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 :'(
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 :'(