question about your fathers day gift
 

hey just wondering what you do with the shrimp and the baking soda?

Shrimp, Baking Soda :biggrin:

LOL, looks like you got the Costco Special :razz:

TGIF!

http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3616/...b90da9b2d5.jpg

So Doug was over yesterday to drop some stuff off and as I was giving him a tour of the tank I realize that I have had this Purple Gonioporia for over a year now. Yes, we all know how difficult they can be to keep long term and aren't typically recommended. What can I say, it was pretty and I wanted it. So ya it was an impulse buy and that was back in April 2009. Well the Goni is still here doing its thang with the Clowns. Yes, to throw another curve ball the clowns have been hosting this Goni for as long as it has been in the tank. :neutral:

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4022/...e02fc719f9.jpg

I was sure that the clowns were going to bring the Goni to a much earlier demise. In the end, I think the Clowns are in fact what's keeping it alive. Either they are feeding it, or just the act of defecating on it continuously is sustaining the Goni. Who knows. Just another one of those fluke occurrences in my strange tank..

.. of course now I've just jinxed myself and will likely find the Goni dead by tomorrow :lol:

Great shots mang!......and thanks again for bebe sittin:wink:......absolutely blows me away that you've been able to keep a Goni alive for over a year!....with clowns hosting it!.......freakin amazing!...btw your system is freaking amazing too

I think he probably eats the Seafood and then maybe chases it down with a Baking soda cocktail.

That goni looks exactly like mine did back in 06...the first day I got it! After that it looked less and less purdy. Nice work with that badboy.

Thanks :)

ahh.. good times! :lol:

Thanks Brett!

Hi Kien, as I sat and stared at hoses siphoning water this way or that tonight (water change time), I started to wonder how your automated water change project was doing. Sorry if this was updated recently and I missed it, but how is that coming along (or working out) so far?

its funny how a gonipora needs dirty water to sustain. hmmmmmmmmm may be the clowns are doing what youa re talking about on the thread pooping to keep it alive. what ever works

Sweet tank man! I just made a similar cover for my tank... got the mesh from the same guy too... only I found him on reef2reef :D
I'm quite jealous of your corals they look awesome.

So hows the tank doing? Been a while since we've seen any of your regular everyday amazing tank pictures. Hows the screen cover been working out on your FOWLR?

Thanks! :-)

Um.. let's not talk about the tank right now (more on that later..). Instead, how about some pictures of what I wish my tank looked like right now! :lol:

from a recent trip to the Georgia Aquarium.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4131/...e7b5f9aa_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4105/...83481d17_o.jpg

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http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4083/...6ff3250d_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4126/...09607fbe_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4106/...2de00178_o.jpg

sharks everywhere!

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4093/...6a247712_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4154/...e64f133d_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4127/...b9d3f47f_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4133/...7e630f54_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4113/...3cac7306_o.jpg

And here is the mother of them all!!

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4148/...48d9d763_o.jpg

Rays!

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4086/...2869175e_o.jpg

This one was playing in the bubbles. Pretty cool to watch.

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4105/...a9a99226_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4132/...c41d8460_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4108/...c7f94154_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4091/...207816e8_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4104/...b63da386_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4131/...24e2824f_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4090/...59117234_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4092/...c627a556_o.jpg

This is what the aquarium looks like in the lobby area. Pretty trippy..

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4145/...da6e9a83_o.jpg

http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4130/...0ab3410e_o.jpg

Those are magic fingers man...you maintain the same quality when shooting in a public aquarium that's not fair! Thanks for sharinfg it's kinda neat how you see the same fish in ppl's videos on youtube etc. That grouper always sticks out he's hilarious.

Nice pictures would love to go there some day...


Chris

Amazing pictures kien nice work. Now what's up with your tanks:wink:

awesome shots. Always wanted to go there. But that grouper shot is money, kind of made me lol

DEATH!
 

Hello boys and girls! So.. where to begin..

When we last left off, I guess that was back in late June/early July, the reef was in top form, trucking along swimmingly (pun definitely intended!). Everything was nicely automated, fish were happy, corals were happy, all I had to do was sit back and enjoy the tank. Then of course summer rolled around and everything went to hell in a hand-woven basket.

I first noticed a couple of colonies acting funny. One was starting to burn at the tips and one was receding from the bottom. Okay, so something is up, let's check all the parameters. Parameters are all in check. Hmm, strange. Now, being SPS and having seen colonies do this before I figured fine, they aren't happy, everyone else seems happy so I'll just watch them and see what happens. Well, what happened next wasn't pretty. More and more colonies started to decline. Let's check the parameters again just to be sure. Yup, all in check. Maybe the lights? No, not the lights because colonies in both tanks are doing this and both tanks have completely different lighting systems (one is halide and one is T5s). Okay, time to clean the skimmer, the powerheads, return pumps, throw in some extra carbon and do some water changes. Nope, still no change. So, over the course of a couple of weeks colony after colony declined and withered away.. :sad:

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284614570

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284614600

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284614600

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284614600

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284614600

In the end I pulled out over half my collection :sad: It was quite heartbreaking actually. Many of these colonies I grew from 1" frags over the course of the year. Also strange is that there was one colony that remained completely unaffected, an ORA Red Planet colony which isn't even mine! Go figure. :biggrin:

So here's what a few hundred dollars worth of SPS death looks like.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284615145

Of course while all of this is going on in the tank summer is in full swing which meant lots of time outside with the family and a few site trips to Atlanta for business thrown in there. It was a brutally busy summer. By August I decided a major intervention was required and started doing 10% water changes every other day with a 50% water change on the weekend. Let me just say that 50% water changes on a 321g system is not fun!!

