Jill's 14 gallon Biotopia

[Ahruk]

Thanks :) I really love that picture!

Yea :/ I really miss her... I'm definitely gonna have to get a new one at some point... May even try to do a pair if that's possible (haven't seen anything about aggression towards others in their species). Definitely kicking myself for being careless and throwing her out with the waste water.... Total noob mistake, will definitely be more careful in the future (just have to look at it as a learning experience I suppose). If boyfriend wasn't dragging me out fishing all weekend I'd probably run out and try to get a new one if I could... >.> Stupid boyfriends...

But on a positive note I've been really enjoying watching my awesome skunk cleaner shrimp chase my mean clown around trying to clean her xD (Don't worry She's fine, I've seen her chase him off and he doesn't really do it all the time just every once in a while)

 

[arman]

LOving your tank...
Some questions toask
First of all what salt mix do you use.
2.Do you add any supplements to ypour tank?
3.What is your lightning set up

 

[arman]

Loving your tank some questions came to my mind.
1.what salt mix you use?
2.DO you add any supplements??
3.Whats your lightning???
4.what ever i do my coraline does not grow as i expect and their color is not as much as it should be.

 

[Ahruk]

Thanks for the compliment :D
1. I used to mix my own but a few months back my boyfriend got a parttime job at a LFS, as one of the perks he gets free water (Lucky me :cool:) So at this point not really sure what I'm using xD I've used both Reef Crystals and Red Sea Coral Pro. (Was happy with both)
2. Currently not dosing anything. I know I should be dosing CA, Alk and Mag (the water we're using is consistently low) but I'm too lazy to test so :confused: (occassionally I do dose small quantities of mag without testing...oops <-bad reefer) Fortunately I haven't had any problems with any of my coral (~20% water changes/week seems to be keeping up)
3. Kessil 350 (Hand-me-down from boyfriend when he upgraded to the controllable 360s)
4. Be grateful your coralline is not growing. It is the worst!! I hate coralline algae. I regularly have to spend 15+minutes scraping it off my glass. Furthermore I constantly worry about it eating up all my calcium and alk >,> While it does look nice to have purple rocks, after a while you don't really notice it. Plus eventually, I hope to not be able to see my rocks at all just the zoas that are growing on them :p If your coral are happy and growing don't worry about trying to grow algae;)

 

[DeniseAndy]

I love pom poms. I had one that molted twice and both times I almost cried thinking I lost it. All upset and the next day see it and laugh at myself for not guessing it was a molt. Got me twice. :) They are such fun creatures.

 

[Ahruk]

Hahah yea I did that her first couple of molts too xD Absolutely awesome little creatures. I can't wait to get another one.

 

[Ahruk]

Not really related to my tank but figured I'd share a couple of pictures from my adventure down at the tidepools earlier today. If you ever get the opportunity to visit the Fitzgerald Marine Reserve near Half Moon Bay I can't recommend it highly enough. Man so much tank envy/inspiration when I'm there xD

Some incredibly colorful limpets

A tiny hermit with the craziest shell I've ever seen...really wanna know where he managed to find it

A live snail with a pretty crazy hairdo (think he might want a haircut?o_O)

 

[Ahruk]

So in an attempt to stem my grief over the lose of my pom pom crab I've been going a little bit crazy with coral.... Unfortuntately, my cell has not liked taking pictures of many of the new additions and I'm too lazy to get out the big camera to try and take decent pics. So... crappy pics will probably get uploaded in a little bit. But for now I'm just gonna share an older picture of an awesome hitchhiker that I finally moved from my boyfriend's frag tank. It's grown a bit since the picture was taken but it's still super cute. (It came with two, so one for him and one for me :D)

Any guess what it is?? Pretty sure I know... Will share my best guess later tonight :)

 

[hingisp]

Beautiful little tank you got there, can't believe the difference that kessil unit makes, wow.. Some lovely corals to and my sympathy to you on your crab loss [emoji17]. Your little hitchhiker I would hazard a guess at a little golden Torch, difficult to say for sure, but certainly looks like a small one to mine. If it is, stunningly nice hitchhiker lol...[emoji6]

