Paul's 4' 65

[footballdude2k3]

Hey guys

I will start out by saying this is a somewhat temporary tank, I had a 125, the heater cracked, killed all of my coral, and quite a few fish, I was moving to a new place, so I took a 65 out of storage since the new place is only 600 square feet, and I have about 10 months left on the lease. I have a 120 and 125 in storage, and I am pretty sure the 120 will be getting setup at the new place. I decided to regulate the temp of the tank with the temp of the apartment instead of a heater, and decided to take as much out of the tank as was possible, this meant upgrading to VorTechs, I have one MP40 in there right now, and will be getting a second one in the next month or so.

It is currently sumpless because I was not able to fit my skimmer under the stand, since I had forgot how small 12" is front to back, I have had an issue with hair algae, so I have decided that will not do. I am going to be ordering a glass holes kit to drill the tank, and put a small rubbermaid next to the tank to hold the skimmer, and cover it with an end table.

I will try to keep these lists updated as an easy reference point, so I know what I have, I keep spreadsheets of the corals I buy, so I can see how big they were, and how much I had paid, so when it is time to frag them, I have an idea of what to sell them for. I hate coral names, but I keep track of them, because it is easier to tell somebody, hey I want an SC Orange Passion, than I want that acro that has a bunch of different colors.

This is a mixed reef because the GF likes LPS, people in San Antonio only seem to like zoas, and they are pretty easy to grow out and frag to help support new purchases, and I love me some SPS, so there should be a pretty good mix. I have been in the hobby for about 5.5 years now, I work from home for a big tech company, so I get to monitor my tank as much as I want, so I usually have a pretty good idea of what is going on.

I need to get a tripod and a new lens, so a lot of the pictures have not been coming out so well, and I am using LEDs so the blue is hard to compensate for.

Livestock
2 Black and White Clowns
3 either Blue/Green or Black Axil Chromi
1 Orchid Dottyback
1 Exquisite Fairy Wrasse
1 Hoeven's Wrasse to keep not so fun things under control

SPS
Red Planet
Rainbow Acro
Green/Gold Mille
Purple/Orange/Forrest Green Mille
Strawberry Mille
Red Dragon
Screaming Green Birdsnest
Green Monti Digi
Orange/Green birdsnest
Superman Monti
Sunset Monti
Rainbow Monti
UWW Starburst Monti
Hologram Monti
Purple Monti Cap
Orange Monti Cap

LPS
3 acan lords
two tone war coral
Green Scoly
2 favias
Purple/Green Favites
Acan Bowerbanki

Zoas
Fruit Loops
Utter Chaos
Paradise
Green Bay Packer
Rastas
Fire and Ice
Large multi rock, with what looks like Whammin Watermelons, Radioactive Dragon Eyes, Green Bay Packer, and I think one other one.

Photobucket is down, so I can't load any pictures right now, but I will get them up later today.

 

[footballdude2k3]

 

[footballdude2k3]

Some pictures were taken with blues on, and some with them off. I am going to have to spend more time learning how to adjust color to get rid of the colors that you would usually see on a website that was trying to get ridiculous amounts of money for a small frag. Any tips are welcome.

 

[revhtree]

Looking good!

 

[footballdude2k3]

Decided to rent a macro lens for the day because I was not sure if I wanted to buy one, and figured $20 is a lot less to pay than $600 for something I do not want, well I am going to be picking one up for sure. These were with the VorTechs still running, so I am going to turn them off to get some better pictures tonight and tomorrow, but here are some I took earlier.

Strawberry Mille


Supposed to be a Red Planet, not sure if it is though


Joe the Acro


Green and Gold Mille

 

[footballdude2k3]

Forgot to add an acan as well

 

[footballdude2k3]

First time out with a macro lens, not bad, definitely going to pick one of these up, still lots to learn, but I loved it.

Fruit Loops




Acan Lord


Strawberry mille




Green and gold mille


Asterina starfish


Cleaner Shrimp


Forrest green and purple mille, only some of the feeders are purple, hard to get the color right on this one

 

[footballdude2k3]

Joe the Acro




Small Red Planet frag




Supposed to be a Cali tort, not sure on that yet, it's still pretty small


PC Rainbow Acro


Rainbow Nasuta, the colony of this one looked amazing, very excited to see it grow

 

[footballdude2k3]

Lost one chromis, and it looks like another one has not been doing so well, has not been eating much recently. The Melanurus is out for 5-7 minutes per day, and most of the coral has been light acclimated, so now it is just time to let things grow, and see what happens.

 

[footballdude2k3]

Made some new purchases on DD tonight, they'll be here on Tuesday, I have always been happy with everything with them, but the order was placed at 5:10, and they charged me for Saturday delivery, and when I called to verify they were going to the right place, because last time they went to the wrong apartment, they said it wouldn't go out until Monday. Definitely not the end of the world, but I they should have blocked out the option to ship it on Saturday if they could not.

