll have the 50g by then and will need to be filling it with more sticks.

[mitten_reef]

5 hours ago, jservedio said:

It's 100% a lord - there are 2 polyps forming off the back. It sort of showed up out of nowhere - I got a 5 polyp frag from a local's aussie shipment he was going to aquaculture way back in the day and proceeded to kill it except for a small speck of flesh in my pico. He lost the mother shortly after I got my frag and went out of business - it didn't even have a name. I cut off the tiny bit of flesh left over and glued it to a small piece of tile and it sloooooowly grew over the years. This year I moved it up front and started feeding it and it blew up and colored up like nobody's business. I'm going to unmount it from the tile and put it on it's own for a grow out - I'd gladly send you a polyp or two in 6 months when I can frag it if you want to trade an acro frag for it. I'll have the 50g by then and will need to be filling it with more sticks.

oooh yes, please.  I'll be happy to send you more than one acro frag for a frag of that guy 😄. 

[jservedio]

Tried taking a few more top-down shots today. Some came out pretty good, others...not so much. The one thing I got as a takeaway from my top-down shots that I just don't see when looking from the front is that I really, really need to take care of my algae and bring my phosphates down a touch. From the front you don't really see a lot of rock, so you don't see much algae, but it's pretty clear that every square inch of rock that gets light and isn't covered with a coral is entirely covered in algae. So...much....algae... The corals are able to grow right over it, but I'm sure it'd be easier for them without all that algae...

 

From the front, my red monti cap looks small and is totally dwarfed by my really big purple cap, but it's actually a pretty nice size!

 

 

 

 

I've never been able to capture this section of my tank before since you can't see it from the front and doing a top-down blocks all the light, I never bothered. All I needed to do was nudge the light over a couple inches and was able to get a not-too-terrible picture.

 

 

 

 

Top down of my LPS on the left side, almost as filled in as the right island. Almost, but not quite!

 

 

 

 

My BC Boomberry is pretty well colored up and decided it was going to start growing out base on a little bit of monti-cap that has been holding on for close to 2 years after being moved. A little blurry, but I don't have a porthole yet.

 

[jservedio]

Man, this favia is getting big. It was a sleeping giant growing slowly for like 4 years not bothering anything, an acan lord pissed it off, it nuked it, and it's been angry and growing incredibly fast over the last 6-8 months destroying everything within 2-3" in any direction. I really can't wait to get more room and be able to clear out everything within 6-8" of this thing and load it up with new colorful favias that won't kill or maim each other. It looks like it just contours the rock, but in reality it's a big half sphere that goes way around the side and is much bigger than it looks from straight on.

 

Here it is from a slight angle in the front:

 

 

 

 

And this is the entire back side you can't see from the front:

 

 

[jservedio]

Looks like even my acros are battling each other now. The Pinkie the Bear killed off about 1/2" of my Yellow Tips over a 2" front and is now halfway encrusted over the dead skeleton and the Red Robin is starting to do the same thing on the other side. This is what happens in a nano when you only leave 3" between acro frags.

 

[jservedio]

With the big RBTAs out of the tank, it is much easier to take good pictures of my clowns! Here's to hoping my fat ass lady clown doesn't damage that bowerbanki... She really is a behemoth of a clownfish.

 

 

 

 

 

[jservedio]

Also trimmed up a bunch of the stuff starting to overgrow the tank like my purple cap, confusa, and yellow tips and traded away some frags for new zoa/palys! Not great pictures since my glass is super dirty, but got some JF Isane Rainbows and Utter Chaos.

 

 

 

[jservedio]

It's getting even more tight for space on the right island

 

[jservedio]

Well...I thought my new Setosa would have a while to start growing out before the cap started running into it since there was a good 2" between them, but looks like I had far less time than I realized... and the zoas are moving in.

 

At least it is growing well for two short months of a fresh cut.

 

And Two Months Ago:

[jservedio]

I haven't been taking many pictures of the tank lately because the glass is super dirty, but this was too cool to not clean a tiny area of the glass and take a picture. My mandarin zoas that live up against an acro have been getting shaded by some bigger palys and have been slowly pushing the acro back and using it's skeleton as fresh live rock and I guess it's been a while since I took a look because they now have a bit more than an inch and a half of acro grown over. In less than a year from now I suspect the only place they are going to exist is on the acro skeleton!

