Sunday, October 16, 2011

PAR Readings

I broke out the PAR meter today to take some readings, here are my results with two 8 month old 250 watt Phoenix 14K metal halides and two 8 month old ATI Blue Plus 54 watt T5's.

Tuesday, October 11, 2011

6 Month Photo Update Part II

Yellow Tang & Mystery Wrasse
Pink & Red Acan
Male Melanurus Wrasse
Pink Millepora
ORA Hawkins Echinata
Right Side
Male Filamented Flasher Wrasse
Tyree Purple Monster


Monday, October 10, 2011

6 Month Photo Update

Banana Caroliniana
Green & Red Acan

Full Tank Shot

Male McCosker's Flasher Wrasse

ORA Pearlberry

Tyree Pink Lemonade

Reefermadness Rainbow Nasuta

Rocket Pop Hyacinthus

ATL Shades of Fall

Purple Turaki

Sunday, October 9, 2011

6 Month Update

My tank has been up for 6 months, here is an updated video, still not much to see yet.

Thursday, September 8, 2011

Blue Zoo Aquatics

I received my first order from Blue Zoo Aquatics and I must say I am very impressed. I have ordered from many online fish stores and Blue Zoo is one of the top online livestock stores available. All the fish and inverts I ordered were very colorful as I requested. The two flasher wrasses I ordered had their elongated dorsal fins intact and were flashing their vibrant colors. There were also no DOA's as I have encountered this with other online retailers. I also like the acclimation kit that is included with every order. I will definitely be purchasing from Blue Zoo Aquatics again!

On a side note, the dinoflagellates have disappeared after keeping the tank completely dark for three days and dosing hydrogen peroxide.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Dinoflagellates

I have recently been battling dinoflagellates in my 120. I am running 500mL of Two Little Fishes NPX Biopellets but I am not dosing a bacteria product. I reduced my photo-period to 5 hours for the metal halides and 7 hours for the T5's. My skimmer has overflowed three times in the past two weeks which dumped nutrients back into the display. I am currently testing the new Vertex Generation 3 skimmer pump on my skimmer instead of the Bubble Blaster 3000, so far the skimmate production is much more stable and is almost twice as much! Surprising for a $70 Vertex pump vs. a $205 Bubble Blaster pump. I covered the tank and turned the lights off for three days and once the lights came back on any algae and dinoflagellates on the rocks were gone! Now, four days later they are slowly coming back. I am now topping my tank off with kalkwasser to bump the pH up and I am giving H2O2 a try. I am going to dose 0.5mL of hydrogen peroxide per 10 gallons of tank water the first two days then bump up the dose to 1mL per 10 gallons. I am hoping this will knock out the dino's within a week. Just to make sure my top off water wasn't adding nutrients to my tank I decided to test it. My tap water has a TDS of 238ppm while my RO water is coming out at 2ppm and my DI is 0ppm. I tested the tank water and the PO4 is 0.05ppm (Hanna checker) but I there is a thread  on Reef2Reef about how even the Hanna checker values are flawed. My fresh RO water tested at 0.04ppm! I would have thought that the RO/DI unit would take out phosphates but I guess not.

Sunday, July 24, 2011

July FTS

Friday, July 8, 2011

New Top Down Shots

Here are a few shots of my favorite corals that are beginning to color up.
Blue Gomezi
 Reefermadness Rainbow Nasuta
Purple Turaki
ORA Red Planet
Rommel’s Ultimate Stag
  Blue Hoeksemai

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

New FTS

Tuesday, June 21, 2011

Finally . . . Corals!

Here is an FTS and video of my 120 now with corals

 

Sunday, June 12, 2011

Quick Video Update

Not much has changed since the last video other than adding some more fish and inverts. Corals will be added later next week, stay tuned.

Thursday, May 12, 2011

Eye candy

Here some eye candy from the frag tank :)

Sunday, April 24, 2011

Clownfish Breeding Project

A friend who was breaking down his clownfish breeding system dropped off seven small Oscellaris clownfish and one large female Tomato clownfish yesterday. I'm not sure if I want to breed the Tomato or not but I will try to breed the Oscellaris. The Tomato is huge and was the female used to breed his Tomato clowns. Here are a few pictures.



Saturday, March 26, 2011

The tank is cycled

The tank cycled in six days and yesterday I added my ten Green Chromis to make sure the tank is cycled before I return the larger fish. The rockscape is not as minimalistic as I would've liked  but it will allow me to place more corals and there are a lot of openings within the structure to allow for good water flow. Here are a few pictures to show you what I've been up to.
 



Friday, March 18, 2011

New Build

Today marks the first day of the rebuild. Everything is up and running and the rocks are cycling in the tank. Within a month I can add fish and a few weeks after that I can hopefully add my first corals. Once things get going I will be starting a new build thread. I had a massive die off of fish when I moved everything over so I will be rethinking about what kinds of fish I want to restock my tank with.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

120 Tear Down Update

So far everything has been going smoothly. The tank is finally empty of coral and live rock. I still have to remove the sand and move to fish into the 40 gallon breeder where I will be quarantining my newly arrived fish. The live rock is currently being dried outside in the 30 degree weather before I re-cure it. The corals are doing well in their new frag tank and are beginning to color up. After removing all the live rock and seeing the mass amount of detritus release from the sand bed I am without a doubt going bare bottom in a few months. Removing the corals wasn't too time consuming, here are a few pictures.


Tuesday, February 15, 2011

Treatment Update

I finished my first treatment of Interceptor on Sunday in my frag tank and I started my first dip of ReVive today. Surprisingly after dipping 200+ corals only one had AEFW (Eggplant Nana). AEFW seem to love Tri-Color's. I still have a long way to go but this is a good start. I added one tablet of Interceptor and let the tank run for 24 hours before hooking the airline tubing to the skimmer and adding the carbon back. I did not perform a water change because Interceptor is ineffective after 24 hours. When I dipped the corals in ReVive the dips are at the recommended strength and are dipped for five minutes. The Turaki, Lokani, Echinata, and Caroliniana are dipped at half the recommended dosage for three minutes because their tissue is very sensitive.

Saturday, January 29, 2011

And the tear down begins . . .

I started moving corals from the 120 into my frag tank. I moved all of the LPS corals and some of the SPS corals. I plan to have all the SPS corals moved over within the next two weeks. My buddy Jim came over to build me a top down viewing box, I decided to test it out. Here are the results.

It is also a great viewing box for dipping new frags.

Saturday, January 8, 2011

Jim's 120

Here is my buddy Jim's tank. He has a reef ready 120 gallon AGA aquarium, Super Reef Octopus XP-2000, Two Vortech MP-40's, eight bulb ATI T5 fixture, and a frag tank hooked up to his system.

Monday, January 3, 2011