40b with DIY AIO

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

Well, a text from a friend yesterday completely changed my morning around.

The tank had been neglected for months by the previous owner. Everything was covered in inches of bubble algae. A lot of corals had already died, but there were quite a few different mushrooms still left, a sad Kenya tree, 2 toadstools (went into my bedroom tank) and whatever the giant thing is in the last picture.

There also was quite a bit of CuC still alive. I got 2 emerald crabs, ~10 hermits, a sand tiger conch, an astrea snail, and hundreds of micro brittle stars. The picture of the stars is only what came out of the clumps of bubble algae all over the power head pictured below them

It took hours to go through all of the algae and rock work, but I saved as many of the brittle stars as I could. There were also 3 fish still remaining. 2 black and white damsels (they are in my Deskmate for the time being) and a Fiji blue damsel that went into this one.

I also got an AI Hydra 64 HD out of this, which that itself made all of the work worth it. This means the Hydra will be going on the SPS side of the tank, the Prime 16 HD will move over to the other side where the Kessil currently is. Which frees up the Kessil a80 tuna blue to go onto the JBJ 20g AIO I picked up the other week for a mushroom grow out tank.

 

[trellemania]

One man's trash is another's treasure! Great save! Cant believe some people would rather get rid of it like that!

 

[UncommonSense]

That’s a score!! Cylinders basically never show up on the used market! — the only one I’ve ever seen was a 90g freshwater tank they were asking $2.5k for!

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

That’s a score!! Cylinders basically never show up on the used market! — the only one I’ve ever seen was a 90g freshwater tank they were asking $2.5k for!

I don’t even know where to begin pricing the tank, stand, and sump at. It would be a neat tank for jellyfish, I just don’t have the time or funds to set up another tank, especially one of that size.

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

One man's trash is another's treasure! Great save! Cant believe some people would rather get rid of it like that!

The new owner had no desire to start learning the hobby due to the state the tank was left in. Honestly can’t blame him after seeing how bad it was in person. I offered to split whatever I make from the sale of the tank/stand/sump and he declined

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

Some of the mushrooms from the tank breakdown yesterday. Didn’t take them long to settle into this tank. I took 1 to add to my bedroom tank that is mainly mushrooms due to the 6 sexy shrimp in there being little little buttheads.

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

Earlier today, I traded 6 micro brittle stars

For some more zoas with @ShanePike

The baby Jawbreaker and Dragon Lady bounce mushrooms are still little, but coming along nicely

And my first “real” acro is doing amazing!

The top is shooting up with new growth

And it looks like it’s starting to shoot up over on the left side as well

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

The HMS I ordered myself as an early birthday present came in the mail yesterday! The tank looks so much brighter already.


The better lighting also has made my photos come out a bit crisper as well.

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

Had a series of wild storms hit Saturday that took my power out. Not sure what time it went out, but I got home from fighting an hour of traffic after working all day, to all 3 of my tanks starting to not look good. A tree took out a bunch of power lines at one of the entrances to my neighborhood and was blocking the road.

Luckily, I bought a generator for winter storms we had earlier in the year and was fully prepared. This time.



GA Power originally didn’t even have an expected time of restoration, the storms had did so much damage. I had enough gas to last until 7am Sunday morning, when I ran to refill my gas can.

I still had to work 12-5 Sunday, and couldn’t just leave the generator running while I was gone. Thankfully the woman I’ve been seeing the last year was willing to hang out for a few hours until my mother was able to get over to my house. They met for the first time ever, so that was super cool .

The update I had to go by was expected restoration for 8pm Sunday. It eventually was restored a little before 3pm. All in all I was without power for ~24 hours. First time that has happened since living on one of the many islands I lived and worked on in my previous life as a scuba instructor.

Everything seems to be recovering so far, with no losses as of yet thankfully. I can’t imagine what would have happened to my fish/inverts/corals going for that long without power to anything.

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

It’s been quite a while since I updated this thread. Shortly after the power went out, this tank crashed right as I was leaving to go out of town to celebrate my birthday. I noticed things looked off Sunday evening, worked all day Monday, did a 5g water change, moved my more expensive zoas, mushrooms, and SPS into my bedroom 15g cube, and hoped for the best. I came home to a disaster. Every soft coral that wasn’t moved, melted away. Most of the SPS died other than half of a stylo frag and apparently the wall mounted cyphastrea. The Duncan colony, 2 headed candy cane frag, favia colony, and the blue chalice all survived somehow. It was odd that LPS and some SPS survived while every zoa/mushroom/xenia melted away.


