My 29g Reef - former AP24.

[Nebthet]

Here are the rest of the frags and one heck of a large piece of live rock with GSP on it that I had to split up with a hammer and chisel to make room for it. It gave me 2 good sized colonies, some small frags and a nice clam was growing on the underside, with a couple Paly's.

The amount of rock with it also took me up over 20lbs of rock in my tank, so that is good for filtration. It also gave me some rubble to work with for the filter system.

I performed a 12% water change after finishing adding everything in there since the water was mussed up, and I have extra water prepared to do continual small changes through out the next two weeks to help with the bioload and doing frequent testing of the parameters.

My next purchase wont be until February sometime, when I get a small BTA, black sun coral and two clownfish.

Here are some pics.

Front tank shot without flash.


with flash


The clam. I have no idea what type it is right now. Anyone have any ideas?


More Candy Canes


Another shot with my peppermint shrimp


Blasto Merletti with the Toadstool behind it.


Peppermint checking out the GSP as soon as it was in place.


On my next day off work I am going up to the hardware store to find some egg crate and acrylic so I can change from the stock lighting to the 130 watt PC's I have. I just have some other rearranging to do first on another project I am working on.

Please let me know what you think.

[Nebthet]

Some more updated pics for the New Year.


FTS showing the removal of the Aquapod stock hooding and replacement with the Odyssea 130w pc with 12,000k bulb, atcinics and moonlights.
It is sitting on top of a 0.220 thick piece of Acrylic panel cut to fit in the shelving space (due to my stupid cats to keep them from falling or trying to drink the tank water... )
I was prepared wit egg crate to use as well, but have found it unnecessary with the acrylic.


Atcinic wit flash FTS


The Hammer all happy as usual. He has grown 1.5 inches back over his skeleton towards the back of te tank as I was hoping when I put him in that spot.
You can see the colour and density of the GSP on the lower left.
A red hermit is sitting beside the clam shell. It shot out a nice pile of crap just as I was taking the pic.
The Xenia on the shell as you can see has come back nicely and it is pulsing happily now. There are several seperate stalks forming, but they are small yet.


Lastly, a close up image of the Blasto Merletti. It as plumped up realy nice and has started touching the rock it is butted up against. I am hoping that in time, it will start growing over the rock.


I am waiting for an order of 3heads of Aussie Duncans, an Acropora Nano frag and an Acropora Suharsonoi frag (which is a deep water Acro) to come in. I thought I would give the Acro's a try with the higher, newer light and placing them closer to the surface of the tank and since fragalot.com has an awsome boxing week sale going on right now where all of these were only $10 each + $45 shipping. I went for it. Of course I will have plenty of pics to show when they come in.

Let me know what you think.

[Nebthet]

Ok.. time for me to add more pictures.

Mr. Xenia is doing very very well. It is up and pulsing vigorously again and getting larger by day.


Blastos and tiny zoa frag in it's final home where it is being less distubed by the hermits.


Beware De Claw!


Nummm nummm nummm nummm


Feeding Frenzy



Check out what I found!!
Baby Snails!!! Nassarius and Turbo!


There is the one by the bubble algae in this pick


I think I am gonna have to name my tank Love Cove or something with the way these suckers keep spitting out babies, whether they survive or not.

[Nebthet]

I finally got my 3 frags in from fragalot.ca today. Not their fault.. Paypal takes forever to let a bank payment go through.

Here are the two Acropora Frags I ordered.
The one in the background is suppose to be Acropora Nano (though it doesnt look like it). and the one in the foreground is Acropora Suharsonoi.


The next pic is my Aussie Duncan (Duncanopsummia). It was only suppose to be 3 heads, but lucky me I got 4.




They had really fast shipping. These 3 frags only cost me $30.. lol.. the shipping cost me more.

They have another $10 frag sale on right now too.. They have some nice stuff and will be ordering from them in the future.

[Nebthet]

So I was out doing some grocery shopping today and other things and I stopped in at Shane's Aquarium Emporium checking to see if they had an MJ1200 and to check prices on other things.

They had a super cute black frogfish in there.. but I dont want to spend $50 on him and it wasnt in my tank plans. They also have an eel in there. very cool.

So in the one tank there was this lone tiny damsel in there hanging in the corner not doing much of anything. I felt bad for him.

I had been reading a few things and weighing my options on what to ad and not to for the passed couple of months and how I wanted to do it. I have come to a final decision on what I want to stock my tank with.

- 2 Onyx clownfish (true perc variant)
- 1 firefish goby
- 1 Damsel: I was gonna go with a neon goby but for $10 I went for the damsel.

