Ricky's Reef Corals

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

120 Gallon Video Update

Tuesday, December 28, 2010

Stan's one year update

I stopped by Stan's house tonight to see what his tank looks like a year later, here is a video for everyone's viewing pleasure. He has switched his metal halides bulbs to 400 watt Radium 20K on IceCap ballasts. He is supplementing with Super Actinic VHO's on the 180 gallon. One of his frag tanks is lit by eight T5's and the other is powered by the 120 watt Evolution 20K LED.