I wouldn`t say its not for sale.. :lol: I'm just not actively bumping the thread because all I got was requests to part out which I refuse to do. Nothing seems to be going my way with this tank so if someone comes along with the $750 I am asking for it (minus GHL and Vortechs) I`d sell, but if I`m only going to get requests to part out a currently running system it`s not worth the effort.

I will definitely be looking for a bulk head strainer in the coming days.

It`s sort of ironic... ever since I accidentally made this slightly larger gap in my overflow teeth I have been thinking "I really hope a fish doesn't go through there" while the whole time thinking that if one of my fish did decide to go on an adventure it would likely be the wrasse that actually DID. It's like I could see into the future man.

That just sucks so much. Sorry to read this. :cry:

As you said, it could have been worse and we're all glad it wasn't!!

Funny you should mention that kien.:redface:

Came home one day last week, had a peak at the tank after walking in the door and everyone was there and accounted for. Came back down about 1-1.5hrs later to feed the tank.. Put the food in, stood back to watch... most of the food was gone when I thought to myself.. "There seems to be a lack of yellow in the tank...hmmm"

Start looking around in the rocks and sure as sh!t, BOTH my Candy Hogfish and Yellow Coris Wrasse are missing. Immediately I checked the surrounding floor to see if they had been spooked and jumped. Nope, no bodies laying around so next was checking the Overflow. BINGO! Sort of.. The Candy Hogfish had managed to stay away from the suction of the main drain and was chillin in the corner of the overflow box. Netted him and got him back in the tank.

Next was trying to find the Wrasse. I started looking around the refuge, nothing, then in the skimmer section of my sump. Nothing that I could see. My last thought was the return pump section, which I thought would be highly unlikely but somehow that little bugger made it through my baffle system and was in the return section. I tried netting him but he was too bloody quick and the space was too confined with the pump in there. So I had to shut down my main pump, un-couple and remove it. By then I stirred up enough detritus that I couldn't even see the darn fish anymore. In the end I tired him out trying to blindly catch him in the net and he just cowered in the corner. Finally got him back into the main Display. He looked a little beat up but he seems to be doing well now.

I HAVE to take care of this gaping hole in my overflow teeth. (or my fish need to grow fat enough to stay out). :lol:

Could you use a narrow strip of eggcrate and attach it to the back of the teeth with small zip ties? Not an expert, just brainstorming. :)

- Ian

Took some crappy iPhone pics tonight (gawd, I miss my old DLSR these days. :( )

Finally brought home my Acan's from the Office tank (again, a favorite of food of the Butterfly I risked):

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/...ps588652a4.jpg

Some crazy Mushrooms I picked up last weekend:

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1dbe29b4.jpg

My Butterfly that perished picked this coral to almost nothing... the nubs that remained are starting to come back! I can't even remember what this LPS coral was..

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/...psa235f0c2.jpg

I've never been one for trying out Chalice corals. I don't recall ever having much luck with them, but I picked this one up last weekend too.

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/...ps30eabb78.jpg

Misc Zoas:

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/...psb64f0e3f.jpg

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/...psad8d8cc1.jpg

And finally 1 of 3 SPS frags I am testing out now that I THINK my tank is ready for them. The photos of the other 2 aren't much to look at unfortunately so I didn't upload them:

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/...ps7e0c4880.jpg

sps looks happy to me. fingers crossed i guess. did you say all your appropriate prayers?

2 out of 3 aren't looking to bad. The digitata isn't showing much polyp extension. That could have been due to my 1.028SG though. Just finished a water change to help bring it back down.

The Acan colony looks much happier/healthier in this tank than it did in my 180G.

Did you ever get your skimmer issues resolved or get it dialed to where it will skim properly. I seem to be having the same issues with my vertex in-180, and its making me consider going with a different skimmer.

No not really, still tinkering with it.

So I almost added a new fish yesterday..

I saw this little guy at Big Als yesterday with no price tag on the tank. It's supposedly a Super Male Ember Blenny (I doubt that it will go Super). I'll be honest I have not seen one before so I could be wrong, but I would assume you'd need some females to help coax this guy into Super Male coloring. So I hung around for 20mins waiting for some service and finally got someone to stop and give me a hand. Asked how much he was.......

http://i1258.photobucket.com/albums/...ps8973ab1c.jpg

........ $250!

Needless to say I passed on it.... not because I think it's to expensive (although based on Liveaquaria, it is overpriced, LA sold one a Super Male in the Divers Den for $80US) but because I didn't have $250 on me... Ok, seriously, I'd maybe pay $120-150... $250 is a stretch! :lol:

Nice! I was looking for this guys for a year, but $250 I think is too much :)

Love those guys! But, um.. ya, $250 is a bit steep ! I'm sure someone will snatch up that beauty of a blenny though.

funny i was staring at that fish the other day for like 10 min. i never asked how much but my wife and i really liked the little guy.

Was it bright Red?, I put in an order for one through someone else a while ago and it never came in - I think its pretty rare that they just show up in a fish order., that's if it is a Super Male - I wouldn't pay $250 though.

it def did not look like a reg ember blenny. the reds were quite red which is why he caught my eye. can a fish remain half changed or would it complete the transformation? and can they change back if there's no female ?

gorgeous fish but i've promised myself no more fish as I feel my load is great as is.

