Steve's new tank thread

[stevewright1]

Cool. I was just in Shenzhen a few days ago in Futian. It’s not even across the water :p

That's True Scott you can drive to and from these days
cannot bring anything live back though, so no coral or fish shopping for me on Fish Street , but I will be going there for dry goods in the near future

 

[ScottR]

That's True Scott you can drive to and from these days
cannot bring anything live back though, so no coral or fish shopping for me on Fish Street , but I will be going there for dry goods in the near future

I’ve always wondered how strict they are about live goods. Like, could a coral make it across the border....

 

[stevewright1]

I’ve always wondered how strict they are about live goods. Like, could a coral make it across the border....

They are pretty strict and do spot checks so I would not risk it for live stock
but for skimmers, dosers, etc and other dry goods I reckon I will find more variety over in Hong Kong

 

[stevewright1]

Nothing new to see as yet but order placed today for part of my CUC
have got 10 x Astra Tecta snails and 2 x small size blue leg hermit crabs hopefully on their way to me

also having some shifting sand bed issues at present and am experimenting with wavemaker placement and direction to solve this problem
its not rapid movement but over the course of last 4 weeks an area the size of a grapefruit at the back of the reef almost in the middle of the tank has been totally cleared of sand
luckily based on previous negative experiences, I did leave enough space between the back wall and the rockwork to allow a long handled scraper to be used and I will reset the sand bed and hopefully along with wavemaker repositioning it will stay sand covered in the future

 

[stevewright1]

Diatoms have arrived
and Algae never ceases to amaze me with its resilience - 4 weeks of only natural light for 99% of the time (aside from the few occasions I lit the tank up for image taking purposes)
Clean up crew will at least have something to do upon its arrival LOL

View attachment 1128584

 

[stevewright1]

Diatoms progressing nicely, going to monitor every few days to record worst it gets safe in the knowledge that without me doing anything about it, it will disappear eventually (once the available silicates have all been used up)

 

[stevewright1]

unidentified hitchhiker appeared out of nowhere yesterday , its a tiny snail type species and its on the tank glass eating

- therefore he or she is staying LOL

 

[stevewright1]

CUC arrived within a couple of days of my last post, 2 blue legged hermits and 10 snails
they have done a great job so far with much of the hitchhiking algae that arrived with the rock has all but gone now

1st stocking was this nice leather toadstool coral with really long polyps
a week or so later I added a trio of LPS corals all from same store

 

[stevewright1]

Hammer, Torch and Frogspawn and yes if they had a nice bubble , it would have been 4 x LPS corals added

 

[stevewright1]

and the obligatory GSP on its own rock which I can move and trim when required LOL

 

[vetteguy53081]

unidentified hitchhiker appeared out of nowhere yesterday , its a tiny snail type species and its on the tank glass eating

- therefore he or she is staying LOL

Stomella snail. Safe and good algae eater
Tank coming along nicely

 

[stevewright1]

Stomella snail. Safe and good algae eater
Tank coming along nicely

That's excellent news because there are 2 of them now and the 2nd one is double the size of that 1st one

 

[stevewright1]

also a pair of clown fish as my 1st fish stocked at weekend

 

[NY_Caveman]

also a pair of clown fish as my 1st fish stocked at weekend

Cute!

 

[stevewright1]

Cute!

Thank you NY Caveman

added new FTS showing all the new corals, plus some bargain bucket Zoanthids I picked up
the side view shows the GSP rock is separate from main reef rockwork and I can move that further away if needs be to prevent it taking over

internal cannister filter temporary for running carbon and sponges to remove the free floating particles I failed to clean out of the sand bed LOL

 

[stevewright1]

been a while, so figured it was time for an update
stocking has continued in terms of corals and fish
only 1 loss thus far which was the Torch coral that contracted Brown Jelly disease and dissolved within a 48 hour period , all 3 heads gone, fortunately none of my other LPS corals seem to have been affected and the Bubble, Hammer and Frogspawn are all OK

Long Nose butterfly is most recent introduction , it took 3 or 4 days for it to recognize the frozen Mysis and Brine shrimp being introduced as a food source , but once it registered the fact they are edible there was no stopping it.
Diamond back Goby does an excellent job of keeping sand bed clean, albeit with the typical particle filled water column as a result.

 

[vetteguy53081]

Coming along nicely.