Thanks! The queen has grown a couple of inches since I got her a little over a year ago. I think she's about 6 inches now, tip to tail? The flame angel is your typical runt size angel, nothing unusual there and the Regal is your typical mid-sized angel at around 4 inches? I have not noticed much growth in the Regal Angel at all since I got her, also about a year ago.

They are all behaving like typical Angels LOL. When I first got them they picked at EVERYTHING. Clams, zoas, LPS, SPS. This was about a year ago when I still had the "FOWLR" so they didn't last long in the 150g Mixed Reef (yes, I did try them in there very briefly). I would occasionally put corals in the "FOWLR" and they would quickly go to town on them, of course. However, over the year they seem to have changed their ways. Towards the end days for the "FOWLR" I noticed that they stopped picking on SPS and LPS that were in there. I even put my giant squamosa clam in there for a while and they didn't touch it. The emperor angel that I had at the time loved the squamosa clam though. :neutral: :redface:

Anyway, when I shut down the 131 "FOWLR" and moved those angels to the mixed reef they didn't seem to care for any of my clams in there or my sps (that I had at the time). They did however like LPS like acans, my watermellon chalice and various nuisance soft corals. I had a very serious infestation of these unidentifiable brown polyp softies that just completely took over one of my rock structures and smothered some corals, crawled on the sandbed and started to invade my other rock structures! It was horrible. My queen angel went to town on that stuff and cleaned that all up within a week. :surprise: They are quite piggy angels and eat anything I throw into the tank which is nice, especially for the Regal because those guys are a brutal to get eating. It's strange because I have tonnes of sponges in my tank, and a lot of different varieties/colours yet none of the angels touch any of my sponges. Go figure :neutral:

Thanks!

LOL nothing gets past you does it :-) Ya, I went to a few stores over the weekend and went dumpster (brown bin) diving. Found a few nicely browned out corals that the store owner practically gave to me :lol: I didn't take any pictures of them because, well, they are brown and not much to look at. However, I do see the potential in them and I'm hoping they will force me to keep my momentum in an effort to get them to colour up. Maybe I should take some pictures of them so that I have a record of the before and after. Or the before and just-the-same-as-before. :neutral:

weird.. just noticed that I forgot to post this pic. One of my top 3 favourites of all time. Also with me for over a year now. Very piggy and loves to get ich. :neutral:

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8192/8...2e5b4a1e_o.jpg

Sorry to hear about all your corals... So I'm assuming you had an almost fish only tank for the past 7 months? And personally I'm hoping to have a very simple reef setup and not give in to buy fish or corals that might cause me to spend an hour or two a day on the tank. I'm expecting 15 mins everyday together with couple of hours of detailed maintenance/cleaning on weekends. Hopefully that'll suffice!

Btw, thats a very nice looking stuffed tang there! How do you treat for ich? Do you quarantine or just give meds in the main tank?

Ya, it was mostly fish only for the past 8 months or so :-) Well, fish only with clams, a Goniopora and a yellow gorgonia.

You shouldn't need to spend 15mins a day on the tank. I've never had to spend 15mins a day on my tank. There is nothing that I do every day except maybe look at the tank. Every 2 to 3 days I run the magfloat across the glass to clean it. Every 4 to 6 days I empty the skimmer cup. Every 2 weeks I do a water change. Every month I replace media (GFO and Carbon).

On a random infrequent basis:
* I top up my auto-fish feeder.
* Feed frozen foods
* Give fish a sheet of nori.

Yearly: change light bulbs, clean out skimmer body and all pumps.

Ya the Powder Blue is a fatty. I think I treated for ich with meds like 8 years ago with my first saltwater tank. Since then I have never treated for ich, ever. In my experience what has worked better is to keep the fish healthy with frequent feedings and occasionally with garlic extract. I have had a Regal/Blue Tang for over 5 years that would occasionally get ich but would never spread to other fish or get out of control. It usually clears up. They normally get ich when they are stressed and their stress coat (slime) is not as thick as it normally is. Once they are destressed and built up their stress coat again they are better able to repel ich I find. So anyway, that REgal Tang that used to get ich ALL THE TIME doesn't get ich anymore. Now a days its the Powder Blue Tang that gets ich when he is stressed. But again, I don't treat him. I just feed him more garlic and more variety of foods like flake, pellets, red and green nori, mixed fish mesh so that he continues to eat A LOT. This helps to destress him so that he can build up his stress coat again.

