New Macro Shots

Dendro

Mystery Wrasse & Montipora Setosa

Back Up and Running

After being out of the hobby for a few months due to a algae takeover I am back and starting over. I now have live sand and a refugium along with a new rockscape. Here is a full tank picture from today taken with my new Nikon D5100.

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.

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

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

6 Month Update

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

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.

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.

July FTS

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