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Actually, if not for Marie, it would be almost empty. Some of the live rock and the large corals came from her. I should change the name to Lance & Marie's 225 gal Build Journal. :wink:
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If anyone is considering a Tang for their tank have a good look at the Kole Tang. (Ctenochaetus strigosus) I've had mine for 3.5 months now and am very pleased with it.
Because I have a Tuskfish, Lunare Wrasse, and Hawkfish in this tank I can't keep a CUC and was looking for a suitable detritus eater. Somewhere I read that the Kole was a good tank cleaner so I bought one. What a good investment! This guy sucks up film algae like a Hoover; and eats nearly anything ugly in the tank. It loves to eat fish poop (gross as that sounds :puke:) As an added bonus, they stay quite small for a Tang (6"-7"); and are quite peaceful. Most of them come from Hawaii, so no worries about questionable capture. I highly recommend them. Here's an older pic of mine, just after I got him. His fins are a much brighter orange colour now. http://i371.photobucket.com/albums/o...9/IMG_3974.jpg |
I agree...loved mine when I had him.
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Nice growth, things seem to be doing very well!
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Yeah, things seem to be coming along nicely. |
Doesn’t the Heniochus pick on corals?
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No, he is a well-mannered fish; doesn't bother anything. But it sure likes it's grub. Biggest pig I've ever seen. |
I've had three Acro colonies bleach out on me in the last month! One from this tank and two from the 90 gal. I put two of them into the QT tank where there is very little algae, in hopes of them coming back. The third is staying where it is to see if there is any difference in the DT or QT as for recovery. All other corals, including the other Acros seem to be fine. :noidea: Water parameters are all fine: The only thing I can attribute to the problem is the recent heat wave we had. Although, with our A/C the tank temps never went above 83F.
Marie and Dave have also been having trouble with bleaching. Must be some kind of a wierd Powell River thing! |
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If only mine had stayed with bleaching I would of been happy, it was the tissue loss from all the tips that really bummed me out. 30g water changes everyday for 10days appears to have fixed the problem though ( I say this while keeping all my fingers and toes crossed) |
At least I'm not the only one having issues, I no longer have a reef, looks more like a tank from the 80's with all those bleach white coral decorations, If not for the fact my bubble is still doing fine I would just shut it down, kind of odd we all started having issues after adding the Vortech pumps tho?
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my tank is doing really good ,however one of the vortechs crapped out on me.:cry: had to send it to OTTAWA inverts to have thme look at it .
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That bad eh? That Sucks! I think the pumps are just a coincidence. Can't see how they would affect that much. |
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Dave, you've got to get your priorities straight. The house your fish live in comes first; then you can tend to your house. :mrgreen: |
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That's good to hear; not about the lost pieces but that is it not as bad as thought. |
Does a dark blue/purple Cali Tort turn green before bleaching? This coral has been losing colour since the middle of last month. Turning from blue to darkish green and now to a lighter, bright green colour. I've been moving it around the tank: less light; more light; less flow; more flow; but nothing seems to help. I've aready lost one SPS colony and several others are not doing well either. :sad:
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I've never had my cali tort turn green but I did have a green acro turn purple when it bleached once. It regained its bright green colour again after a few months. |
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Yeah it's been a frustrating several weeks. Glad to hear your tank is on the mend though. |
It only took changing out 300 gallons of water and approx 6 cups of carbon but it is on the mend
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Are you OK on salt? I have a couple of buckets if you need some. |
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Lance my Cali Tort is blue/purple but usually has some parts of it that turn green which I quite like as it adds a whole new dimension of colour to the colony, that said it has never turned all green and remains mostly blue/purple and it's just some of the branches in the lower light regions that get the green hues. Sorry to hear you're having problems. Any pictures so we can see what you mean? |
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Yup, I use R/O water. (TDS of 1). Can't get any pics up for a few days as the wife lent our camera to our daughter. Strange things happening in the tanks: Some corals are doing great. Bird's Nests, Staghorns, 2 Milli's, Digi's, Stylo's, Hydnophoras and Pocillopora are growing well, with good colour. All LPS and softies are doing well. It's just a problem with a few Acros. Water parameters are fine; pH; 8.1, S.G: 1.025, Ca: 420, alk: 8 dKH, Mg a little high at 1450 due to inaccurate readings from an old test kit, which has been replaced. NO3 at 5, and PO4 is undetectable. (all on Salifert and/or Elos kits). Haven't changed any lighting or flow, or dosing any different. The strange thing is that I have had some bleaching in both tanks which leads me to believe that it may be the recent heat wave or bad salt. Don't know what else it could possibly be? |
I've also noticed that the film algae on the glass seems to need cleaning more often; can warmer tank temps cause this?
