Littlebigreef's 220

[Chad_P]

Here's the maculiceps which came from @Chad_P ... your boy is doing alright!

Man he looks great! Awesome to see!

 

[CWR24]

Hey "Littlebigreef".......is this you Jay? Craig here. If it's you I've been over a few times with my girlfriend to grab some zoa's and what not in the past.

I was fishing around early this morning on R2R and browsing posts and came across what I thought looked like your system.....and I believe seen someone mention your name. And I'm thinking what a lucky coincidence if I found you again.

Hopefully it's you as roughly a year back I had my cell go bad and screen went out and couldn't retrieve contacts....which of course included yours.

I am gonna go to PM and leave my contact info for you and shoot me your cell in return if in fact it's you.

 

[revhtree]

Here's the maculiceps which came from @Chad_P ... your boy is doing alright!

Beautiful!

 

[littlebigreef]

It’s been a pretty good winter for collecting zoas. I’ve wrapped up pretty much everything on my must have list. Some more good news, my wife and I are expecting our first child in August. So, now I’ve shifted gears and been knocking out house work. The aquarium has achieved a state of equilibrium (more or less) so once I finish treating for BCP I’m in really good shape to just do standard maintenance stuff. I’ve also been consolidating and replacing old frag racks in my sump. Unfortunately I’ve collected so much stuff it can’t all fit in the display!

It’s my aim to have everything on auto pilot before the baby comes. In the mean time here’s some pics of what’s been growing.

 

[CWR24]

It’s been a pretty good winter for collecting zoas. I’ve wrapped up pretty much everything on my must have list. Some more good news, my wife and I are expecting our first child in August. So, now I’ve shifted gears and been knocking out house work. The aquarium has achieved a state of equilibrium (more or less) so once I finish treating for BCP I’m in really good shape to just do standard maintenance stuff. I’ve also been consolidating and replacing old frag racks in my sump. Unfortunately I’ve collected so much stuff it can’t all fit in the display!

It’s my aim to have everything on auto pilot before the baby comes. In the mean time here’s some pics of what’s been growing.

Tank looking solid buddy!! Did you go to Starved Rock swap Sunday by chance? I was gonna go and text to see if you were going but had something come up and couldn't make it. If you did let me know how it was.

And congrats on the 1st edition to the family coming......that's terrific!!
You'll hear this a million times for sure even before the baby is born, and that's to make sure you enjoy your time with them as they grow because "IT GOES BY FAST".
My daughter is graduating high school tomorrow night and off to college in California soon. And my son will be a high school senior next year.
From the delivery room.....kindergarten......school events.....ballgames......vacations.....its a blur brother.

Best wishes to you and the wifey.

 

[littlebigreef]

@CWR24 Hey, didn't go to Starved Rock this time, between CMAS and a few acquisitions I was both tapped out and extremely content on where I'm at. I have a few more trades coming up to round out the collection but I'm mostly done- and nearly out of room all around.

Thanks! much appreciated. We're about 7 months in, feels like just yesterday I was concentrating trying to feel for the baby and now we're seeing punches and kicks from the outside... its crazy man. So yeah, its tough sometimes but I'm trying to take it all in and appreciate it.

 

[littlebigreef]

So here’s the obligatory 6 month-ish post. At some point I’ll keep up with this part of r2r better than I have been. I was able to get all of the projects outta the way before the birth of my daughter back in August. This including re doing some plumbing and finalizing part of my rock work. Since August I’ve mostly just been trading here and there and occasionally splurging on rarer/hard to find zoas. That list of mine is finally getting down there although I still have 25 names or so.

Strain wise things are good, a few flame outs here and there but nothing too painful. I’d also started taking chalices and shrooms in trade (since it was getting hard to find stuff to swap), those have finally started to grow out now and I’m happy with the shroom patch I’ve put together.

For fish I figured I was done but then the opportunity came up to add a pair of spot-breasted angels. Now, I love angles but avoid them for obvious reasons. That said, the genicanthus had always intrigued me but if I was gonna do it I wanted a pair. I figured the buy in would be $220+, so when I saw these two (with the male already displaying the barring) for $150 I popped on them. At this point I’m very happy with the fish in the display. My daughter really enjoys watching them and at a little over 3 months I can already see her tracking them.

