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Jimroth's Big Ol' Tank
- Thread starter jimroth
- Start date
Jimroth's Big Ol' Tank Pics, Supplemental
While I wait for my camera to come back from Canon, I thought I would see how I could do with my old Sony point and shoot. The pictures are inferior, and the fish are terrified of the autofocus illuminator, but I got to post some pics!
Before and after:
Efflo
Rainbow Poccillopora
and look, a surprise...
Dropped a planula for a new colony:
Pohnape Birdsnest:
New:
February:
Today:
Montipora Spongodes:
After the frag Swap:
November:
Today:
If it weren't for photos, I wouldn't even notice the growth!
While I wait for my camera to come back from Canon, I thought I would see how I could do with my old Sony point and shoot. The pictures are inferior, and the fish are terrified of the autofocus illuminator, but I got to post some pics!
Before and after:
Efflo
Rainbow Poccillopora
and look, a surprise...
Dropped a planula for a new colony:
Pohnape Birdsnest:
New:
February:
Today:
Montipora Spongodes:
After the frag Swap:
November:
Today:
If it weren't for photos, I wouldn't even notice the growth!
Here is a picture of my blue millepora frag. Very slow grower. This pic illustrates a fact about this coral. To get the blue color it needs to be blasted with intense light. If you look carefully in the photo, you can see that even the areas where the frag is shaded by itself have failed to turn blue. Potassium also helps. This little coral is on the higest spot in the highest rock in my system.
When I got it:
When I got it:
Great looking tank from start to finish.
Yipes! First Fish Over the Weir!
If you look back in this thread you can see my tank has a long "coast-to-coast" overflow. Until now no fish went over it, there is no screen but the water that goes over is only 1/4" at the deepest.
Every morning I do a quick feed of pellets for the fish who will eat them, and yesterday morning Elvis the yellow longnose butterfly was absent. He's the most enthusiastic pellet food fan, so I was surprised. I checked the rockwork, and I looked at the sump in the garage, with trepidation, since that would be a hard trip for a butterfly to make.
I went back to the tank and looked in the overflow, and there's Elvis, up at the far end of the overflow, swimming for all he's worth! I grabbed the closest thing at hand (a beer glass) and kind of scooped him back into the main display. He was hungry, and ate pellets right away, and he's fine.
He's a pretty tall fish. He must have gone over like an olympic high jumper The water really moves down that trough, I wonder how long he was running on that watery treadmill!!
Not so lucky was that big pink phallo-cucumber. It died and became a stinky mess. I think that the VSV routine is not echinoderm-friendly, I have lost my linckia and one of my serpent stars has stopped showing up. Don't know what happened to the little crab. :-\
If you look back in this thread you can see my tank has a long "coast-to-coast" overflow. Until now no fish went over it, there is no screen but the water that goes over is only 1/4" at the deepest.
Every morning I do a quick feed of pellets for the fish who will eat them, and yesterday morning Elvis the yellow longnose butterfly was absent. He's the most enthusiastic pellet food fan, so I was surprised. I checked the rockwork, and I looked at the sump in the garage, with trepidation, since that would be a hard trip for a butterfly to make.
I went back to the tank and looked in the overflow, and there's Elvis, up at the far end of the overflow, swimming for all he's worth! I grabbed the closest thing at hand (a beer glass) and kind of scooped him back into the main display. He was hungry, and ate pellets right away, and he's fine.
He's a pretty tall fish. He must have gone over like an olympic high jumper The water really moves down that trough, I wonder how long he was running on that watery treadmill!!
Not so lucky was that big pink phallo-cucumber. It died and became a stinky mess. I think that the VSV routine is not echinoderm-friendly, I have lost my linckia and one of my serpent stars has stopped showing up. Don't know what happened to the little crab. :-\
Quite an adventure for a buterfly. Good thing you found him when you did. This reminds me of "Nemo".
