Long Overdue Update

So it's been a long time since I've done anything with this blog. In my defense things got a little busy... I got a job offer from a company in Chicago, had to find a place and move within a month, go to some training within that month, take down all the tanks and get everything ready for the move. All while still working and going to school haha. It's been about a year since I've actually posted anything. There have been some losses and some gains during the whole process. I lost the vast majority of frags I had in the frag tank from the move. My fish died from being kept from new water for to long. My banded brittle starfish almost kicked the bucket, but I got to him just in time. Here's the newish setups.

40 Gallon Breeder
This tank has mostly remained the same. Same corals, same livestock, everything. The few changes that were made include moving the hang on breeder box that was on the 20 gallon over to here as a refugium, building a small frag rack for the side of the tank and keeping all the surviving frags over here. The fish have been replaced and are all doing amazing. Yes, I know... People will say that a blue tang belongs in a bigger tank. Well there is plenty of room for him to swim around, plenty of places for him to hide and we've become very good buddies haha.

Bayer Dip and Tank Update

So as of today the Red Bugs on the Blue Stag have not returned so I'll call that a success. However, after dipping the zoa frags a few times it seems that the Byprosis is just as resilient as ever. It kind of faded away for a day or so looking like it would die off, but was back a couple days later in full force. I need to find a way to take care of this stuff cheaply. Yes I know, some of you may say that there is nothing cheap about this hobby and I will agree to some point, but the point of this blog is to find a way to keep reefs somewhat inexpensively. The majority of us, including myself, don't have hundreds of dollars to spend on keeping reefs.

20 Gallon Long Frag Tank Update

So since I was already doing a water change in the display I figured I would do one in the frag tank as well. Ever since I took the Scopus tank out of here and added the RBTA's I've been having a bit of an algae problem as you can see from the pictures. I wanted something else to help control it so when I was at my LFS I bought a small Sailfin Tang and an emerald crab to help keep the hair algae down until I can get a bigger filter.

In the previous post I mentioned that I bought a few pieces of Green Staghorn that were thrown into the LR bin at my LFS. They are a little worse for wear, but I may be able to bring them back with a little care. I cut some small pieces off the three bigger ones because the tissue wasn't attached. For some reason, I'm thinking that these small frags will recover better than the bigger ones. The tissue has become very thin due to being in the LR bin for a day or two with crappy light and water.

Frag Tank update!!

So over the weekend I ended up getting a Banner Engineering light bar from my dad. Not the typical reef led but so far so good. It's a 24v bar that is "normally" used for industrial applications. 

Since putting it up my zoas and mushrooms that were reaching for light have settled down to where they should be. I've also added a couple more egg crate racks to the tank to lift some colonies off of the ground to make cleaning the bottom easier. 

Looking at the tanks today makes me think I went a little "frag crazy". My 20 gallon long tank is completely filled. I have really no more room... This is good in the sense that my coral is growing but bad in the fact that now I have to find somewhere to offload some of the frags. I suppose I could do a little rearranging, add another big rack and take out some of the smaller ones and so on, but that will have to wait until some time Monday or Tuesday. I have plenty of egg crate left to do it with. I mean look at it! It's packed!!