Way over due update...

So it's been some time since the last update to everything or even a just a general post on something haha. Things have been pretty busy around here with work, moving my roommate out and finally getting things back in order in the apartment. The last post I did revolved around the baby rock flower anemones that I had, ~120 in total. Sad to say they didn't make it. Due to a huge hair algae outbreak in the tank, they were smothered and the ones that made it past the outbreak got lost in the rocks because they were to small for me to save.

When the outbreak started, I didn't think it would be that big of an issue. I moved what babies I could reach to a dish in the tank so I knew where they were and could target feed them when I fed the rest of the tank and they would, hopefully, stay away from the algae that was covering the rest of the rocks. Soon that wasn't even enough. As I fought the algae, I moved the babies to a breeder box on the side of the tank. That was a bad move. Soon the algae was in there as well. I then decided that I would move the remaining babies to their own 3 gallon tank. I don't know if it was the move or something else, but they soon disappeared...

I dismantled the 20 gallon in attempt to rid it of hair algae. I had some nice rock that was curing in a bucket that I decided to use. New sand was bought and an internal filter was made using acrylic and put into the tank. There's the overflow compartment that I can put a filter pad and a Phosphate remover pad in. Under that is an area for Cheato, since it's growing like a weed in the sump of the 75 Gallon, then there is the return section with a powerhead for a return pump.

The goals in doing this:
To be able to house the cheato in the tank to help with the algae.
Get rid of the ugly HOB filter.
Increase flow in the tank to kick crap out of the rocks and keep it suspended to get sucked into the overflow.
Give the tank a "cleaner" look.
Most of all: set the tank up the right way from the beginning...

When I first set this tank up I did so in a rush. I wanted an awesome Rock Flower Anemone garden. What I ended up with was a massive headache and a major mess I was always trying to clean up. Learning my lessons, I let the tank go for a month without anything in it. Then added the Cheato when I started to see algae growing on the rocks. ~20 small Limpets and ~30 small unknown snails were added to the tank shortly after that from the 75 display to start reproducing and help with the algae. After I was sure everything was good to go, I added the anemones to the tank with a couple other snails to clean up the remaining algae and keep it gone. One month later, everything is going great and will hopefully stay that way.

I'll be looking to add to the 6 Anemones in the tank to make a nice little colony of them with the hopes of them reproducing again and being able to raise some of them to maturity. Not much is out there as far as breeding these guys in our tanks. Most of it is just luck. I'm hoping to be able to put my experience with it all on here to help those who might want to do it as well. These little guys really are a great addition to a tank for people from expert hobbyists to the new people getting into the hobby.

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 

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!!

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 photos.

Just some photos from the frag tank and display. Everything is going good so far. 

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.