250gal Island tank project

[dragoneggs]

Good Evening,

A couple of posts tonight for me here... this first one is in the area of artistic enjoyment of my tank. Up until now... it has been pretty much all technical.

I am pretty excited tonight because I get to post my first real attempt at some decent photography of my new inhabitants. This is a shot of my Ricordia. There are three greenish 'shrooms' and one orange one on the rock. One of the green ones is splitting and has two mouths right next to each other.

 

[dragoneggs]

The other item of note is the evap/skim rate I have now calc'd. I am running approximately 1.5gal per day loss. My system is approx 250gal.

 

[Krish]

Nice pic!! As for the evaporation rate...Not bad at all! I use to evaporate about that when I had my 75gal!

 

[Scooterman]

Cool man, I wonder if the summer heat will evap. more?
Still not bad, I drop a few gallons duing the winter & I'm not fully lit yet
Try adjusting the white balance, you may get a less blue photo but still very nice, congrats!

 

[dragoneggs]

Nice pic!! As for the evaporation rate...Not bad at all! I use to evaporate about that when I had my 75gal!

Well to be fair, I am only running the MH for 4 hours so far... and working the duration up slowly. I am sure that number will push up some with longer MH and especially in the summer... not that it gets to hot around here :lol:

 

[dragoneggs]

Cool man, I wonder if the summer heat will evap. more?
Still not bad, I drop a few gallons duing the winter & I'm not fully lit yet
Try adjusting the white balance, you may get a less blue photo but still very nice, congrats!

Hi Scooter, that last pic was with actinics on only and shot at f5 and 1/5th sec. I did a little PP in photoshop adjusting levels and color balance slightly.

Here is a similar one with the MH on also. This shot is pretty much straight out of the camera f8 and 1/15th sec without any post tweaking. Notice the Astrea snail... he was rooting around under the ricordias and I thought he was going to knock them off! Looks like he is done underneath them for now.

 

[dragoneggs]

Okay I have bumped the MH's up to five hr/day and the actinics at 10hrs. There is a one delay after the MH go off. This weekend I plumbed the RO water unit to my tank. I had about 60ft of 'blue line' to run to my sump from the laundry room throught the cramped crawlspace. I am getting a bit old for that kind of spelunking. Not much exciting to see on water top off plumbing until I install some kind of auto top off.

In the meantime some other pics... this first one is the tank edge detail. A shameless plug for Clear Fabrications but another detail that I appreciate about this project. Thanks Jason! This shot purposely with the actinics only to show the detail... a double bevel with a sweet runout.

This one I believe is a featherduster worm and one of the first 'colorful' creatures to appear. Please with this and any future post where I have attempted to ID the photo, correct me if I am wrong.

Next one is a blue legged hermit working on the top of an oyster. I wonder what if anything will become of the oyster shell?

 

[dragoneggs]

The other item of note is the evap/skim rate I have now calc'd. I am running approximately 1.5gal per day loss. My system is approx 250gal.

Okay I need to revise the evap loss rate... I believe it more like 2 gal/day. This is with 5 hours of MH on.

 

[Krish]

Okay I need to revise the evap loss rate... I believe it more like 2 gal/day. This is with 5 hours of MH on.

LOL!! And it keeps rising Nice pics man! Your tank is looking nice!

 

[dragoneggs]

Okay some exciting news and a picture here... my first SPS a Pocillopora frag in its new home!

 

[brady816]

cool man good luck with it... keep the pics coming

 

[dragoneggs]

Need help on ID for this thing. First one of these to pop up. What is it? Is this a good thing? I am looking in my books for it but haven't figured it out yet.

 

[Sushi Reef]

Majano -

pest anenome, needs to be taken care of before it spreads throughout the tank.
Send a hit on it asap.
Boiling hot water shot at this guy while open will get rid of him.
use a turkey baster or syringe(sp)

 

[Krish]

Looks like mojano here as well...You'd want definate confirmation, then get rid of it ASAP!

 

[dragoneggs]

Majano -

pest anenome, needs to be taken care of before it spreads throughout the tank.
Send a hit on it asap.
Boiling hot water shot at this guy while open will get rid of him.
use a turkey baster or syringe(sp)

Majano begonow... I did blast with boiling water trying not to make escargot out of an astrea next to it.

It definitely did not like the shot. I will watch for its return and any others. It did look like a small BTA but I am guessing no based on some quick internet research.

 

[Krish]

Better safe than sorry

 

[tamarindthai]

Mark,looks real good ,,need more different color pollcil or other let me know.

 

[Dr. Dee]

Yeah man your tank is looking good

 

[SueT]

definitely aiptasia. Blast it with lemon juice if the boiling water doesn't knock em back good enough. You can also make a mix of kalkwasser and ro water mix, that use a syinge and blast it. No needle needed.

 

[JPG@CFI]

Mark,

Your tank is progressing nicely, keep it up!

Jason