Albertan22's 120g Reef

[Leah]

New pictures yet???

[Albertan22]

Originally Posted by Leah

New pictures yet???

Not much has changed, but this thread is due for some more eye candy

Another hitchhiker. He's a filter feeder, some kind of muscle or barnacle I suspect, but I haven't gotten around to IDing him, any ideas?


My non-mantis catching bottle trap


A couple of pics of some of the nooks and cranies in my rockwork





Sump running with the reactor on it:



And the skimmer at work... It was pulling out a lot earlier in the cycle, but has slowed down now. I'm not surprised as there isn't much bioload in the tank.



I really like the way this tank looks even with the lights off!



And my basement QT:



The ammonia patch in my QT seems to be yellow this morning so maybe I can get some fish this weekend. I'm gonna do some water testing later this morning (after some house cleaning, blah!) and maybe I can get some clowns into QT today or tomorrow. I'm also planning on picking up some cheato for the refugium and a cup of sand from one of Blue Worlds tanks this weekend to seed a bit more life into my tank

[Albertan22]

For whatever reason, this morning I had a hunch that my rogue mantis had taken over the home that the first mantis had built. So I pulled the rock out and started poking around and what fell out was definately not a mantis!



I think this is the loonie sized crab I saw when I first put my rock into the tank. He's living in my refugium now along with a little ball of cheato I obtained today and the last little crab I pulled out of the DT

[Albertan22]

Woohoo! First fish



These guys will be in QT for 4-6 weeks, the main tank should be more than ready for them by then. Next step will be adding a cleanup crew to the main tank. Hopefully that will happen in the next week or two, we'll see how the cycle progresses I guess...

[Albertan22]

Found the smaller of the two clowns (the darker coloured one) dead this morning I'm not exactly sure what happened. Neither of them have been eating since I picked them up (I did see them eat at the LFS), but I figured I wouldn't worry as it's only been a couple of days. The larger one was always shaking and dancing around the smaller one, but the little guy always seemed to ignore the big one. I'm wondering if the larger of the two decided to kill the little guy? Or maybe it was just stress... Hopefully the one I have left starts eating. A big water change is also in order tonight as the death has caused an ammonia spike

[Albertan22]

Well it's been a couple of weeks since I've updated this thread. Not a whole lot has been happening with the tank. I'm still reading somewhere around 0.25ppm ammonia, this level hasn't changed in 2 or 3 weeks, I'm thinking about taking some water to an LFS for confirmation.

My other clown fish also died, he had something weird growing out of his head one evening, I was going to go into the City to get some medication the next day but he was dead by morning. Hopefully this isn't an omen of things to come.

I also tore down my rockwork today looking for that elusive mantis, but he was nowhere to be found. Lots of little crabs though I'm starting to wonder if maybe whatever I saw all those weeks ago was either something else, or didn't make it through the cycle/starved? I do hear clicking and snapping from the tank every now an then, but I've come to realize that lots of things make clicking and snapping noises (ATO, heaters, light timers, splashes, etc.). I guess I'll find out when I add a CUC.

[MMAX]

I had a clown with the same thing as yours, he had something growing out of his bottom lip. Freshwater dipped him twice and then quarentined him with doses of Instant Ocean Lifeguard. He was fine within a week and was quite a little trooper until he decided to find out what life was like outside the tank. I miss that little guy.