20 Gallon Long Stand Build

Now here was a fun project. I built this up a few months ago because I was running out of room in the 10 gallon frag tank I had and wanted to upgrade to a 20 long. The thing I like about this stand is because I custom made it to my needs, I got to built it out of whatever I wanted. So I decided to go with pallet wood except for the 4 4x4's for the corners.

Dimensions were a little hard to decide on. I wanted something that was going to be sturdy enough to handle the amount of weight I was going to put on it, yet look nice and even possibly be used for an upgraded tank later on in the future. I decided that I would make it big enough that, if I wanted to later on, I could put up to a 40 gallon breeder on it. 

It sits at just about 72" in height and about 37" wide and 18" deep. 

The inside can hold two 5 gallon jugs and the shelf on the inside is holding fragging supplies and chemical tests.
Total Price on this stand was around $25- $30.

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.

40 Gallon Tank Update!!

So for awhile I've been trying to update this page with the 40 gallon setup, but haven't had a chance to. Today is the day though!! I'll try adding a little video later, but I've created a new page showing off some of the tank. Unfortunately, one of my clowns died so I traded in the other one for a pair of black clowns which seemed to be paired up. Only time will tell though haha. I'll probably end up changing the aquascape at some point just to be able to do a little more coral wise. I tend to not epoxy coral to the rock, but I'm going to with this tank. I've got a lot of coral on the sand but not to much on the rock 

Been awhile!

So it's been awhile since I posted an update. Everything's going good for the most part now. Byprosis is gone in the frag tank, corals are looking healthy, my girlfriends Duncan's made a full recovery in my frag tank and I've been sellin a few pieces here and there with a few freebies given as well.

I recently split up the frag tank into two partitions: one for frags and the other for anemones. I used two pieces of eggcrate as the divider and put them together so the holes were half the size as normal. It seemed to be working good while it was up. I recently took it down, however, to add more room to the frag rack and transferred the RBTAs to a Hang on breeder box where they can do whatever they please. The two RBTAs are still doing good, a nice deep red and bubbly. The RFAs are doing real well. My original one is constantly growing bigger. I got it when it was a baby about the size of a dime, now its about two and a half inches across. I'll probably do a review on the breeder box here soon as well as the Deep Blue Professional SolarFlare lights that I have had.

Corals Under LED's!!

For the longest time I've admired the color of corals under blue LED's. To me they look so much more eye catching than when they are under other actinic lighting. Capturing that color in photos has always been on the back of my mind, but every time I've tried it I failed miserably. Until yesterday.

After I finished with the water change and frag rack replacement yesterday, I figured I would grab the camera again and try to capture that amazing color again. Photo after photo just kept turning out too blue or purple. I took a look online and realized that I had forgot the most basic step in video and photography: White Balance. I felt so stupid afterwards since I had taken so many video and photography through high school and college. I set the camera's white balance to custom, took a picture of an empty spot on the frag rack, set the custom white balance to balance off of that picture and started shooting again and with a couple minor adjustments to some of the other settings, I had my photos. Now all I need is a macro lens... These are some of the results:

 

 

The Weekend is upon us!

So this weekend my tanks are going to get a much needed cleaning... I've kinda neglected them for a little because I was so busy. I need to do a major water change in the display cause I haven't for about a month, a big water change needs to be done in the frag tank as well. Oddly enough I have cyno growing on the bottom of the tank to the point that it's starting to bubble up. I can easily get it up but I think what I might do is pull out the frag racks and  do a whole tank cleaning. I'll probably start on it today when I get home actually. Everything is still looking good though which is kind of surprising. I can almost guess what the nitrates are and I cringe when I do. I should add a small CC, but that just adds more crap to the water. After this weekend though everything should be good.

I also am going to try and figure out what to do with the mushroom frags I just cut. Do I glue them to a rock and make a few colonies of different kinds/ colors of shrooms or do I put the Yumas and Floridas on frag plugs to keep them separate or build some colonies and some frags? Either way I look at it I need to get rid of some because I'm pretty much out of room. I suppose I could make up another 3 tier rack to go along with the one I have now instead of using random racks and put the rock on a rack underneath it...

RBTA update!

So when I got these two little guys, well two halves of a little guy, they had just been split on accident by the seller. I was about 90% sure that they would be fine and it turns out I was correct. Within the two weeks I've had them they've healed up nicely and are accepting what I give them for food which is usually mysis every other day and a few small chunks of deboned silverside on the weekend. Next time I feed them I'll try taking a video of them feeding along with my rock flowers who greedily accept anything haha but a pic for now is all I have which is not the best due to the LEDs.

Not much new to update the blog with tank wise today, but I am updating the design a little and rearranging a few things as well as adding a few links that I found helpful to running my tank.

Headed out to a Frag swap in Flint today. Mostly just to see whats there. Not really in the need for anything, but then again when do I ever NEED more coral lol.

The Frag tank is pretty full right now. I've got some yumas and ricordea healing from fragging a week ago. I might post a few frags up on Michigan Reefers soon just to empty out the tank a bit. I've also been looking at upgrading the lights on both tanks which will be easy if i can find a decent priced T5 HO for the display.

Just some details...

Alright... so everything seems to be on track as of right now. The thing I love about this tank is that it is running and has been running without any expensive equipment.

My maintenance routine includes:

• Weekly 5- 10 gallon water changes, 
• Replace the filter floss twice weekly, 
• Feed the tank a little every other day and once a week heavy feeding for the fish and feed the LPS the day before the water change,
• Blow the rocks off every other day
• One drop of iodine mid-week
• Check the chemicals once a week and add magnesium if needed

This has kept the tank going well without much issue, including nuisance algae, for a little over two years now.

Livestock includes:

• Two clownfish
• A yellow watchman goby
• A banded brittle star
• A decent sized pom-pom crab

As far as corals go:

• orange montipora cap
• green and blue polyp montipora cap
• purple with green polyp montipora cap
• orange montipora dig
• green and kryptonite candy cane colonies
• baseball sized colony of galaxiea 
• two small frags of purple and blue stylophora
• small frag of green porcillipora
• three different brain colonies
• two common paly colonies
• a frag of pavona
• a colony of branching duncan
• misc mushrooms including a purple and green yuma and a green and orange ric florida
• a nice frag of blue stag that is starting to get its blue color back
• a few pieces of green slimmer that are slowly recovering
• a baby piece of green loripes that i cut off of a dying colony

Everything has growth on it from within the last few weeks since it crashed due to a heater malfunction.

Starting a Blog

So I decided that I would start a blog to help me keep track of my 26 Gallon display as well as the frag tank I have running. Not just for my own personal reasons but to show it off as well. Unfortunately my display crashed about a month ago and I lost a couple nice sized pieces but everything is good now and I'm starting to repopulate it slowly. The frag tank has been going nicely since started about a year ago and I was able to throw a couple pieces crime there into the display. The rockwork was redone after the crash but there is only so much I can do with it due to it being such a tall tank with the lights I have.