Tank birthday, 47+ years

[Paul B]

He's also trying to fill my boots. And blow his nose

 

[reefwiser]

Cute one Paul grand kids are great. You can spoil them and send them home to your kid for the to deal with them. [emoji1]

 

[Paul B]

Yes, that Is one of the best parts
of being a Grand Parent.

 

[Peanut]

Yes, that Is one of the best parts
of being a Grand Parent.

it's your reward for not killing your children...at least that's what my father tells me :)

 

[Paul B]

Today I picked up this very cool clingfish although I have to admit, I never had much luck keeping them very long. You don't see them very often and I don't really like common fish.

 

[gordonj1]

awesome!!!!

 

[Chris Aldrich]

Teddy just found out he is to young to start a reef tank

Well if he wants to meet and surpass the age of your reef someday, he better get started early!

Also, I look forward to see how you do with the clingfish. Such an interesting fish.

 

[Paul B]

I
usually don't have a
lot of luck
with
those,
but we will see.

 

[Paul B]

My boat is away for the winter but I have the two outdrives in my garage so in the spring I have to do yearly maintenance on them like paint them with antifouling paint, replace the zinc's and change the oil. I can't wait to get out and do some collecting in the summer as that is one of my favorite things to do. That and to watch the Supermodels they sometimes have at my marina when they want to introduce a new boat model.
My tank is doing very well, I just lost a small hammer coral but that is a good thing because it was shaded by an acropora that seems to be growing very fast. I don't know why. I couldn't get my fat fingers under it to move the hammer but it is what it is. I have plenty more hammers. The monti's are doing the same thing and I will have to break them soon as they are almost touching the front glass. Breaking them is not a problem as they seem to be the fastest growing coral and they even shade their own cousins and kill them. But again, that is a good thing. Sometimes I break off the shaded pieces and stick them someplace else but usually I just let nature take it's course.
I still have the pipefish, mandarins, ruby red dragonette, possum wrasse, pair of pistol shrimp and every thing else. A bananafish jumped out, actually both of them jumped out so I won't be getting more of them even though they are extreamly cool. I also don't know how many shrimp gobies I have as there is so many places to hide, I only see glimpses of some of them occasionally. I may go to my favorite LFS today because I want a mate for the ruby red dragonette and possum wrasse. I don't like to see lonely fish.
My water is always clear but for some reason today it seems exceptionally clear. I am not sure why but it disappeared, not even sediment. Maybe the large blue sponge sucked it all up? Who knows.
I have not seen my new clingfish eat anything yet, not even live newborn brine or live worms. What he does do is position himself right in front of a hermit crab like a javelin, he is very still an inch away, then he propels himself right at the crabs face. The crab is not amused and quickly pulls his shell down in front of his face and the clingfish crashes into his shell and bounces off. You would think that after a couple of hours of this, he would get a bloody nose (if he had a nose) or at least tire of it. But it is his thing so I assume he eats hermit crab faces.
You really can't get good picture of those ruby red guys as they don't like camera's, but he is in the back here

OH, here he is

This stuff just grows wild

This is just a common red one

 

[gettaReef]

Mmmmmm.....hermit crab faces sounds yummy

 

[Paul B]

They
look
delicious

 

[Paul B]

My tank is doing great for some reason. I still have to move the entire structure to the back and break a bunch of corals to do that, but I am going to wait until after the holidays because I get a lot of visitors now and after I do that, the tank will need a little time to recover and re grow. The pistol shrimp pair are still making huge tunnels. It amazes me that they can construct tunnels so long under a heavy reef using just gravel. All my livestock is doing very well and many are still spawning. These duncans probably doubled in size in the few months since I have them

This mushroom is weird and I have seen this many times. The thing will sit there for years doing almost nothing and all of a sudden it grows to 5 times it's size. I have noticed that a number of times. Now that it grew I can feed it and it really grows when you feed it. I use clams to feed them and most of my corals and fish (the fish also get live blackworms every day) I do not use Mysis to feed corals because Mysis are mostly shell and corals do not need shell which is not even calcium. I still feel clams are the best food besides live worms that you can feed most sea creatures.

About a week or two ago I bought this staghorn. Tomorrow I am going back to get some more of them as it seems to like my tank so far and expands nicely. When I dove in Tahiti these things were like weeds with miles of them growing in shallow water. I love this stuff.

 

[Paul B]

I
took
a
new FTS

 

[Chris Aldrich]

Great to see a new FTS, Paul! Looks fantastic.

 

[Paul B]

Thanks, it's a very hard shot to take because the tank is so long and low. That shot is 4 pictures merged together. My camera allows you to do that then it merges them.

 

[Paul B]

The tank is doing very well. I pushed back the reef structure a little so I can clean the glass. I had to break that large montipora in the lower center but it already grew back and you can't even tell where I broke it and it was 2 weeks ago. I added 3 staghorn corals you can see two of them in the above picture, one is right in the center of that picture. They seem to be doing well and expanding nicely. The tank is still overcrowded but that is a good problem as the corals are growing and I keep needing to remove rocks to fit them. The fish are
1 copperband
2 bangai cardinals
2 fireclowns
1 possum wrasse
3 or 4 unknown gobies
3 or 4 unknown cardinals
1 clown gobi
2 mandarins
2 blues tripe pipefish
2 ruby red dragonettes
1 regular red dragonette
2 pistal shrimp
unknown number of crabs and snails.
Most of the paired fish are spawning and I am hoping the ruby reds spawn as they are young and I just got the female 2 weeks ago.
I built a denitrification coil and am cycling it before I add it to the tank as a test. So far it reduces nitrates from 40 to zero in 10 minutes that it takes water to go through the thing but only at one drop a second.
I am still writing a book which will be about half DIY stuff of stuff I designed over the last 50 years and forgotten practices that disappeared but I still use. I still use the brine shrimp feeder every day and feed clams and worms every day. The baby brine help me keep those pod eaters as I have quite a few.



Denitrification filter showing intake water and water exiting



You can see the staghorn here as well as the monti I had to breakto move back due to the growing and the pistal shrimp pushing the structure forward.

 

[gettaReef]

I love the fts. Corals, fish...whole tank is looking great. I'd be very interested in learning how to build a denitrification filter! Does it require a specific skill set to be able to build, or would you say it's a rather easy diy? Again, can't wait to read this book you're working on

 

[Paul B]

The denitrification coil is probably the easiest thing in the book to build and my 2 year old Grand Daughter Greta could probably do it. OK, maybe not.

 

[mark11]

Hi Paul, Thanks for the great thread. There's a lot of mixed results with denitification coils. One person became a proponent after he started dosing the thing! Knowing that's not your style, and you don't build sissy equipment, I'm interested in the solution you came up with. Did you go bigger than 1/4" for the tubing, what length did you go with, and what material did you chose for the anaerobic area (I'm guessing bio balls)? Thanks!

 

[Paul B]

The tubing Is 1/4", maybe 60' long. Then there is about a 5' X 3'4" pipe filled with sand. I made it in 2 parts so one part could be removed while the other part stayed working. My book will have a simple diagram, but I hope to have the thing perfected by then