Having said all that, if your fish is really ill and has ich then you definitely need to do something about it, like QT and treating. Not necessarily treating the ich but treating whatever is causing the ich. You know your fish is really ill if they are not eating. If they have ich and are still eating well then you can usually ride out the ich just fine. If they are not eating and are lethargic then they definitely need attention and possibly in a QT with meds.

Many times fish will get ich, will stop eating and then die and people think, oh, my fish got ich and died from ich. In my experience this isn't the case. Usually it is something else that you can't see that is making your fish sick causing them to be severely stressed, thus losing their protective slime coat, thus letting in ich and even more parasites. It's all downhill from there if they continue to stop eating.

And also, sometimes people see spots of ich on their fish and immediately have a knee jerk reaction and think, OH CRAP I need that fish out of there now and pump him full of meds! Often this knee jerk reaction is worse and dooms the fish :-(

thanks! And ya, I'm actually getting kinda used to the clean uncluttered rocks. It's amazing how much more open it is and my tank was already pretty open.

you gonna go sps dominant again this time??

i could snip you a bunch of sps frags easily to get you started;)

Hey thanks bro! I appreciate that! That is a good question though. Since the rehabilitation I've just been sitting back and enjoying the semi-FOWLRness of the tank and contemplating where to go with it. I do want to put some corals in to colour up the tank a bit and was initially hesitant to go full-on with the SPS again. However, the more I gaze into the tank the more I start to miss the SPS colonies that I did have in there. So ya, I think I'm going to move forward with making the tank SPS dominant again. Of course this means that in the near future I may have to make some tough decisions with my angels that may not be so compatible, but we'll see.

sweet .yeah idk i think you should, when i look at the tank i still see a forest of sps in their would look weird now if it was say a lps tank or softie :)

could always go azoox and really stress your self out lol

when ever your out and about send me a pm and ill cut you a bunch :)

If anything, SPS might be the only corals that I'd be able to keep in there with the angels LOL. I had sps colonies in my 131g "FOWLR" with the angels and they never touched them. LPS and softies on the other hand, they LOVED them :neutral:

Over 8 years in this hobby now, nothing stresses me out :lol:

Where abouts in the city are you anyway?

im pretty much right next to golds aquarium ....about 5 mins away on 36street SE

i work evenings and weekends but if you have any free time in the days or in the coming days im here untill 3pm everyday:)

Sounds good. Probably not this week but maybe sometime next week we can hook up over my lunch break. I need to make a trip to that store on 17th ave anyway.

Angels are funny. My Emperor is fine with everything. SPS, LPS, polyps, clams. My first Queen loved clams, nothing else. The second Queen I got ate nothing but SPS...

I'm not sure if "funny" is the word that I would have chosen to use here.. :lol:

my emperor will pick at duncan only :-(

Okay, so I picked up these struggling SPS colonies over the weekend. They were pretty brown and a couple of them were RTN'ing so the store owner practically gave them to me. I'm always up for a challenge.

Browned out RTN'ing pocci.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...31E0EBD099.jpg

Browned out RTN'ing red(ish) digi.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...31E6121DF1.jpg

Unidentifiable Digitata. Browned out, o course.

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...31DA066397.jpg

I think this is an Austera but hard to tell as its browned out a bit :lol:

http://i1002.photobucket.com/albums/...31EB4FE279.jpg




______
Sent from the future on my iPhone 10 using Tapatalk

those corals should make it back no problem.

Anyone else got a case of the Mondays?

http://farm4.staticflickr.com/3617/3...88320f6a_o.jpg

Turn that frown upside down!

Third time's the charm
 

Well, it appears as though things are back on track. All of my equipment is back online, the tank has been rehabilitated with all parameters in check. A few weeks ago I threw in some struggling colonies and they have all stopped STN'ing and are starting to colour up in their growth tips.

