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Jimroth's Big Ol' Tank
- Thread starter jimroth
- Start date
reefsandrotts
NJRC Member
That sucks Jim sorry to read that 
Yes, thanks folks, I mostly feel financial pain, to tell you the truth. My time working as a keeper in the zoo left me pretty unsentimental about animals, especially the cold-blooded ones.
Now I have to figure out another place to get a majestic angel, a bigger one I think, and decide just how much quarantine I'm going to give it. I still feel I have to treat for flukes, maybe just 24 hours in cupramine, and then change the water and 24 hours with prazinquel.
Now I have to figure out another place to get a majestic angel, a bigger one I think, and decide just how much quarantine I'm going to give it. I still feel I have to treat for flukes, maybe just 24 hours in cupramine, and then change the water and 24 hours with prazinquel.
Added a third Vortech MP40W water mover to my tank. Since I have one at each end, my plan was to put it on the back wall blowing towards the front of the tank. This proved astoundingly difficult, especially fastening the little adhesive hanger. But it's done and now there is a real ocean current blowing through the tunnel in the middle of my reef. Took the fish by surprise, fun to watch. My only concerns are: (1) The wetsides need to be pulled off and cleaned every couple months, that's gonna be fun, and (2) The current is wobbling my big A. Efflo. The efflo seems to have a fibrous connection at the base rather than being truly encrusted. It's possible a little movement will make it hurry up and encrust the rock, but I really don't want to look and see it on its side again. I was months getting it remounted to my satisfaction, an effort that included glue, toothpicks and a splint to keep it standing up!
Also purchased a few magnetic frag plugs ("Frag Mags") to put some frags on the outside of my overflow (to compete with the @#$%ing pocillopora already growing there!) In truth it's something anyone could make, but the price was not bad. And since I dropped the Vortech wetside onto my purple A. Nana, I had a few frags ready to go!
Made a bad discovery about the Aquacontroller 3's switched outlet (DC8). It can't handle the amperage of my new dual 400W ballast. I apparently burned out one of the triacs (?) making that outlet useless. Off to HD today to by a big honking 3-prong timer, but wasn't the point of the AC3 to get away from those?
Also purchased a few magnetic frag plugs ("Frag Mags") to put some frags on the outside of my overflow (to compete with the @#$%ing pocillopora already growing there!) In truth it's something anyone could make, but the price was not bad. And since I dropped the Vortech wetside onto my purple A. Nana, I had a few frags ready to go!
Made a bad discovery about the Aquacontroller 3's switched outlet (DC8). It can't handle the amperage of my new dual 400W ballast. I apparently burned out one of the triacs (?) making that outlet useless. Off to HD today to by a big honking 3-prong timer, but wasn't the point of the AC3 to get away from those?
I'm oncall this week (and weekend), I can barely go out into the yard, let alone down the shore (to Trop), since I'm keeping the nation's financial environment out of the ditch.
To add to Jim's Cavalcade of Bad News, my one-year-plus Yellow Longnose Butterfly, a fat and happy fish, decided to try life on the carpet yesterday. I could just $%&#. I already mounted the hooks for the netting but had not yet put on the netting. I guess he was using his last chance for suicide. Open top tanks really look cool, but there are more fish that jump than people think.
One of my two female square anthias, which had lost her second eye a month ago to an infection, finally came out on the rockwork and swam up to the top. Being completely blind she had stopped feeding and hid in the rockwork. I removed the fish and euthanized it.
I guess I need to buy some more fish!
What now? :
To add to Jim's Cavalcade of Bad News, my one-year-plus Yellow Longnose Butterfly, a fat and happy fish, decided to try life on the carpet yesterday. I could just $%&#. I already mounted the hooks for the netting but had not yet put on the netting. I guess he was using his last chance for suicide. Open top tanks really look cool, but there are more fish that jump than people think.
One of my two female square anthias, which had lost her second eye a month ago to an infection, finally came out on the rockwork and swam up to the top. Being completely blind she had stopped feeding and hid in the rockwork. I removed the fish and euthanized it.