Stupid Newbie Mistakes #100:
Last night I found my skimmer was really not working at all, after working pretty well for months. I did some troubleshooting and found that the five foot tall downdraft tower which which houses the bioballs was almost completely clogged, enough water and air was not going through. I had put off changing the balls per the makers' recommendation for a long time, because I was making a lot of nasty skimmate. Why mess with it, eh? So I go to dump out the bioballs and they won't come out. They are all encrusted with calcium, probably related to a couple of "snowstorm" events a few months back. I manage to pull some out with a coathanger, but ultimately I'm digging around in there with a 6' piece of plastic molding. It took like an hour to get them all out, and when I'm done, It's 10:30 and I'm dirty and soaking wet. (I'm probably lucky I didn't break it and smash it...kudos to ETSS for making strong stuff!) The bioballs are so encrusted that each one weighs as much as a golfball.
I hose off the skimmer and put in the new bioballs I had stashed, and reinstall the skimmer. I know all about people flooding their house after cleaning the skimmer, so I cranked the skimmer WAY down. I have an auto-shutoff waste collector bucket, too!
Get up this morning, water's all over the garage, the top up tank has put in about 10G of kalky RO, and the bucket is full. Even with the auto-shutoff bucket, the skimmer managed to overflow and push out something like 15G of water out through the bucket.
So I add a bunch of salt to the sump, manually top up the sump the rest of the way, and turn the skimmer down even more. And start making RO water. And vacuum up all the water off the garage floor and sump stand.
And I added more salt. And the damn skimmer filled the bucket 3/4 up AGAIN! so I cranked it down some more. And added more RO and more salt.
As near as I can tell, that skimmer has been running at something like 60% efficiency for months. It's hard to control now, like drinking from a firehose.
This is such a dumb thing to do, especially since I know at least 5 people who have done similar things, including the mighty Steve Weast. I should have said, "The tank will be fine without the skimmer for one night, turn it on in the morning and watch it so you can get it dialed in." Jeez. I'm going to put a sign up in the garage that says "DON'T CLEAN THE SKIMMER AND GO TO BED"
On the plus side, the interval timing of the top up system prevented the adding of all the RO at once, which limited the problems for the tank, a bit. And the waste collector probably prevented even more water from being skimmed out, to the point of burning out the return pump. So thank heaven for small mercies.
Last night I found my skimmer was really not working at all, after working pretty well for months. I did some troubleshooting and found that the five foot tall downdraft tower which which houses the bioballs was almost completely clogged, enough water and air was not going through. I had put off changing the balls per the makers' recommendation for a long time, because I was making a lot of nasty skimmate. Why mess with it, eh? So I go to dump out the bioballs and they won't come out. They are all encrusted with calcium, probably related to a couple of "snowstorm" events a few months back. I manage to pull some out with a coathanger, but ultimately I'm digging around in there with a 6' piece of plastic molding. It took like an hour to get them all out, and when I'm done, It's 10:30 and I'm dirty and soaking wet. (I'm probably lucky I didn't break it and smash it...kudos to ETSS for making strong stuff!) The bioballs are so encrusted that each one weighs as much as a golfball.
I hose off the skimmer and put in the new bioballs I had stashed, and reinstall the skimmer. I know all about people flooding their house after cleaning the skimmer, so I cranked the skimmer WAY down. I have an auto-shutoff waste collector bucket, too!
Get up this morning, water's all over the garage, the top up tank has put in about 10G of kalky RO, and the bucket is full. Even with the auto-shutoff bucket, the skimmer managed to overflow and push out something like 15G of water out through the bucket.
So I add a bunch of salt to the sump, manually top up the sump the rest of the way, and turn the skimmer down even more. And start making RO water. And vacuum up all the water off the garage floor and sump stand.
And I added more salt. And the damn skimmer filled the bucket 3/4 up AGAIN! so I cranked it down some more. And added more RO and more salt.
As near as I can tell, that skimmer has been running at something like 60% efficiency for months. It's hard to control now, like drinking from a firehose.
This is such a dumb thing to do, especially since I know at least 5 people who have done similar things, including the mighty Steve Weast. I should have said, "The tank will be fine without the skimmer for one night, turn it on in the morning and watch it so you can get it dialed in." Jeez. I'm going to put a sign up in the garage that says "DON'T CLEAN THE SKIMMER AND GO TO BED"
On the plus side, the interval timing of the top up system prevented the adding of all the RO at once, which limited the problems for the tank, a bit. And the waste collector probably prevented even more water from being skimmed out, to the point of burning out the return pump. So thank heaven for small mercies.
jimroth said:
LOL! I can always expect some good brevity when tuning into your posts! Skimmers can be back breakers.
