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Hornberson Reef - DSA 90 gallon mixed reef

That's awesome bro how long have you had the two together? How's that new doser working? The one I got from you is doing amazing! Thanks! As soon as I find some super glue I'm going to be fragging some stuff up you should stop by!

Thanks! I'd love to check your tank out. Are you going to the meeting on Saturday?

The mandarins have been in the tank a little over two months, the female was added about two weeks after the male. He's about 50% bigger in size.
 
I wasn't aware there was a meeting!
Yeah man, anytime just let me know. And just a heads up, it's not nearly as nice as yours.


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I re-wired our Apex breakout box with quick disconnects and a gang terminal for the grounds. I added a magnetic door switch but the wiring was broken and it didn't work. After re-wiring it up I got it working and installed on our cabinet doors. Now the Apex turns on the Refugium lamp whenever the cabinet is open, which makes my life a lot easier doing maintenance on the tank.

Some nice new additions this week. I bought two rock flower anemones in @Merith 's group buy - big thanks to him for organizing. I'm looking after a second Rainbow Acan colony for @Corallus and a Linckia starfish for @jonmos75.

Our Rainbow Acan colony is growing like crazy:
2015-07-18%2017.50.26.jpg


New rockflower anemones, one attached to a rock and the other buried himself in the substrate:
2015-07-18%2014.54.43.jpg

2015-07-18%2014.54.08.jpg


Linckia Starfish:
2015-07-18%2017.44.33.jpg
 
Looks dope man! I want a linkia but I also want a harlequin shrimp lol. My acan has still not sprouted 1 baby and its all pissed off at me. I believe its from me bringing up my alk to 12 haha. I want to see more pics!!!!!
 
Looks dope man! I want a linkia but I also want a harlequin shrimp lol. My acan has still not sprouted 1 baby and its all pissed off at me. I believe its from me bringing up my alk to 12 haha. I want to see more pics!!!!!

That is why @wpeterson has my Linkia.... as I got a Harlequin to do some cleanup work and then when the harlequin is done with his duties I might sell him or trade for corals or store credit.
 
I didn't mind them when they were here and there, but when you get hundreds of them they due become an eyesore and they are never very geometric...but that could make them very unique...lol
 
Yeah same here. Here and there it's not too bad but once you have to scrape them off to see your beloved coral, then they have to go lol.


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I re-wired our Apex breakout box with quick disconnects and a gang terminal for the grounds. I added a magnetic door switch but the wiring was broken and it didn't work. After re-wiring it up I got it working and installed on our cabinet doors. Now the Apex turns on the Refugium lamp whenever the cabinet is open, which makes my life a lot easier doing maintenance on the tank.

Some nice new additions this week. I bought two rock flower anemones in @Merith 's group buy - big thanks to him for organizing. I'm looking after a second Rainbow Acan colony for @Corallus and a Linckia starfish for @jonmos75.

Our Rainbow Acan colony is growing like crazy:
2015-07-18%2017.50.26.jpg


New rockflower anemones, one attached to a rock and the other buried himself in the substrate:
2015-07-18%2014.54.43.jpg

2015-07-18%2014.54.08.jpg


Linckia Starfish:
2015-07-18%2017.44.33.jpg

Love the star. Are you doing anything special to feed it? I had a beautiful blue one in my old 140g tank. Loved it, but it seemed I never was feeding the right stuff and it slowly withered away. Could have been a poor quality specimen too. Oh the things to get with a bigger tank!
 
tygunn said:
Love the star. Are you doing anything special to feed it? I had a beautiful blue one in my old 140g tank. Loved it, but it seemed I never was feeding the right stuff and it slowly withered away. Could have been a poor quality specimen too. Oh the things to get with a bigger tank!

I'm not feeding the star, orange linckia's are supposed to be detrivores and scavengers mostly. He's very active on the glass, rockwork, and across the substrate.
 
