My New 75 Gallon Reef Journal

[garagebrian]

frag swap pics continued
My QT tank in overdrive

Does anyone know what kind of mushroom this is in this pic? Seller said it was a tonga, but I'm not sure.

Some of my favorites, the blue mushroom and some green centered zoas.

Another favorite - orange center with orange skirt - gorgeous, but only 2 polyps on this rock, but the other orange skirts are nice too

I have to say one of my favorite additions right now is the mag float....I can't believe how easy it is to clean the glass now and my arm doesn't get wet and I don't have to pull out the towel! VERY VERY cool

B.

 

[Bojangles]

Wow what a haul!!!

Awesome pics cant wait to see what they all look like in the tank!

Love my mag float, bought it for $9 and its worth twice its weight in ..um.. sea salt.

 

[Anonymous]

Are you still waiting for rock from florida, or did you get that? I am interested in acquiring a Neogonodactylus wennerae mantis shrimp. Live rock from the gulf (floridaliverock and tbs) usually abounds with juvenile wennerae species. I would pay for shipping and give you a nice tip as well. Unfortunately I do not have anything to swap you for it at this time.

PM or reply here, thank you very much
-B

 

[garagebrian]

Are you still waiting for rock from florida, or did you get that? I am interested in acquiring a Neogonodactylus wennerae mantis shrimp. Live rock from the gulf (floridaliverock and tbs) usually abounds with juvenile wennerae species. I would pay for shipping and give you a nice tip as well. Unfortunately I do not have anything to swap you for it at this time.

PM or reply here, thank you very much
-B

The rock pictured above is my final florida rock (TBS), I know I have at least one mantis, might have as many as 3. I have to capture them first, but they should start being captured soon. I have one local person waiting for one, but you will be 2nd on the list.

B.

 

[garagebrian]

Hey all,

I thought I would post another update while I'm rapidly discovering things Tested my water this morning and did a 10% water change. Alk is after change, everything else before:

Ammonia: 0.2ppm
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: <10, probably close to zero
pH: 7.8-8.0
Alk: 8.6
Salinity: 1.026

My increased flow by adding the SEIO 820 in the main tank sure has increased my detritus settling out in my sump, a lot is accumulating in my cheato but that should stop once I install my bubble tower and the flow changes.

I still haven't seen the mantis/pistol and this morning I moved rocks around and I heard clicking in three separate rocks.

Here are some pics:

A nice cave:

"Star coral" - can anyone narrow down the ID on this? After that flurry of posts yesterday I don't really see one that matches.

Cup Coral and sponges:

More to come in a second...

B.

 

[garagebrian]

Uknown hitchhiker:

I noticed it can close its two valves when disturbed.

Yellow sponge(my wife's new favorite):

I turned one rock around and look what I found!:

Here are my other christmas tree worms, including a small baby one, can you see it?

Brian

 

[Anonymous]

I have one local person waiting for one, but you will be 2nd on the list.

Excellent thank you very much.

Also, sweet pix. *drool drool*

 

[garagebrian]

Hey all,

Melev on reefcentral gave me an idea for a bubble tower to reduce the noise and flow problems I'm having in my new sump. Here are some pictures of the process:

I followed Marc's advice and put in a bubble tower for the drain into my sump. A bubble tower is simply a piece of 3" diameter PVC with some holes at the bottom and filled about 1/3 of the way with live rock rubble.

Here are some pics:

The sump before install, you can see the flow is going immediately to the left with very large bubbles that reach my bubble trap within a couple of seconds, this was causing a lot of my water to miss the skimmer pump.

I am cycling my tank right now and this rapid left flow was causing a ton of the decaying detritus to gather in my cheato. I took a bucket with 3 inches of water, dumped my cheato in and washed the detritus out. This was about 3 days of detritus.

Before:

After:

I then made the bubble tower. The bottom isn't perfectly flat which causes some bubbles to escape, I might try to flatten it out some later.

It's hard to tell in this picture, but the bubbles have been greatly reduced and most of them are a lot smaller. The best thing is that the flow is redirected to go right past my skimmer pump intake and I have much more laminar flow in the sump

Here is the inside of the bubble tower doing its job.

Comments? Questions?

Brian

 

[garagebrian]

I got some closeups last night, thought I would share:

My healthiest brain seems fully recovered:

Under 10K plus actinics:

Under actinics only:

Also, i got a picture of another unknown coral, it is losing the battle against one of my other brains:

ID on this guy?

