Hart's 120 3/4" starfire expansion!

[hart24601]

I think it's been about a month with no visible ich, so I am not too worried about it now. I think the combo of the diatom filter and good nutrition helped them build up an immunity (which I didn't know was a thing until I googled scholor searched it. There is TONS about marine ich immunity). The bare bottom and tons of flow might have helped. I sure hope the Dr. G's works for the butterfly fish (2 of the 3) bacterial infections. Been not quite 3 days and it looks like it might be getting better, but I can't tell for sure. Lucky everything seems to like both Dr G's products, so I have hope.

The HUGE other news today is this weekend I saw my white-tail bristletooth tang just destroying coral. In the past I rehomed several coral he picked on, but now he is biting zoas, the big gorg, the plate coral and the final straw - the clam mantles. I assume there is more nipping that I didn't see. So despite waiting 2 years for live aquaria to get them, and paying $300, it's time to go. Tried a few things, including borrowing a fish trap from the LFS but to no avail. One cool part to that is the store I gave the coral to didn't sell them so I took them back, including a really nice big open brain that I loved.

So after several days of no luck when I saw him bite the clam I got motivated. Complete tank transfer of rock and coral to 40g totes with tank water to leave only a few inches of water and I got him. I prepared well and had 30 gallons of new water so I took the opportunity to vac the sump too and clean the bottom after taking the ceramic rocks out. Only took 45 min to remove everything and get it back in and underwater. Had my gf pour water over the exposed coral, but a grand total of 3hr later all coral was back in place and all systems go. Everything looks great, so that is a big success in my book! Of course it's to remove a fancy fish so that isn't as fun... Figure I will ask locally for much less than I paid for him and see what interest I get, but it's exciting to not have everything picked at! He is super fat, I had nori for him everyday along with normal food. No coral looks like it was hurt too badly, clams are open, got a water change and got to suck out lots of detritus. I did see 4 berghia that were under rocks that I carefully moved. No idea if the other 8 are still alive, but I transferred those and hopefully they can still eat aptasia and have babies.

Busy Sunday afternoon, but feel pretty good about it.

 

[hart24601]

A few of the flowerpots, I took some pics for the flowerpot thread, but why not put them here too:

 

[hart24601]

Sad news. We had to put our cat down yesterday. He was only 3 years old, but after a couple of UTI issues it was discovered he had some nasty internal deformities and possibly cancer. My GF, Bliss, is pretty broken up about it. He was a very good cat, affectionate, never mean or crabby and just loved attention.

RIP Chunk.

A few photos, not the best ones sadly. In the one we shaved him after getting fleas last summer.

 

[gettaReef]

Ahh man, I can't imagine; I have a similar (very friendly) cat, but he's 9 years old. So sorry to hear that

 

[hart24601]

Ahh man, I can't imagine; I have a similar (very friendly) cat, but he's 9 years old. So sorry to hear that

Yea it's not any fun...


So back to coral. Few new pics, with the more intense hydra light reds are coming out a lot more in several corals, and the color in general is improving. A few quick shots of red planet with bubblegum mille, strawberry shortcake, leishman's acro small frag and cali tort.

 

[MRRBW]

Really enjoyed reading through your thread. Glad you kept updating and posting even though there aren't too many responses. How are you liking the miracles tank? I'm about to start an upgrade and looking at them to make my tank for me. do you find the 24" width is good or do you wish you had 30"? Beautiful corals and reefskape, keep it up!

 

[hart24601]

Really enjoyed reading through your thread. Glad you kept updating and posting even though there aren't too many responses. How are you liking the miracles tank? I'm about to start an upgrade and looking at them to make my tank for me. do you find the 24" width is good or do you wish you had 30"? Beautiful corals and reefskape, keep it up!

Glad you enjoyed it, always a work in progress! The thread is a nice place to store my photos if nothing else, lol.

As for miracles I honestly don't know how a tank could be made better. I am extremely happy we went with them. I am also happy with 24 deep, I like the 2x1x1 ratio the 48x24x24 has. I wouldn't turn down 30 deep, but if I was doing it again I would stick with 24", I didn't want a custom stand and 48x24 is easy to find, plus lighting would be harder for the coverage I like.

 

[hart24601]

So the Dr. G's medicated food seems to be working. Too soon for me to declare victory (the treatment time is 2 weeks), but after 1 week the mildly infected butterfly fish looks to be totally cleared up, the one that looked very sick is harder to tell since he was getting pretty bad, but I really think it's starting to clear up on him too. Lucky they still eat like pigs. Nothing else has changed, and despite very diverse feedings their infections were slowly getting worse, so I directly attribute recovery to the medicated food. The poor guy battling the heavy infection still is a long way from looking good, but I am even more optimistic that another week of treatment will fix him up. Those two butterfly fish came at the same time and must have gotten some bacterial infection either before they were shipped or upon arrival, the 3rd butterfly has been in the tank longer and is without any issues.

