College Nano ~ 20L REBORN!!!!

[sandlot13]

surprisingly well.... as far as I can tell this eel of mine is the rare kind that only eats frozen krill (im not sure where he found the frozen krill at in the wild, but he sure does like them now! )

In fact, I dont think I have seen him become remotely interested in anything at all while he's been with me. Most of the time, he glides throughout the rockwork, or does the usual eel thing of relaxing and breathing deep. When food touches the water (or my hand for that matter, as he has associated the smell of ME with the smell of food), it's off to the races though, as the eel will cruise the tank, looking for the source.

It makes adding or moving frags interesting, thats for sure. I havent yet been bit by him, but im sure i will at some point in the future when I get lazy in my tank maintenence.

Took some more pictures last night, and I'll try to post them soon..... I have a great story about my decorator crab (and by great story, i mean a story that involves me questioning why I added it to my tank, even though I knew what was going to happen).

 

[Salty D-O-G]

Nice tank Bro.

Jerry

 

[Sushi Reef]

Yes, i unfortunatly lost my bright chalice... that was by far my favorite coral, and i was just about ready to frag it into three pieces. Sigh... oh wells, I guess that's just the way the world works.

I am placing an order with a guy soon though... should have a couple more chalice frags within the next week hopefully! wahoo!

how did you lose such a large piece?

what kind of lighting do you have??

 

[sandlot13]

you would have to check out my other thread to see what happend to the chalice/ every other coral in my tank. Basically it was a tank crash due to unfortunate circumstances. there is a link to it on the 1st post of this thread

 

[Sushi Reef]

oh i thought your new coral... my bad

 

[sandlot13]

Update time!!!!

Sorry it has taken so long everyone who is following along on my thread! My baseball schedule has been horrendous. We have been gone every weekend travelling (Southern California, Lewiston and Boise Idaho, etc etc) for a while, and I havent even been able to attend half of my classes at school, let alone update my tank thread.

The tank is doing pretty well, even with the couple days every week that I havent been home to watch it. It has a little problem with cyano right now, and a flatworm outburst is starting to subside as well. My corals are seeming to be ok, but my xenia is suggesting to me that I need to do a water change. The biggest thing that is bugging me is the detritus everywhere! There is gunk that is building up in places of low flow, and Im struggling to find a way to get rid of it. If anyone has any tips, please help me! I think i need to buy another power head and get a little cross action going on my currents.

But, as promised here come some pictures. There still isnt a Full Tank shot, because Im still trying to get one that im happy with. There always seems to be something wrong, whether its the lighting, dirty glass, or my corals not looking stupendous. Sorry, im a perfectionist when it comes to FTS. (PS - PLEASE IGNORE ALL DIRTY GLASS IN THESE PICTURES! THANK YOU!)

First off, I ran into a little interesting occurance a few weeks back. I looked into my tank at night, and saw that my green rics were on the ground, having fallen down off their perch on the rocks. The funny thing was, they were moving!!!! Walking across the bottom of the tank!!! So, of course I watched them for a bit until it finally hit me....... the decorator crab! It had taken my rics, surgically removed them from the rock, and placed them on its back!

At first, I was kinda mad, because they were the only rics I had, but as I watched him for a day, it actually was kind of cool to see him all covered in his armour of rics.

I was impressed with the work he did, because the rics were all healthy and living on his back. Unfortunatly for him, I wanted the rics on the rocks...... So I took them off his back and they are currently alive and well starting to reattach to the rock. After that, i banished the decorator crab to the makeshift refugium, to which he promptly escaped and took all of the zoo frags I had and put them on his back. Sigh...... this time I took the zoo frags off his back and put him in the part of the refugium where he cannot escape this time. (the zoos were not harmed in this process either) The decorator crab is currently up for trade if anyone is interested. I would love to keep him, but my little frags arent big enough yet to allow him to decorate himself. When they grow out to be bigger colonies, i think that it would be cool to have a "walking zoo garden" in my tank

Anywho, off to more pictures!

Here's a cool shot of my fighting conch...

Bronco, my only other survivor of the tank crash besides my eel.

This picture gives a little bit better sense of motion when my eel is out and swimming. You can see how it can curve its body much like a snake..... I love him, he's so cool!

Here's seabass, my orangeback basslet. He loves watching me, but whenever the camera comes around, he hides. stupid silver camera.....

A cool shot of Seabass's eyes. His eyes, depending on the angle you get, will change from either this neon green or a bright blue with the occasional red. Very cool to see

 

[Krish]

Nice pics man! Glad to see the tank is still kicking! As for the detritus problem, yeah...You may need to pop in another powerhead or try adjusting what you have. The problem with adjusting sometimes is that you fix one problem, but create another so it's a toss up. Hope you get it all sorted out soon and keep the pics coming

 

[sandlot13]

And now for some corals!

Here's my new favorite coral! A beautiful glowing blood red echino coral..... its unbelievable!

and also got a very nice new blue echino. It was light blue when i first got it, but has darkened up nicely now that i have moved it lower in my tank.

a new acan enchantia orange crush... i got it bleached from a local reefer, and it is healthy and alive still. Im really excited for this one to grow up a little bit.

