Ken's 55 gallon algae farm

[palindrom5]

Well my tank is a few years old now but I am constantly tinkering with it. I will post some older pics of it as well as the newer ones so everyone can see its trajectory. In the last month I have added a Neptune Systems, Apex, upgraded my lights to Kessil a360we LEDS and some other tweaks. So Pics to come but currently it is set up as follows: 55 gallon display w/ 5 gallon hang on back fuge, and 15 gallon sump. I'm using two 360 gph pond pumps for returns from the sump I have a Coralife 75 Skimmer because my eshoppes psk-100 is .5 inch to big for my sump. I run two aquatop reactors for carbon and chemi-pure elite. I run a coralife 18 watt uv on one of my returns for 16 hours a day. My fuge is packed with Chaeto and mangroves other hitchhiker algaes that I have plucked from rock throughout my time in the hobby. I currently have a Sailfin Tang, 6 Line Wrasse, Starry Blenny, and an Ocerallas Clown. I have a few zoas, flower, mushrooms a giant toadstool, a plate, pagoda, a tiny Kenya tree, 2 hammers and tons of gsp and xenia (I was very gullible when I started this hobby).

 

[ReefFreak@]

can't wait to see what it looks like

 

[palindrom5]

The latest pic that I already had

 

[ReefFreak@]

looks nice! where did you get that type of toadstool I've been looking for one and its huge! i also like the blue look you got going.Where do you get your nori for your tang?

 

[palindrom5]

Well I use ocean nutrition green or red marine algae with garlic just run of the mill at most lfs around here, I also feed Black Jack Reef Crack which has seaweed and garlic along with other necessary goodies for the reef, also use coral frenzy and aquavitro fuel 2x week. here is that toadstool when I got it a few years ago

 

[ReefFreak@]

omg that thing really got big! If you want to save a bit of cash go to your local oriental food market or even like a sushi house and they will give you a huge pack like 100 sheets for around 10 bucks, And its the same stuff.

 

[palindrom5]

this is where the monkey got on my back, this is my 1st tank it is 10 gallons and I had it for about a year before I just HAD to go bigger and better. 2 16 watt cfl bulbs a preset heater and a hob filter I kept macroalgaes a boxfish and some mushroom corals

 

[ReefFreak@]

do you think you could help me id a soft coral?

 

[palindrom5]

I have family that eat that seaweed paper stuff and I joked about feeding it to my tang didn't really think it was the same thing though too funny

 

[palindrom5]

I can try, that's for sure. as for mine all I know is it is in a family people call octo-corals

 

[ReefFreak@]

hey everyone starts some where. my first saltwater tank was a 10 gallon crashed within 2 months so i gave up for about 6 months caught the itch again but decided to research research and research a little more and started with this
2.5 pico with jbj unibody and bare bottom

Recently i set this 65 up

 

[ReefFreak@]

if you do decide to put some of that nori just make sure its not flavored, just regular old nori. Heres the softie in question

 

[palindrom5]

that's a tough one because its hard to determine color and the shapes of its polyps but if its a new frag maybe Kenya or colt coral or maybe devils hand??

 

[palindrom5]

day one for the 55 tank was with stock hood and canister filter

 

[ReefFreak@]

The polyps kind of remind me of miniature clove polyps. Thats some interesting live rock, almost looks like river rock i have.

 

[palindrom5]

this is after I upgraded lights from stock to pc then t5ho and added the hob fuge and a sump it ran this way for 1.5 years before a forced mid autumn move killed almost everything, only small bits of coral and nemo survived

 

[palindrom5]

The polyps kind of remind me of miniature clove polyps. Thats some interesting live rock, almost looks like river rock i have.

the rock I dug out of my own yard and cured in a bucket. I am pretty sure that I why I fight algae as bad as I do. have compared it to any other coral images? is it close to any of the three I mentioned or am I way off?

 

[ReefFreak@]

i didn't even know it was possible to put terrestrial rocks in a reef. Is your water chem stable? Defiantly not the devils hand but the kenya and colt kinda look the same in my eyes. But it is a more pinkish color if that helps and thick stocks with skinnier branches.

 

[palindrom5]

well never had a crash after I added the fuge I run all 0's had traces of phos so I started running the chemi-pure elite and the carbon and now that's a 0 as well. it has been very stable since the first couple months but I also do 10% weekly water changes (almost always) but I have been plagued by gha as youll see in all my photos and im willing to bet that its leaching something out of those rocks, however corals attach to them and everything else seems normal. the Kenya I have is pink and the colt I used to have is in the center of one of the above photos was pink to purple

 

[palindrom5]

the Kenya and colt are side by side in image 0120 that I posted the Kenya's polyps look needle like and the colt look more like a flower but their structures are so very similar