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MedRed's 34 Gallon Solana


MedRed

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Thats a sweet little tank. The color and rock scape is outstanding.

Thank you!

 

very nice tank med! :)

 

that red gorg isn't photosynthetic?

 

Thanks Jason, the red gorg is non photosynthetic. It goes on a snatching spree when I add rotifers to the tank.

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This is where I bought mine. http://www.fish.com/item/solana-34-gallon-aquarium-system/721528/ This is the tank only, but they do sell the stand and light as well. For some reason it's massively cheaper buying each piece separately rather than buying the bundle. I'd highly recommend having a stand built as the stand that's meant for it is cheap as all get out. If you can get a good price, I'd recommend going local. These tanks break super easy in the mail. I've heard there's a local current distributor here... so any LFS that deals with them should be able to get one for you.

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My Gorg is opening up more during the daytime

 

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I'd also been wanting to add a crab to my tank really badly, but I wanted something reef safe. I was worried about hermits eating my snails and emeralds eating everything else. I was at my Davey Jones Locker yesterday and noticed a couple of curious crabs. They'd come in with their emeralds. I scurried home and looked them up. Porcelain crabs! I bought both of them today. I'm happy to have crab representation in my tank.

 

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Here's a quick, crappy video of one of them immediately filter feeding after being added to the tank.

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eRVnebiaRNw

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  • 3 weeks later...

been really busy... but It seems like all the bad luck i was going to have with this tank pooled up and hit at one point.

 

A). What were you thinking?

 

I recently tried to kill my remaining 4 patches of bryopsis with Flourish Excel. I'm an experimenter... more of that side will come out later. I used a large pipette and administered 4 doses over the 4 areas (sidenote... only one of the patches is endemic to the tank... the other three only grow on the 2 zoa frags and one ricordea frag i'd received from others).

 

The reaction was almost like in the movies when everything goes quiet in a jungle scene signifying something is wrong. I just happened to notice while administering the last dose that every single coral had closed up tight as a drum. I'd never seen that before, not even at night. I realized at that moment I'd added about 4x what I would have added to an entire FW tank as I was using a gigantic pipette. I know Excel can kill simple algae... so now i was worried for the safety of the tank.

 

I performed a 15 gallon water change... made up more SW and did another 15 gallons. My ponape birdsnest is dying back, my favia isn't looking too hot, the 2 treated zoas haven't opened up fully again, most of the sps browned out, and the ric i directly treated let go and has ended up somewhere in the tank. All in all... a crisis has been averted, but I'm not doing that again. On another note... it did kill the bryopsis. I may try excel dosing on a small scale and not repeat my episode in stupidity.

 

 

B). The Series of Unfortunate Events.

 

So the pump to my skimmer was making an AWFUL racket. It finally went away. I then noticed it went away because it wasn't working. I lifted the skimmer out of the tank and poured the water out. I later realized that the surface of the tank was smooth... my vortech wasn't working. I had poured the water out of my skimmer right into the dry dock. I then took the vortech out and draped it over the side of the tank to dry and see if it'd start back up. while fooling around with the cables i inadvertently caused the heavy vortech to fall on top of the canister used for the 5.5 gallon tank. this broke the clamps that hold the lid down. I now had water pouring out of the canister and onto the power strip for both tanks and the carpet. I had to unplug the power strip and fumble with the shut off valves. So my $30 pump going out... coupled with my stupidity cost me a $400 vortech and $120 filter.

 

I had to rush out to the LFS to get a Koralia 4 to provide flow until my new vortech arrives. I also had to get a filter as my canister was both filtration and flow for the 5.5 gallon. The 5.5 gallon actually benefited as I upgraded from the older model 2232 ecco to the larger and revised model 2236 ecco. I added almost a gallon of water volume and significantly increased the flow by going with the larger filter.

 

Everything is stabilized and the tank is looking good. I'll take some pics this weekend.

 

On a side note I've added a few more inverts. I now have 3 Porcelain crabs, 1 anemone crab, 1 striped cleaner shrimp, 1 peppermint shrimp, 1 scarlet cleaner shrimp, 1 emerald crab, and 1 pom pom crab (ordered 2 but one didn't make it at the LFS). I'm going to add another pom pom crab and I'm thinking of one of the shrimp that host anemones.

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Pre Apocalypse:

I'd removed a lot of SPS to make room for pieces I really wanted. Looking for some ORA Roscoe’s Blue, Hawkins, Blue Echinata, Marshall Island Yellow Fuzzy, and Pearlberry Acro.

 

 

Post apocalypse:

 

The Koralia 4 looks big and bulky in the tank. It's putting out less power than the vortech does on half power. I can't wait to get my new vortech. I still need to upgrade the light. already bought the moonlights to attach to the fixture.

 

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Pom Pom Crab: Only one claw has an anemone and it's tiny:

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Anemone Porcelain Crab: He lost a claw while I was moving him. Unfortunately it was right before he moulted.

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Monti Mount: Just need some superman to complete my encrusting monti area

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Acan Alley: just need 1 nice rainbow to complete the area.The light washes out the colors. The one to the lower right is neon green and pink.

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Chili:

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so... Upon realizing my camera isn't as bad as I thought it was and I was just doing it wrong... a member of another forum gave me some tips to take some better pictures. Let's begin!

 

 

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Night Shots:

 

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Porcelain Anemone Crab between the Rics:

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Emerald Crab on Gonoipora (he better not be eating my polyps):

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Overexposed:

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