As advertised the food has had no negative impact on the tank. I am running fresh ROX carbon as the directions indicate. Clams, feather dusters, coral, I have noticed no change in them this week. The fish eat the food so fast that after about 30 seconds it's all gone.

 

[hart24601]

Been drama in the reef world. After removing the white-tail I noticed the purple tang had also taken to eating clam, and did a number on them except the derasa. Sad times, no idea if they will make it. I got him out of there by taking all the rock out again with coral attached - getting too good at that, only took about 10 min this time. So the star of the tank will be finding a new home I guess. Not 100% sure. Clams are my fav reef critter, but I am tempted that if they die from him to just go without clams, but I would probably eventually regret that as I know the desire for clams will be back after the mourning period! Other news while Dr Gs food did a good job on 2 of the butterfly fish the one that was infected pretty badly got worse. At least he was easy to catch and so I put him in a 10g tank with some furan-2 I had. I hope this clears him up. I think that I will now be without tangs for here on out and just get a couple more butterfly fish, they don’t fight much and several of them look good to me. We will see.

Other news I got some coral today from golden basket via eBay. I have been wanting some yellow acros and they had several yellow millepora. Yellow coral generally look green with all the blue lighting that is popular (yellow and blue make green!), but I run pretty white during the day and blue in the evening so I wanted a bit more colors. They look good and are healthy, nice job golden basket!

Of course now with the clams not doing well I guess I don't need to run that much white light...

 

[hart24601]

Build threads are fun when everything is going well, but not as fun when problems happen! So I noticed the issue with the 1 butterfly is flukes. I don't want to treat the DT with pazipro as I have lots of feather dusters and the expensive berghia. So I emptied the tank of rock, coral and water, again... for the 3rd time in 1 week! Caught all the fish which with 6 line and clown goby isn't easy and moved them all to a hospital tank after freshwater dip. The dip did confirm flukes. So I will treat the fish and leave the DT empty for 2 weeks. Most sources say the eggs hatch under 1 week and have 36hrs to attach so 2 weeks should be plenty. The DT is really clean now...

And my fav maxima, the big fat one isn't going to make it after the tangs loved him up. I was hoping it would, but started pulling away from the shell. :cry:

 

[Bao]

Wow, that is alot of trouble in just one week. Sorry to hear that.
One time I drained my tank to catch some fishes and exposed the sps to air for few minutes, 4 of them rtn the next day for me. I wouldn't dare to drain the tank again.

 

[hart24601]

Wow, that is alot of trouble in just one week. Sorry to hear that.
One time I drained my tank to catch some fishes and exposed the sps to air for few minutes, 4 of them rtn the next day for me. I wouldn't dare to drain the tank again.

Oh dang! Lucky none of the coral seem to care, most of them look totally normal 1hr later, which is crazy to me considering that not only do I drain the tank, but take out the rock with coral on them, even the fleshy LPS which I didn't wait to retract - the rubbermaid bins are not large enough to cover the rock and coral so about 1/3 of them stick out of the water along with the monti on the back wall, but I just dumped water over them every few min and 0 losses even on the LPS out of water! I think I am just lucky with that, which is nice considering all the other bad stuff the past week!

I think I should just stick to coral!

 

[hart24601]

I came across this post on RC from PaulB and it really seems accurate to me. Aside from Randy's chemistry posts this might be my new favorite quote. I put in bold the part that I really like.




Question:
Is there a specific version or era of your tanks you enjoyed more than the others?


"I think I liked it just before corals started to be kept. Keeping fish was still new and I still only knew one person with a salt water fish tank. Learning by trial and error was fun and I learned a new thing every day. When I went to a LFS or wholesaler I always saw a new animal that I have never saw before and I wanted it. Then I could get all excited learning about it by reading all I could even though information was limited.


I still like inverts such as crustaceans better than fish, I find them facinating.


The hobby was a challenge then and there was so much to learn.


I also enjoy building equiopment, there were wet drys, skimmers, ozonators, surface skimmers, UG filters, algae filters etc.


Now it is mostly people telling you you can't do this or that. There is so much incorrect information out there that it is staggering and I personally am tired of trying to answer questions and then having the person telling me something like I never heard that, or I heard that is wrong, or I heard you can't do that.
We all have our own ways to do things and I didn't learn on the internet so my ways may be different.


We now have a lot of "experts" and some of them are very knowledgable and I admire some of them, but some of them are so adament that their way is the only way and it annoys me. Some people actually want to fight you over this stuff thats how sure they are that their way is the way to go.
It's a fish "hobby" why would you get mad over a hobby?


I run a reverse UG filter but I would never tell anyone else to do that. It's my thing and I am in the vast minority, I may be the only one running one but it works for me. You should see the mail I get saying that is a terrable system and it can't work
No one is shooting at us here, it's a Hobby and not very important except to us."