Blue/purple mille


Some sort of a pink mille, I loved that it had so many branches, in my last tank, I was able to keep these very pink, so I think I should keep this one pretty close


Close to a dragon soul, but looks to be missing one of the colors, either way, the gf really wanted this piece for awhile and it had been there for a few weeks, so I got that one for her


Trapezia crab, I will put it in one of the bigger mille's and see how it does, almost bought a couple more, but next time they have some tetralia, I will grab one or two of those to see if there is a difference in how the colonies do.

 

[footballdude2k3]

Had a huge long ordeal where the order was sent to the wrong place, and then had issues with UPS, so instead of 930 am, the stuff didn't start acclimation until 10 pm. As of last night and so far this morning, the favia had a liiiiiittle bit of skeleton showing on one of the heads, both mille's had ridiculous PE, and while I have not seen the crab today, last night he looked alright. Even though the whole ordeal was not the best day of reefing I have had, I am encouraged that this stuff will be ok because DD always packs their stuff so well.

 

[fishroomlady]

I haven't seen this thread or I would have commented earlier! first, your livestock looks great and you did a fantastic job on those macro shots especially given that that was something you hadn't used before??!! It sounds like the ordeal had a positive outcome so that is good! the pieces you ordered look awesome. I love inverts and that crab looks so cool. That will be interesting to see if there's a difference in terms of health and growth with and without a crab.

would love to see a FTS of your system. I also have a 65 although mine is a wide at 3 ft. length.

 

[footballdude2k3]

Thanks for the kind words! I really thought I had more FTS, I will have to take a look on my computer and put some on here later today, I was under the impression it was a 65 breeder, like yours, but it was cheap, and it was a few weeks before I bought my SUV, so I rented one for a day, and I didn't see a point of not buying it since I was there. It has been fun for the most part, I need to suck it up and go to gl*******s so I can buy an overflow, and start using the skimmer from my old tank that is sitting right next to this tank.

With Ecotech having a sale, I am going to pickup my second MP40 in about 2 weeks, and order an eheim return pump as well, and then this pesky algae issue can finally go away. I literally have turbos that sleep most of the time because they are full from eating too much.

 

[footballdude2k3]

That is an older one, and surprisingly, the only one I have taken, I have more of a either GHA or bryoprisis issue now, but as soon as I can get this thing drilled, I am pretty sure that will be gone pretty quick.

 

[fishroomlady]

looks good! I like the three islands you have going on. That tank looks a lot bigger than a 65

 

[footballdude2k3]

Thanks a lot! I cannot wait until May so I can get the 120 out of storage, instead of just talking about it, I just pulled the trigger on a glass-holes 700 overflow with lid, and Eheim 1250 return pump, hopefully that will be here next week, and then the second VorTech will get ordered once I have this setup

 

[footballdude2k3]

So, I had put the trapezia crab in the biggest acro that I had, knowing that it would work out best for him, since he isn't exactly tiny, well he had other ideas. The new mille colonies had a little bit of algae on them, the turbo snails decided that organic new algae, is more addictive than cocaine to a new pop star. There were two turbos on each coral, and they turned everything around, and one of them was near my scoly, which was puffed up much more than usual, like when he gets a molt from my fire shrimp, so I thought, that was an expensive meal for him. Well, last night about an hour after lights out, I was feeding the tank for the coral to get some noms, and all the way on the right, in the sand, directly under the VorTech, was the crab against the glass trying to catch some food.

The crab is still alive, and apparently decided he wanted to rent a new location in the tank, he has no desire to stay in any of the pieces of coral I have, but a realtor is currently showing him around all of the caves in my tank, the negotiations have thus far been pretty one sided, with him giving me the silent treatment.

 

[footballdude2k3]

Did a water change, decided to quick clean out the powerheads, those things get pretty dirty sometimes, but there is better flow going on in the tank which is nice. I have enough water now where I am running the skimmer in a sump, and will manually swap out 5 gallons of water 1-3 times per day to help keep the water a bit cleaner to choke out some of this algae. My order from glass-holes shipped out this morning, so hopefully I will get to drain the tank in this next week or so.

 

[footballdude2k3]

Ordered an acan frag pack, another acan, the rainbow dragon soul favia, and AquaSD's rainbow mille, which should all be here next week. The overflow and return pump will be here on Tuesday, so Tuesday after work I will be drilling the tank, very excited to finally be able to use my skimmer again. With this thing having such a small footprint, I need to be pretty much done with LPS until the upgrade next year, and I am going to have to spend this week getting everything out of the sand that can go on the rock.

 

[fishroomlady]

thanks for the updates! I love your crab and snail description lol