Joe's Wet Dream, A 550 Gallon Work In Progress

[Jobiwan]

Okey dokey snowboard, I shall post some lovely photos of the gravel I placed in the tank on Tuesday shortly.

Kirk, if you want a good laugh check out this site, you will not believe it: http://whozoo.org/Anlife2001/lorabrys/lrb_butterflyfish.htm I bet you didn't know that Golden Butterflies ( Chaetodon semilarvatus) come from freshwater rivers, jump in the air and glide with their huge pectoral fins to catch their primarily diet of flying insects, and love mealworms in captivity. They should not be kept with small fish, as they are carnivorous predators (not to be confused with vegetarian predators) and will eat them. All this has to be true because it is on the internet, so we are not talking about the freshwater butterfly fish from your local FW fish store..

I didn't realize you were going FOWLR, that really gives you a lot more options for some gorgeous fish. I love Golden Butterflies and researched them hoping I could put them in my reef, but it was not meant to be. They do well in groups, that will be way cool if you can do it. Take a look at the Goldflake Angel from Hawaii, it is spectacular, if I kill all my SPS I will get one of those, The Navarchus (Majestic Angel) has always been a favorite of mine also, but I'm going to try the allegedly usually reef safe Azfur Angel for a large angel in my tank, other than that it will be a few assorted Centropyge Angels.

FYI:
Semilarvatus Butterflyfish

The Semilarvatus or Golden Butterflyfish, Chaetodon semilarvatus, is often found living on or around the reefs of the Indian Ocean and Red Sea. Members of the genus Chaetodon make gorgeous inhabitants of fish only aquariums. Soft Corals and most Invertebrates should do fine with the Butterflyfish, but it may likely decimate Stony Corals, as they are a part of its natural diet. Peaceful or non-aggressive tankmates are recommended to reduce stress on the Butterfly.

 

[vwmoneypit]

Wow Looks Great I Was Getting Alittle Impatient Waiting To See This With Water Wow Woow ,we Are Just Stoooked Up Here In Spokane Waiting For The Big Bang Of Nature .looking Good Will Report To All The Progress Hopefully I Too Willl Have A Tank This Big....yep I Got It I Will Remove The Wall Into The Kitchen And Make It A Tank L.o.l.

 

[krisfal]

Joe,
I have an Asfur Angel that I got this summer. So far he has been fine with both the SPS and my clam. However, I moved my green brain coral from my softy tank to the tank with the Asfur and after a day noticed that it had closed up tight. I sat and watched the tank for a few minutes and noticed the Asfur swim by and nibble at the brain. As soon as I moved it back to the softy tank it began to open back up.

I really like the asfur and hope it continues to ignore the SPS and clam.

Be sure to either order one (Barrier Reef got mine for me) or study the difference between it and the yellow bar angel (I believe that is the name) as they are similar, I saw some yellow bars that were being sold as asfur at a LFS. If I remember correctly the big difference between a young asfur and a young yellow bar is that the asfur will have a yellow tail while the yellow bar has a white tail. I will check if I am remembering right when I get home tomorrow.

 

[Jobiwan]

Thanks Kris, I would appreciate that info, I am quite a ways out from getting any new fish other than some chromises, I've got to get the fish I've got out of their cramped quarters in my holding tanks, also need the space for quarantine, gonna try to do this one right, I've been lucky not quarantining in the past, I think my luck is due to run out though

 

[krisfal]

I will definately pass on the info when I get home to my books.

Glad to hear you are not going to wait, like I myself did, to QT until after the worst happens and you get something in your display. I think we need to start looking at it as bonding time! I currently am QT'ing Anthius which has gone from being very skittish to a fish that is looking for me to come feed. In fact my QT is painted on three sides, but I did not like not being able to see in from the side so I scraped a couple little "portholes" into the paint. The other day I looked into the room and the anthius was looking through the porthole for me. I was wondering how he knew when I was coming:shock: as he was always right below the hatch in my eggcrate where I feed when I would get in the room.

I have found that I spend so much time with the fish in QT that I am almost sad to move them to the display, although that is the intention from the start and a lot less work. I worry how they will compete for food, if anybody is going to pick on my new bud, and if they will change in personality after they are with other fish. I have gone from thinking of it as a delay to enjoying the time getting to know the fish.

 

[NC2WA]

Joe,

Thanks. I am going for color and the list of fish I plan on getting is:

Golden Buttefly
Majestic angelfish
Scribbled angelfish
Blue face angelfish
Emperor angelfish
Flame angel
Cherub angel
Blonde Naso Tang

Great looking list, but I will see how the pair of golden butterflies do first before we really commit to the list.

