Keenan's IM170 EXT

[Keenan]

How’s the BC super rainbow doing? Mines remained fairly pale for the past 18 months. You’re one of the few people who I’ve seen have one too.

Mine is doing well. Decent grower but yeah definitely took some time to color up.

I tried to find Fishfoo Cigarettes After Sex. I can't find it anywhere. It's a beautiful SPS

That's because I named it myself! While on a business trip in Chicago I purchased two completely browned out frags for cheap from a LFS. One didn't make the flight back but the other turned into this guy fter a ton of TLC.

Definitely one of my favorites and I've never seen such deep red polyps on an acro before this one.

 

[Keenan]

What’s ur par like on ur cricket spine I’ve had mine healthy for two but fluoresces grew and won’t grow, I think I have too much par on it

I unfortunately lost my cricket spine colony, but it was doing great in about 450 par for 2+ years.

 

[fishface NJ]

Mine is doing well. Decent grower but yeah definitely took some time to color up.


That's because I named it myself! While on a business trip in Chicago I purchased two completely browned out frags for cheap from a LFS. One didn't make the flight back but the other turned into this guy fter a ton of TLC.

Definitely one of my favorites and I've never seen such deep red polyps on an acro before this one.

Well there you go! That’s why I couldn’t find it. It’s beautiful

 

[ReefLaw]

How is this tank doing? Is the kalk and A4R combo still working out for you?

 

[Keenan]

How is this tank doing? Is the kalk and A4R combo still working out for you?

Tank is doing alright. Sps still have yet to hit their groove again but still look good so I guess we just wait. Tank has been on auto pilot for a majority of the last 6months but I’ve been able to spend more time on it as of late. Will post a more detailed update soon.

 

[Keenan]

Been awhile.

Lps are doing great. SPS still haven't taken off but I'm hoping that my increased attention to the tank (including biweekly water changes) will kick start them. I will try to get some pics of the new LPS additions along with some fish photos as I haven't taken any of my fish in a good while.

I recently made the switch from GHL to Hydros. Nothing was wrong with the GHL equipment, I just mainly wanted to try something new to keep the hobby interesting. I also wanted to simplify my setup, and Hydros helped me achieve this. Below are what I grabbed:

IV (for automated alk testing)
X10 (3 dosing heads for the IV. 1 for neophos)
XP8
Minnow (1 dosing head for kalk stirrer. 1 head for all ffor reef)
Sole (acting as an ATO pump)

Still need to mount the units vertically, just haven't decidfed how I'm going to go about it. Overall, the Hydros has exceeded expectations for me. Very easy to use, and has allowed me to accomplish everything I've wanted to program so fart. Also, the iV has been spot on with my Hanna checker for alk which is great. I plan to eventually get the Kraken and maybe some wave engines.

No new fish additions since the last update, but I am looking to add another wrasse or two in the near future to help spread out the aggression (hopefully) between my current wrasse community. I've also been thinking about getting a larger sump. I have the space for it, and the current one came in smaller than I expected and already crammed. Likely won't be till next black friday if I do though. Can't be bothered to re-plumb everything.

In another effort to spice things up for myself in the hobby, I decided to re-aquascap my tank. Up until now, I've had the exact same aquascape that was transferred over from my old tank 5+ years ago. I planned to rebuild the scape with most of the current live rock included as that's got all the nice biodiversity which will then seed the new stuff. I had some leftover dry rock in storage and then purchased a caribsea arch that came in WAY larger than expected (but ended up working out well to create a large cave instead.) In the end I'd say I added 30ish pounds of new rock which has been in for a month or so with no ill effects as of yet. Just waiting for it to get some coraline now. Will get a pic of that as well.

 

[Keenan]

Probably should have put some carbon in to clear up the water a bit but you get the idea



SPS are still in the frag tank so that I could move around the rocks easier

 

[Keenan]

Sailfin and Tomini High Five

Eight-Line Wrasse

Rose-Band Wrasse (Favorite of the tank)

Chaoti Leopard Wrasse

 

[Keenan]

Hemi slowly transitioning to male

 

[Keenan]

LPS Dump









Newest rescue project piece. It's only about an inch tall and wide

 

[Keenan]

The bully of the tank

 

[Keenan]

Added the mini controller board for the Hydros equipment. Still need to cut the dosing tubes down to size, but this will suffice.

In tank related news, I exiled the mystery wrasse to the frag tank. My plan is to get a few more fish, qt them and let them settle into the display for a while, then try and reintroduce the mystery to the display.

I also added the sps back to the display which I'm pretty excited about. Will try to get a pic of that soon.

 

[Keenan]

Some new additions arrived today. Hopefully these will help spread out the aggression with the mystery and rosefacia. And if the pintails start fighting too much I can put one in the frag tank.

 

[fishface NJ]

Congratulations!

 

[Keenan]

The curse continues. Every time I take pictures of my fish one of them dies. After 1.5 years of no fish issues I walked downstairs to find my eight line flasher getting blown around by the powerheads, all but dead. No clue as to what happened. No real aggresion that I saw targeted at him whatsoever and he was just starting his transition to male which I was excited for. Oh well., such is the life of keeping fish in glass box with a bunch of blenders spread throughout.

Speaking of flow, I can't seem to dial it in. I thought I needed more flow, so I added a Reefwave 45 to the mix and now have way too much. I've turned everything down to ~50% which seems to help, but these gyres lose power at a much faster pace than normal powerheads, and need to be cleaned more often in my experience. It doesn't help that I have so many torches and am trying to limit the flow for them while trying to provide enough flow for the sps. Seems like an impossible task. I'll mess around with it a bit more but may end up just keeping the two mp40's and one of the reefwaves.

Side note: I wish every powerhead manufacturer had a feature when in random mode to have both a min % and max %. All have a max %, but the only powerhead I've ever had with a min% was the AI nero.

 

[Keenan]

Had the camera out for another project so why not take some coral pics as well






Here's a little experiment I'm running. SC Dynamte x WWC Banana Boom. I wish I could've glued them closer to each other as I think it's pretty important for them to "heal" right next to each other but that's just a theory. Time will tell.

 

[Wonkabar]

This is a spectacular example. Wonderful tank.

 

[RSnodgrass]

That chalice graft could get interesting...

 

[ReefLaw]

Regarding flow, I have a similar tank setup and just switched from mp40’s to the reef octo pulse 4’s on the wave engine. The setup is way better due to the power of the pulses and the control ability of the wave engine. Just something to consider if you can’t get the flow right

 

[Keenan]

Regarding flow, I have a similar tank setup and just switched from mp40’s to the reef octo pulse 4’s on the wave engine. The setup is way better due to the power of the pulses and the control ability of the wave engine. Just something to consider if you can’t get the flow right

Appreciate the advice. I actually used to have a pulse 4 and absolutely loved it. Unfortunately when cleaning it I dropped it on concrete and that was the end of the pulse 4 :smiling-face-with-tear: I have considered swapping out all my powerheads for pulse 4's and a wave engine.

I took out one of the reefwaves and like it a lot better with just the 1 reefwave and two mp40's, but still not quite where I want it. What I plan to do is grab a pulse 2 from a buddy at my local swap in April which will allow me to use the pulse 2 in the frag tank, freeing up the mp40 that was in there to then use in the display. Hopefully that will come close to what I'm looking for.