This digi here was completely brown and STN'ing. New growth tips show blue with red polyps. Appears to be turning into a "Superman Digi" maybe.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8480/8...a2203f6b_o.jpg

A few other random pieces I've picked up in the last little while.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7137/8...1978a2b5_o.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8202/8...64df1745_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7128/8...66992f7f_o.jpg

I do miss "watching" these buggers grow. Grow little friends, grow!

other random things in the tank..

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7274/8...cee1193c_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7248/8...1f0941c3_o.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8059/8...8da95625_o.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8198/8...edbd0168_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7124/8...56a8e7e9_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7259/8...97ca22a9_o.jpg

Who doesn't love watching these guys play in 'nems.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7136/8...27235d9c_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7106/8...afc4e582_o.jpg

I sure did miss taking pictures in the tank.

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7109/8...0381b19b_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7257/8...8b712946_o.jpg

Wrasses are so hard to photograph!

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8487/8...0b1e63a3_o.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8208/8...df05b22e_o.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8346/8...c94ff59a_o.jpg

When I first saw these two together I was sure that this relationship would end badly!

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7252/8...f37ecf9c_o.jpg

I've been proven wrong. They've enjoyed each other's company for a long long time now.

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8197/8...aab65499_o.jpg

http://farm8.staticflickr.com/7129/8...91022cce_o.jpg

Shrimp cocktail anyone?

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8469/8...b3491cc9_o.jpg

http://farm9.staticflickr.com/8332/8...f488719e_z.jpg

You've inspired me. I'm officially on a mission to bring my tank back from the brink of destruction.

On a side note, I somehow landed on this post

"I am actually liking this skimmer now. For the first year that I had this skimmer it was nothing but headaches. It would blow its skimmer cup often and I could not figure out why. I came so close to throwing it into the recycling bin so many times! After about a year it started to settle down and hasn't blown its load in quite a while. I think it just needed an insanely long break in period LOL. Anyway.. I won't be replacing this skimmer any time soon. I'm in love with it again." - Kien

My skimmer was the same. My Tunze Master DOC Skimmer took about a year to break in?! I'm loving it now, but I would have replaced it if an opportunity had presented itself.

- Brad

Love the pics

Good to see you back at it Kien, regardless of your status with my now EX-girlfriend :razz:...

Also +1 to Steve, good to see your photos back on here.

Hey brad! Good to hear from you again! Ya, this hobby isn't for the faint of heart, that's for sure LOL. The first time I had a coral melt down I had no clue as to why. This time around I knew exactly why. It was a series of unfortunate events.. Doser pump failed, reactor pump failed, biopellet reactor BROKE! Our central AC broke as well an we didn't have AC during the TWO heat waves we had earlier this year. We had home renos, vacations, yard work. I was sure someone was trying to tell me something. It was so demoralizing. I didn't even want to look into the tank for weeks. Came so close to packing it all in on a few occasions.

However, when I finally cleaned my glass and peered in to see my (more or less) happy fish I realized that I could never leave this hobby LOL. For the record I did feed the fish and clean the skimmer cup on a regular basis! The skimmer is likely what saved the fish and my interest in the hobby. It skimmed like a champ ! And ya, your skimmer experience sounds exactly like mine. From zero to hero! :lol:

Thanks! I sure did miss taking them.

No comment...

Love your tank!! Hard to believe you had such struggles as it definitely does not show! Thanks for not giving up!!:biggrin: eye gauging and hair pulling on hiatus...lol

Thanks! Ya, three years with this tank and it has been all over the map! We have a very normal love-hate relationship.

what a giddy little schoolgirl. a schoolgirl that takes sweet-ass pics i might add. glad you're recharged boss.

Thanks! And I'm going to get the old band back together again.

Great pictures as always! Wow. I love how you're somehow able to coax the subtlest colours out.

Thanks! By the way, did you get my IM from earlier by chance? :-)

Only just now, sorry :p

That's okay. I was just worried that you didn't love me anymore. Carry on.

Did I hear someone calling?.....ha ha. Good to see you back. I've had no real reason to post so I've been lurking.

Do we need to bring back the pheasant balls??

Aaaaand he's lurking again. Nice Kien.

:whistle:

Happy 100 pages Kien ;)

Thanks!! And now 1000 posts! :-D