Kirk

 

[Jobiwan]

Thanks Kris, sounds good, how long do you QT? What kind of tangs do you have in the big tank, I'm a tang fan myself.

Kirk, you have some beautiful fish in mind, that will be spectacular. I wonder how all the big angels will do with each other, I imagine you would want to add them all at once if you are going that way

 

[Jobiwan]

Something Only A Reefer Could Love....

OK Snowboard, no more whining, here are some lovely photos of rocks and snails, the algae bloom has subsided a lot, the snails are only partly responsible...
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This is the beach I put in place at the front of the tank 2 days ago, I put down some big rubble rock (1/2" and larger) to hold the medium sized substrate in place with all the current from the CL outlets, you can see 4 of them lined up:
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Here are several views of the front rockwork, the white rock was totally covered in nasty algae a few days ago.
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This is the very back of the tank, I asked Jason to put a few mounting strips in place to allow me to build up the back wall with LR and zip ties, he had a bit of 1" thick black plex laying around and made the mounts out of that, it is massively awesome, very far out and groovy...
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Here we have two views of the canyon Eric built, the first view is from the right side, followed by a view from the left side.
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And lastly a couple of different wider views of the back, the first one shows the placement of the back wall outlets, the upper right and left are sump returns powered by the Iwaki 70, the middle upper is the chiller return from the Iwaki 55. The lower two Y outlets are CL returns, they operate oppositely via the OM-4.
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That's all folks, we now return you to your regularly scheduled programs...

 

[Scooterman]

Like the beach, hope a tidal wave doesn't blow it away
man, I can't believe how fast you have so much brown stuff in there!
If I was you I'd throw in a Krish in there & see if he survives, maybe he'll help with the cycle:badgrin:

 

[Jobiwan]

Good idea Scooty If you think there is a lot of algae now you should have seen it a week ago, it exploded in the first 3 or 4 days and since has been dying back, stuff I haven't seen before, brown and slimy, but it had tufts and streamers an inch to two inches long, it's like it sucked up every nutrient there was that it needed, ran out, and started to die, I'm gonna start seeding the tank with coralline and see if I can speed the development of that along..

 

[brady816]

cool thanks for the updates man..

 

[Snowboarda42]

I'm happy, for now....

 

[Jobiwan]

LOL I'm really sorry I don't have anything more interesting, It's killing me, but I'm determined to go slow, it'll pay off in the long run, at least that's what I keep telling myself...

 

[NC2WA]

Joe,

From a man that was in your shoes about 2-3 months ago, go slow. It is paying off for me as I now have plenty of good beneficial bacteria and tons of pods. I am going to slowly add fish to the tank. I am tired of starring at these darn clownfish.

 

[Jobiwan]

Ocean Motions Sand Issues

At least you have Clownfish to look at

Here's a little something to share with those of you considering OM-4's. If you have a lot of sand grit circulating in the water within the tank the rotating drum that turns inside the body of the OM-4 can jam if sand builds up between the two components as water is pumped through, this causes no damage to the unit, just a bit of inconvenience to dissassemble the unit to clean it, they are very simple to work on, it is less than a ten minute job. (A small amount of sand like a sleeper goby etc would stir up is no problem, the unit can handle that, they just don't like being bombarded). The sand became suspended in my water column when I made one of my typically brilliant moves, I dumped a couple of hundred pounds of gravel in the tank with all the pumps going full blast. If I would have just had the pumps turned off there would have been no problem, even though the gravel had been rinsed, with all the flow going on whatever residual sand was left went right into suspension. I must be getting really smart, 'cuz I sure gets a lot of them learning experiences...

 

[Maxx]

Had that happen to mine a time or three....one trick to minimizing the number of times you have to clean that out is to use either a belt sander or something similar to sand down the inner drum just a bit....this should give you some more clearance for the grit to work itself out.

System looks great.

Nick

 

[Jobiwan]

Thanks Nick, I was wondering if there was a way I could increase the clearance, nice to hear from someone who has done that, I'll give it a try.

 

[reefman069]

well i have no sand in my tank and my om still jams up. i have to send mine back to paul at om. i am tired of it and hope paul is able to do something about it. i know he can.

 

[Jobiwan]

Bummer Chad, I'm sure Paul will take care of you, shame you have to go to all that trouble.

I got brave and moved a few of my fish out of the teeny holding tanks they have been in for over 6 months, I couldn't deal with the guilt any more, keeping them cramped up while they were staring at their future quarters. I moved a Naso Tang, Purple Tang, Vlamingi Tang, Coral Beauty Pygmy Angel, Foxface, and two Yellow Tailed Blue Damsels in yesterday, here are a few photos of them I took tonight.
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[Snowboarda42]

Awesome!!!