Variant's Acros n' Nems

[Variant]

Who said the back of your sump had to be a mess or wires and tubing? This is what happens when I can't make any more meaningful progress until the man in the brown suit comes and drops off my much needed boxes of reef supplies...

Got some 1/4" tubing channels to route dosing lines and ATO lines while using wire holder/hiders to route all the wires coming out of the sump. Hopefully this will let me put a bunch of equipment on this side of the stand like skimmate holder, co2 scrubber, UV sterilizers, and whatever else I can fit.

 

[Variant]

Made good progress on the plumbing over the long weekend! Just waiting on some silicone tubing that'll come in the mail this Friday to finalize everything.

 

[Janci]

Made good progress on the plumbing over the long weekend! Just waiting on some silicone tubing that'll come in the mail this Friday to finalize everything.

Nice and clean built, Variant.
I love the shallow tank and the dimensions are perfect for viewing and scaping.
Happy to follow along.

 

[Variant]

The plumbing is done and by some level of luck, I was able to go leak free on the first go! With water in the tank, next step is to get live rock. I decided to go with Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock, which should be arriving at the airport later today. Before anything live goes into the tank, I decided to hook up a UV sterilizer to make sure the water is as clean as I can possible make it. It definitely helps with the water clarity through the glass, but only time will tell.

 

[Variant]

A couple other noteworthy updates… With a ton of traveling coming up in the next 12 months for both work and personal across five countries, I decided to hook up a neck cleaner for my skimmer along with a skim mate collector.

 

[Janci]

Cool add-ons!
Curious how the tank with rock will look like.

... and which hitchhikers you are going to score! TBS is one of the best ways to start a tank.

 

[Variant]

Got my shipment of Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock and this was attempt number 3 of aquascaping. It was challenging to make sure the aquascape looked good from at least 2 or the 3 viewable sides of the tank. If anyone has thoughts, chime in! And for those who were hesitant in ordering from TBS for smaller tank, there's no need for hesitation. I specified the dimensions of my tank and the general sized of rocks I was looking for and all the pieces I got in were perfect.

 

[Janci]

Got my shipment of Tampa Bay Saltwater live rock and this was attempt number 3 of aquascaping. It was challenging to make sure the aquascape looked good from at least 2 or the 3 viewable sides of the tank. If anyone has thoughts, chime in! And for those who were hesitant in ordering from TBS for smaller tank, there's no need for hesitation. I specified the dimensions of my tank and the general sized of rocks I was looking for and all the pieces I got in were perfect.

I love the first picture and view.
It would look awesome to have more then 2 islands.

I would keep the rock not too high to the surface. It is a shallow tank and you have a light fixture that will grow coral even under the tank.
It might be an idea to keep some rocks on the bottom, to connect the islands between them.

Still, it looks great as it is.

 

[liverock]

Nice job!

Richard TBS

 

[Variant]

In my opinion, a reef tank is just not a reef tank without some clownfish. My S/O did a quick doodle of the new clownfish.

 

[Variant]

A couple pictures of some of the goodies I got today:

One of the two clownfish

Mr.clownfish photobombing the duncans

Green slimer + Mystery acro + maxima clam

 

[Variant]

Back from hiking the High Sierras to a tank ph of 8.3 and acros all happy and encrusting.

But on a sad note, one of the clownfish died. While the live rock allowed me to put acros immediately, it also housed some tiny parasitic isopods that basically ganged up on the smaller of the two clownfish. There was so many on him that it had a hard time swimming in the flow. I scooped him out and used tweezers to take the isopods off the body one by one. The clownfish was so weak at this point he eventually died.

To date, I pulled out ~15 tiny isopods, which have proved to be more difficult to catch than the larger ones. The positive is that with a barebottom, it's easy to find them!

 

[count krunk]

could you post a pic of the isopod's you are pulling out?

I am imagining rollypolly looking guys

 

[Variant]

could you post a pic of the isopod's you are pulling out?

I am imagining rollypolly looking guys

I can when I catch another sucker. I don't have a good macro lens yet so photos might come out poor though.

I am 100% sure they're the bad isopods. They attach to the fish, large black eyes, do not roll up into a ball and my clownfish that got attacked by like 8 of them got pale.

 

[count krunk]

thanks for the headsup. I am going to get TBS rock and I will run it without sand for a week or two to make it easier if there are some nasties I want to pull out

 

[Variant]

thanks for the headsup. I am going to get TBS rock and I will run it without sand for a week or two to make it easier if there are some nasties I want to pull out

Yeah I would put in an easy to catch fish like clownfish to see if you have isopod.

 

[Variant]

My S.O. who is in the animation industry decided to pick up an interest in drawing aquatic life this week and whipped up some designs. It's always nice when your partner finds an interest in the hobby albeit in different ways.

 

[Daniel@R2R]

Great photos! I like your sump setup. I have a GEO's Reef sump as well and love it!!

 

[Variant]

Running into some algae issues... I'm having these small patches of brown algae pop up. I know it's not due to low flow or cycling as I have mature live rock in the tank. Any idea what these are? I'm starting to do small doses of vodka + GFO. I've circles the algae in question in red here.

Aside from the algae issue, the potentially high nutrients level + high ph levels I've been seeing has led to some pretty quick encrusting of my sps frags.

With a good deal of confidence in keeping SPS, I pulled the trigger on getting a nice wild acro colony. It originally had a bright red base with neon green polyps. It came in super cold water and pale. But after several days, I think it's well on its way to recovery. The green polyps are coming back but hard to capture with my point-n-shoot camera. Fuzzy for sure!

 

[Janci]

Running into some algae issues... I'm having these small patches of brown algae pop up. I know it's not due to low flow or cycling as I have mature live rock in the tank. Any idea what these are? I'm starting to do small doses of vodka + GFO. I've circles the algae in question in red here.

Aside from the algae issue, the potentially high nutrients level + high ph levels I've been seeing has led to some pretty quick encrusting of my sps frags.

With a good deal of confidence in keeping SPS, I pulled the trigger on getting a nice wild acro colony. It originally had a bright red base with neon green polyps. It came in super cold water and pale. But after several days, I think it's well on its way to recovery. The green polyps are coming back but hard to capture with my point-n-shoot camera. Fuzzy for sure!

With high pH I would not worry too much about algae.
The system is new so some algae will come any way.

The wild acro looks like a strawberry shortcake. This will colour up nicely.