 

[littlebigreef]

Happy new year-

2019 was a good year as the system has fully matured and been on auto pilot (to a degree). I’m really finally within spitting distance of closing out my zoa list. Things are doing well and I really can’t complain. I’ve got a few trades in the works both shrooms and zoas. I’d like to find a small chunk of jellybean chalice but at the current rates I can wait until the right opportunity comes along. It really is a joy to be able to watch the fish with my daughter and just enjoy the aquarium. I’m no longer chasing the Dragon lol. A few pics just for fun.

2017

2020

 

[littlebigreef]

And zoa stuff just cause.

Oh, and I started collection rock nems too!

 

[littlebigreef]

Time for a quick update. All is well in the aquarium. Since my last update I was able to and an Achilles, something I’ve wanted to do for awhile. It was the right specimen at the right time. He’s adjusted well and crushes pellets. He also adjusted really well with the other fish.

While I’m not a euphyllia guy with indo opening back up I was able to add gold and green torches. Using a product called Aqua Rocks I’m able to mount single frags to the back wall of the aquarium. This allows me to utilize a ton of new real estate. More importantly it allows these guys to open up without being right on top of each other. I have an order in for more. I have a bunch of chalices and other lps that’ll be going up on the back wall.

While not as sexy I’ve added some new hardware as well. I now have 2 Zen Reef heater holders for the display. Heaters are ugly and a pain in the as$ but I need to run 2 in the display and one in the sump. With these heater holders you don’t have to worry about them coming lose and floating around. Surprised no one thought of these sooner.

I’ve also added a reef brite xho unit to my sump/fuge/grow out. While I was happy with the T5s it left something lacking when it came to color. The zoa colonies back there look great now. I do need to borrow the par meter from my lfs. I’m curious to see where I’m at now. However, none of the zoas are stressed from the additional light so it’s not a high priority.

All and all this are really good with the aquarium. It’s so nice to sit back and enjoy with only a mild amount of tinkering to do any given day.

 

[revhtree]

The reef looks great man! Nice to see how far it has come!

 

[littlebigreef]

Here's the token 5-6 month update. The aquarium keeps plugging right along. All the fish are doing good and the tangs have their pecking order well established at this point. I have a pair of black ocellaris I moved out of the display and into the sump probably a year or so ago (sump is a 125 gal). I got tired of getting bit when I worked with the zoas so I moved them over into my aiptasia tank (I grow aiptasia for my little colony of berghia nudis). About a month ago I decided to downsize the aiptasia tank to a 2 1/2 gal so I moved the clowns back into the display. They're happy to be back in the display and the female has been nesting in my godspawn bounce. However, I'm getting bit by the male every time I have to go in there. Annoying. Oh Well.

My wife and I decided we're going to stay in our home another 2 years which has lead to an interesting development. I have avoided multiple tank syndrome at ever turn but the zoa collection has gotten so large and varied I really don't have any other choice but to add an additional aquarium. I'm in the process of building out a 50gal lowboy now. Using T5 for lighting and 1, perhaps 2 CPR bak-paks for filtration. Still need to buy an additional ATO unit, and reservoir, as well as, a gyre. Reason for this is two-fold. First, some of the more delicate zoas need lower lighting and params that aren't tied to a 220 gal full of LPS and Sps corals. Secondly, redundancy in the collection. I usually have multiple mother colonies going but that means little when a strain of zoas gets it in their head to do a group melt. On the whole not what I wanted to do but with another few years in the house it makes sense. Fortunately, I'm able to do it without cutting any corners so while I'm buying more equipment I know it will be worth it in the long run.

Naturally I've already got a fish for the lowboy. My lfs had a well conditioned similarvatus butterfly at a price I couldn't walk away from. They had a second one that didn't quite have the same feeding response but has been at the shop a month or so and looks equally fat. So, I'm thinking about it. For the time being I placed the one I bought in the 125 sump/fuge along with my other fishy misfits. He eats pellets well enough and hasn't bothered anything yet, (there's some acans, torches, and sps in the sump/fuge). Ideally I'll be able to move him over to the lowboy and possibly add a mate. Wouldn't that be something to see a pair of semilarvatus butterflys cruising around over a bed of zoa colonies?