I did a 15 gallon water change, followed by a 10 gallon one two days later and then just left it alone for a month. The cyphastrea that was a completely white skeleton for weeks, came back to life. It’s currently sending out sweepers to clean surrounding areas for expansion on an almost daily basis. Apparently all mushrooms melted away, save a few tiny red discos that started making appearances in the rubble. I slowly started moving things back over from my bedroom tank, trying to save them from the sexy shrimp in that tank (they killed a few zoas and almost a purple stylo that I got out in time).

Things stabilized, and then some. Severely damaged frags are recovering at a rapid rate. I was also able to restock things much, much faster than I otherwise would have thanks to some wonderful people in my local reef club. I traded, bought for dirt cheap, and was given so much coral the past two months. There’s no way I spent over $100, and $70 of that was just yesterday on a jellybean chalice and ASD Rainbow milli frag.

Zoas I made single head frags of on the 3rd of this month, all have 2+ babies on them already. The space invader pectinia that was severely damaged by a chalice while they were in my bedroom tank during the crash, is just about finally fully healed up. Only a tiny little patch of skeleton with algae remains.

Here’s a tour of what the tank looks like currently. It’s hard to believe 3 months ago barely any coral survived whatever caused this tank to crash.

 

[BristleWormHater]

It’s been quite a while since I updated this thread. Shortly after the power went out, this tank crashed right as I was leaving to go out of town to celebrate my birthday. I noticed things looked off Sunday evening, worked all day Monday, did a 5g water change, moved my more expensive zoas, mushrooms, and SPS into my bedroom 15g cube, and hoped for the best. I came home to a disaster. Every soft coral that wasn’t moved, melted away. Most of the SPS died other than half of a stylo frag and apparently the wall mounted cyphastrea. The Duncan colony, 2 headed candy cane frag, favia colony, and the blue chalice all survived somehow. It was odd that LPS and some SPS survived while every zoa/mushroom/xenia melted away.


I did a 15 gallon water change, followed by a 10 gallon one two days later and then just left it alone for a month. The cyphastrea that was a completely white skeleton for weeks, came back to life. It’s currently sending out sweepers to clean surrounding areas for expansion on an almost daily basis. Apparently all mushrooms melted away, save a few tiny red discos that started making appearances in the rubble. I slowly started moving things back over from my bedroom tank, trying to save them from the sexy shrimp in that tank (they killed a few zoas and almost a purple stylo that I got out in time).

Things stabilized, and then some. Severely damaged frags are recovering at a rapid rate. I was also able to restock things much, much faster than I otherwise would have thanks to some wonderful people in my local reef club. I traded, bought for dirt cheap, and was given so much coral the past two months. There’s no way I spent over $100, and $70 of that was just yesterday on a jellybean chalice and ASD Rainbow milli frag.

Zoas I made single head frags of on the 3rd of this month, all have 2+ babies on them already. The space invader pectinia that was severely damaged by a chalice while they were in my bedroom tank during the crash, is just about finally fully healed up. Only a tiny little patch of skeleton with algae remains.

Here’s a tour of what the tank looks like currently. It’s hard to believe 3 months ago barely any coral survived whatever caused this tank to crash.

That sucks, nice to see things are going well again. The ARC community is very nice!

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

I found the first picture of my skittles bomb cyphastrea from Oct 24, 2024

This is where it’s at now. It survived this tank crashing in June, it was a bone white skeleton for weeks, then started coming back to life.

Shots of my first “meet viral”, an indophyllia that was given to me last week.

I didn’t notice it at first, but the jellybean chalice that was sold to me as just red, has this little streak of green through it which was a nice surprise to find!

Macro shot of one of the tips of the forest fire digi frag that was given to me last week

The jellybean chalice looks maroon compared to the red convict chalice next to it

My first real acro is still just chugging along

The exospheres I traded some fairy farts for

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

I won a $250 gift card to @Corals.com last week and placed my order on Monday. Everything got here Tuesday, and they were kind enough to send me a few freebies as well! Everything has settled into this tank nicely, including the few pink coral that my 4 year old picked out for “her” tank. Here is everything I got!

Strawberry Shortcake acro

Purple and neon ricordea

Pink/purple favia war coral

Pink stylophora

Pink zoas

Bower Banki

Acan Lord

And some shots of a few frag racks

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

Some updates!