 

[MRRBW]

opinions are a dime a dozen, but wisdom is accumulated with time. When people like Paul B, Sprung's and Palleta's of the world share their wisdom, it's worth more than most of the forum combined. It's true what he says, everyone is an expert now, especially behind the screen. Sorry to hear about your troubles, but you seem to be reacting appropriately and making the right moves.
As I'm more of a fish lover than coral lover, I would encourage you to not give up on the fish (it's the only way to have a tank ..... ;-) lol

 

[Vermont05452]

Tank build

Your dedication is amazing. Ive learn a lot via your thread.
I'm shopping tanks now for my step up from a 75g to I hope 120g.
I'm partial to the rimless and hadn't been able to find a tank above a 105g (made by DSA). I don't want to compromise my volume for rimless but I just might.
Can you please share the cost of your tank and anything you would have changed now if you could?
Did you tank size require any sort of top cross braces or such?
Are you using a cover of any sorts? If so how is it supported?

 

[hart24601]

Your dedication is amazing. Ive learn a lot via your thread.
I'm shopping tanks now for my step up from a 75g to I hope 120g.
I'm partial to the rimless and hadn't been able to find a tank above a 105g (made by DSA). I don't want to compromise my volume for rimless but I just might.
Can you please share the cost of your tank and anything you would have changed now if you could?
Did you tank size require any sort of top cross braces or such?
Are you using a cover of any sorts? If so how is it supported?

Happy to give some info. I wouldn't change anything, I am really happy with the tank design, but it was very expensive as I didn't want any bracing but a full 24" tall that made it require 3/4" glass all around with 3 panels made of starfire. I think the total was around 2200 or 2400 shipped, which unless you can find wholesale glass the price of the starfire is almost that much! Now if you want to go with eurobracing or go down to 22" tall or so then you can get thinner glass, and if you get thinner glass the benefit of starfire isn't that great so right there is a big savings. Shipping was also around $500, plus I got the external overflow which was more $$ and they had to recut and temper the back glass and go up to 3/4" on the back too. I am not using any cover. I had one fish jump out but I found him. It's about 2" from the waterline to the top.

I would call Miracles and talk with them, they are great, very nice and helpful and can answer all your questions and give you a better idea of options vs cost. Even though 3/4" glass is crazy thick for this tank it's nice to also have the piece of mind and hopefully it will last decades.

 

[hart24601]

So... today sucked. I have no idea what this happened, but when I went to be last night the fish in the QT tank were great about 5am. I got up at 11, and when I checked on them at noon they were all laying on their sides. There was no medication in the water, as I removed the pazipro earlier and the ammonia badge was fine. I thought I would lose them all, but I quick took water from the DT and transferred them, did a few more transfers and had some fresh water made. Long story short I lost 2 butterflys (the two healthy ones!!) and one anthis. Perhaps there wasn't enough oxygen? I had a powerhead aimed at the surface though. I have no idea why, but the others are looking alright now. I wish I had stayed up longer or looked at them sooner as I think they had just died, but at least I caught the others in time. Of course the two tangs I have in another hospital tank just in isolation and they are just fine. Some days this hobby is hard.

 

[hart24601]

Sold the tangs. Not sure what fish I will get, I was temped to get more butterfly fish as they are pretty sweet and don't fight much, but they are so hard to find and I think I might go with a larger number of smaller fish, makes the tank layout seem a larger scale with smaller fish. The berghia have not really done too much, I see them every so often, but with the DT empty I bought 8 peppermint shrimp and will just starve em until they eat the aptasia! They will go for it eventually. I will keep the betta and 6-line out for longer than the rest of the fish to keep the shrimp alive. I won't put them back until the aptasia is gone and hopefully by then the shrimp are large enough for them to leave alone.

With all the fish woes I decided to play around with the tank layout since the corals are the only thing that does really well for me, ha! I moved the euphyllia zone to the base of the rock and moving up it. Had to frag it up a bit, it sure grows fast. I don't know if I love the look yet, I will have to wait and see, but with the SPS growing eventually I have to think about the tall coral in the back and short in the front so this should help. I also took two birdsnest, 1 pretty large colony, and moved them to the middle bottom right on the glass. Put a dab of Mr stickies epoxy on a large frag plug so they should not get pushed around by urchins and snails. The BN look nice there, also moved the mp40 to blast the rear corner as detritus was gathering there. I was able to do this by moving the flowerpots right under the gyre where there is less flow.

Will see how everything looks today when they are not so mad at me.

 

[hart24601]

As I said the coral has been doing well. I posted this on the growout thread too, but why not here too. I have been trying to bring out colors more and feeding less. Lots of growth though, I think it likes the hydras! I did not touch the white balance or any color mods, just the WB on the camera.

 

[hart24601]

I talked about moving the hammers and frogspawn to the bottom around the sloping rock base and fragging them a bit as some heads were not getting light. Here is a pic, better than I thought considering it was daylight and reflecting. Once again no playing with colors or anything - straight from the camera with a FTS too. The FTS has reflections and was harder, but I just took a quick pic so I can see it over time. Moving the corals a bit should allow for nice upwards growth and taper down at the front. It's not as packed as it looks! The depth you can't really see there, just coral poking out.