Nebthet's 56g Reef

[Gee]

Looking forward to the 90gal upgrade thread ... what, we all know how upgrades go ...

Looks great!

[Nebthet]

Ok. Here is a quick update with the new lights and 30lbs of live rock added in.



Closer front tank shot


View slightly from the right side showing the added caves.


Left hand side of the tank showing the space I left back there for the more shy fish to hang out.

[Nebthet]

Everything is progressing very nicely in this tank. I took some more pics tonight especially since I was feeding my sun coral.


Under the atcinics:

Blastos


Candycanes, Zoas and Suncoral


Cleaner Shrimp and GSP frags


Duncans


Frogspawn frag


Front Tank Shot



Suncoral Feeding Time:

Before


Using the top half of a 2Litre pop bottle to protect the coral and food during spot feeding. I use a mix of all frozen saltwater medly, brine shrimp and baby brine shrimp for the new baby heads appearing.


This Nassarius snail was adament he was gonna get something to eat.


He succeeded at it too!


After feeding


Suncoral looking much nicer and happy now!


and finally one of the scissortail gobies poking it's head out of one of the small caves on the left side of the tank.

[Nebthet]

Ever wonder why people would want an urchin?

Here is the answer;


And after he was done that spot. All nice and clean:


Once the other powerhead is done, it is on to this one next. Oh and you can just make out my BTA in the back right corner there. Happily sitting in his favourite spot away from the T5 lighting.


Feather Caulerpa growing nicely in the sectioned off back left area of the tank.


Couple close ups of one of my SPS I am thinking may be a tortusa.






Acro SP.


This Acro is starting to encrust back over itsself.




Zoa Garden again


Octo Frogspawn doing very well now. It likes the spot it is in.





Pods have significantly increased and there is no where I look where there aren't any. If things continue that way, I may consider a red mandarin goby.

The damsel is still being submissive to the other fish and has began to pick at the algae growing rather than eating the fish flakes. He remains to be fat and happy. He has a new territory around the skimmer intake and outtake (which the later I need to develop some s piping to reduce microbubble issues).

The baby Onyx are doing very well. It is a pain in the derier though to keep cleaning the breeding net. I am going to get one of those plastic critter keepers and drill small holes in it. I think with a little cleaning magnet it will help and the clowns will be big enough then not to slip through.

Of new hitchhikers I have with this tank there are 8 brittle stars, spaghetti worms. I have also been following along with the baby tubo snails I have had. There are still 2 of them in there and they have continued to grow steadily.

The sun coral has a bunch of new mouths growing on it. One of them is orange which was an awsome suprise. I would like to get a black sun coral eventually.

My Metallic Green BTA is happy in his spot on the top right corner. It doesn't seem to mind the water changes, when the water level goes down and then back up. So as long as it is happy, so am I.

Future plans for the tank:
- Red Mushrooms - only 1-2 to start they can do their thing on their own.
- Torch Coral frag
- Hammer coral frag
- SPS frags, for which I will hold out for an Oregon Tort.
- Black sun coral
- Firefish Goby
- Mandarin Goby (big maybe)

[Myka]

Looking good! Gorgeous Percula! Have you been monitoring ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate during the move?

[Nebthet]

Yes I have definately been monitoring all of that since the move, especially since I expected a soft cycle with the new live sand.

As of June 2nd, my perameters were the following:

Salinity: 1.025
Ammonia: 0
Nitrate: 0
Nitrite: 0
Calcium: 380 (touch low for acropora, but didn't want to start adding extras in yet.)
Alkalinity: 4.5 meq/l
PH: 8.3

I am checking my perameters about once per week the day before doing a water change.

When I first did the change over there was a small cycle where the nitrates got between 5-10 but that was expected.

[Nebthet]

Here are some more pic updates from today.

The red mushies are nice and happy now. They finally attached themselves to a rock.


The acro is doing great.


This big hermit likes bugging my candycanes.


Blasto is finally developing babies.


My MGBTA has finally (i hope) selected a permanent home.


Here is a sequence of pix showing me feeding my MGBTA silversides.NOM NOM NOM NOM....





And finally I got the set of blue LEDs in the mail today that I won on ebay. They make perfect moonlights and only cost me $35 Canadian, shipping included. They are made up of 4 connections of 3-led beam bulbs each and are waterproof.

The Metallic Green BTA


Frogspawn and Duncans


The front tank shot. In person the leds do not look that bright, but the camera setting I use lets more light in. I had a closer up shot of the red mushies under the Leds, but it was too blurry, but the red really pops out under these too!!