 

[Ahruk]

Yep I think it's an aussie gold torch. He's soo tiny. A couple of centimeters max. Perfect for my tank xD Just had to get rid of normal size torch because he was stinging everything and taking up half my tank. Looking forward to watching this guy grow out :)

Yea, I LOVE my kessil. It's absolutely amazing (plus its sooo easy to use, no complicated settings to try and mess around with). Honestly it's probably overkill for my tank, I generallyy have the blues on about 25% with no whites... Using no where near the full potential of this light but I wouldn't change it for anything :)

 

[hingisp]

Beautiful, those aussie golden torches are really beautiful when they colour up nicely. I am a bit of a torch lover myself, had to get one to hehe... However as you rightly say, they need lots of space. I came so close to loosing my inferno bubble tip from the wrath of the torch... All is well now. So your corals do well without any white lighting at all? Wow ok, I'm slowly easing into the led story and wonder what settings to have everything at.. That unit sounds nice and straight forward. Glad you having good success with it.

 

[Ahruk]

The kessils are build so that when I say "all blue" this is technically not true. It's simply that I only turn the knob for the blue lights on (there are only two knobs on the light one for blue light and one for white). However Kessil lights are built so that they are always properly balanced (full spectrum), it's merely the color that we perceive that changes. It's a pretty deep blue without the whites. From talking to people who've gone on tours of the kessil factory (hoping to go myself someday) the color is merely about personal perference. While I'm not sure if this is totally true, everything in my tank seems perfectly happy under the pure blue lights and looks absolutely incredible (Im not really a tech wiz so sorry if my explanation kinda sucks) .

 

[Ahruk]

Okay so just wanted to add some pictures of some of my new addition. Thought I had a picture of my new mystic sunset but I don't and away from my tank tonight :confused: Oh well hoping that it colors up some more anyway :) Also added one polyp of rastas but it failed to open up before I left.
Well here's some of the other stuff I added in the last week. Sorry for crappy cell phone pics, I'll try to do better next time :)

Paradise Zoas (I highly recommend looking these bad boys up...my picture is pathetic and does not even begin to do these incredible micozoas justice)

Way brighter green in person. It hated being dipped more then any other coral I've ever had even though I only dipped him for 6 minutes :mad:

Space Monster (?) Looks way better in my tank then in my boyfriends just as I expected :rolleyes:
And FINALLY...

An updated picture of the torch now in my tank, after probably 2-3 months in my boyfriends tank its grown a tiny bit. :cool:

 

[hingisp]

Great stuff. The plating monti sure Eish bright.. Can't wait to see how the torch gets on..

 

[Ahruk]

Thanks :D the torch has been in boyfriends system for at least six months so I imagine it should do fine unless the flow in the area i put it in is too much or I exposed it to too much air during transplant... Looked happy when I left it though so I think it's got a pretty good shot :)

 

[hingisp]

Been trying to take a picture of mine for you to give you an idea what to look forward to, or though I'm sure you have a great idea... But this phone camera doesn't bring out the colours unfortunately

 

[Ahruk]

Yea they're amazing... My boyfriend actually has a big one which he has to get rid of because it's gotten too big :( They're legit gold... I actually love the little one because it's got all the color packed into a tiny package xD Don't have to worry about it stinging anybody.... yet

 

[Ahruk]

PICTURES TIME!!! This time taken with an actual camera. BTW these are all completely unedited because umm....I suck at editing and I can't seem to get it to look as awesome as it does in real life no matter what I do :confused: Got some gel filters coming in a couple of weeks so hoping they'll help get the images closer to what I actually see. Anyway enjoy :)

Robin picking at pods (I assume) right by my new rastas

A teeny tiny sliver of tricolor acro that I saved from the garbage can... Very curious to see how it does :)

 

[Tahoe61]

The images are awesome, I especially like image of the Fighting Conch ( just guessing), and the leather.

 

[zoacrazy42]

Very nice. I just noticed my clown is very similar !