Turtle's Fairy Tale

[Fudsey]

I'm home! Tank looks fine other than being covered in film algae... tons amd tons of film algae. Really wish this stuff would go away.

I have to scrape my glass daily. If not, it's like looking through a haze....

 

[Scurvy]

You know its funny. After my vacation in early August I scraped the glass exactly 3 times before I tore it down last weekend. I had nitrates around 30 and Phosphate at .51 near the end. Whatever the exact numbers the tank was balanced. Not reccomending these numbers by any means.

 

[Katrina71]

You know its funny. After my vacation in early August I scraped the glass exactly 3 times before I tore it down last weekend. I had nitrates around 30 and Phosphate at .51 near the end. Whatever the exact numbers the tank was balanced. Not reccomending these numbers by any means.

I just repeated your numbers in a mocking voice. Lol

 

[Scurvy]

Haha, I've told you how many times Im a lazy reefer? I mean it! But no, things didnt look good near the end, I let it go. i was shocked about the glass though.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Big changes to the Fairy Tail.... BIG changes. Lets call it Fairy Tail 3.0 It's all good tho. More room for corals, no more burried corals... Let me get some pics and type this up.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Sneaky peeky

 

[Scurvy]

structure on the right changed a bit?

 

[SashimiTurtle]

The structure on the right changed a lot a bit.


FTS, sand still a little cloudy. I'll get a better one and update when it clears.

Dining room side, unchanged. Its not viewed much so not much room for coral placement.

Fireplace side. Viewed from my spot on the couch and much easier to view standing by the tank. Changed completely except for that one rock on the bottom that acts as the support for it all.

I never was happy with the scape after the first one. Fairy Tail 1.0 was my absolute favorite. Since we have shifted our focus to LPS, we needed more horizontal area for mounting corals. So I tore the right side apart, flattened them out a bit while rearranging them and stacked it all back up.

Second, lighting. After watching the BRS/WWC videos last weekend at work (I know, overtime too ) I got to thinking about my lights. WWC has their whites and T5 on at the beginning of the day and then transition to blues for the second half of the day. My lights only had a brief time of blue at the beginning and end of the day, stayed mostly white for 11 hours and had 6 hours of T5 in the middle of the day. So, what did we do. Lights on and off are the same, 1100-2300 for 12 hours total light. About the same as WWC's tanks. What I changed was the Kessil ramp and the T5 on and off time.

So my whole lighting schedule goes like this...

1100 0% color 5% intensity
1130 35% c 100% i
1200 T5 on
1700 T5 off
1730 35% c 100% i
1800 0% c 100% i
2230 0% c 100% i
2300 0% c 0% c

If that makes any sense. The first half of the day is mostly white from the Kessils(35% isnt totally white, I know I may increase this slowly depending on how I like the look with the T5) then the second half is all blue from the Kessils. Its changed over to that as I'm typing and all the LPS is seriously popping.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I bet you all want to see the corals too... ok, they've all mostly opened back up and they look great under the blues.

First up, the centerpiece. The metallic green trachy.

Bi color frogspawn, turned it so the green is visible in a picture. Kinda really blue, but the back half is purple. I know it looks blue.

The other frogspawn. Yea, you forgot about it didn't you. I thought of selling it, but with the Indo ban going on, I decided to keep it.

Duncans, yep bet you forgot about those too. I've had these for over a year, all the way back to that 75 FOWLR that I tried to turn into a reef... rather unsuccessfully. They are a little worse for wear, lost color and usually have some kind of weird algae growing on the skeleton. Hopefully with some stability and time off a frag rack where snails and hermits can get to them, they will color back up and lose the algae.

Acans, glued them to the rocks. Yep, I was tired of wrasse burring them in sand. Joke is on me... one of them burried already and kicked sand up on the snake eyes. Up on the rock.

Blasto, it had grown onto the plug some so... cut the stem and glue the plug. It'll cover it soon the way LPS has been growing.

