My 400 g build

Nice!

Yep, I got a decent quote for a 8' X 4' X 30" tall tank with dual overflows and starfire glass on the front and one end.

But what I'd really like is to move it out to either 9' or even 10'. But I think that may cost too much.

I talked to the wife last night. Yesterday afternoon the fish were breathing hard and scared. I had her plug back in one of teh Lorrilla's thatw as making noise becaus eit was near the surface and sucking in air. I told her she would just have to put up with the noise. When I talked to her last night, she said the fish seemd to be doing better and were no longer breathing hard. So that's good and means I got some oxygen back in the tank.

As of right now, my Majestic looks like it has Ich, but just on one side she says. Kind of weired. And my green wrasse we just got is MIA. Hopefully he's in the sand somewhere. The rest of them seem OK. Other than my Birdsnest having issues, she said the rest of the corals look OK.

goodluck!

A 10 foot tank would be awesome. I think if your going to do it definatly go for 10 feet. Glad to hear everything is doing a bit better

clownfish14 wrote:A 10 foot tank would be awesome. I think if your going to do it definatly go for 10 feet. Glad to hear everything is doing a bit better

+1

Man you guys sure like spending my money.

I know right, while they're suggesting it they need to be writing out a check to you.

How's the tank? Any casualties?

Dont know yet. Im sitting a pdx waiting for my flight. But the boat is floating.

Yea, what was the outcome? how is Sandy, the diamond back goby?

Oh, I thought you flying in on fri night.

Crusty Old Shellback wrote:Man you guys sure like spending my money.

sisterlimonpot wrote:I know right, while they're suggesting it they need to be writing out a check to you.

We would have 10ft tanks if we could! We just have to live vicariously through your guy's tanks

Nicely said

Crusty you should also get radions to light your tank as well as 3 or 4 mp60s and a full apex controler

That would be awesome! Mabey you should think about winning the lotery first though :p

clownfish14 wrote:That would be awesome! Mabey you should think about winning the lotery first though :p

maybe*

....

I'll ignore the fofo post.

Mike, I didn't get out of there till Saturday evening. Undocking slipped a day.

OK here's what I know so far. I pulled the dart return pump out and tore it down. There was some Cheto sitting at the intake pipe in the sump so i don't know if it backwashed out of the pump or not. But there was no sign of any inside the pump.

I found a few small snail shells in the impeller. That may have been the cause of the stopage. Pump is working now and everything is back on line. I had about 60G of water left over from my last water change so I put that in and then some of the watr Mike took out for me. So now I'm waiting for everything to clear up.

Right now, the diamond goby, green wrasse,red stripped wrase and Majestic Angel are MIA. Wife said she saw the Majestic yesterday but he didn't look good.

I've also lost several corals. A challice Mike gave me was on teh sandbed upside down but it looks liek part may stil be alive. The yellow leather I got from Darron is not looking too good. I lost one of the Montis from the contest. The frog spawn I got from Darron is trying to hange in there. And a few of my Zoa's are barley hanging on, including the contest one.

I'm going to give it a few more days to clear up while I mix up some water and then I'll do about a 200g water change and go looking for my MIA fish.

Thanks again Mike for helping out like you did. That helped some in saving some of my stuff. The rest there's not much that could have been done unless you were willing to spend some tiem trying to rebuild stuff which i wouldn't expect you to. I'll rebuild, just going to take some time.

This is a bummer I have some frags for you once your tank is back in action.

You still have that blue hippo tang?

I'll be looking for frags once I know everything is growing again. Also I want to wait till I'm done in Portland so I can spend more time on the tank. I'm hopeing to be done by the end of the month.

The blue hippo is doing good now. It was a bit schetchy for a bit but yesterday he was eating and out swimming finally.

I lost my Majestic as I found him last night deep under the rocks. I've got to try and get him out today when I get home.

My red stripped wrasse was spotted yesterday and is doing fine. The rest of the fish that I've seen are all doing fine.

I'm running the skimmer a bit wet right niw. It was foaming pretty good for a while but by the afternoon, it seems to have returned back to normal. I've runn skimmerless tanks before so that's basically what I had for a few days there. So no big deal. Other than the stress on the fish for a bit.

I'll post more after looking at the tank when I get home. But for now, my green wrasse and diamond goby are still MIA and my Majestic is DOA.

That sucks, atleast there are survivors!

It sucks big time. The Majestic was about 6", looked great and was adapting to his new home just fine.

Everything is doing Ok now. I still haven't seen my green wrasse that we waited two months for Tat's to get us one. Nor have I seen the diamond goby. But everyone else is accounted for. Now I also have two new occupants. I got a small, about 3" Majestic and a 3" Chevron tang. Both are doing great.

My corals are hanging in there. I've got 200G of water made up and will be doing a waterchange tomorrow. Just need to warm up the water and aireaite it some more today.

I've got 2 more weeks to go in Portland next trip and then should be done up there. I've also got to send in my other two PAR 38 LED's for rplacement. They are not a sbright as my last one they replaced and they said no problem replacing them. Going to contact them today and try and get them shipped out today. Then it's sit and wait for a bit before I continue restocking the tank.

As far as the grow out contest goes, it looks like I'm going to have to bow out. I lost one of the monti's and the Zoa's are not looking to good either. So here's your chance Jimmy.

