Audifeesh's updated nano - 30L, lots of pics

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audifeesh

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Aug 18, 2010
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Hello everyone :)

Just a quick (lol) update since I haven't posted about my tank in awhile. I've had some hardships and losses in my tank over the last few months - but things are slowly coming back together and I'm pretty happy with the result.

Quite sometime back I peaked with having several very nice corals, a few fish, a clam, and misc shrimp and snails (including a few sexies and peps) well... Then my clam died. I came home one day and his insides were outside and that was pretty much the start of a crash. I made the mistake of not getting things under control right away and slowly over the course of a month or so lost almost everything but my fish and one or two soft corals.

I had tried and tried and tried to regain control but it just wasn't happening so I bit the bullet and tore down the tank while I had some new rock and sand cycling in a spare 30L. When things were to my liking I put everything that was left (basically just my clown, scooter, and tribal blenny) into the new tank and it seemed all was well.

The new hardware setup consisted mainly of a bigger tank with no sump, more rock, a few powerheads I had laying around (maxijets and a koralia1), and my Coralife skimmer (the big HOB/in sump one for 120gal) which was also just sitting around unused. Same light (current PC's 2x96) and no mechanical filtration - just WC's and vaccing up the poos.

After the switch my scooter (who I had eating pellets) became very ill and died which was a big loss for me - then after that I had a couple accidents that resulted in the loss of my mandarin (who was to replace the scooter, eating mysis and working on pellets) in a powerhead and then later my precious mocha clownfish, Guinness in a powerhead as well. I almost tore my tank down and gave up at that point. That little fish meant more to me than I ever thought a fish could.

Alas I couldn't bring myself to get rid of my tribal, belle, or my firefish, Kees, (which I acquired some weeks before the loss of my clown, someone was going to flush her) so I bucked up and kept going.

Since then I've added a red scooter named Killian, a tuxedo urchin named Artois, and I've also thrown a conch and some various hermits (including my 2" Halloween hermit, he's a beast) and snails in the mix as well. I have TONNSSS of mini brittle stars, some of the tiny white ones, etc. lots of fun hitchhikers - Majanos being the only bad ones. Theyre decreasing in number though, ive nuked a few and will continue until none remain.

I recently plumbed in a very simple refugium, tossed in a few more lbs of rock, added some macro/a light and called it a day on that. I've been battling a GHA outbreak as well as some tiny sprigs of razor caulerpa that came in on one of the new rocks in addition to the normal cyano blooms and such. Before the fuge/macro/purigen I had eradicated about 60% of my algae and the tank is looking better daily.

Ive been beefing my corals back up as well, and have several heads of pink and green hammer (which looks kinda half hammer and half frogspawn) a green/white torch, a few small zoa colonies, a medium sized chunk of galaxea, some assorted mushrooms, a nice orange ricordea florida, my first little red/orange acan, a second larger red acan colony (8 heads i think? - scored it for $40) a 3 headed duncan frag, and a bunch of kenya trees which started as two big ones and are now numerous tiny ones all over my tank.

Onto the pics! Sorry for talking (typing?) your ears (eyes) off, just a lot of updates. Lol.
I also apologize for the quality of the pictures, they're all coming from my phone and span the last month or two.


Also - ignore the bits of cyano and turf algae in these pics. Some are older than others, the FTS's and the pics of the acans and duncan are the newest.



The big head on my torch :)















And my very dearly missed clown fish and too soon departed mandarin :'(

 

Ballyhoo

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Jun 27, 2010
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Beautiful tank!!
Im so sorry for your loss in Guinny and Kirin. You have given such a lovely home to Kees, Belle, Killian and Artois they are some lucky critters. When you decide to frag you know where to find me ;)
 

greech

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May 13, 2009
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Glad to hear you toughed it out and kept the system going. It doesn't take long for a tank to start snowballing on you! Its funny how losing a marine fish gets to you. maybe its just me but losing a FW fish never bothered me near as much. Not saying I didn't care but its a real bummer to lose something like a clown.

The tank looks great! Corals have good polyp extension and color and I like the fish selection a lot. You don;t see the tribal blenny all that often.

Look forward to hearing more updates!
 

audifeesh

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Aug 18, 2010
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Yeah no kidding on the snowball effect. Everytime I'd feel like things were under control something else would go wrong or I'd lose a coral or one time I had a plumbing issue, etc. I also wasn't skimming on my last tank and I suspect that didn't help much at all once my water was fouled.

I'm very very happy with how things are turning out though. I'm getting amazing growth in all my LPS and my softies seem happy enough. The only one that weirds me out is my first zoa colony. I thought it had died (it was a pretty orangish skirts/blue/orange mouth colony) and the polyps stayed closed for something like 3 weeks or more. Finally it's started opening again but it's half orange eyes in a brownish polyp and half neon yellow skirts/eyes. Im not sure how or why it changed color like that but at least it's alive and openin again.

My tribal is a mean little fish, but I love her. She's been known to have chased the clown and the firefish. She always leaves my dragonettes alone though. Scooters and the mandarin. (which is good because it's hard enough training the little guys to eat other foods.. Let alone when theyre always hiding)

Pic from long ago of my zoa's, just above my clown/firefish


I'll have to get a good pic of them now - ill just reserve that spot here lol.

And one of my tribal full body, I can't find any good ones of all her markings but they're beautiful.

This one shows some of them, still doesn't do her justice though. It's just very very difficult to catch her out and roosting.
 

greech

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May 13, 2009
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I have seen them in a few tanks. The blue is very bright on them. Does yours hover in open water at all or does it perch most of the time?

My midas is always out in the open until the light start to go out.
 

Ballyhoo

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Jun 27, 2010
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Is that a majano above your tribals head?
 

greech

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Google "zoapox" just in case.

Any other pests crawling around on them?
 

audifeesh

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Aug 18, 2010
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No, no pests - they look happy, just a different color now. Weird.

I'll look in to pox
 

audifeesh

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Aug 18, 2010
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And for anyone looking at that pic - those little teeny white spots are just detritus/marine snow/cell phone camera illusions. Ive a fair bit of "snow" in my tank but my levels are fine and the way I see it it seems to keep my coral and starfish happy.
 
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