It almost looks like a boulder star coral or great star coral here:

http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/fish/southflorida/coral/profiles.html#common

Brian

 

[garagebrian]

Hey all,

Since I always have to tinker with my tank, I decided it was time to modify one of my canopy fans. The left side fan was aimed straight across the tank and pulled air in from outside the canopy. however, the canopy was only 1/4" away from the wall and the small space caused the fan to be loud and airflow was reduced. Here is a pic:

I made a new fan mount for the fan to move it away from the canopy and aim it downward. This greatly reduced the air coming from outside the canopy, but increased the air flow and surface agitation(and hopefully evaporative cooling power) and reduced the noise from the fan.

Fan mounted in the canopy.

We'll see if this increases my evaporation and cooling power over the next couple of weeks. The noise reduction was great and I'm considering doing the same for my right side fan now.

B.

 

[garagebrian]

Hey all,

I found some pretty cool nudibranch hitchhikers in my new TBS liverock.

I'll try to attach some pictures in order.

Brian

 

[garagebrian]

Here are the two nudibranches snuggling...or are they mating? HUM....only time will tell.

B.

 

[garagebrian]

A lot of things going on in my reef.

First the nudibranches are mating and laying eggs. I have 4 egg masses so far:

Here they are mating:

Here is a poor picture of the egg mass:

I have also finally rearranged my live rock, I'm going to make a couple pieces of homemade rock to raise these pieces up a little, but this is close to the final configuration, lots of caves For those wanting a full tank pic, I finally have one!

8/14/2005 full tank:

Left side(temporary mushroom prop cup hiding large cave):

Center:

Right:

Thoughts on my rock structure?

B.


B.

 

[garagebrian]

First off, sorry for all the broken links, I'm rearranging my pictures on photobucket. I'll try to just attach from now on.

Here are a couple of new pics for your viewing pleasure.

Tank continues to do well and I ran carbon for one week and it really cleared up my water, removing a lot of the yellow tinge and my corals are much happier now.

Brian

 

[garagebrian]

Some more zoas

 

[garagebrian]

I have been working on raising my Alk with baking soda the last 2-3 months from readings around 5-7 dKH to 9-12 dKH. Last reading was 10.5 and since I've been doing this my zoas growth has been exploding! I'm been keeping a detailed log of the growth and will try to put pictures up soon. I always count the number of polyps on any frags I get and here are a couple of examples of growth:

frag1:
07/26/2005: 8 large, 2 nubs
09/14/2005: 18 large, 4 nubs

frag2:
07/26/2005: 3 large
09/14/2005: 6 large, 2 nubs

frag3:
07/26/2005: 4 large
09/14/2005: 7 large, 3 nubs

frag4:
07/26/2005: 100+ polyps
09/14/2005: 200+ polyps and I've fragged off 50 polyps.

Here is my latest full tank and half tank shots. I'm still waiting for two large agrocrete rocks to cure so I can rearrange my rockwork.

I'm very sad to report that my damaged LPS brain from my TBS rock did not recover My other two brains are very happy and one is growing like crazy. RIP little buddy.

Brian

 

[ratherbediving]

Brian--

Everything is looking really good! Nice pictures

 

[garagebrian]

Brief Update:

Things have been busy at school, minimizing tank time I was not able to successfully raise the nudibranchs and I have sent them to a dedicated nudibranch breeder to see if she can raise them.

I'm still looking for cirolanids, but haven't seen any in a couple of weeks. Hopefully I can finally get some fish in the tank in the next couple of months.

This will allow me more time to get my tank organized. I've made my last batch of homemade rock and I will be adding two large pieces in a few weeks to FINALLY have my rockwork done. I'll post pictures of the process soon.

Only recent additions to the tank are two coral frags and two fighting conches that are really cleaning up my sandbed. The two frags are my first attempt at SPS. I know the birdsnest is one of the more difficult corals to keep, buy my wife begged me for it and she usually doesn't care about corals. I got a small captive raised frag and a frag of a monti cap.

Brian

 

[garagebrian]

Almost forgot. One of my goals in my tank is to have lots of things breeding in the tank. Not only to have new babies to watch grow, but to have stuff to trade. Anything that doesn't survive is just food for my tank's filter feeders.

I got 4 trochus snails from another reefer who has them breed all the time. They have already laid 3 egg masses, no visible babies yet, but the other reefer says it takes a couple of months for them to be visible.

Brian

 

[Anonymous]

Looks good!

IMO the birdsnest is an excellent starter SPS coral. It was one of my first SPS (monti cap too) and it has always grown like a weed for me.