I've had my own baffling troubles lately. (including burning out yet another internal return pump during a calcium dosing event) I will post the whole story in under general discussion soon.
I have been quite sick with the flu and some other things, so neither the tank nor this post has gotten much attention lately. Here's a couple updates, musings, etc.
(1) Added another female square anthias from The Fish Tank. I saw they had one as big or bigger than my other female, and that is definitely the trick, as the small ones I tried got a serious beat-down and died. She moved in and held her own, they fought a bit (including locking jaws, GIRL FIGHT!). Now there is only minimal squabbling and I have a trio. A big plus is that the new gal ate flakes and pellets right away, and the others grudgingly followed her example. So now everybody eats some pellets in the morning, even the CBB.
(2) The "yellow coris" wrasse (Halichoeres chrysus)is a fish extremely underrated for beauty. I bought it as a nice-looking little yellow fish that I have seen eat flatworms. As it's gotten bigger, its looks have really improved. The scale pattern becomes large and pronounced, the tail takes on a pink tinge, and the head gets subtle "psychedelic" pink and green stripes, you can just barely see them. Plus, a model citizen of the reef tank.
(3) Added a couple new frags from Mr. Mheaven of Clifton. The Upscales Microclados, which is settling in well, and a very nice A. Turaki he has. He warned me that the Turaki was sensitive, and it immediately lost most of its flesh upon being mounted to the rocks. Luckily he gave me another small frag which I mounted and put in the raceway, where it's already encrusting the plug. Frags love the laminar flow in that raceway.
(4) Still having coral color issues, but since I haven't done a water change in two months now, I probably shouldn't be surprised. I have discontinued Brightwell Poatssion since I want to give Lugols solution another try, and it has potassium iodide in it. Getting some good blue returning in my pokerstar monti. Plus my blood shrimp immediately shed when I started adding it. Can it be true...? I am up to 3.5ml VSV per day. I am going to lower my MH Lights one inch and finally hook up the actinics. I'm starting to feel the urge to redo my lightrack and apply all the things I've learned (like being able to get it out of my way).
(1) Added another female square anthias from The Fish Tank. I saw they had one as big or bigger than my other female, and that is definitely the trick, as the small ones I tried got a serious beat-down and died. She moved in and held her own, they fought a bit (including locking jaws, GIRL FIGHT!). Now there is only minimal squabbling and I have a trio. A big plus is that the new gal ate flakes and pellets right away, and the others grudgingly followed her example. So now everybody eats some pellets in the morning, even the CBB.
(2) The "yellow coris" wrasse (Halichoeres chrysus)is a fish extremely underrated for beauty. I bought it as a nice-looking little yellow fish that I have seen eat flatworms. As it's gotten bigger, its looks have really improved. The scale pattern becomes large and pronounced, the tail takes on a pink tinge, and the head gets subtle "psychedelic" pink and green stripes, you can just barely see them. Plus, a model citizen of the reef tank.
(3) Added a couple new frags from Mr. Mheaven of Clifton. The Upscales Microclados, which is settling in well, and a very nice A. Turaki he has. He warned me that the Turaki was sensitive, and it immediately lost most of its flesh upon being mounted to the rocks. Luckily he gave me another small frag which I mounted and put in the raceway, where it's already encrusting the plug. Frags love the laminar flow in that raceway.
(4) Still having coral color issues, but since I haven't done a water change in two months now, I probably shouldn't be surprised. I have discontinued Brightwell Poatssion since I want to give Lugols solution another try, and it has potassium iodide in it. Getting some good blue returning in my pokerstar monti. Plus my blood shrimp immediately shed when I started adding it. Can it be true...? I am up to 3.5ml VSV per day. I am going to lower my MH Lights one inch and finally hook up the actinics. I'm starting to feel the urge to redo my lightrack and apply all the things I've learned (like being able to get it out of my way).