A few weeks ago I traded @BristleWormHater an ATO I never used (and forgot I even had) and a frag of goldenrod anacropora for this lovely goofball

Reefing USA also stopped by my area this past weekend, and I made the 40 min drive up to check it out. It was smaller than I expected it would be, but it was also their first time here and the few vendors that were there had some really nice pieces. I picked up a $25 RFA and a stunning Deadpool Jawbreaker to go into my bedroom 15g from @Oceanic_Gardens

I also picked up 2 more zoas to add to my collection from @CherryCorals , that also fit the colors my 4 yr old wants in her little tank: pikachus and rainbow infusions.

And here are just some recent shots around the tank.

 

[trellemania]

Dude these are stunning pictures!! Great picks too!

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

Dude these are stunning pictures!! Great picks too!

Thanks!

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

Pictures from the other evening

 

[Hunna’s Stunnas]

The clowns in this tank are now laying eggs. They laid their first batch 3 weeks ago, and second one a week after the first round was done hatching. I didn’t have the pot in the tank fast enough though and these were laid on the base of the Duncan hosting the clowns again.

Everything in this tank is doing fantastic, other than 1 zoa and 2 small sps nubs I got for cheap. Some of the colors that have come out of stuff the last few months are unreal. Like this free acan lord @Corals.com tossed in my order. It was a deep red with not much else, and now looks like this.

The strawberry shortcake acro I purchased from them has fully puddled out on the frag disc and starting to shoot up in multiple places. These are from Jan 22, so there’s even more growth now.

The only real bad thing that has happened was that I finally pulled the trigger and got a mandarin for this tank. Within minutes of introducing it after a lengthy acclimation, my starry blenny went on a full out assault on it. I pulled the mandarin and moved it to my bedroom tank. I sold it to a local club member for what I paid for it, since it was way too big to spend the rest of its life in my bedroom 15g. Real bummer, since I’ve wanted one of these for quite some time now. I at least got a handful of pictures of it before I passed it along, and it went to a great home.

 

[stE25wy14]

The clowns in this tank are now laying eggs. They laid their first batch 3 weeks ago, and second one a week after the first round was done hatching. I didn’t have the pot in the tank fast enough though and these were laid on the base of the Duncan hosting the clowns again.

Everything in this tank is doing fantastic, other than 1 zoa and 2 small sps nubs I got for cheap. Some of the colors that have come out of stuff the last few months are unreal. Like this free acan lord @Corals.com tossed in my order. It was a deep red with not much else, and now looks like this.

The strawberry shortcake acro I purchased from them has fully puddled out on the frag disc and starting to shoot up in multiple places. These are from Jan 22, so there’s even more growth now.

The only real bad thing that has happened was that I finally pulled the trigger and got a mandarin for this tank. Within minutes of introducing it after a lengthy acclimation, my starry blenny went on a full out assault on it. I pulled the mandarin and moved it to my bedroom tank. I sold it to a local club member for what I paid for it, since it was way too big to spend the rest of its life in my bedroom 15g. Real bummer, since I’ve wanted one of these for quite some time now. I at least got a handful of pictures of it before I passed it along, and it went to a great home.

luckyyy good luck with all those little babies!!

 

[Corals.com]

The clowns in this tank are now laying eggs. They laid their first batch 3 weeks ago, and second one a week after the first round was done hatching. I didn’t have the pot in the tank fast enough though and these were laid on the base of the Duncan hosting the clowns again.

Everything in this tank is doing fantastic, other than 1 zoa and 2 small sps nubs I got for cheap. Some of the colors that have come out of stuff the last few months are unreal. Like this free acan lord @Corals.com tossed in my order. It was a deep red with not much else, and now looks like this.

The strawberry shortcake acro I purchased from them has fully puddled out on the frag disc and starting to shoot up in multiple places. These are from Jan 22, so there’s even more growth now.

The only real bad thing that has happened was that I finally pulled the trigger and got a mandarin for this tank. Within minutes of introducing it after a lengthy acclimation, my starry blenny went on a full out assault on it. I pulled the mandarin and moved it to my bedroom tank. I sold it to a local club member for what I paid for it, since it was way too big to spend the rest of its life in my bedroom 15g. Real bummer, since I’ve wanted one of these for quite some time now. I at least got a handful of pictures of it before I passed it along, and it went to a great home.

Awesome shots!!