$4 Anemone frag/ Mushroom Frag Basket

So at the last frag swap I went to I found a RBTA that I just couldn't pass up buying. The seller had accidentally fragged one of them and was selling both frags for the price of 1 haha.  In the past I've kinda stayed away from buying anemones because I had a mixed reef tank and didn't want to add them to it just to have them move around and kill a few corals before they found their spot. Rock Flower anemones are a different story though since they usually don't move around a lot. Well since I couldn't resist buying the RBTA I had to come up with a spot to store them in the frag tank without them roaming around. This is what I came up with: a $4 basket that hangs on the side of the tank.

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.

Tank Upgrade

Well this was kind of a spur of the moment decision. I've been looking to upgrade the display tank for a little while now and was thinking of getting a 40 breeder or maybe even a 55 gallon and build a stand for it. A couple weeks ago I made a trip to my LFS and to my surprise I found my upgrade or at least I thought I had. A 75 gallon tank with a pine stand and sump/ external overflow and wouldn't you know... the price was perfect. At $75 I couldn't pass it up!! The stand needed to be sanded down and re stained, the sump and overflow weren't cracked or scratched and need to be cleaned. The tank though... This is the sad part. It seems the guy who owned it before me used some extremely hard water. This led to the front and back panels being etched... Well there went that. No 75 gallon tank for me. This brought me to the realization though that a 75 was a bit big for me right now anyways. So now it's just sitting here in my room waiting to be resold to someone who can use it for something else.

I started looking around on line and thought that maybe a 40 gallon would work. I have a buddy who has two of them so I went and took a look at them. They wont exactly fit the stand, but they will work and it just so happened that Petsmart had them on sale last week! So after all of this excitement and sadness I have my tank, stand, overflow and sump. Now all I need to do is finish staining the stand, clean the overflow and sump, and get the plumbing set up and I'm good to go. I'll have a page up shortly to follow my build of this tank. It'll be my first build page so we'll have to see how it goes. If I like it I might even post it to a forum haha.

Stay tuned! I'll have a few more posts and pages coming out here soon including my DIY acrylic frag stand, a hang-on-side frag rack and an update on the tanks!!

Build a Better Frag Rack

So yesterday I decided to do some rework on my frag tank when I took everything out to clean the bottom. I'm glad to say there is no more Cyanobacteria. I did make a new frag rack that now spans almost the entire bottom of my tank as well as has two raised platforms for more light needing corals. I do like the look of this one much better because it gives me not only more room, but it makes the tank look more open as well. It's almost exactly like the pic I posted yesterday.

Before, I was using a 3 tier rack that I had in my 10 gallon. For that tank it was the perfect size. However, I needed more room in my 20 gallon and wanted a rack that would be able to handle the amount of frags I wanted to put in there, as well as make it look a little cleaner. This led me to make the rack in this design. It allows me to put corals wherever they need to be as far as flow and light are concerned.

Before:

After:

Now, what is the main reason frag racks are made? Personally I build them to be able to use as much room in my frag tank as I can, but I've also built them to keep frags in my display tank. These are also, from what I've read, what the majority of other people build racks for as well. Another reason I've seen is to keep the Cleanup Crew from knocking the frags around as they sit on the sand in the tank.

They can be made of anything from egg crate (light diffuser) to acrylic and held together with glue, zip ties, or epoxy. Depending on what is being kept on the rack, the size and shape of the tank, as well as the lighting, frag racks are made in all different shapes. The most common one I've seen is just a flat platform raised up off the bottom with either PVC legs or egg crate legs. People are keeping softies, LPS and SPS on these kinds of racks, they just change the lighting depending on the coral. If keeping a mixed frag tank, usually raised platforms are a good idea so you can put corals that need more light up higher and don't have to buy a new light.