I'm fortunate to have been working from home since mid-March. This has offered me the opportunity to trade with folks like never before. Being a Monday through Friday drone with a very limited WFH policy has always been an obstacle unless I wanted to burn a vacation day. I've been able to add some great zoas, sps sticks and shrooms (fun fact: to date I have never once opened my wallet for any of the shrooms in my collection). So, I'm pretty happy with how that section of the tank is looking. Now, to show my mileage, I've been in the hobby, specifically keeping saltwater, since '97. I always hear people long for the good ole days before branding and PP on zoas but guess what? The hobby was heavily monetized even then and the barriers to entry were much much higher. This summer I got in the way back machine when another one of my LFS got in a nice chunk of fox coral. Its not purple or red, yellow or orange, but dang it, its a nice little piece of nostalgia. We'd actually order these at the pet store I worked at in HS when we couldn't get elegance corals. So I had to pop on him. In a related note I knew torches and other euphyllia would be flooding the market when indo re opened. I hadn't counted on the fact that apparently a great many pectinas also come out of indo. For the last couple years the only pecitina available has been mainly space invader. This has changed and my LFS has been averaging 1-2 nice rainbow pecitinas a month. What's a guy to do? Buy them all. I've bought 4 so far and been given a struggling one from yet another LFS. On the whole they're doing well and I've been able to stabilize the one that was struggling.

Ok, there's all the David Copperfield stuff. Here's the eye candy.

 

[littlebigreef]

Last post looks to be from a little over a year ago, my oh my what a difference a year can make. Around this time last year we became pregnant with what would turn out to be our second child (James). We knew we'd be moving as our starter home was busting at the seams after 4 years. I was also wholly dreading not only moving everything but I was at a loss as to how we were going to get the 220gal out of the basement.

Fast forward to the end of March 2021. We'd closed on our new house and the old house was under contract to close 3 weeks later. I lost an entire week due to having the hardwoods redone. Based on previous moves I decided to start two new separate systems. The floor joists didn't work in my favor so I ended up downsizing the display to a standard 125 gal which ended up going in our great room. I procured Icecap 30 sump and AquaC 194 skimmer to drive the tank. It was a wild few weeks as I had 4 tanks across 3 systems at 2 different houses. The drive was only 15 mins either direction but it lead to a lot of late nights running car loads of aquarium (and house stuff) to the new place.





As I mentioned I decided to finally split the zoas off into their system. I fortunately had a buddy that had moth-balled his system during his move the previous fall. I ended up with his two plywood troughs and a smaller plywood sump. I decided to only set up one trough and I'm keeping the second in reserve.






It was a few chaotic months leading up to the move as I also repainted the entire interior of the old house. My procurement notes look like the ranting of a mad man lol. It was a lot to organize. Additionally I had to build a stand for the trough and drill the 125 for the eclipse overflow and returns. Through no small amount of support from fellow hobbyists and multiple lfs I was able to pull everything together.

In the run up I was able to get some additional live rock which I started seasoning with my own rock as well as some Dr Tim's (at the suggestion of McReefer who'd recently moved his entire sps collection from Chicagoland to Madison Wisconsin.). Once the tanks were in place it was a full on push to make as much water as possible. I let the RO unit run at the new house largely unsupervised for a day or two and I still needed an extra bump of 50 gals of water from a lfs. At this point it was the first week of April and I had less than two weeks to not only move everything, but also patch up holes and such at the old house.

I 'cycled' both systems with new and old chunks of live rock as well as multiple bottles of Dr Tim's. After two days I held my breath and started moving the farm and live rock structures to the new house. The zoa racks I was able to drop directly into the trough. I also ran what would later be the display skimmer on the trough while keeping the other AquaC skimmer running at the old house. Unfortunately the salinity drifted high in the display coupled with a faulty heater led to a loss of pretty much all the sps. There simply wasn't enough of me to go around. However, I was able to adjust those and brought them inline. With the trough faring decidedly better I ended up purchasing a dozen or so plastic shoe-sized containers I then loaded with 2" of sand. I then placed the mushrooms, lps, remaining sps colonies, and everything else inside of these and took them to the new house. Since I had the space I put the containers on the bottom of the trough and 'let them be.'




In this was I was able to move everything out of the 220. I put the delicate stuff in the 125 sump (still at the old house) and everything else went to the trough at the new house. With about 3 days left I finally drained the 220.

In perhaps one of the greatest feats of strength I've ever witnessed Jay Ramano of Blue Line Coral 'walked up' the butt end of the 220 aquarium while I watched helplessly holding the front end from the top landing of the staircase. The physics there are crazy when you consider it was a several hundred pound glass aquarium. I was finally able to sleep easy after that day. I had honestly had no answer for the previous 4 years how I would ever get that tank out of the basement.