I have often had asterina stars in our tanks, but I've never seen a bloom or the large numbers folks complain about. In my experience, I've only see them eat algae and coralline. We have a Tuxedo Urchin, so there's plenty of competition for coralline eaters.

http://reefcorner.com/reef-database-index/hitchhiker-index/asterina-starfish/

There are rumors of them being bad for SPS or soft coral, but I've never seen that or a substantiated first hand account. Like many members of the cleanup crew, if a coral dies, and you find them eating algae off the skeleton you might think you caught them red handed.

On the other hand, perhaps there are more than one kind and some are bad news. I've seen lots of flat worms, but not all of them are AEFW.
 
http://reefcorner.com/reef-database-index/hitchhiker-index/asterina-starfish/

There are rumors of them being bad for SPS or soft coral, but I've never seen that or a substantiated first hand account. Like many members of the cleanup crew, if a coral dies, and you find them eating algae off the skeleton you might think you caught them red handed.

On the other hand, perhaps there are more than one kind and some are bad news. I've seen lots of flat worms, but not all of them are AEFW.
That is kinda my theory too. Either people are wrong about them eating corals or there are multiple types
 
The current cleanup crew that's growing out of control for me are the small 1cm-2cm white brittle stars, thankfully I think they're great and friendly. There's probably about 200 of them in my refugium whenever I first turn the lights on before they hide. They seem to do a great job of cleaning the chaeto forest in there. Hopefully, they're not eating all my pods - but since the mandarins are getting fat off of frozen food now, I'm probably OK.
 
@Nav dropped by this afternoon and I gave him a big hunk of chaeto full of brittle stars, snails, and pods. There are so many brittle stars in the sump I'm happy to share and the chaeto is still growing like crazy under the big full spectrum CFL grow light. Best $14 I ever spent. I was surprised how many baby snails there were, 2-3mm in size in the chaeto when we looked at it in the container. Plenty of stomatella, but curious of the cerith or trochus are able to grow up in the refugium as well. I've been promoting the adult snails up to the display tank when they get over 1cm or so.

Ive been manually feeding live phytoplankton and frozen zooplankton (cyclopeeze) in the tank so far, but now that I have a doser with four heads I put some bottled phytoplankton on a small feeding once a day a few hours after lights out. It'll be interesting to see how that works out.

I've been worried that my water changes might be exporting useful critters from the sump. Usually when I do a water change, I turn off the return pump and pull the return stand pipe from the overflow to fill my sump to it's max level. Then I pump the water in the sump out and replace it with my water change water, usually around 25g. The sump only holds about 20-22gal because of rocks and equipment and how low I'm able to pump the water level, so I usually pump all the new water in and then pump 2-5 gal out after it all mixes. I've been sticking the pump inside my filter sock when I'm pumping out the sump to try and prevent sucking out critters from the refugium and sump area, seems to be working a little better.
 
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Vinegar is amazing stuff. I mixed a bunch of vinegar/water together in a 5 gallon bucket to soak/run our return pump in. Having that already mixed up, I wanted to clean as many things with it as possible. @Nav pointed out how much algae growth there was inside my skimmer body - about half of it was totally covered in different types of coralline. It's so weird to see a totally white/clear skimmer with clear water in it. I took the time today to breakdown the remaining pumps in the sump and the skimmer, run them through a vinegar bath, and scrub them down.

Beyond what seemed like half a pound of algae, I found some debris blocking stuck inside needle wheel impellor on the skimmer. Glad to get that cleaned out and working again, this is the first time I've broken it down since I set it up 8-9 months ago. Given we're going away for a long vacation in August, it's good to get all the big things done while I have a few weeks to make sure I'm not breaking anything.

Sump:
2015-07-26%2015.52.32.jpg


Here's a full tank shot from yesterday:
2015-07-25%2018.49.55.jpg


Acans and red rock flower anemone:
2015-07-24%2019.19.36.jpg


Flame Angel
2015-07-25%2018.49.20.jpg


Ricordeas are doing well, biggest split off two babies:
2015-07-25%2018.51.25.jpg


Orange Linckia hogging the spotlight:
2015-07-25%2018.52.13.jpg
 
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