Kessil

SFSU's tank(s)

Ok thanks go out to Phong for me showing my tanks off, I'm not happy with them, but the glass/acrylic is semi-clean now, so it'll do a little show-show

First tank is my "stony" tank, corals consist mostly LPS & SPS, it's looking a bit bare now, since I've battled montipora eating nudibranchs, "something" that caused a great deal of my other corals to have tissue necrosis (no evidence of redbugs or AEFW!) and my latest malady a red poofy type of algae that probably is worse than any pest you could get simply because there's no way to treat it other than light deprivation (I don't think a zero nutrient tank will dent it), it's easily detachable which means it can float right into the branches of a particular coral and it will start growing close to the "trunk", and it "attacks" indiscriminately, so I can't simply remove all of Acropora sp. or whatever. Anyways biological means are what I'm using to try to keep it undercontrol, haven't found the magic bullet yet though. I'm still unsure what causes this, if it's my RO/Di water is somehow "tainted", maybe my salt is a little funky, hell I even considered that the algae came from the Formula Two food that maybe some red-strain managed to live *shrug*

No plans for anymore fish, I think I'm at a happy stocking level (but yeah we've all said that before). This tank is acrylic, so it's the most easily damaged, and as a result it's scratched to hell, but it's not that big of a deal, I can always sand the scratches to minimal levels, but using a razor blade to clean is just so easy when the coraline builds up that I probably will always have scratches.
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Size- 100g (acrylic), 72" long x 18" x 18"
Lighting - 2-250w 14000k Hamiliton w/ electronic ballast
Flow - 2 vortech pumps on reef-crest mode + Quiet One 4000 as return pump
Corals - Hard (with a couple soft ones as placeholders to grow out)
Fish - Yellow Tang, Tomini Tang, Double-barred Rabbitfish
Skimmer - ASM-G3 w/ Sedra 5000 needlewheel



Here's my softie tank and before not too long ago this tank was immaculate clean! Then I noticed some red-flatworms and treated for those, which lost my foxface rabbitfish which without a doubt made sure than any vegetable matter didn't last long in this tank! Also lost a bicolor angel which was a shame because he got along with my flame angel. Due to the loss of a foxface (and I'm trying desperately to get my new one to take up the slack) that red poofy algae has hit this tank as well! Which isn't as bad, as softcorals don't usually have long branches where it makes that much of an issue if something comes in contact with. However I still have the planeria, and those little blue cloves are growing over everything, they somehow detach into the water column and reattach elsewhere, because there's not one corner of the tank that is free of them! In fact they're even growing on the back glass! But this tank really is my "let it go it's own way" tank I don't want to keep pruning and cutting (except maybe the colt coral as it's getting a bit large.

Size- 120g (glass), 60" long x 24"tall x 18"deep
Lighting - 4-54w T5 bulbs, 2 "10000k" bulbs, 2 - "actinic-blue"
Flow - Seio 1500 (one with tons of green crap growing on it) & Seio 1100 + Quiet One 3000 as return pump
Corals - Soft, with a couple exceptions, plus a RBTA that has been with me for a long time.
Fish - 2-Tomato Clowns, Flame Angel, Foxface Rabbitfish
Skimmer - None, due to my hawaiian trip coming back to a burn power strip took out the pump, still haven't replaced it yet.

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How does your Tomini Tang do with Algae? I have one which I got after losing my 9-year-old Yellow. He doesn't seem such a big nibbler as the yellow one was. He does pick but the Yellow never stopped tearing at the rocks.

I've got that darn pink-cotton-candy algae from somewhere and the tang certainly doesn't pick at that. I hear the big Turbo snails do but I only have one and I've yet to see him near any... If I place him, he is uncanny in his sense of direction; never yet hitting the algae I want him to eat. I'm scared to pull at this stuff because it's probably fragmenting and landing all over the tank.

-Adrian
 
The Tomini does scrape at the acrylic/rocks, as that's what kind of algae they go for, but how much of a dent he does? I dunno.