With the display out of the way much of the lighting went to the new house. At the very end it was just my 125 gal sump acting as a life boat for the most delicate corals at the old house. With 1 day left I was able to move the last of everything, drain it and get it out. Here's the footer for the sump at the end. A special thanks to my relator, friend and former neighbor Jon TeVoigt. He was over there at 1am helping me patch and mud the wall and the holes.


That completed the most perilous portion of the move for the aquarium. Bear in mind during this time I was still working 40 hour days, parenting my year and a half old daughter (who was not in daycare), doing everything I could to support my 8 month pregnant wife and generally overseeing the move of everything into our house that wasn't in the POD (an excellent excellent service btw).

Deep Exhale. Ok, closing date came and went on the old house mid April. We had exactly 6 weeks until Jimmy was due to be born.

The plastic containers with substrate and coral worked to a point in the trough. However, I did have issues with things getting buried. Lost my Blue elegance (looking to replacement) as well as a few odds and ends but nothing too bad. Going from the Ecoray LEDs to reefbrite/T5s over the display was always the plan (those Ecorays are available in the sales forum btw, they too powerful for a 125). The corals adjusted pretty well. I needed up using the old T5 unit from the farm with the accompanying reefbrite on the new display. On the trough I used the 4' T5 hybrid I'd bought for the lowboy (which cracked not long after my previous post) and married that with another 4' reefbrite unit.





Through May I started consolidating, organizing and moving stuff to it's proper place. I also added a 3' T5/reefbrite combo to the trough so I could use the full length.





My son was born 6/4, exactly a week before my 38th birthday. I had a month of paternity leave and then I was required back in office 3 days a week. Over the summer and through much of the fall I've been organizing, consolidating and knocking out all my 'nice to haves.' I finally built the hood for the display and went to a 2 bulb 5' t5 diy fixture from the 8 bulb unit I had been using. I am currently working on tweaking the rock work so I'll never have to touch it again. On the whole the take is doing excellent. I do have some ugly algae that pops up between water changes but that'll likely go away once the tank fully matures. I couldn't be happier with how the display turned out. I did lose nearly all the fish that were in there from the old tank (pair of clowns, fowleri tang, bangai cardinals, pair of spot breasted angels). I'm at a loss as to what happened. It was almost like velvet or Oidium tore through there. This happened in May. Since then I've been adding dartfish. We now have a colony of fire fish, scissor tails, bar gobies and then a comet... the lone survivor. I'll look to add more small fish as time goes by but for now I couldn't be happier. I can finally play with the kids or sit and watch the tank, even have a cup of coffee while listening to breakfast with the Beatles and I don't have to go to the basement to do it.




The trough is also doing exceptionally well. I have been able to create a number of different par levels to suit the needs of particular zoas. When we moved all the fish that went into the trough survived so I have a 7 year old chromis (originally from my city tank- the 120 oceanic), maculiceps tang, tomini, and a yellow coris. I was so rattled by the loss of my beloved folweri I had BLC get me another. Unfortunately I didn't think it through at the time and I put him in the trough to be safe. He's fine and happy but I don't get to appreciate him the same way I would if he were in the display. Perhaps, once the rock work is set, I'll move him up to the display for at least for a few years. Anyone from the Chicagoland area can probably tell you about Reefwise during it's heyday. That's what I sought to emulate here. I've got a decent amount of rock in the system and the racks are all ~10" off the bottom. I have 3 gyres to move the water. No longer am I working out of a 125 gal sitting on the floor. I can comfortably walk around 3 sides of the trough (96"x30"x18") and closely inspect each and every colony. Already I've started seeding the rock below with zoas. It's my hope that one day, with the addition of more rock, the rack will come out and it will turn into one big zoa mess. I currently have 3 of the 4 bays covered in racks. I recently moved the skimmer to its own container behind the wall and use gravity and an existing bulkhead to return water to the system. It is largely quite, and easy to manage since my mixing station, sink (something I didn't have at the old house) and water source are all right there.




So there you have it dear reader. That's how littlebigreef's 220 has fared over the last year and become littlebigreef's 125 display and zoa trough. It wasn't easy and there's no way I could have accomplished this without the support of the local reefing community. So here's the huggy-feely thank you outro-

Local Fish Stores
Blue Line Coral- Dan for drilling, Matt water-hauling and Jay for muscles!
Gingerbread- material support
Reef Design- material support

Gabriel Pinto- holding like 5 dozen backup frags in his second tank (check out his youtv! He know's how to dial in nutrients better than anyone I know):

Matt E- sold me the troughs.