 

[jservedio]

I may not be able to take good photos through my nasty glass, but I can still take them top down - my SPS island is really filling in. Not super fast growth, but progress continues:

 

[jservedio]

Well, both good news and bad news...

 

The bad news is my Melanurus Wrasse has finally passed away after a long, long 10 years of life... 😢

 

The good news is that I just spent away my sadness at this event by getting an IM 50-EXT Lagoon, a Trigger Triton 26 v2 sump, and a new Sicce return pump! 

 

Should just be a few weeks away now.

 

[jservedio]

So, after the wrasse died, I simply couldn't get to him without breaking down the tank and a powerhead wouldn't blow him free while he was mostly buried and under a rock, so I just left him. I was hoping maybe the clowns, a crab, or something would knock him loose enough to grab with the foreceps or blast him out with a powerhead before he started decomposing had the prime ready just in case.

 

Well, he never did get out from under that rock and my biological filtration has been amazing. It's been more than 2 weeks and I see nothing left of the wrasse. My crabs and nassarius snail certainly aren't hungry, no ammonia spike, and didn't so much as get an algae bloom - I actually have less cyano on the sand than I normally do!

 

Apparently, even in a well established nano tank you can have a large fish die and be forgotten without problems. Hopefully I'll be able to find his bones when I break down the tank and can give them a proper burial at sea in the Charybdis of porcelain.

[jservedio]

Since the tank is going to be broken down in a week or so, I haven't done any water changes or maintenance, but apparently the corals are cool with that because I've got better PE than usual on the SPS! Can't get great pictures because the glass is crazy dirty, but cleaned off a little area to see how the baby heads on the bowerbanki were doing so snapped this.

 

[jservedio]

Well, my tank has officially made it to 10 years! Unfortunately, because of the big WWC Yellow Tips and my Big Caps, I can no longer clean half of my front panel and my side panels have been off-limits for almost a year now. This will probably be the last, super dirty pictures I take of the tank before it comes down the first week of November to have our new floors installed and I won't be setting it back up - everything will be transferred directly over to the new 50g!

 

The one spot that was always hard to get grown in is now finally all filled up, just in time to come down!

 

 

My big purple cap is officially out of control, this is after cutting off 5 different 3-4" plates and handing them out like hotcakes. The red cap is now firmly adhered to the side panel as well. The yellow tips bottom base receded a bit up to the monti cap now that it's in full darkness and being attacked by the zoas - hopefully that means my zoas will have a few extra inches of branch to grow on now. The merulina and echinata went at it when the clowns pushed them together and the echinata won that one - but it only killed back an inch or two.

 

 

And, here is an FTS in it's dirty, dirty glory - I haven't attempted to clean the glass in a month and I haven't done a water change in 2 months. Doubt I'll be doing any cleaning or water changes before it comes down. It still feels so empty without the big nems - but at least I'll have some in the new tank!

[jservedio]

Since I can't take pictures through the glass anymore and can't clean it, top down it is! I'm really, really starting to struggle to keep things from killing each other and keeping things from getting entirely shaded out. The big purple monti cap is getting absolutely out of control and the monti caps are now well over a foot across together. I'll see if I can break out the step-ladder to get a picture next time!

 

I hadn't noticed it until now, but my Bubblegum Digi actually has a couple of zoa polyps growing right in the center of a newer plate

 

 

Got a nice top down of the LPS and while I've lost a little bit of color from not doing any water changes or paying any attention, they continue to grow and look fantatic:

 

 

The three acros I have on the right side of the left island are now all officially growing together. It seems like the Pinky the Bear and Boomberry are at a standstill and the Pinky is just killing back and growing right over the Yellow Tips - it's pretty cool:

 

[ReefGoat]

You got the magic going for sure great job. This tank is beautiful. Your 50 gallon is going to be awesome.

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, ReefGoat said:

You got the magic going for sure great job. This tank is beautiful. Your 50 gallon is going to be awesome.

Thank you! I'm not excited to be breaking it down in a couple weeks, but it'll all be worth it. Hopefully by next Christmas, I'll have a good looking tank again!