I've tried turbos for the poof-algae, but It still comes, maybe they are denting it, it just grows faster than they can eat.
 
Being as my glass was so crystal clear (got the back scraped clean too!) I decided to take some shots of some of the things really close to the front, they were so close I had to use SUPER macro mode, not just ordinary macro mode! Not that I had anything better to do but just wanted to share.. I didn't want to shrink them too much since the macro loses it's beauty when you shrink it too much. This is by no means "my collection" this the stuff that was really close to the front glass :D

No name for these (although I tongue-in-cheek called them "Luck of the Irish")
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These are extremely similar (same?) as the ones Zepplock put in the DBTC, who knows maybe they came from me via swap as I think I put a dozen frags into it, they are quite weed like, although a very nice shade of greyish-blue. I literally have hundreds of these buggers.
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Norman might recognize these ones, got these from a pick at the Seabay swap many years back, remember a couple things from them, first thing is "Who the hell is Mr. Ugly?" and then I remember the tentacles went away when in my tank, well now they're back out :D The one, the only, the really honestly true... Armor of Gods! (Everyone else is just a pretender god!) While not as red as the ones usually photo-shopped on zoa sites, I also don't have a ton of actinic (none actually) on this tank ;)
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These aren't terribly "special", probably came in a ton of shipments, but they are very densely packed and their tentacles make a neat little sea of grass look.
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Given/sold/traded quite a few of these, probably too many imo.. but the bumpy nature of a ricordia close up is quite neat... this one is the florida version of it.
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Cloves look so damn cool in macromode, but with human eyes they look basically like a mat of stuff, these are not big at all, take a look at one of the zoa tentacles and compare it to the size of these.. .get the picture? VERY weed like, got this in the DBTC, gave away my fair share of it as well, it doesn't need to be near anything to grow on it, they detach in the water column and will take up residence anywhere! Luckily they don't seem to sting, but they are pretty much everywhere in my tank... I would hate to see what happened if they got loose in an SPS tank! But in my softie tank they're fine.
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Finally one of the few "hard" corals in my tank (the other is my "phoenix cap" which must have had a sliver on a rock when I put this tank together), close up of a torch coral. It works with the softy theme of the tank though as it's swaying motion is quite neat... you might almost mistake it for an anemone... Ritteri.
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Nice AoG's there Mike :D

I can tell the one that grew from my frags because the orange lines run just about all the way to the mouth :D

Btw, a lot(most) of the AoG's out there that have flooded the collector market are actually a different zoa. There's a SoCal vendor that kept renaming his zoas to the current hot name, and the last one he settled on was AoG. So a lot of the stuff traded on RC actually are descended from his.
 
Glad you can recognize your babies :D I really hope these are yours now, I do remember grabbing yours from the swap, but they have been a metallic pink for a long time, don't know if that was lighting, or a morph over time, but i'd be upset if they somehow weren't yours.

Yeah I figured that people would call ANY coral that looked close that, which is why I dislike the naming there are very few corals that can be said to be uniquely colored/patterned. But whatever, I like them, I'm not trying to sell them in any way, so they can be called crusty granny panty zoas for all I care :D
 
Ok, I found this picture on my hard drive, from June of 2006 (I've had the T5s in there since then... might be time for a lighting change :D)

But this is literally right after I set the tank up... (btw the back glass is now clean like the old picture.. just haven't taken a picture of it yet)

I lost that magnificent foxface I had... (it's not a "magnificent" one but it was a beautiful animal that destroyed ANY algae within days)

Some things to note, for growth comparisons
1) Norman's AoG, they're on the rock in the bottom left, maybe 10 polyps in the old, in the new they're the dominate zoa on that rock!
2) RBTA, that was one, it turned two , split I don't know how many times, now there's 3, only two are pictured because the 3rd went walkabout and is behind the rockwork somewhere.. oh yeah they're pretty damn big now
3) Finger leather, to the right of the RBTA, yeah it's grow a bit, and that halimedia didn't last long with the foxface.
4) The toadstool.. yeah it's larger
5) The Colt coral... oh yeah I chop the crap out of it a couple times and it's still huge!
6) Everything else... yeah this is my "let it grow" tank
 
Have the day off today. I'd frag my AoG's but I'm cross referencing Salifert and API alk tests right now.

