~450G Display (~1000G system) documentary starting

[NuclearReefs]

Nice Hycianthis ,, I love those !

Looking good keith!

[peterlin98]

Hey Keith,
You are a bad influence. You reminded me how much I missed my red sea regal angel and I ordered one this week. So far so good.. It's eating and swimming around. No qt for me. I lost fish in qt before so.. but it looked nice/healthy from day one. We'll know 2-3 months from now.
Just want to drop in and see how your fishie is doing and great looking thank you have there.. Lots of room for sps to grow out.
Peter

[mflamb]

Keith,
Where did you order the Tonga coral from? They look great.
Mike

[kwl1763]

Hi Peter, Good to hear from you. The Regal is doing great. He's really eating anything right out of the water column. He's also not scared of people at all anymore! Glad to here yours is eating well. That's about 3/4 of the battle! Where did you order him from.

All the corals came frome livestockusa.org, You have to order full boxes but it's nice stuff and the price is right. The customer service is outstanding also. Tell them I sent you.

Nothing really new to report. The regal will go into the tank next weekend. Oh I also just got some true percs and a real nice RBTA a week ago. They are also doing great. Of course they won't even look at the anemone yet. I know it's hit or miss if they host or not.

A couple more pics to fill the post out.









I still don't have the calcium reactor exactly right. IIt's close but not perfect. I'll mess with it more this week. I also was running low on the test kits so I decided to try out the Elos tets kits. They should be here early next week and I'll post my opinion on them!

[sivert55]

updates?

[NuclearReefs]

Yeah.. I want Polyps for Xmas! SPS Polyps !

[kwl1763]

No major updates. I'm like 600 miles form my tank the next 2 weeks so that's a little stressful!

Coralline is going nuts. The starboard surface is at least 50% covered. The corals are doing great. Encrusting like crazy. I had a slight issue with them lightining way up due to lack of nutrients (best guess) but I started feeding golden pearls and cyclopeez and oyster eggs on a rotating basis nightly and that seems to have helped. They always looked super healthy and were growing but the color was just getting extremely light.

The Regal Angel is in great shape. He is in the reef and eating literally anything out of the water column. All the fish look fat and happy. Next I'll go with some wrasses then the tangs and trigger.

If I'm lucky I'll return from Dallas with some nice frags from my buddies here.

Nathan your alive! Computer Issues taken care of???

[kwl1763]

OK update. The tank looks great after 2 weeks alone with only every other day feeding from someone who has no clue about aquariums so that's a huge success.

Nothing major to report. The calcium reactor is rocking and rolling. Levels are real stable at 8 dkH and 425 calcium. My Mg is a little low at about 1100 so I'll get that worked on as soon as I order something else from marine depot or premium. I also going to get some Mg medium to include in the reactor. I used to use doloite in there (about 15% of the media) but it's not easy to find anymore so I'll probably breakdown and order some of the ZeoMag or simular. Corraline is really kicking now and is at least 75% covering the starboard. I still keep scraping the back glass as I think it looks much cleaner and better that way.

Skimmer is kicking butt. I still haven't hooked up the chiller but no need this time of year!

2 things on my project list but no major hurry.

1) RDSB. I'm going to either put a 20G tub full of sand in the top sump or get a trashcan on wheels, fill it 3/4 with sand and then drill a bulkhead and feed it with a maxijet and overflow through the bulkhead back to the lower sump.

2) A clam "holder". I want to make an acrylic container for clams that will fit in a sump. Since I have 2 fish that will potentially nip them (copperband almost certainly will!) I want to make something to display them. I want to make it where I can make it a closed loop with a couple ball valve turns so I can feed the clams but keep some flow. I may make it two sections, One for clams and one as a prop/frag section. I have quite a bit of acrylic laying around so I'll have to think about it.

Other then that onto the eye candy.

Good ole full tank shot.



Left Side



Center



Right



Here is a pretty cool different kind of reflection shot. This is fro the left side behind the tank looking through the side towards the front.



One through the right side lengthwise.

[kwl1763]

Fish Update:

All is well. Everyone is eating great and getting along. Every once in a while the copperband will act like he doesn't like the regal and he'll flare and turn sideways but the regal just looks at him like he's crazy!

So so far there is:

Magnificent foxface
Regal Angel
Copperband Butterfly
2 True Percs
2 Neon Gobies

Some pics:

[kwl1763]

Corals.

I'll start with some of the small colonies and then I'll move onto the frags.

[kwl1763]

And I have a whopping 2 non SPS in the tank.

A suncoral (both orange and black) which is closed here and in the overflow (hence the super dirtyness)!



