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Jimroth's Big Ol' Tank

magic

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Pulled out the rtn'd coral branches and dead and marginal corals yesterday. Small bucket full of branches..

Jim

Sorry to hear about all the loss. Hang in there I know exactly how you feel. I only have one fragable coral but your welcome to it.

Bob
 
Jim

Sorry to hear about all the loss. Hang in there I know exactly how you feel. I only have one fragable coral but your welcome to it.

Bob

It's a challenge. Now my ORA Joe the coral is starting to RTN, trying to arrest that.

Hey I'll get to try some exciting new corals!
 

Tazmaniancowboy

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Sorry to hear this Jim, I went through the same thing with the hurricane and lost close to 75% of my reef in a little over 3 days without power. I probably would have lost it all if my ecotech battery didn't last 3 full days!.
Luckily I didn't lose power at all this go around, but It probably wouldn't have made much difference at this point. It is going to take me a LONG time to recouperate from the last disaster. If there was a bright side, I had been wanting to redo my rockwork and didn't want to disturb anything, now It doesn't matter! Hang in there
 

Sunny

NJRC Member
Article Contributor
Jim

I have some decent SPS collection right now. LMK if you want to stop buy for whatever you need.

Sunny
 
hey jim, i know how bad you guys get struck with destruction up there. lowes sells whole house generators, with pretty good financing. its worth taking a look at. hope all turns around for ya
 
One sad result of losing your algae eating fish is that after a couple weeks you find oout what algae they were keeping down. Now getting hair algae, even on the glass. Was going to wait to buy fish but I need to get on top of this. I wanted to wait for a Magnificent Foxface but I think I'll have to go with the regular yellow guy for now.
 
Jim, I have a really nice little Lawnmower Benny - you can have him! Stop by anytime ... neighbor!



Sent from my iPhone!
 
Jim, I have a really nice little Lawnmower Benny - you can have him! Stop by anytime ... neighbor!

Sent from my iPhone!

That's too good an offer to pass up. The foxface and kole tang I got are working hard, but they're so small they don't have much effect. Are you able to catch the blenny?
 
Added lawnmower blenny, small unimaculatus foxface, small kole tang . Also added big powder blue tang trochus and top crown snails from AO. The algae removal team is on the job! The top crown snail is huge and eats algae like crazy. May have to buy more of those. Plus it has live barnacles on it.
The kole is hiding or deceased. The PBT is in a war with the majestic angel over who owns the cave. As usual the foxface is doing most of the work.
 
I can tell the phosphates are dropping in my tank. The fouling of the glass has slowed down and changed from green to clear.
As part of my self-directed "reef intervention" I removed my once-proud Phonepe birdsnest colony from the tank. It had become a football-sized ball of bubble algae. I pulled it apart and rescued the handful of growing tips poking through the mess. There were a few solid branches surrounding the location too. Since I grew it originally from a tiny frag, I think I will have no problem regrowing it over time. A similar procedure was followed with my pinkish birdsnest and will soon be followed with the ORA green bird.
I have been chopping up colonies of the horrid rainbow pocillopora. It is hell to remove, there is no way to get the cutters around the base, and the skeleton is not fragile but finger-bustingly tough! That said, I removed a couple easy ones, growing on PVC, and if anyone wants to try this beautiful coral, let me know.
I managed to bust the top of my TLF Phosban Reactor 150 trying to get caked in GFO out of it, so I replaced it with the bigger 550 model. I was running two of the smaller ones, but changing those is more work than changing one big one. So I will have one big one for carbon and one for GFO.
Thoose who have seen my tank or some photos of it know that I run those off a PVC globe valve manifold from Aquatic Ecosystems. That has been a disappointment over time, because in my calcium-rich environment the valves become crusty and no longer seal. As you might imagine that makes changing the reactors difficult without shutting off the return pump. I have replaced the top ends of the valves on a couple by buying and disassembling PVC globe valves, but it keeps happening.
The skimmer is now dialed in just right, and producing about 6-10 oz. of dark nasty crud a day.
I have sharply reduced my feeding of the fish, doing dry in the morning (NLS, Hikari) in the morning and a reduced amount of PE mysis in the evening. I have also reduced dosing of coral food (Oyster Feast) to a couple times a week.
Up next: mushroom assasination by kalk injection!
 
Jim, I also thought you were a “vodka doser.” If so, are you still dosing vodka?

after what he has been thru - i wouldn't be surprised if jim was dosing vodka to himself!!!!!! :D

but it does seem like things are looking up.

So you are the second person to warn of the hypnotic and aggressive growth of pocci. My pocci (courtesy of herb) is confined to a small island (made of pvc). It grows without stopping. I'm guessing your advice is to frag before it spreads to far?
 
after what he has been thru - i wouldn't be surprised if jim was dosing vodka to himself!!!!!! :D

but it does seem like things are looking up.

So you are the second person to warn of the hypnotic and aggressive growth of pocci. My pocci (courtesy of herb) is confined to a small island (made of pvc). It grows without stopping. I'm guessing your advice is to frag before it spreads to far?
No, it doesn't spread like you think. It reproduces with internal brooding, so it can make daughter colonies anywhere. My advice is to not let the original colony get much larger than 3", that seems to retard the spawning activity. It's cool to have new colonies, but they seek out the best realestate in the tank. Once established they are tough to destroy, not like acros and mointis!
 
One interesting thing was observed after the big insult and deaths involved in the blackout.

When I built my reef I made a support structure on PVC pipe with holes drilled in it, see way earlier in the thread. It connects to a barb fittting in the tank. When I do water changes I run a hose to the barb fitting a suck out the water and sand from inside and adjacent to the pipes. usually I get a little muddy water and sand out of there. When I did my water change after the disaster, what came out of there was EXTREMELY NASTY. And there was a lot of it. So that thing is worthwhile. I never saw bodies for my regal angel or royal gramma, they were somebody's expensive lunch. So maybe that was liquid fish.
 
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