Paul Bek- material support

David G- material support

And any/everyone else that might have bought a frag here or there to help finance this thing.

 

[littlebigreef]

Hard to believe it’s been nearly a full year since the move. Closing on our old house was April 15 2021 which means this time a year ago I was pulling all nighters and running car loads of ‘stuff’ and coral to the new house. Due to our buyer requesting a shorter close I only had a 2 week window to get the aquarium stuff moved. It was nuts. I’m now getting much better sleep.

Not much has fundamentally changed since my last update in October. The display has rounded into shape and is a constant source of enjoyment. It’s transitioned to mostly a pectina, chalice, euphyllia and shroom tank with a growing collection of acans and blastos. I’ve also started to add a few of my favorite acros here and there. At this point it’s doing what it’s supposed to and all the fish are looking great.

The trough has also fully matured at this point. Everything is laid out nice and orderly. I’m able to go through and trim with relative ease. Due to the different lighting areas of the tank I’ve got a ton of leeway in finding each zoa strain’s happy spot. Nothing much has fundamentally changed there either.

Inside is pretty well organized too…

Which brings me to the zoas themselves. Finally had success keeping some that have given me grief over the years. All and all I’m really thankful to be where I’m at and that keeping everything going hasn’t become an all consuming effort.

 

[littlebigreef]

Time for that obligatory 6 (in this case 9) month build update.

The display continues rolling along. I battled a persistent case of turf algae this summer and finally ended up dosing flux to knock it out. It was gone for awhile but ended up coming back. I'd pulled my middle 'arch' rock structure over the summer to simply reset. Naturally it was the first to get re colonized when I put it back in in October. I ended up pulling it again just last week. I'm going to clean it up and culture it outside of the aquarium. I also made the tough but necessary choice to pull my large orange line chromis and pajama cardinals. 8 fish in total that likely half'ed the fish bio load. Finally, I had to pull my achilles hybrid as he was showing ich (I'd previously pulled both him and the folweri mid October and only recently re introduced them). At this point the display has the folweri, comet, a trio of melanarus, a few dartfish and a pair of clowns. The hybrid is in the hospital tank and doing great but I'm going to take my time before reintroducing him. No need to rush. I suspect the phantom overflow is contributing to the persistant high nitrates (along with all the fish I just pulled). I did a series of large (30 gal+) water changes over the last few weeks. I turned over the sand bed as well. All of the lps are looking far better and the sps are happy. Finally, I'd been running a 6' reefbrite and a 2 bulb 5' T5 diy kit. I purchased a rig off a local guy and added another 2 5' T5 kit and a standard reef brite. I haven't been able to check the par yet but the difference is significant and bring the tank inline with what I'm running over my trough.

The cardinals went into my Zoa QT tank and the chromis joined all the other misfits (and maculiceps) in my trough.

In my fish room generally I was able to build out my hospital tank and work it into the flow. I have the material to add a curtain to the front so it'll match the apron on the trough. I was also able to consolidate and clean up my work stations.

I also got around to reworking my mixing station with a blue line pump I got from a buddy this summer. My old mixing station was all soft plumbing and a 1262 ehiem from 1998 lol. Needless to say this making water changes and topping of jugs a breeze. Eventually I'll add a larger container but this suffices for now.

Then finally, as for the trough itself its been a year of one step forward and two back. I've just had a lot of crumby luck fragging initial plugs when they grow out to 8-9 polyps... I'll make 3-4 frags but I've been losing all but one frag. No reason in particular, just bad luck. That said, stuff is turning a corner and I have a lot of strains finally coming out of month's long stalls. Just time and patience by it really sucks the motivation out of you. In all things are going really pretty well. With the display rounding into shape I'm finally able to move much of the lps and sps out of the trough. I'm trying to get it whittled down to just the zoa collection and then a few odds and ends as necessary.

Here's a few of the zoas that have been behaving

In short it's not been the most productive year but things are generally in a good place. I have backups of most everything at this point and I'm looking forward to some of these colonies really getting rolling again in the new year. That said, I had a buddy ask about an updated master list and I'm sort of dreading doing it.... there's always a few that come and go. I think the collection is hovering some where between 150 and 170 strains.