Reef Safe With Caution

[pcon]

Got em

 

[Dr. Dendrostein]

Went back through my phone for full tank shots to make this annotated progression: 7 months of the tank.

April 16 2019:

This tank was an upgrade from my 40b in late 2017, and was moved in february this year. Had a hideous overflow box that took a quarter of the tank and still leaked so have been experimenting with overflows since removing that. Photos on my current phone only go back to april.

May 19:

June 2:

My friends montipora had grown too large and shaded many of the corals lower in his tank, so we cut it up and he gave the trimmings it to me.

July:

I lost the burgess butterfly and male venusta angelfish in the weeks leading up to getting a puppy, in july and so taking pictures of the tank and cleaning the glass to take pictures of the tank took the back seat for a little bit.

August 19:

Dosed praziquantel in response to the lost fish, not in time to save the burgess. The stress of the second round of prazi killed the large birdsnest colony. Added 40watt Pentair UV and mechanical flow meter in hopes of reducing chances of future disease, in addition to tightening QT protocols.

September 23:

some of these photos are not the most consistently framed, that with the random dates makes it seem like this was not planned out.

October 6:

October 21:

Left the powerheads off for a week while out of town and lost most of the pipe organ coral in the lower right.

November 1:

Got the bird nest and octospawn from helping a friend rescape, the large clump in the upper right promptly RTNed after being in the tank a week. smaller frags in other spots are doing alright and have grown small amounts in the few intervening weeks. Seems the top of the rightmost rock stack does not grow this birdsnest.

November 18:

Added the hawkfish after quarantine, conditioning the longnose hawk was a refreshing change from the butterflies and angelfish. My makeshift acclimation box hit was running into a montipora. So I introduced after lights out and after some initial scuffles in the first 48 hours the hawk happily cruises the tank.

I am not sure why images keep getting repeated at the end of my posts,

Thanks for sharing, me likie

 

[pcon]

Ugh how not to ship fish:

Two simple issues very common to see coming from wholesalers. Bags multiple bag layers, sealed with a single clip on all of them at the top, and clear bags. Wether both bags simply leaked from the tops or both fish were spooked enough to rupture all layers of the bag. Very unimpressed with this shipment.

 

[pcon]

Edit: photos in reverse chronological order. On mobile sorry.
E

Thankfully neither fish was completely dead on arrival and because the bags had already been exposed to normal air and the , I am drip acclimating. Both butterflies have perked up in the process.

 

[mattzang]

man that sucks, glad they somehow made it. hopefully no worse for the wear

 

[pcon]

Yeah they seem settled in to QT way better than I hoped on their arrival.

 

[pcon]

Unfortunately they didn't eat day one. Perhaps too much to hope for.

Not sure how the videos disappeared from the earlier post but here they are:

I am incredibly glad they recovered quickly, however I must say this seems like the basic steps to prevent this were not followed. The experience has left a sour taste in my mouth that I cannot say any other fish retailer left with me. I think I will go back to Marine Collectors and Divers Den.

 

[pcon]

Both are still alive, the burgess is a bit more reclusive. makes sense coming from deeper waters may take a bit to get used to white lighting.

(sorry mobile users)

 

[pcon]

Burgess is eating strong! Love the Roaops for this reason. Aculeatus is showing interest in food and may even be eating just not at the front of the glass. Little bit of head shaking makes me concerned about flukes. I’m hoping to get them both confirmed eating before treating with prazi. But thinking that needs to be sooner rather than later.

 

[pcon]

(Sorry Mobile users)

Burgess is hammering food with a passion, complete 180 from when it came in. Atlantic long nose was out and about yesterday but a bit more reclusive today. Not sure its eating yet. I am hunting for oysters, live blackworms or live clams tomorrow.

 

[pcon]

bad picture, I really need to clean the outside of the glass, lol. Should get better pics tomorrow.

 

[pcon]

I will start by saying, absolutely love Burgess butterflies, I was originally planning on saving up for one of the other members of the family, but I am so glad I decided to get this instead of waiting. They are incredibly hardy, and readily take to prepared foods. They have been very sociable for me, coming up to the glass to check out what is going on, whenever someone comes up to the tank.

The aculeatus has an awesome subtle beauty which is not well captured in pictures. Unfortunately it hides with the disturbances of opening the lids before feeding. I haven't been able to actually see it eat.

I got some live tubifex worms today. Local stores didn't have blackworms but had tubifex so figured worth a shot. I got to drive a ways away to try some other fish stores that may have some. Oysters are probably the next thing I am going to try. There is a seafood market next to one of my favorite fish stores, I am going to try to swing by to see if they have anything that may spark the aculeatus' interest.

