My 400 g build

They say no. But is any fish reef safe?

As long as I can get them to feed from me like my other fish do, then they should be OK. They ate last night when I fed the tank. So we'll see what happens. I now have 4 butterflies in the tank.

dwolson2 aka Mr. Dumb Dumb wrote:Is that a reef safe angel? Its a good looking fish!

Its a butterfly

coryg wrote:

dwolson2 aka Mr. Dumb Dumb wrote:Is that a reef safe angel? Its a good looking fish!

Its a butterfly

oops yea, butterfly, thats what I meant

Did you go to PTF?

PTF??? ****** tropical fish??

Pasadena tropical fish.. pretty well known fish store in LA..

Naw, I was at monrivia aquarium. New owners and all having a grand opening. Just across the street from Kirckland homes. That's why we were in the area, had to take the wife shopping there. Listen to me, DO NOT take the wife there unless you want to spend money.

I didn't notice that DW posted Angel. It's a sunset butterfly. They look really good in the tank. Bright yellow and orange colors. The stripes are more gray on mine. And I did notice that the stripes are a little different between the two. One of them even has a little different patteren on each side.

They are eating frozen and trying to pick at the pellets, so all is good. They are still a little shy and hanging out in a back corner. Only down side is I've seen them picking a little at my yellow scroll coral. I'll have to keep and eye out and also make sure they are well fed.

My other two kelini butterflys have given up chasing them around and are OK with them now. But my Coral beauty Angel is still not happy with them and chases on occasion.

OK, guess it's time for an update.
First off, I lost one of my Sunset Butterflies. It seems to have something wrong with it's mouth. It had a redline going down one side. Parasite? I found it swimmung with it's mouth up, near the surface and barley able to swim even though it's fins were moving quickly and it was gasping for breath.

The second one still seems to be doing fine, other than I see a little red around it's mouth as well now. But it's still eating good.

My two Kelini Butterflies are still doing fine along with the rest of my fish. My Sohoal is doing great and has grown a little. He occasionaly picks on the Blue Hippo, but he was a wimp anyways. Seems like they all are, or at least the one's I've had.

Thanks to FRAG, I've added a few more corals and a clam. I picked up the branching hammer that everyone was trying to buy, even though I didn't know about it. I've placed it next to the bluegreen one I already have. So it looks great with a bluegreen one next to a bright green one. We'll see how they grow out together.
I also got an Elegance coral from the couple from L.V. It's slowly opening up and I'm waiting for it to open completely to see if it likes where it is. It's got pinkish tips on it which look good.
Lastly I picked up an awsome colored clam. I'm having a little problem figuring out where to place it so it will be happy.

Speaking of FRAG, I spent some time talking to Dr. Tim and learned a lot. Thanks to a second drawing, I wound up winning a complete reactor set up. I got it all set up in the sump and am now waiting to see the results. I've used his waste away in the past and saw good results from it so this is just going to the next level. As Dr. Tim explained, I can't really measure anything to see if it's making a difference, only by watching the aquarium will I be able to see things change. So now it's time to sit back and watch.

Another thing I'm thinking of doing is redoing the way I have my solar tubes. I spent some time talking with Steve Garrette who grows his corals out side along with actually reading his display. My first thought is to remove the tubes that I added on on the inside and just let the light spread more over the tank. I may be putting too much light in the tank and hince some issues I'm having with my corals.
Another thing I'm looking into is to either put the diffusers back in on the tubes or cover them with some transparent blue film. I'll take it one step at a time and see how each step makes a difference, if at all. I'l still keep my PAR 38 LED's though so that I can see my tank at night.

pictures? I have to come over and see the reactor in action?

adding some blue diffusers will make that yank look awesome.

I'm cleaning the tank this weekend so I'll get some pictures after I'm done and everything opens back up.

As for the clam, he "jumped" off of the rock again and I found him in the sand all open and happy. So I moved his shell that he was in down to the sand in front and he seems happy so far. He's been there for a few days now.

I like Jimmys idea of the blue diffusers. but I like the 20k look.

I'm going to do a little more research on it before I do it.

OK, here's some pictures of teh corals I got at FRAG.
First is the branching Hammer. The big green one on the left. It's a really bright green. To the right is my Blue/Green branching hammer.





next is my Elegance Coral. It hasen't opened up all the way as of yet. But it's not receding from the skeleton either.



And last is a bunch of trumpet frags that Jimmy thru in my bag. I made a big hunk of reef putty and stuck them in it.
The trumpets on the left are ones I won at a meeting a while back. For some reason, they don't seem to like their new neighbors.

How about pics of the bio-pellet reactor in action?

So you want a picture of a acrylic tube with little round pellets in it?

OK I guess it's time for an update on my tank, albiet not good.
First off my corals and such are not doing good. I lost the legance coral and calm I got at the FRAG swap. But the branching hammer is doing good. I also lost the old torch coral I had but the one I got at FRAG was doing OK. Now it seems to be dieing off.

I'm still haveing some issues with my Calc and Alk and trying to get them under control. The issue seesm to be more with my Alk than my Calc.

As for the Dr. Tims Pearl reactor, it seems to be working just fine. I have very little alage growing on my front glass now. I just recently had to add in some more pearls as theyw ere about half way gone. So in a month, the reactor used up about half of the pearls.

