My 75g tank's story..with pictures

[zenya]

Well, I figured I'll post a few images to tell a story of my 4 year old stony tank. I don't have pics of it when it was first set up, didn't have a good camera at first and then lost all the images when my PC crashed. Anyways, here's first pic of it when it finally grew out and started to look like mature reef,early 2004.


Later that year after watching corals constantly being at war for space I decided to change a few things and managed to do the right side of the tank, some corals were given away and some fraged severely.
September of 2004 look.


It took almost a year for things to grow out again and the problems I were having returned. Here's what it looked like in summer of this year...


So, this past September I decided to take it appert completely and redo everything. Gave away my large H.crispa, fragged the heck out of some colonies and some just gave away and came up with this look.


So, that's my story and I think I extended the life of this tank for quite sometime. The colors in the tank a bit on the brown side but corals are recovering from the typhoon that hit them and I think they'll look as good as ever in times to come.

[Mark]

Great pics and story Gene. It's refreshing to see such a tank. A lot of the pics I see these days are of these really sterile-looking sps tanks. Your's looks so natural and alive.

[NMOCEAN]

I think you have great colors, and the final result, well worth the time and the fragging.

-Jen

[zenya]

Thanks,Mark and Jen !

I probably should've mentioned[just to keep the story straight ] that this tank suffered tremendous loss in Sept. of 04 in terms of fish polpulation. All fish(9 of them) had died while I was on vacation,I'm still not sure what happened but leaning towards power outage. Not in terms of power being out but simply the tank sitter forgot to turn it back on after feeding it and cutting all the pumps off. He wouldn't tell me but I asked around the neighborhood and was told that the power was never out in the area. The interesting part is that the coral survived just fine except for the parts where they were exposed to air, resilient buggers.

[Mantis]

Looks good Gene,

I like that mille

[zenya]

Thanks Brad. How's yours doing? I hope it's growing as fast as it did for me, especially since you have much larger tank.

[gregr]

thanks Gene- that was a treat.

Your's looks so natural and alive

agreed! i love looking at beautiful acros but for me the joy is in diversity. you have so much going on i could spend hours looking at all the different creatures.
Greg

[zenya]

Thank you, Greg. I feel exactly the same way about your tank.
Unfortunately, fighting the red bugs took it's toll on my tank and I did loose some of it;s diversity, but I did replenish some of it with kits and what not. Hopefully, before long, it will repopulate itself.
I thought I killed my porecellain crab but I managed to catch a glimpse of it the other night, woo-hooo.

OK, since I started this thread, I'll add couple of closer images to show that some of the colors are coming back as far as color goes

Here's a coral that is not all that popular, at least I haven't seen them in people's tanks as much, Astreopora sp.

Seriotopora hystrix

Funky growth form on one of my stag's

And one of my favorites, heart shaped Favia sp.

And one of the oldest corals in my tank, Seriotopora caliendrum.

[Mantis]

Originally posted by zenya
Thanks Brad. How's yours doing? I hope it's growing as fast as it did for me, especially since you have much larger tank.

Mine's doing great, it's created a large encrusted spot already.

[louist]

Gene, your tanks is a testament to your skills as a aquarist! I enjoyed the story and the photos, very cool stuff!

I really love the natural look to your tank, that really is a slice of the ocean (more accurately the continantal shelf!)!

[derrikd]

glad to see that corals are being grown in captivity and not allways taken from the ocean.

[zenya]

Thank you for your kind words, Louis and Derrik.

I think I have all but one or two wild colonies in this tank and even that may be too many.