By mid August things had started to settle down in the tank and I could see improvement. The remaining colonies that didn't completely kick the salt bucket were starting to get their colour back which mostly all of them had lost. I also noticed a few colonies that had lost their tips started to encrust over them. Like this guy.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284615572

Because I was spending so much time trying to fight this "event" I didn't really have much time for other non essential maintenance like algae scrubbing. By this time the tank glass was a spectacular array of algaes. Nothing a few hours of elbow grease can't fix though.

I'm not really one to dwell too much on the doom and gloom so to look on the bright side of things, the tank didn't completely crash! :lol: In fact, everyone else is doing perfectly fine. Clams are doing well, all LPS, zoas, fish, happy as can be. The few remaining colonies are in recovery mode and starting to come around.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284616081

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284616100

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284616119

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284616139

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284616165

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284616181

As you can see the Reef is still here, the FOWLR is still here and we're back on track.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284616293

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...g?t=1284616314

So what the heck happened? Who the heck knows. Maybe SPS chemical warfare that reached a critical mass, maybe some sort of pathogen like a virus or protozoan. All I know is, whatever it was, it helped to clear much needed reef real estate for me to buy more corals :lol:

wow i really feel your lost. I am very sorry to hear. have you checked your carbon?

thanks.. and yes :) it is the same carbon that I've been using for a year now and the same carbon I'm still using today. Lignite RoX 0.8 carbon, great stuff actually.

I know what your feeling buddy, pulled out a stupid amount of coral over the summer. Tank is still looking wicked, on the bright side now you can beat me to all the nice coral... like usual :razz:.

Ouch. :( Having lived through several inexplicable SPS die offs, I feel your pain.

Like I've said before sometimes it's not even really a testable parameter. There's so much stuff at play, when an event happens, our attempts at an investigation can sometimes just be the Texas sharpshooter syndrome. You hope whatever it was is resolved and hope for the best sometimes.

But, like you hinted .. onwards and upwards. Your tanks sure have a good look to them still.

That is heartbreaking man. Those pics are tough to look at having seen that tank in person before. Great attitude about it all and not only are you not going soft(ie) on us you're plowing ahead with the sps. Not sure there's much I can help with but if you need me to break off anything to kick start you let me know.

Thanks! Ya if you stand way back and squint it doesn't look so bad :lol: just don't put your face to the glass.

Wow. Hard to read that. There was more in that bucket then in my entire tank. I think the hardest part about it all is not knowing what caused the problem. Seems to be a hard year for SPS.... Sorry about the loss and I can only hope that I can be as calm as you are with the situation. Tank is still show worthy!

Geez! :twised: This is not what you want to read about. So sorry to see this Kien...YOUR tanks inspire so many of us.... they are truly beautiful. Wish mine looked half as bad as yours do know. :mrgreen: Glad to hear you will be hanging in there. You are a true reefer. :biggrin:

That sucks, sorry to hear about this. Do you run a chiller? What did your temp. get up to?

No I don't run a chiller. We have central AC in the house :)

With the Profilux Controller and some fans the temp always remains between 78 to 81. I have never seen it go out of that range, and if it does I get email alerts. I do have an old skool thermometer that I check on just to make sure the probes are okay but I do clean the probes frequently as well.

So sorry to hear this Kien. This is what pees me off about SPS. It happens all the time; to both newbies and experienced reefers alike: Acquire a little frag, grow it to a nice colony and then one day watch it wither away for no apparent reason. I've sworn I'm done with SPS a dozen times, but no........ we're all suckers for punishment. A sane person would stay away, but there's something about those fuzzy sticks that makes us lose our heads a little. Hopefully you're done with the bad stuff for awhile and your tank returns to its former glory.

sorry for your losses Kien.
the tank still looks great as usual.
did you lose your little baby toe of a red planet frag from OC?

Tragic, I still say it's something seasonal, every summer I go thru the same thing, I make sure to maintain the same maintenance schedule as, like everyone, summer gets busy and let things slide. I get moderate growth from Oct-June and then all hell breaks loose (even the FOWLR lost all 4 large angels within 4 days this spring and no other fish were affected) Nice to see you keeping a positive outlook, I don't know how much more of this I can take, even my bubble for the first time in 20+ years was looking pretty unhappy this summer although it is looking real good the last few weeks, looking forward to the new progress on yours, Cheers.

Sorry to hear of your troubles but glad to see you're looking on the bright side Kien.

Oh and I just gotta ask. Which tank is the FOWLR ? :wink:

Thanks for all the words of support everyone! Heartbreaking, yes, but I think we all know that in this hobby we have to learn to take the good with the bad because there's an ample supply of both. I've had a few issues but pushing onward was never one of them. I'm in it to win it! :lol:

Its the one with all the fish of course. Duh! :lol:

Word! They truly are like drugs. You know that in the long run they are bad for you but you just can't help yourself!


Ha! That piece of lint kicked it eons ago :lol:

I'm still trying to find the one that is Fish Only With Live Rock.... I see two reefs... one of them might be FOWLRACAOS (Fish Only With Live Rock And Coral And Other Stuff) But I don't see a FOWLR :D

*edited at 10:49 on day of posting.
I know everyone hates to see the stuff Kien is going through (as do I)... but it seems to me like he has the right attitude and IMO since he has moved on (as best he could) we should too and stop bringing up the bad things and concentrate on the good. Like what an awesome tank he still has even after losing more coral then many people have.
I love your attitude Kien and you will have a happier with life because of it.

holy, @@@@, thats not very good news. Sorry to hear this and see this.

ahh man, my stomach turned when I seen the stylofoam box.