Tank is doing well, really enjoying this SPS growth. The Acro at the top left was only a couple polyps 6 months ago. sorry for the blues, in the following pictures, it was late when I got home today.

Been tweaking the flow to try to make the octospawn and dendro happy. May need to move one or the other, but seem to have found a decent middleground, will have a better idea in a few days or a week.

Hawkfish loves to follow me around, has a bunch of perches but this is one of my favorites. I always enjoy seeing fish perched on corals.

 

[pcon]

Full tank shot, as its been at least a week since the last one, not that much changes in that time.

The gorgonian muncher, starry blenny posed nicely for a photo today

Not much of an update on the butterflies. The aculeatus has been picking the decorations and getting more used to people around the tank. So we fed some masstic today, not sure if it has eaten it, but perhaps a better shot at it eating from the glass than the water column.

 

[pcon]

No changes with the Butterflies in QT. They just went through the first round of prazi, and got a water change after that. Round 2 is probably tomorrow got to check the calculator.





Today was water change, skimmer cleaning, foss change, and reactor media change day. So should get a nice Full tank shot tomorrow, it is also 6 months with the venusta angel tomorrow.

Friend lost the mother colony that my red monti cap came from, so I returned some sections to him to begin regrowing. This cleared some space to start a small acro garden. So I picked up some acro frags from one of my favorite local stores, had a nice long chat with the owner, about all sorts of topics in the hobby. He showed me some parasitic vermetids which bore into snail shells killing the occupants, phone was dead or I would have snagged a picture.

Quick Tank Tour clip from before today's maintenance:

 

[Wrangy]

I can't believe I've missed this thread till know man! I'm here now and definitely tagging along

 

[pcon]

Quick full tank shot, no real changes otherwise.

Officially over 6 months with the venusta. Hope to start the hunt for a mate in the new year.

got some books to add to my collection. Really enjoy how they break down to the subgenus level, even if they are a touch older.

 

[pcon]

Hope everyone's Christmas has gone well! I like I think many on here am away from my tank this week and much of next. I am lucky enough to have the Girlfriend looking after the tank and keeping up with feedings, and a local highly skilled friend who can pop by to address any more major issues if they come up. Always scary to be away from the tank I feel. Luckily I banked some pictures and updates in the few days before leaving so my build-thread wont go neglected either.

Start wit this lucky shot of the hawkfish that the angelfish had to sneak into:

Did a large 45gal water change just before leaving, took the opportunity to take some top down pictures without water in the way, hard to give a good sense of scale to these photos.

Below is the same coral as beneath the hawkfish from the first picture, sorry for the blues.It is a purple grey chalice with orange and green mouths/eyes. It has been miserably slow growing, I have had it almost a full year now and maybe has grown a quarter or eighth inch. Most of the rest of my chalices have grown much faster. So I decided to try clipping the edge with a fragging tool to see if that prompts faster growth. clipped a small spot, perhaps the size of the tip of a pen on the upper edge, Hopefully can see some growth, when I get back from the holidays.

Finally saw the Aculeatus eating prepared foods the other day. I am still not happy with its trepidation and only eating a little bit. but its a good first step. Considering splitting up the butterflies, the butterflies have such subtle body language interactions its hard to tell if there may be something going on between them. Them picking at a mix of Mega-marine Angel, Mysis, and Mastic smeared on a rock:

 

[Admann]

Man it has been a rough summer. Some good things going on outside my reef, some bad things going on in.

Lets start with some of the good stuff. I finally finished my undergraduate degree! And now am job hunting, if anyone is in need of an engineer with an extensive background in complex mechanical systems and underwater robotics, please feel free to PM me. Lol.

Try Oceaneering. They design and operate AUVs and ROVs all over the world. Since oil and gas exploration has long since moved in to deeper water depths these vehicles are more and more in demand.

 

[pcon]

Thanks for the suggestion! Oceaneering has been on the list, I just was looking at a mechanical engineering position in Texas with them earlier today, I will have to apply. In my free time I have been dreaming up schemes to do deep water fish collection with ROVs, I don't think I am brave enough to do mixed gas rebreather diving.

 

[Admann]

Thanks for the suggestion! Oceaneering has been on the list, I just was looking at a mechanical engineering position in Texas with them earlier today, I will have to apply. In my free time I have been dreaming up schemes to do deep water fish collection with ROVs, I don't think I am brave enough to do mixed gas rebreather diving.

We had Oceaneering divers kept in a at-depth habitat onboard doing repairs to our SPAR facility. 6 divers would do 28 days at a time in a habitat 6' in diameter and about 15' long. Days of compr/decompr in and out. The ROV brought some interesting things up and we saw from really cool videos of wildlife at the bottom around the subsea connections, 4000'+