According to Big Al's it's on it's way to becoming a super male. I would have thought he would need a harem of females to become a Super Male. So no, he wasn't bright red like the pic below.. If he looked like this pic, I would drop $250 in a heartbeat I think.:mrgreen:

http://blog.aquanerd.com/wp-content/...tigmaticus.jpg

That was the Red I was expecting for a Super Male - Really nice Fish!

no def not red like that. but i'd believe he's undergoing the change for sure. my wallet doesn't care if he is though lol. $250 ouch!

That is one schmexy schmexy fish there.

I wonder how easily they can be ordered in up here? I'd be in for a group order with some locals, depeding on price of course.

not easily enough , the ember blennys can be got from time to time but the super males arnt easy to get and ive yet to get one.

i see them on my list very rarely but i order one everytime and anytime i do its cut from the list , meaning that one of the larger stores who do large orders get it(or a buddy of the supplier)

for an example there may be 100-200 embers available on my list(usualy juvies) but only 3 super males , divide that by 100 stores or people who want them... and its not easy

alot of the larger stores are dropping 10-20g a month with suppliers so i dont think a grouporder of several is gonna do it.

beautiful fish though and my fave for blens:)

Well I added a few pieces of SPS from denny a few weeks ago and this is backfiring on me.. again...........

I'm currently losing a Frogskin Acro, Red Monti Cap, Blue Tip Stag to STN, and 2 random frags from Reef Wonderland. A Monti Confusa that isn't STNing yet, but has NO polyp extension what so ever. The only piece still hanging on is a Red Planet I got from Denny. (knock on glass)

I'm at a complete loss as to what's going on in this system. I'm at 9months. There isn't a single piece of SPS that has survived longer than 1 month in my tank. My params are all in good standing these days, I'm doing weekly 10G water changes with H2Ocean salt, I'm careful on my feeding to not overfeed the tank, I'm running HC GFO, I've dialed back my lighting with regards to intensity and also raised the unit another 1-2" off the water level as suggested by others over on Nano-Reef. I've tried varying strengths of flow thinking that I was possibly blowing the tissue right off the skeletons. None of my fish are to blame. The tank is completely free of any algae except for the little bit of film algae on the glass every few days.

I'm AGAIN about ready to shut this tank down and sell it off at this point. Mainly due to the fact of how much money I've been investing and loosing, not because I can't figure it out. I wanted this tank to be an SPS dominant tank with a few pieces of LPS and zoas down along the sand bed but that doesn't seem to be possible. Although my Acans are rocking, but even certain zoas are struggling while others are doing fine.

My only other option besides shutting down completely is to gut the live portion of the tank and restart with ALL LIVE ROCK, no dry rock whatsoever. Every tank I've previously ran has used Live Rock and I've been fairly successful in keeping most SPS (or anything for that matter)

This hobby can really be a struggle sometimes.. :neutral:

you know what ive always said.....cough cough **dryrock** cough


dude pull out a huge chunk of the rock and ill give you some actual liverock to replace i have lots , theres something missing and i believe its partly because of the rock and the lack of biological diversity of micro flora and fauna:)

worth a try right?


if you want to swap it out let me know and swing by my place in the evening we will figure this out for you piece by piece.

I will have to agree on this point...seems tanks started with dry rock take forever before they can handle sps for some reason!!!

Sorry to hear about your issues Josh :( There's definitely something not right in your tank. That monti cap should be bullet proof! I wouldn't worry too much about the confusa. I've never had major polyp extension out of them but they still thrive.

I don't know much about the frogskin acro. I don't think I've ever had one. Stags can be touchy.

Anyway, swing by and grab some bullet proof red/orange digi and yellow/green birdsnest. I can't seem to kill that stuff!

Definitely worth a try, but to do that I will need to pull out my fish as I'm sure to experience a cycle.

Wouldn't be the first tank I've seen this happen on.. my 180G @ the Office had similar issues but I have since decided to not have SPS at all in that tank.

Thanks, the Monti Cap was the first piece to start showing signs. No matter how bomb proof you think those pieces are I'm not adding anymore SPS till I start changing a few things (ie: the rock). No point killing off more frags when I don't have too. I don't want to be the guy that is known for killing Kiens unkillable SPS. :lol:

Sorry to hear Josh. Definitely start with new live rock before you throw in the towel. You've been successful at this before something is not right and it could very well be the rock.

swap a few at a time and then no cycle , come fill up a bucket and take your time swapping them out , when you have a aquascape you like just bring me what ever you dont use. i got a mix of tonga, pukani and god knows what else for liverock lol :P

I think I have found my new love/hate relationship.. and the love part is hopefully still to come, so as of tonight it's all hate. :lol:

ROX 0.8 Activated Carbon.... This stuff caused me to rage tonight.. It's so damn lightweight that even with the valve on my 1.5 Vertex reactor nearly completely closed the flow still caused a mess everywhere when the pump fired up. What a nightmare to clean up with how fine this stuff is.. embedded in the threads of the of reactor, sticks to your fingers, floats right to the top of the reactor, it made it's way into my display tank, sump... EVERYWHERE. After about 1hr or so I finely got it dialed in but it was more effort than I was planning to exert tonight. :lol:

Before I pull the rock out I'm going to try carbon on this tank. It's the one thing that I have always used in the past that I haven't setup on this system until tonight so will see how it works out and if there are any noticeable changes.

