Video of Stan's tanks

I went back to Stan's the other day and brought my new camcorder to take a video.

New video

Here is a video I took today with my new HD camcorder!




I also posted the video on Vimeo.

New Frags

I picked up 13 new frags last night. Some of the names that I remember are the Tubs Mystic Blue, Green with Pink Tip Florida, Undata, Apple Berry, Seasons Greetings, Mike Paletta Blue Acro, Pink Hyacinthus with Ice Blue tips, some staghorns and four varieties of Granulosa and Loripes.

Stan's 180 & 120

Tonight I went over to Stan's (SMCOOLER) to trade some corals and check out his new aquascape in his 180 gallon. He has all of his tanks connected to a Bubble King 300 External protein skimmer. He runs 400 watt Reeflux 10K bulbs on his display tank with no supplementation. He uses both Vortech MP 40's and Tunze Streams. He runs a ZEOvit system and uses 6 liters of the ZEOlith rocks (his colors are amazing). He runs a chiller and calcium reactor as well as a kalkwasser reactor and doses two-part.

He has the best frag tank, he has two 48"x24"x12" frag tanks. One is lit by a 400w Ushio 20K and the other is lit by a 400w Reeflux 10K and a 250w Radium 20K.

This is his 180 gallon reef ready tank

This is his 120 gallon tank

Wendy's 180

Over Thanksgiving break I visited Wendy's (JerseyWendy) beautiful 180 gallon reef tank that was lit by eight 80 watt T5's. Here are some stats and pictures.
180 gallon reef ready tank
Eight bulb 60" 80 watt IceCap T5 Retrofit
Bulb Combo from front to back:
ATI Blue Plus
Giesemann Pure Actinic 03
ATI Aquablue Special
GE 6,500
ATI Blue Plus
ATI Aquablue Special
ATI Blue Plus
ATI Blue Plus
She uses two-part for calcium and alkalinity and doses magnesium as well as amino acids
Octopus Extreme 250 protein skimmer
Two Vortech MP40 powerhead
One Hydor Koralia 4 powerhead
Carbon and phosphate media are run in a TLF reactor

FTS & Sump Shot

FTS shot from yesterday. It's so cool to look outside and see snow and have a tropical reef inside my house.

Top Down Update

Some new top down shots, the tank is looking good. 

A Sad Day

While I was home over Thanksgiving break I added four cups of salt directly to the sump because the refractometer wasn't calibrated. The salinity in the tank was at 1.022 but all the corals looked great. I raised the salinity to 1.027 over the course of four hours. After I returned to school I received a call from my Dad that the Skittles Granulosa was losing tissue. This was the second time this happened to the coral. The Granulosa was the only coral affected by the salt increase and ended up completely dying. I never realized how big the coral was until I saw how many frags were made out of it. Here are some pics of the frags that were made to save the coral.

Left side

Right side

How many watts?

I did some testing yesterday with my new kill a watt meter.

Here are the results,

8 Blue LED’s – 3 watts
Koralia 4 (left side) – 16 watts
Koralia 4 (right side) – 16 watts
Koralia Nano – 6 watts
Rena Cal 300w Heater – 296 watts
Danner Mag Drive 12 (1,200 GPH) – 75 watts
Vertex IN-180 Skimmer – 32 watts
Lumatek 250w electronic ballast (left side) – 282 watts
Lumatek 250w electronic ballast (right side) - 278 watts
TEK II T5 retrofit (2x54w) – 126 watts
Refugium bulb – 19 watts
Cabinet light – 15 watts

Monthly usage = 282.52 KWH @ $0.22 per KWH = $62.15

New Shots

ORA Ice Tortuosa

Some information on the new ORA release:
The ORA™ Ice Tort has the typical Tortuosa branching growth form with a deep sea green base and glowing baby blue branch tips. This coral may look similar to the standard Tortuosa that we sell, but rest assured it is not the same thing. In addition to a different color pattern, this slow growing variety has thicker and considerably longer branches than its more common counterpart. The contrast of the dark base, blue polyps with green rims and almost white tips is stunning. Interestingly, all of the Ice Torts in the ORA greenhouse spawned 2 weeks ago.

Stock photo from ORA

Here are a few shots of the frags from Live Aquaria's Diver's Den