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I've noticed this too, so not sure about the warmer temps. My tank is actually a bit cooler than normal usually 79, now 77 and I'm finding I need to clean the glass every 2nd day.
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Hmmm, strange. In the last month I've also been getting some of that short, brown, sorta fuzzy, real-hard-to-remove algae growing over the corraline on the back wall. Horrid stuff! |
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Yeah I have that too. Sadly, its not growing over my coralline as I don't have any :neutral: On the flip side, my tank is rather ghetto right now as we have it in the basement awaiting the big tank build and its out from the wall a bit so I can scrape the entire back glass with my mag float/easy blade. So I can get rid of it rather easily with a scrape and a water change. Yay ghetto reef! :biggrin: |
Changing my plans for this tank yet again........... (SPS Boycott)
It was originally going to be a Fowler with large cool fish: Tangs, Trigger, Tuskfish, Angels, Wrasses etc. Shortly after setting it up I moved a few soft corals over from the 90g reef. Then Marie gave me a large Pipe Organ Coral, and several large softies as well as some mushrooms. Then a little later I thought a few nice LPS would be ok, which of course led to SPS frags and colonies. All of a sudden it became a full-blown mixed reef! However, as the fishes grow larger and the bio load increases, it's becoming more and more of a struggle to keep nitrates down. I've got 3 reactors running in the sump. One for GFO, one for nitrate sponge, and one for carbon. I also use T.A. Nitrate Destroyer and perform 10% bi-weekly water changes. With this regimen I can keep NO3 at about 5ppm. I refuse to underfeed my fish; If I can't keep them fit and healthy I'd rather not keep them at all. The livestock in the tank now consists of: 5" Harlequin Tuskfish, 5.5" SF Tang, 6" Kole Tang, 6" Foxface, 5" Bannerfish, 5" Lunare Wrasse, 2.5" CBB, 2x 2" Fire Clowns, 4" LM Blenny, 3" Lamarck Angel, 2.5" Falco Hawkfish, 11x Chromis, many large snails and hermits and shrimp in the sump. My wife has been pining for a Blue-Chin Trigger, which I have my doubts about. The fish are all getting along well, and I'm a little leery about throwing a Trigger into the mix. All the soft corals and LPS are thriving, but a few of the SPS are not doing so well. I lost one colony and two frags to bleaching, and two other colonies are losing colour. The faster-growing SPS (Stags, Bird's Nest, Montis, Hydno- phora) are growing well and showing good colour, as are the Milli's, Stylo's, and Pocci's. The tabling varieties are not doing as well. IMO it's only going to get more difficult to keep SPS healthy in this tank as the fish grow, ............. so no more SPS additions for this tank. Those SPS that are doing well will stay and those that are not will go either to the 90g reef, or to fellow reefers. The 90g has few fish in it and corals grow well there. However it's mostly full, so I guess I'll have to stay away from the frag sales, and the LFS for awhile. :sad: |
Nitrate sponge is no good man.....contains aluminum ( I think thats what I read):redface:..... correct me if Im wrong.
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Ha Ha! I may be doing that as well in the 90g. My heart pounds and my hands start to shake when I think of weaning myself off of SPS. :mrgreen: |
Grrrrrrrrrrrrr!
As if I haven't been having enough troubles with my corals lately. I just noticed one of my favourite pieces, (a Pavona I brought back all the way from Calgary last year), was missing. Where do I find it? Smack dab in the middle of my 10" Torch Coral. Yup, it's fried! Poor thing had the crap stung out of it. :( This is it before the fatal tumble. http://i371.photobucket.com/albums/o...k/IMG_3071.jpg |
Sorry to hear about your coral. I've been having problems with nitrates as well. I started using T.A. Nitrate Destroyer in hopes to help keep the nitrates down but it's only been 12 days and so far it doesn't seem to be doing much. How long did it take for the T.A. Nitrate Destroyer to work in your tank?
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Laurie, I can't honestly say how much it helps. I manage to keep nitrates down in this tank to about 5 ppm, but I can't tell how much from the Nitrate Destroyer, the water changes or the nitrate sponge. I CAN tell you that since I began using the T.A., the sponge, and more frequent water changes, the nitrates were consistently at 10 ppm; so at least one of the three is working. |
If it makes you feel any better Lance (you know the saying 'misery loves company'?) this is my montipora setosa...or whats left of it
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v2...ll/aug2309.jpg |
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