Ricordia florida. Yep, I want more of these. Not really into shrooms, but these are cool. This one is still small but has doubled in size since I got it.

Zoas, some I know the names... some I forgot. JF Stargazers JF Jungle Juice, Pink Zippers, Gatorades, Pink Hippos... ehh the rest I need to figure out.

View attachment 20181018_185509.jpg

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Oh yea, y'all probably saw him. Smiley is back.

I also moved the coral beauty over. I probably could have used an acclimation box so it wouldn't have been such a shock on Bonnie. We all know how much she hates blue and orange tiger striped fish... ok, coral beauty angelfish, she hates all things Centropyge bispinosa. Bonnie gave her a thorough tail thrashing and a few nips here and there. No actual damage that saw. The angel knows to hide inside Smiley, and has found the McCoskers old hiding spot from the brunneus. Top left corner behind the locline.

 

[Fudsey]

Keep an eye on your trachy. I've heard angels like fleshy things...

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Keep an eye on your trachy. I've heard angels like fleshy things...

I dare that angel to get anywhere near the trachy... Bonnie has claimed it as her "anemone." She's calm and mild mannered, but mess with her and there will be fins flying. She actually nuzzled me a few times when I was rescaping the rocks. I was expecting her to bite like last time. Just little gentle nibbles and a few tail rubs from Clyde. Puppies, I tell ya.

I tried to catch a pic of her face first in it but she's too quick. I'll keep an eye on it tho. The acans were fine in the 35, but it may just go rogue. Never know with Centropyge.

 

[Janci]

Few quick pictures of the acans (Micromussa lordhowensis) doing some tank maintenance.

JKR Snake Eyes acan. This is the one with the yellow. I got it in the JKR live sale in August amd its growing a few babies. Few top down pics at the surface, the water was moving but you can see the yellow color.

Random orange and teal. I dropped it face first in the dirt so its ticked off. Got this one from Joey at JKR back in late June I think. No babies yet but the two polyps look healthy.

Different orange and teal... got this one a year ago at the CMAC show. Going back Saturday. This one started as one polyp, grew a bunch of babies, lost the large original polyp and now it's starting to grow back over where the original polyp was. It's also been shaded a bit and half burried by either a wrasse or a conch, or both. That's why the flesh looks a little see thru. It should come back with more light.

The last one. The green and purple. This was on another frag disk. When I removed it I fragged a little section of about 3 polyps. The frag, and the area fragged from the mother colony are growing like wildfire. I may frag another piece off the mother soon. First pic is mother, second is the tiny 3 polyp frag that is now at least 6 large polyps with babies, last pic is new growth on mother from fragging.

gorgeous pieces.

 

[Katrina71]

I just got some rock like yours from a friend. I'm changing my scape as well. I have to say I'm not loving the glaring white rock in mine, but it will be perfect when it colors up. I will never again have artificial flat rock. I'm really glad I only had one piece.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Full daylight FTS. I decided on 60% color from the Kessils with the Actinic T5s.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Had to remove the angel... fins torn, tail bitten off scales missing... hopefully it recovers. It can still swim around and holds itself upright but man, does it look rough. Like it went in one end of a power head and swam out the other. I'll have to rehome it once it recovers. Bonnie just hates all things angelfish.

 

[Scurvy]

Wow, thats a rough 2o hours....Hope he recovers.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Crazy how she gets along with everything no problem. Not even a shred of aggression from her. As soon as I put a coral beauty in the tank she loses it. This is the second one she hass tried to kill. The first one was much smaller, about 3/4", so I thought one about her size would be ok. I have no doubt it would be dead by tomorrow if I left it.

 

[Fudsey]

WOW ! ! !

So much for puppies....

 

[SashimiTurtle]

WOW ! ! !

So much for puppies....

Puppies that dont like orange and blue stripped toys... ;Facepalm