I wanted to test my system to see if flow was good on how the parameters would change with fish livestock additions and I wanted to go slow on that. So, the damsel has become my test subject.

All is well so far. In at Shane's he want as bright. He was more of a dark blue dull colour. After acclimating him and putting him in my tank he is now the normal bright blue.

Here are some pics.



Here it is checking out his now favourite cave/tunnel system


Damsel just coming out of the Peppermints cave.


and two front tank shots.

[Nebthet]

Well I finally got in my babies I have been planning on for my saltwater tank for a long time. Since before I set it up when I was in the research phase.
They are not completely what I was looking for, however they are a very good comprimise with a very bright looking future.

I got my 2 Onyx clownfish I wanted. Well, these are actually listed as Half-Onyx clowns, hence the compromise, but depending on the age of them, I may get very lucky as they have not fully coloured up yet.

Apparently Fedex doesnt know how to read, because when they delivered this and left it at my door. Thankfully it doesnt take me long to run there - The box was on it's side with the big arrows pointing in the wrong direction.

I did the acclimation. At first I thought the little guy was not gonna make it. He was listless and just wanted to lay at the bottom, but once I put them both in the tank (at the same time) he got all happy and was moving around nicely.

Obviously by size we know which is male and which is female. These were not purchased as a mated pair, however I think they are already going through the dance. Literally. Nice pops from the female, like light taping on a door, and both twitch, and nudge each others sides and barely swim away from each other. The male is already trying to host the hammer coral. The damsel is just having a territorial issue right now. I am going to do more research on it to see. If they are.. I am so happy because I do want to breed these guys.

So without further adeui, some pictures.



Closer shot. Female has a slight misbar, but not by a lot. I don't mind.


Close up of the two. Female left, male right.


And my cleaner shrimp in the hammer. Poor guy feels left out and neglected. He keeps going over to them to try to do his cleaner job and all the fish run away from him. I think he's gonna get a complex.

[Nebthet]

So I have upgraded my AP24 to a 29g tank. I liked the Aquapod, but I thought it would be nice to give the fish a little more swimming room. I also wanted to move the tank into the Livingroom so I can actually enjoy it a lot more. It was ok in the kitchen but I really couldn't spend a lot of time enjoying it sitting on the kitchen chair.

The corals seem to be making the transition ok. They are taking a couple of days to readjust but most seem good. I lost the hammer coral before hand. A hermit crab got into it and was pinching the flesh and it developed brown jelly disease. I will replace it later on.

I went with a thinner crush coral bottom. I will add more as I need it. if I need more. I also have enough room in here to comfortably get a BTA and let it get large if it wants to.

So here is a current pic of the 29g.

[Nebthet]

It took the corals a few days to get out of their pithy state and now they are all doing extremely well. The xenia is not as happy as it was yet, but it is not in it's final place yet. The Duncans are very happy where they are now and are sporting lots of baby heads. The Mushrooms have doubled in size (still trying to get a better pick of those). Zoas are growing like nuts so I also think not having the thick acrylic over top but just the white light reflector stuff has helped.

I have also seen a mass return of the isopods today and at least one brittle star survived the transition. I haven't seen the second one yet. My clownfish, who is a month old now and named big momma is a lot happier too. She has room to race back and forth across the tank. Her and spot the damsel don't fight at all. Oh.. and I now have my tank topped up. I had run out of salt when I did the change over. But one I got more salt I slowly topped it up bit by bit. There is now no water showing below the black seams. LOL.

I am also keeping an eye on the growth rate of the Halmedia and feather caulerpa. I added those to help with nitrates. The caulerpa grows like crazy, but the Halmedia is much slower. It is part of the reason why they are in the opposite corners from the live rock.

Here are a few more pictures for you all to enjoy.

Spot Damsel and Big Momma Clown



Candycanes and green zoas



Peppermint and Astraea snail on the K1.



Blastos now plumped all up and swaying in the current a little



My Acro is finally starting to show some blue colour. Not sure what that Astraea is doing.



Group shot of Duncans, Xenia on shell, gsp, palys and clam in the back.



Close up of the Duncan showing the baby heads.



Feather caulerpa and mixed green and red zoas and reverse gorilla nipple zoas. Sorry for the fuzzy pic.



Just showing how I have set up the inside of the filter as can been seen through the tank. I took the ac70 filter and cut it into quarters. So every 1.5 weeks or less I change the filter pad out. Live Rock rubble on top and then Chemi-pure back on top of that. Later I will add a bit of mesh to cover as I try to find some Cheato to put back there.