Tank Journal Archive

[ReeferRob]

Here are some pics of M's stand, mine should be getting wet next weekend. They're replacing the 60 cube and 93 cube we had before. The tangs are growing and needed to stretch their fins a little. Pete the Purple tang has been with us for almost 3 years now.

Dunno why that hood pic looks bowed, but it isn't.

Here are a few pics of the fill and critters.

Crackers and Stripey.

 

[Wrangy]

About damn time we got some updates :P

Can't wait to watch this one come together Rob! :)

 

[ReeferRob]

This one's the wife's tank. We'll be doing dueling 80s here shortly. I'm tired of letting so many of these beautiful SPS colonies go out for sale. I've fragged heaps and have had them growing out in my SUPER SEKRIT run in the shop. Stuff from Australia, The Solomons, Indo and Fiji, there are a few oddballs LPS in there too from my collector in Queensland. I have a friend stationed in Okinawa and he's bringing me the holy grail of leather corals, the Neon Green Toadstool. They're a bright green version of the Fiji Yellow leather.

We're also doing Turf Algae Scrubbers on all the systems now, the tallest is on the fish systems and those are 200x200mm with 1800 lph flow across them, we harvest the algae weekly and feed it to livestock. The ones at the house are made from a plastic magazine holder with a hole drilled in it. I'll start another thread this weekend showing the design. I wanted to build one with off the shelf parts so anyone could get the parts easily and make one without spending an arm and a leg. Mine were made for about $75USD. Ones the size I made are $400USD.

 

[daveH]

Nice to hear you’re going to get yours wet next weekend!!!!!

 

[ReeferRob]

A few observations about turf algae scrubbers:
They seem to impede the growth of dynos. M's tank had some, last week when this thing finally took off like a bat outta hell, they up and disappeared. I don't know the mechanism for this, but it's no coincidence.

 

[Savage Henry]

What sort of wrasse is that? I'm thinking it is a Melanurus like mine, but mine is more blue than green.

 

[ReeferRob]

What sort of wrasse is that? I'm thinking it is a Melanurus like mine, but mine is more blue than green.

It is indeed a melanurus wrasse. It depends on where they come from as to their colour. That one is from The Philippines, ones from Fiji have vertical stripes and are more green than the others. I've gotten them from Indonesia, but they were just transshipped for others. I'll order a few next week to see what colour they are.

 

[Savage Henry]

I couldn't recommend a better wrasse for a reef tank. Mine eats so many little creatures it is fat and not at all interested in flake food anymore. But, when I do give flake food, it goes about inspecting the rocks: I think what it is doing is waiting for the little critters to pop their heads out looking for the food and it gets them!

Also, for those who might think negatively against wrasses that eat beneficial worms etc, these wrasse are only active during the day so just shine your torch in the tank at night (with red cellophane or red light torch) and you'll see there are still plenty of the little critters to clean your substrates.

 

[ReeferRob]

I have them in all of the runs and all tanks but my small cube. They are busy little critters, always inspecting new arrivals for bad things and dispatching them if found. We're going to try to add a pair of Yellow wrasses to Ms tank this weekend. I would NEVER, EVER recommend a damn 6 line wrasse, they're assholes, plain and simple. I have one by himself in a small QT run because he's killed 7 other fish.

 

[ReeferRob]

OK, the weather's been shit here the last 4-5 days. Pissing rain or temps in the single digits and I can't urethane anything in those temps. We did manage to get the stand stained and assembled this week in between rain and freezing temps. I got the slats cut to size today, I should get them sanded and possibly stained tomorrow.