I've also gone to truning off my skimmer at night for about 5 hours. No ill effects there and the skimmer still pulls out the same amunt of stuff, if not more, than before I started using the reactor and turning it off at night.

I am also still running a .5 micron whole house filter in the sump. It seems to be pulling out a lot of brown stuff. Probably stuff that the skimmer would pull out. I'm just wondering if it's some of the bacteria that the reactor is feeding.

So for now, I'm still kind of limping alone. I'm going to try and refrane from adding anything else to the tank until I figure it all out. As for the fish, all are doingw ell except for the blue hippo I got from the little guy. It just hides in the rocks because it's afraid of my Sohoal.

Sorry to hear that. how are your levels(besides alk and cal)

My other levels seem fine. PH 8.3-8.4 Mag is 1480. Nitrates around 5ppm. My Alk is swinging from 8 up to 11 and back down. I'm had it fairly stable and then it started swinging. Calc is swinging from 420 up to 460.

when does the alk get up to 11? how are you replenishing it?

I'm using Seachem dry powders for my Alk and cal, same as I always have. I guess I just need to do a daily measurment and see how things are flowing.

I also think that on occasion of when one of my pumps falls off the tank side and stirs up my sand bed, it's releasing Alk and calc back into the water. So I beleive that is where some of my swings are coming from. I had a big sand storm the other day.

Crusty, sorry for your loss! Atleast it wasn't the clam from Chad.

Maybe its time you try the daily dosing method and use a doser. Once you get the doser, it will makes a huge difference when you get it dialed in.

Crusty Old Shellback wrote:
I've also gone to truning off my skimmer at night for about 5 hours. No ill effects there and the skimmer still pulls out the same amunt of stuff, if not more, than before I started using the reactor and turning it off at night.

Also, how often do you clean your skimmer collection cup, I see a huge difference when the collection cup is cleaned. They sell auto wipers that are hands free and will make your skimmer more efficient. I notice I need to clean it almost daily now if I want it to be perform better.

I try and clean it twice a week. It usually has a nice thick grunge accumilated inside the neck by then and the cup is about 3/4 full.

I haven't really changed my rotuine from when everything was growing great. Just a smaller more manageable skimmer and the solar tubes and LED lights. Everything else is the same. Well except for maybe the NSW.

For this big of a Tank I really think you should go back to NSW, I also think you need to top off with RODI. Also when you need to buy some bio pellets I have a bag of BRS and a small jar of NP Pearls.

My plan is to go back to NSW when it is reacily available on my time schedule. I have gone back to using RO for all of my water ever since I found out how bad the regular water really was.

I wish you would have said something about the NP Pearls, I just bought a big jar of them this past weekend, 70 bucks worth.

OK I ran some test three days in a row in the morning around the same time. My Alk dropped a good 2 DKH in 3 days. But my Calc only seemd to have dropped 10 ppm which is a bit odd.

I'm going to try dosing a set amount each day this week and check again at the end of teh week. I know that if I add in 1 Tbls of Alk, I raise the tank 1 Dkh. I'll have to check my Calc addition and see how much it raises it but if I remember right it's 1 Tbls for 20 ppm.

Do you have plans to set up a dosing pump? Or some way to dose on a regular basis? When I started with stony corals I bought a bunch of 10ml syringes and preloaded them with daily doses, everyday I squeezed the contents into the sump, I was able to maintain some stability in the tank. It eventually progressed into dosing half in the morning and half in the evening until I purchased the bubble magnus peristaltic dosing pump that now doses 24 times a day.

I also want to throw out that (In my opinion) BRS 2 part is far purer than anything on the market. And the fact that it’s the best price around is a bonus.

I usually dose evey day in the morning before I go to work or the afternoon when I get home. It's worked that way in the past for years so I don't think I'll be going to a dosing pump.

I've also used the Seachem products for years with great sucess. I tried switching to a different 2 part but didn't have any sucess so I've gone back to using the Seachem stuff. I may swap to BRS next time I need to order some.

Hey Ray,

Do you have any interest in a large blue hippo tang? I wasn't sure if you already have one, but I've had him for almost 8 years and he's like family and I know he'd love it in your big tank. He's fat and happy and colorful and he eats anything. If you're at all interested I can put up pictures. He would be "free to good home." Let me know.

John

Hey John. I had gotten one from Derrick a while back. But when I got my Sohoal tang, he started bullying the blue. This morning I found the blue half eaten under some rocks. I think he starved to death as I couldn't get him out of the tank and I never saw him come out to eat. So because of that and my Sohoal, I'm going to pass on the blue. But thanks for the offer.

Okay, thanks Ray. Sorry to hear about your blue tang =(

Ray, you killing my Dory! How dare you! LOL hopefully he pulls out OK, he was a good fish when I had him.

Derrick Dory is dead...

You sure Dory is dead? "Half eaten under some rocks" could mean a lot of things...

Half eatin under the rocks means DEAD. I saw a large bristle worm having a midnight snack of him. Sorry. He's now in the green waste to become fertilizer. Now I have to find that damn bristle worm. I thought I had gotten rid of them all.

Well its the end of an era. I've got a buyer, a deposit, and he's picking it up tomorrow. So I'm going from a 400 to a 29 until I get the 130 up and running.