I guess I need to buy some more fish!
What now? :
I replaced the yellow longnose butterfly, since they are a fairly inexpensive fish and I didn't want the other fish to forget about him (long story). Man they are tough little fish, like a damsel almost. I drip acclimated him for 40 minutes and dumped him in, a few minutes and he was pushing the other fish aside to get to the food!
The tank is covered with netting now, not pretty but it will do until I fashion something better.
I picked up three forms of cyphastrea I didn't have, Purple People Eater (green w/purple polyps) Tyree Japonica (blue-gray background w/green polyps) and something or other ocelina which is red/rellow. They look WOW! but are mostly pretty small to photograph. I am going to try and grow them out over some old brain coral skeletons. Should look cool.
Also got a frag of mini war coral in the meeting raffle, unreal colors (orange with green eyes) but still booger-sized.
The tank is covered with netting now, not pretty but it will do until I fashion something better.
I picked up three forms of cyphastrea I didn't have, Purple People Eater (green w/purple polyps) Tyree Japonica (blue-gray background w/green polyps) and something or other ocelina which is red/rellow. They look WOW! but are mostly pretty small to photograph. I am going to try and grow them out over some old brain coral skeletons. Should look cool.
Also got a frag of mini war coral in the meeting raffle, unreal colors (orange with green eyes) but still booger-sized.
Cool moment of the week: I have a green acro which has never grown much for me, it was sold as green slimer but it isn't. I was doing tank maintenance and I broke off the precious 1.5" of new growth on the top. I saw it lying on the rocks below and made a mental note to recover it and mount it. When I looked a half hour later it was gone. I looked all over that end of the tank, even shoved my head up under the lights. No sign of it. Crud. A little later. I'm just looking at my corals, and here comes the tomato clown holding the frag like a dog with a stick! He removes the offending object from the anemone's area and carefully places it on a rock, where I picked it up from and mounted it. Good clown!
My white Atlantic urchin from the group buy is doing an amazing job eating coralline algae. On the rocks, he cleans right down to the white part. I wasn't sure how to feel about that, and then last week it basically ate all the coralline frome the back of the tank in two days. Like a lawnmower.
I found a little (2") skinny earthworm in a puddle on my deck and fed it to my copperband, who was very enthusiastic about it.
I'm running out of "choice" spots to mount coral in the tank. I still have a "show size" hunk of LR in my rock bin, that may have to be added to the aquascape, up at the less decorated right side. Need to get rid of my rock with 1000 pale green palys, it's up at that end too.
I fragged my ORA Purple Plasma, which is doing fine, but I found one of those rare good spots that needed something spectacular. My ORA Red Planet has been doing so badly (dark brown, dormant) that I pried it out of the rocks and found a new spot for it a little further down. In the process I scraped all the axial corallites in hopes of starting new growth.
ORA Bellina was beautiful when I got it, it's dull green now. Coral coloration, still a mystery to me. Most of my sticks are looking better than ever under the new Oyster Feast regimen.
My white Atlantic urchin from the group buy is doing an amazing job eating coralline algae. On the rocks, he cleans right down to the white part. I wasn't sure how to feel about that, and then last week it basically ate all the coralline frome the back of the tank in two days. Like a lawnmower.
I found a little (2") skinny earthworm in a puddle on my deck and fed it to my copperband, who was very enthusiastic about it.
I'm running out of "choice" spots to mount coral in the tank. I still have a "show size" hunk of LR in my rock bin, that may have to be added to the aquascape, up at the less decorated right side. Need to get rid of my rock with 1000 pale green palys, it's up at that end too.
I fragged my ORA Purple Plasma, which is doing fine, but I found one of those rare good spots that needed something spectacular. My ORA Red Planet has been doing so badly (dark brown, dormant) that I pried it out of the rocks and found a new spot for it a little further down. In the process I scraped all the axial corallites in hopes of starting new growth.
ORA Bellina was beautiful when I got it, it's dull green now. Coral coloration, still a mystery to me. Most of my sticks are looking better than ever under the new Oyster Feast regimen.
