105 Cubish Leather/LPS Tank

[Soylent Wrasse]

A couple of Red Saint Thomas mushrooms, two rooted halimeda plants, two sprouting mangroves, 5-6 hermits and 5-6 snails. Oh and a blue/green discoma

I'll get a pic once those (mushrooms) settle in and open up.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Mid water change pic:

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Oh, and did a quick and dirty light stand, so I finally (since February!) got my Fiji Sun T5 fixture running. You can see the bare wood on the top of the pic. I'll get it painted this weekend.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Quick vid of the new fishies and some other stuff. It's nice to actually see stuff in the tank after six month.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

HUGE, HUGE Shout-out to John and Andrew at MAS (Midwest Aquarium Services) in Fargo, ND. I texted him if he was opening today (it is 2.15 hours each way for me), he was and come on down.

Long story short, amazballs. Here's what I picked up today:

Two green/purple hammer frags (1 head each)
2" Jedi Mind Trick Monti
Two Watermelon Rainbow Bubble Tips
Leather Coral frag that hasn't opened yet for him (no ideas on color, probably tan/gray/regular)
Four heads of branching Blasto Merletti
Two big polyps of a really sweet paly grandis, a couple babies on the back side
Four heads of a branching multi color frogspawn (purple/green and mix)
Neon Green cabbage leather
Black/Blue branching sponge
Neon Pink/Purple finger leather
Single yellow/gold torch head, with five baby heads underneath

Regular sized Rods frozen herbivore
Hikari Baby Brine Shrimp Cubes
Hikari Spirulina Brine Shrimp Cubes

Easily 500-600 if you looked for this online right? Heck some places are selling single torches for $400.

I honestly can say I paid under $250 for everything above.

John is the man. Also thanks to Andrew for helping trying to do three things at once!

Pics when they start to open up.

Edit: Forgot the Nassarius snail
Edit V2. Forgot a mushroom

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Also, last night I put a small order in at Pacific East Aquaculture for some Cristata corals and a rose Gonipora. Should be here Tuesday, I think.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Couple of pics (Sorry for fuzziness, used my phone). Still working on placement - just about everything seems to be opening up somewhat, but the torch just isn't happy. Also I run my tank right around 10-12k, so no oversaturated colors. That said, I think I need a bit more blue, I think I'll try 14-15k and see how I like that.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

I've been reading a really great write up of PAR/PUR/Spectrum/Lighting I found on a planted tank site. The author lists some pretty neat summaries / conclusions that are making me think/ponder new stuff. That is always welcome.

Link to site:

Aquarium Lighting Information Guide | Reef Planted | PAR PUR/PAS

Aquarium Lighting; Help with Reef, Freshwater Plant & more. Researched information about PUR, Kelvin, Nanometers, PAR, “watts per gallon”, light types such as LED By aquarium keeping guru Carl Strohmeyer

www.americanaquariumproducts.com

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

I think I settled on a pretty easy to follow water change routine. If it's not easy, I'll probably not do it . Also going to be testing every Tuesday and Friday for Mag/Alk/Ca. Figure this is enough to get a rough estimate for the levels. With only eight or nine frags, shouldn't swing too much.

Everything is starting to settle in, and so far so good!

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Grabbed a better pic of some of the new stuff:

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Updated video with new corals and the tiny atlantic tang.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Box of goodies came in from Pacific East Aquaculture today - two cristata's a peach Goni and a neon sinulara. They've been in the tank about two hours and are starting to open.

I love T5's!

 

[Teaman89]

Quick and dirty outline of how the tank will be situated. They will both share the 75G sump/refugium.

This looks like a fun build I like this plan. It would be sweet to see it complete. I’ve never seen 2 tanks running through 1 sump. Cool idea.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

This looks like a fun build I like this plan. It would be sweet to see it complete. I’ve never seen 2 tanks running through 1 sump. Cool idea.

While that part has changed a bit (It was originally going to be the two 60's side by side) I ended up with the 105ish "cube" tank. I've got something similar that I'm going to be working on hopefully mid summer, so we'll see how that goes.

Thanks for looking!

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Some of the new stuff:

Big shout out to PacificEastAquaculture, the contact/emails were awesome before and AFTER the delivery. Will order from them again.

Couple of Cristatas. Red/Rose Gonipora and neon sinulara that is coloring up really well 2" from the surface under T5's. I'm kind of excited to see how the tan/yellowish cristata starts to color also. The Purple/Green one on the bottom of the last pic keeps getting darker and darker, while the edges of the tips are starting to lighten up also. Pretty amazing coloration in less than three days.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

While looking at the tank yesterday and getting ready for the H2O change for today, I noticed all my mushrooms are gone. I haven't changed flow, so I don't know if they would have gotten pushed. I'll need to move some stuff around while doing the water change, which I suppose gives me a chance to suck the gunk out between the rocks.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

So tearing the rock apart looking for three mushrooms, they are just gone. Poof. I don't have anything that eats them, and the one discoma was pretty big (2"). Weird.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Everything is trucking along pretty well. Still haven't found the missing mushrooms, and I've got to replace a wavemaker, but the corals are doing great, and even the halimeda plants are still with me (I was worried there might not be enough nutrients in there for them).

Fish are great, the little tang is almost as round as he is long, and the Sunshine Chromis are always out, even the little half inch ones.

Keeping up with the 5 ga / week h20 changes, but I'm having to top off with nearly two gallons a day of fresh water due to evaporation. Small price to pay I suppose, and it is nice that I can use my well water without worry. I try to top off with half ro/di and half tap (My well water is pretty spot on with both Calcium and Mag, nitrates around 10), just to keep things semi stable.

Overall as we roll into summer, tank is doing well.

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

Couple of new pics:

 

[Soylent Wrasse]

A tale of two bubbles....

So got these both awhile ago, same mother (they split), and looked almost exactly alike. They are a rainbowish bubble tip, but since these were kept in lower light really turned into a darker red. I moved one up high, to see if it would take the light (it's about 3" below the surface), and would let it move to where it was happiest. It now looks like this:

The other one was placed on a rock on the sand bed (11" ish from surface), and it has moved a grand total of 1" in the near month I've had it. It looks like this:

The color pattern is there, but it is much more red/orange with slight green tips than the other one. Both are fed via the tank, they don't get fed directly.

Since neither one is moving, they both like where they are at. Same parent, so some genes in both, both happy in two different light levels. Go figure.