Here are some zoos that I got with the echinos.... very bright, very colorful radioactive dragon eyes!

Also got a nice piece of pink montipora from a local reefer, though it recently fell behind some rocks while i was gone on a baseball trip and has lost a lot of color. I still have my hopes out for it though.

and then finally, here's a really cool shot of another burnt red echino that I have. I looked into my tank one night and saw these giant mass of feeder tentacles and was comletely astonished that it was coming from this echino frag. Very cool i thought!

and finally another picture of my eel, just because I love taking pictures of him and it's really easy to get some decent shots!

Hope you all enjoy!

 

[spongebob lover]

nice dood !!! .

 

[brady816]

tank is looking good.. ready to see a full tank shot man

 

[sandlot13]

Haha, ya, Im ready for one too! Ill try and get something in the next few days after I do some glass cleaning and maybe a waterchange....

On another note, Im glad to announce that I took second in our university's dirtiest room competition! I had to enter because 1. my roommates pretty much made me and 2. I already had some great pictures and the prizes included free food! I should post a picture, just so you can see that my neglagence of posting on here isnt the only thing that is getting a backseat to baseball and school

 

[sandlot13]

Okay, so today I finally took the plunge into some aquaculture! I basically took that giant echino I had and took my dremel tool to it.......WOW, what an experience. It feels really weird just hacking up a living organism, but hey, everything looks like it's healing well enough, so Im kind of excited!

I took some pictures of the before and after.....

Heres the shot of the coral before hand getting ready to get chopped.... it's about the size of a third of a regular computer keyboard

Just a shot of the coral with the dremel tool on my "workbench"..... dont tell my roommate what I do on his pingpong table.

I just kinda dove into this; I had read a lot online about people fragging off pieces of coral before, so I didnt think much of it. Hahahaha, wow, it was a learning experience!

First things first... if you are going to be using any sort of cutting device that is moving at high speeds, wear saftey glasses! Nothing is worse then ground up coral flesh stinging your eye. ALso, do not wear anything that is valuable to you or you have to wear on a date soon, because it will get the spray from the cutting action all over it no matter how hard you try to prevent it. Its kind of gunky, and to be honest, smells bad. I guess all in all, its better to be fully prepared and not have to worry about anything but the health of the coral while you do all of this.

Oh, and dont have your cell phone with you.... I had mine on me, which as soon as I made the first incision decided to ring. I didnt answer it, but it definitly distracted me because it's a natural reaction to answer a phone when it rings! haha

After the cuts were made, I swished it in some tank water I had set in a tupperwear, then carried the freshly cut colony and the two frags back to my tank. As you can see, even with trying to clean the cuts, the corals still werent all that happy about it.

Colony after it had its makeover....

Frag number 1.....

Frag number 2......obviously a little less planning went into this one. Note to self: always have a preconcieved notion as to WHERE you will be cutting, dont just make it up as you go.

Anywho, thats my little tidbit of action going on here...... I have big order of new corals coming in early next week! Tons of palys, im so excited!!!! Ill be updating around that time next week, so be on the look out!

 

[ilektrik22]

Looking good...the eel is awsome, what type is it? ( I know eel knowledge, didn't see you mention it anywhere)

 

[sandlot13]

Sorry, it was in my other thread about this tank before it crashed over december.....

It's a Psuedachidna brummeri (Ill have to look at the spelling again to make sure that's spelled correctly), also known as a Ghost Ribbon Eel or White Ribbon Eel (though it is more closely related to moray eels, they still call it a ribbon eel generically). Top length is about 48 inches, though mine is currently about 24. It's a great eel, and Im very glad I am an owner

 

[morgan]

hey great to see u didnt throw in the towle man i love fraging stuff my mates got an eletic blue echino and wont frag it for me even thought hes got about 9 corals off me i have get an inch of his echino
be warry of the galaxya as they can grow fast and smash alot of stuff long sweeper tentecals are bad

 

[sandlot13]

My galaxia was doing great at first, and it had a lot of room, but now it's really struggling...... its still alive, but just not looking good. If anyone is looking for a nice sized one, im down for a trade. I need to get rid of it anyway just cause it's not suited for a tank my size

 

[sandlot13]

Okay Okay Okay! I get it, i havent posted a Full Tank Shot yet!!! Stop yelling at me!!!

..............................err, i mean.............

I finally gave in and took a full tank shot. Im not proud of it, as my tank is still in the rebuilding process after the crash, but its a FTS non-the less, so take what I give you and like it...........

I decided against perfection on these pictures, and took them and posted them within five minutes, so hopefully they arent too bad. Comments and Critisicm welcome....... (Please disregard any dirty glass, detritus buildup, or random coral frags sitting along the bed of my tank )

 

[Krish]

Looks great man! Thanks for posting the full tank shot

 

[ilektrik22]

Looks good, don't see why you were so hesitant about posting one.

I will have to look into the eel, I don't think my present gobies would like to have him as a roommate though

 

[JRBear5658]

what kind of eel is that?

JR