Blacknifes 50g Battle of SPS learning

[blacknife]

Got glass hole saw..

got crazy

decided to go with the added sump water,

made a "stand" to put the new refugieum the same hight as my sump.

lined up and marked holes.

drilled the empty tank..

Making a new big batch of water to fill it up.

tomorrows project.. drain and clean the sump then drill it and re-pumb everything that needs re-plumbing.

I think i will attempt to make some of the rock for in there, i will see how that goes. but for now it can just be extra water for stability.

[blacknife]

All projects got derailed by going on a week of storm callout down south the next day.

Came back and my new/used lights were in the post office. 6 bulb nova extreme. they look great and i swear i can see growth on some of the sps after a week of having them.

15g addon is on lights off and all it is housing is the tube anenome, gorilla crab, and a hermit. it had the softies, some lr and the cheato in it with standard flourescents but it seemed to just want to grow cyano and diatoms. the sandbed is black in it and i am not sure what to do. might just take it offline, rebuild the stand and put one of the bigger tanks there. might just leave things the same.

Main tank looks good same small little patches of HA but its not spreading at all and i can deal with that. If the "easier" sps that are in there keep doing good i might have to try a couple little harder ones.

I want to setup the other tanks as either an addon or separate. I was thinking all the low light corals could go in the other tank. I would like the ease of having a common sump but wondering if the long term health of some of the hard corals would be better if i left the softies in a separate tank instead of just using carbon.

[TheKid]

You are really dedicated, good job!

[blacknife]

Down to one tank.

Failure of the day....


looking at the plumbing of the return from the 15 gallon.. thought i put a union in it when i put the tank together after the flooding incidents of a few months ago. barely touched the plumbing... cracked the tank.

I was looking to move it so i could put the 40 tall beside the 40 breeder and leave the 15 a fuge.. but now.. i just have the 40 b. and room to build everything.


on a side note took my kid on a tour today to all the fishstores. all i got were 2 acro frags and some salt.


playing with everything to get the rock from the 15 back in the 40 messed my flow up and i cant find a spot to make my alveoporia happy. everything else is settled in and normalizing.



that sand in the 15 was pretty rank. it was nothing like that when i moved the 33 into the 40 and split the sand between the 2 i wonder why it ripened up so fast.

[blacknife]

i took a pic of milli that has stringy stuff on it, found a different way to use the camera to get good macro shots.. decided to go back and take more pictures only to discover the mj1200 fell off its suction cups and fell on some stuff and sprayed sand everywhere..


yay fun times..

[blacknife]

Everything is still growing and doing ok.
sps are growing and.. showing hints of colour but not not really colouring up.

im not sure if it has only been since i got my new lights or if it has been longer, but all my zoo's and some of my lps have been looking fairly washed out lately. looked through some of my old pictures last night and was affirmed of that. I know need to put new lights in my newer fixture but i don't think that would cause this. New lights are waiting till I'm working again.

what do i need to do to get some color back in my zoo's?

[blacknife]

Hah off all summer and no updates.
Fish come and go.. corals do good then do bad.

not sure what i had for fish before but im down to the 2 clowns, dottyback and a yellow line goby it is staying this way for now, work is to unstable dead fish make me to sad. all my blennies have either jumped or found their way into pumps.. the fish i have have not committed suicide yet so ill keep it that way as long as possible.

I'm back to work so this means 2 things.. more money for the tank.. back to less time. oh well keep trying to automate things more.

replaced half my lights a few weeks ago the rest today.

as well IO got some prodiobio<sp> to try out.
I have been battling with a mix of diatoms/cyano. most trays it looks like diatoms but some days it gets little red patches here and there, dust off the rocks and suck what i can out and call it good.
I think i need to look at getting an ro unit soon to make this problem go away for good but who knows.


Some of my spas are having a real battle.. my alk got low a few months ago.. or something else was bugging them and the birdsnests' and one of the pocks has been fighting back to life since.

the milli i got from dez ages ago finally pinked up.. i assume its a rose milli of some kind because.. i pretty much gave up on it having any color other than brown. the couple arco frags i have are slowly looking more like when i got them,


I was going to take some shots tonight to throw in for good luck but the reefbooster food made everything to cloudy for now.

I still want to add a bit more rock to the sump but i have not find the right rock at the right price yet.. base rock.. used live rock i don't care just need the right stuff.

on another note i found a small 12ish gallon classic cube<has stainless frame around it to boot. i was going to use it for mixing but instead i put a small hob filter on it .. one picee of rock.. and a few days later some of my softies. plans are to get a couple more nice pieces of rocks for it and put softies/mushrooms/ what not in it.. but right now i just watch all the pods run around on the rock doing their thing with no predators.