The API reads a whole 2dKH higher than Salifert if you follow the directions and go to the yellow endpoint.

Grrr....
 
Ok minor update (no pictures sorry :()... Redid the lighting arrangement on my softie tank.

Current lighting was 4x 54w T5 bulbs, 2 were "Aquablue" Giessman (basically the 10,0000-11,000K "white" bulbs) and 2 were "Actinic +" which are the "blue" bulbs but they do make the corals pop like regular actinic 03 does.

Reason for changing is these bulbs are getting close to 2 years, and while I know T5s are good to go for a while I wanted to mix things up a bit, thanks to Dudley & Eileen for the reflectors too!

Being as their is limited space in the canopy, I decided to go with 2x 175w MH bulbs, and 2x 54w T5 bulbs (for the poppiness! :D) The reflectors I got went in without a hitch, however the flat one I got is a night and day difference from the other more parabolic/focused one. So might try to manual bend it a bit although at it's size it might be a PITA to do so. I had a really old custom sea life magnetic 175w dual ballast laying around, so I simply used that with two 175w 12,000k Reeflux bulbs. As a result my tank is much more bluer than it was with t5s only. However I'm betting the MH bulbs probably put a little more punch into lighting deeper, and everything that has fluorescent pigments now sparkles, even my ugly "brown eye" palythoas look pretty sexy, with silver insides and green bodies :D

I did run into a few problems, I mismeasured with the center brace on the flat reflector, so I need to readjust that, however as I mentioned I might bend it into a quasi-curve just to get a bit more focus so no big deal. Another issue is my timers just don't want to turn on anymore! They're so old the gears inside of them seem to be a bit stressed. So I need to figure something out with that.

The idea I originally had was to have the 2x 54w Actinic+ (blue) bulbs, on at 8am, then have one MH bulb fire at around 10am, the other at around Noon, the actinics off at 12:30 (since I forgot how long it can take for magnetic ballasts to fire/warm up bulbs *laugh*), then back on at around 2pm, , with the first MH bulb going off shortly there after at around 2pm, then finally the 2nd bulb going off at around 4pm. and finally the T5s off at roughly 8pm Kind of move the light across the tank, however I'm unsure if I like this, simply because I'm not quite sure how much light energy those blue t5s actually put into the tank (or if it's just eye candy).

The over all result however, is
2x 54w x 10.5 hours = 1.134kWh
2x 175w x 4hours = 1.4 kWh
= 2.534 kWh per day

versus my old setup/scheme 4x 54w T5s on at 8am, off at 8pm.

4x 54w x 12hours = 2.592 kWh

So not much of a difference in energy usage between the two setups.

I might also get even less creative as well, by having the blue bulbs fire then both MH bulbs fire at the same time (hey all I need is ONE working timer for the MH bulbs then! :D) then the blue T5s off, and finally back on, when the MHs are going to go off. But then again I really don't know what kind of direction I want to go with lighting.. after all its just softies :D
 
A couple of top down shots of potential DBTC corals.

Won at BAR raffle as "pokerstar" was a big honking frag, growth is orange similar to a rainbow though, we'll see how it works out, either way not a shabby coral, and grows fast too, faster than any other montis I've had
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Sunset, the real deal, unfortunately some time ago my glue job sucked and it plopped upside down in my tank, and bleached out a bunch, it's been in lower light for a while starting to get the orange back, but now I put it up a tad higher and we'll see what happens
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A couple lepastreas, growing on the bottom acrylic, oh and it's completely covered with coraline too (yet the damn stuff doesn't grow on my rocks *grumble*). They're touching each other with no issues it seems well see how it goes, have no idea how to frag these though! Unsure what those brown/red spots are, at first I thought they might be red flatworms, but they're completely solid so who knows.
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