One coral that does seem to excel in my tank is my Acans so I picked up a few frags from the grand opening of Concept Aquatics today. So many things I wanted to buy but didn't want to risk any expensive stuff till I get this tank sorted out. :)

I'll get some photos soon.

One thing I forgot to mention in my last post was that as I was leaving the house this morning for work I looked at the skimmer and made a mental note that I should empty it and clean the cup when I got home. I haven't touch my skimmer in weeks and it had about 1.5-2" of DARK skimmate sitting it in it too. So I felt it was due for a cleaning.


Got home tonight, walked in the door, and the damn thing was overflowing into my sump like crazy... all the skimmate was gone and back into my system. NO IDEA what happened to cause it to go haywire, as I said, I hadn't touched it in weeks with NO problems what so ever. So that sparked me to start mixing up WC water tonight (thankfully I bought a new bucket of H2Ocean along with my new acan frags today). Will do that tomorrow night when I get home from work, ya know, if the house hasn't burnt down or something.

airdrie air, mine does the same thing, works well forever, then goes bloody haywire for no apparent reason.

gotten in the habit of emptying mine every chance. nothing more frustrating then seeing a nice cup o skim end up back in the tank.

It must be that crazy air we have out in Airdrie...:lol:

Curious what skimmer you got?

Check was happens during a power cycle. If your sump level rises during shut down and everything turns back on at the same time, the short time the skimmer runs at the elevated level can sometimes be enough the fill and overflow the cup, once full it just continues to bubble over because of the lid extension. So a brief power cut could explain such skimmer issues.

Definitely a possibility! I know just from switching off my power bars for water changes that the sump rises. I suppose with all the construction in my area there is a likelihood of power being cut briefly, although it NEVER happens when I'm actually home :(. Thanks Steve. I'm not sure my Reef Keeper Lite tracks power outages like my Apex at work though. Will have to check that out or upgrade.

Most controllers allow blackout delays so if it turns out to be an issue adding a delay to the skimmer circuit will fix the issue.

+1 on the cycle time between power off and the sump filling and turning everything back on. I have now incorporated this into my feeding and dosing schedule. I power off everything, feed, and then power on the power head, then the return pump, then the skimmer. Dosing, I turn the skimmer off, dose, add live bacteria, and turn the skimmer back on in the morning.

Charles

Well I have decided that I am going to restart this tank. I'm going to pull all the marco dry rock I started with out, re-home most of the fish to my 180G tank at the office, and start from scratch. New water, new rock, fresh start. There is just something not right in this tank that I can not put my finger on. This tank has been up and running for nearly a year with absolutely ZERO progress and hundreds of dollars in coral down the drain. I have lost EVERY SINGLE piece of SPS I have tried in this tank. Everything from easy to keep montis/digi's, red planet, to harder to keep stuff that was doing very well in MUCH younger, less mature frag tanks at the LFS.

I tried feeding Oyster Feast and Live Copepods per some conversations with a fellow reefer on NR.com that yielded no results with regards to improved coral vitality (SPS specifically). None of my fish are coral nippers so I can rule them all out. I've inspected and dipped all frags before putting them in my tank (although still could have missed something, the procedure was still there and I have no seen bugs or pest of any sort). Carbon and GFO made no difference in my tests with them.

I got 2 things that seem to do ok in this tank. The fish and a few (4) acans. Zoas don't grow (or gradually disappear), ALL SPS dies, I'm not interested in softies for this tank so haven't even tried putting them in.

So I'm gutting it and starting fresh. Maybe in a years time I will actually have something to show off in this tank, because as of right now after nearly a year hundreds of dollars in dead coral, I basically have a handful of fish and 4 small acan pieces (which are for the most part less than 6 weeks old). Something clearly isn't working/right/balanced in this tank and no test kit new or old can give me any indication to the problem as they all point to average readings for Ca/Mag/dKH, low PO4, no trates/trites/ammo.

good to see you back at it. If you're losing pretty much everything that you put into your tank then something is definitely up. Especially if your water parameters are in check. Good luck! The only suggestion I can think of to give to you is to maybe invest in a Prayer Reactor.

That sucks Josh but a fresh start might do wonders. Good luck.

Josh I was having problems too man. and once I moved my tank from the old house to the new house and with a fresh new water like 98% my tank is looking amazing. I feel for ya bro I have had crappy luck but now with the new house:biggrin: new girlfriend,:mrgreen: new water completely the tank is doing amazing. the wallet isn't doing good thou lol corals are flourishing thou so im happy. the Red Algae is all gone. I really think the Mitras Light has helped with the Algae. It has to be i have checked everything that I can think of. the rocks are all purpling up really nice too.