tlhood's first tank - 34g RSM 130D

[tlhood]

Here is a current FTS of my RSM 130D. The GHA, diatom, and cyano blooms from February and March are over, and everything is nice and clean. I also trimmed my garden of banana algae on the back of my base rock. I have started running GFO (given to me by riceboy) to try to help resolve my phosphate problems.

Currently the only coral that I am having a lot of trouble with re: colour is the pink birdsnest, and the bird of paradise could be more vibrant too.

I received the two toadstools and the blue mushroom (center rock at the front) from tobysmurf on Tuesday. The toadstools are currently shedding a bit, but are getting used to the tank nicely.

I decided I wanted more versatility with colour ratios and brightness in the tank, so I pulled out the stock t5's and installed the Rapid LED DIY retrofit kit, and the Storm controller. All was well for about a month, but unfortunately, the controller I received was a dud, and I am currently waiting on Coralux to send me a new one.

Because of the controller issues, my LEDs are at max, and I can't control the ratios .



Current Stock:

2 Black and white clowns
1 purple firefish
1 yellow watchman goby
1 sapphire damsel

1 RBTA
5 narites
3 astrea
1 cerith
1 fighting conch
1 nassarius
5 red hermits
2 porcelain crabs

red maze
green and purple favia
green monti cap
red monti caps
blue mushroom
two toadstools
GSP
purple/tan and green torch
spacemonster zoas
purple and green zoas
green button polyps
bird of paradise sps
pink birdsnest sps
small plate-like coral thing
leptoseris type frag

and next week I am getting
aussie green and red blasto
aussie multi coloured maze
dragon soul favia
needle in a haystack sps
blue and green sympodium

The large red monti and the two frags on the sand behind it are pending pickup from Steve...

[Bugger]

How are you liking that 2 gal fluval tank. Im thinking of getting one for brine shrimp. Is there a pump that connects the back to the front

[tlhood]

The 2 gal is ok. I more or less just used it for short and cheap QT for my fish, but since I'm not getting any more its been sitting there empty.

There is a small pump that comes with the system that sits in a tiny separated compartment behind the black overflow which pushes the water from the back to the front through a slightly flexible direction outlet on the right side. There isn't much room for a thermometer though (unless you want to put it in the display part of the tank), and the two I have managed to find to fit in the back crapped out on me within a week.

The lights are nice and bright, but the lid has a huge hole in it for the light to shine through, so with fish in there/ having cats, in order to stop jumping or paws going where they shouldn't be, I had to cover it with mesh.

[tlhood]

For the first time ever, I managed to catch a decent photo of one of the two hitch hiker crabs I got on a piece of rock from Wai's back in January. They somehow managed to survive my ammonia cycle. I'm pretty sure they are porcelain crabs, and they have moved their home from one end of the tank to the other. I usually can see them hanging under small arches filtering the water.

While both have the same blueish spotted colour, this one has pink under his claws, while the other has white.







Also, here is a photo of Frank, my conch, because he is a rockstar.

[tlhood]

I think my fish is a bit anti-Semitic.... PS. Man do iPhone cameras love soaking up the blue LEDs. Yikes

[tlhood]

We just had some reno's done in our bathrooms, which is where I get my water to run through the RODI, so I had about 3 weeks of no water change. Out of desperation, I grabbed a few gallons from Walmart. Now that the bathrooms are pretty much complete, I was finally able to hook up my RODI and decided to take the opportunity to do some major tank maintenance and overhaul.

What I have planned for the afternoon/evening:

1) Splitting my GINORMOUS anemone, which has taken to shading all the other coral in my tank
2) a few of my corals have gone downhill since the renos, so I will be doing some trimming/dipping/moving of them
3) changing the rockscape a bit to better suit the corals I have, to try to avoid having a setup where the nem can umbrella over the corals, and to create some more surface space for the zoas I will be picking up tomorrow
4) Rinsing some of the detritus off the rocks while I move them
5) a large H2O change

Fingers crossed nothing dies.

[tlhood]

New equipment

I am super excited to get my new skimmer! I have been using the stock RSM 130D skimmer, and it is loud as all hell, and I find it very finicky. I placed an order at concepts for a Tunze (the cutest skimmer you will ever see!) and should hopefully get it in the next week or so.

Livestock

Lost one of my zoas =[ of course it was the most expensive, and due to unfortunate events caused partially by me, and partially by a really annoying hermit crab, it got beat up and exploded, and died. The rest of the new zoas I got are doing amazing, though!

My two halves of my nem are healing, slowly though. I had to clean out their containers (which they haven't moved out of) since their bodies were blocking some flow to the bottom, resulting in crud buildup. I did put some slits in the sides of the containers to hopefully avoid that issue reoccurring. The cuts have healed, and it looks like the discs are rounding out and the mouths are healing up too. At this rate, they should hopefully be good in the next couple weeks.

Commendations to Mr. Cerith, my invincible dwarf cerith snail! I found him alive this morning on my glass, despite thinking he was dead for over 2 weeks. He has lived through stranding himself in a bunch of accumulated salt on the lid slider bar things for 2 days, he has survived being sucked up by tubes into water change buckets, and being stuck in the crud under my nems in their containers. yay!