And a nice frogspawn

[kwl1763]

Well I visited several reef buddies over the holidays and got a few frags (ok well actually 20 something) They all survived the trip back (14 hours drive time plus an overnight detour to Oklahoma) and are doing great. Here is a sample:

















That's it. As always any suggestions/questions are encouraged!!

[jnarowe]

corals look great and that foxface is totally awesome. what a great loooking fish!

[mflamb]

Great looking tank. The pics are awesome!!!

[melev]

Sweet update, Keith. Your macro shots are getting much better.

You have several nice pieces in there.

[SERVO]

[kwl1763]

Honestly not a lot to report. No new fish (getting some this week) Traded for a couple frags but essential no infrastructure work! I did get a new camera so expect a major pick update soon! Today however I did treat for red bugs (even though I treat everything in qt something slipped through)

OK here we go!

First a few things.

My tank is 450 G and I have another almost 200 in sumps. As Eric B. did more research on them (being direct brooders and not hanging out ,always erratically swimming until they find an acro) I decide to take the sumps offline and not treat the sump water. This allowed 2 things: 1) Without the sumps the water volume minus rock, etc in the tank was somewhere around 1 full tablet dose of 380G! 2) It allowed me to drain the sumps, clean them out good and do an almost 200G water change right after the treatment by just starting the return pump up.

Note that I have tons of in tank circulation so losing the relatively small amount was no big deal but it may be for others.

I have 6 cleaner shrimp in there and tons of acro crabs. I fully expected to lose them all but I only lost 2 cleaners. The acro crabs went pretty quick though. It looked like a graveyard on the bottom If your going to treat just be prepared to lose all your crustations you don't get out. You may not but don't get your hopes up!

Ok on the pics I took roughly one per hour and some are good and some are bad! I spent literally 30 seconds each processing them and my goal was to get the bugs to stand out. Not properly represent the coral or have awesome pics, etc so if some are different colors don't worry about it I was trying to show thw bugs the most obvious way.

First the essenials. A container to mix, The Interceptor tab, a spoon to crush it and a piece of paper to crush it on. Most people are probably a little more proper with a morter, etc but a spoon works!



I'm going to use 2 frags as we go in case the leave one quicker. Here is the first is the one posted above and here is another shot pre treatment.





After 1 hour:








Now the first frag has probably the most dense infestation I've ever seen! Also I treated my last tank twice and never saw this but compare the polyp extension of the first frag throughout these. Some people say that once the bugs start dying the really burrough in and irritate the coral. I have to say with this experience that seems very possible to me as the polyps totally withdrew within an hour.

Second hour:





Not to much change here. I saw less movement but numbers still high. Acro crabs starting kicking it.

[kwl1763]

Hour 3:






Significantly less bugs. The ones there appear dead. Coral polyps still totally retracted.

Hour 4:





I count 5 bugs total in pics, no movement, polyps back out!!!

Hour 5:





No bugs!!!

Nothing changed after that. After 8 hours I turned the sumps back on (diluting by basically 50%) and starting running 3 phosban reactors full of carbon.

Everything looks great today. I still see lots of pods but no bugs!

I'm only going to treat once since we know they are direct brooders.

And I said earlier this was the first time in this tank but my third total and I would encourage anyone who has them to treat. It's not bad, your tank isn't oing to crash. Your pods won't disappear (granted there is surely some dieoff) but the tank recovers nicely and your acros will love you for it!

[golfschosen1]

Keith, what kind of camera did you end up getting?

Steve

[jnarowe]

Good job Keith!!

[kwl1763]

Steve I got Canon XTi. I really like it. This weekend I plan to spend several hours with it and the tank so I definitely have an update after that. It's been two months since a real update which is just unacceptable!

I actually plan to hook the chiller up weekend after next also. I've had it sitting for almost a year!

[kwl1763]

So I'm really beginning to fall in love with the lens. Today I decide to shoot exclusively with it.

The camera is a Canon 400 (Rebel XTi) and this lens is the 100mm/f2.8 Macro.

First thing I did was setup about 10 feet from the tank and wanted to try the photomerge command. At this distance it took 4 shots to get my 10 ft long tank but photoshop did a great job stiching them together.



The I took a few "normal" macros:










Next we headed to the botanical gardens where I was very hesitant to take a no zoom no IS lens. All I can say is wow. I took over 100 pics and at least 75% were great. Not good but great. Here is just a couple.








Anybody contemplating a macro I would highly recommend. As always critique and comments of the pics welcome!

I'll update later in the week with more tank info.

[golfschosen1]

Keith congrats on the camera I think you made a great choice on camera and lens I like the pics a lot

Steve

[melev]

There is nothing to critique. You did good!

I like your tank, it looks like it is doing very well. What color are those bulbs again?

[pimp2daizzo]

where did u get your sumps from?