That diamondback likes to hide, so hopefully he is just in the back of your tank waiting for the tank to be quiet again.

Yea, he took off to deep under the rocks when i put him in. But I haven't seen him since. But I've had fish disappear before and show up weeks later.

I also just found my purple with green center tube aneoneme last night. he had been missing for about a month. But I also found a fat Apstia in the tank as well. . Haven't seen those in a long time.

dang aptaisa sucks! time for a copper band and some peppermint shrimp!

A CBB is always on my list. Just got to find a good one.

Yea they are hard to find. Just try to nap Jimmys when he isn't looking

That and his red tang...

dwolson2 wrote:That and his red tang...

+1

HMMM. Sounds like it's time for a little visit.

here is a link to a tank. I know you were looking at glass but this may be a nice tank
http://centralcoastreefkeepers.com/viewtopic.php?f=43&t=4696

OK now that I'm done with my long term traveling, it's time to get back to the tank.

I actually want to thank everyone in the club for giving me some motavation to get this thing going again. Even though you might not know it, it's been the club that has gotten me to get my tank back up. So here goes.

I'm going back to my old tried and true methond, so I ordered up some seachem reef builder and reef advantage calicum. It's always worked great for me in the past. I started back on my dosing regime on Saturday. I'll do 2 Tbls of Calicum 3 days a week and 1 tbls of Alk 3 days a week. That will get me going again. I'll actually start measuring them this time and keep a record so that I can keep them stable.

I also ordered up some of Dr Tims sludge remover, brightwell aquatics micrbacter7 and reef biofuel. I'm going to give these a shot and see if it helps with removing the excess nutrients in the tank.

One other thing I've done which is diferent than normal for me, is I've installed a 5 micron filter that circulates water in the sump. Input is from the section that has the overflow from the skimmer section. Output is near the return pump. I used a whole house water filter that you get at Lowes for 30 bucks and a Mag 9.5 that I had laying around. The also make 2 micron filters that also have carbon in them. So far, after just a few days of running it, it's fairly brown from taking stuff out of the water. we'll see how things go. Also I can rinse the filter out so that I don't have to change it as often. The water seems to look clearer than before.

One downfall I'm having though I'm blameing on Nike civic since he told me about rainbow pets. I was there again yesterday and walked out with a beautiful Sohoal tang and 3 korilai (sp) butterflies. The butterflies are to take care of my Apstia problem that someone gave me.

My next trip there will be to get more corals, not fish. Unless they have a CBB or a Majestic Angel. Sorry no pic's of the new fish yet, but you can see them at the meeting.

I'm thinking at this time to make the tank LPS, no SPS. We'll see how that goes.

Is there a calcium reactor in the near future?

Sounds good! I also think I will be going LPS on my next tank. Make sure to dip your stuff before you put it in next time

Take some pics!

Unlike you, some of us have to work for a living. Pic's will have to wait.

I ran a calicum reactor in the past with mixed results. Daily dosing seems a lot easier right now and has worked great in the past. But who knows.

OK, I ran some test last night.

Amoinia, nitrite and nitrate were undetectable.
PH 8.2
Calc 460 ppm
Alk 12.5 Dkh

I don't have a phosphate test kit but will probally pick up one to check. For now, I'm going to keep an eye on things and wait till my Alk drops some before I start dosing again. So far, I've only done 2 doses of calc and one of alk.

As for pictures, here's some cheap phone pics to tease you with. You'll have to wait till the meeting to see how beautiful the colors really are. They just move too fast to get a good picture.

Butterflies. I got three of them but I've only seen two of them being active. The third one hides a lot. They are about an inch long and actively feeding on the pellet food I feed.



A couple of bad shots of the Sohoal. He's about 3" and hasn't bothered anyone in the tank. Of course my Blonde Naso is almost 3 times his size. And the pacific blue is just shy, but a little bigger.

Looks sweet!

I would list the test kit with your results. Maybe we can compare your results with other kits. The ALK results seem too high. I can bring my Hanna Alk Checker at the meeting.

you should pick up a hanna checker. I have the alk and its pretty nice!

I have phosphate, calcium, and alk!

I used two different kits to test my PH, Calc and Alk and they came up the same. API is one of the ones I use and have used for some time, the other I'm not sure of but it was in a master test kit I got from one of the meetings. When I finally started testing for Alk a few years ago, I noticed mine ran high and I'd have to dose less alk that calk to get my numbers right.

This was my initial readings. I'll get them adjusted where I want them and then figure out how much to dose to keep them there. I'll have to check the IO I'm using next time I mix a batch and see where it is at. I may not need to add as much calc/alk has I had in the past when using NSW.

If you want to bring the tester/test kits to the meeting, we can measure and compare them.

API is notorious for having off values.

The UCSB NSW has low ALK from the reefers who have tested it.

I never tested when I was using NSW but just added a regeime of 2 calc to 1 alk twice a week and everything worked fine. I knew that it ran low.

Now that I'm using IO, I know that the alk and calc are higher and will have to adjust accordingly. Not sure how far off the API is. Maybe you can bring some test kits and we can compare.

I can bring my Salifert calcium test kit.

do you still have chaeto?

About a golf ball size peiece is all that's left. It kind of broke apart and went throughout the tank, never to be seen again.

lol, is it growing or dieing?

Dieing I think. It's definatly not growing.