Islandoftiki

Oh, how exciting! This is almost as much fun as my main display tank! First off, I would like to thank George for his generous contribution of both live rock and a wicked huge aiptasia. He gave me so much live rock that I had to scramble and put together my old empty Mr. Aqua 7.5 gallon freshwater cube tank and set it up for saltwater. Yay for having enough extra bits and pieces to throw together an impromptu holding tank. It's now running and hosting what must be about 10 lbs of live rock. Thank you, George! Here's the 7.5 gallon and 2 gallon next to each other: And here's the largest aiptasia that I've ever seen. Thanks George! I'm still in need of more pests, and I'll be getting in touch with folks as I'm excited to host some mojano, bristle worms and other nasties! I think I'm going to remove about half of the sand bed from the tank and hopefully add some more nasty, infested, pest addled live rock to the tank!

Yeah, people consider it a pest. Emerald crabs love the stuff. Some say Emerald crabs will eat corals if they get too hungry, but mine has been a model citizen... and bonus, no bubble algae. But the pest tank is another story altogether! Bring on the pests! It's going to be a battle royale to determine the ultimate winner! Does anyone have any hitchhikers they want to get rid of? Nuisance crabs, pistol shrimp, mantis shrimp? Send 'em my way! In all seriousness though, I'm excited to give a home to these misfits.

Awesome! PM sent.

I'm not sure if my schedule will allow me to get down there any time soon. I should be at the next meeting, I hope. I'll put another call out for pests just before the meeting. Does anybody have any chunks of live rock that they're ready to give up on? It's only a small tank, about 6.5" x 6.5" x 8" tall. 2 lbs should be enough.

Ok, so I'm about to get the 2 gallon pico back up and running. This time it's going to be a pest tank. That's right, a tank full of mojano, aiptasia, bubble algae, unknown crabs, etc. If anyone has any pests that they want to donate to the project, let me know. It's not like you can go down to the local fish store and specifically ask for aiptasia without being looked at like a crazy person, so I might need a little help with this one. I think my first order of business is to find some infested live rock. Cheers! John

Nice work. I'm looking forward to watching this build progress.

I'm curious to try a chalice coral, but I hate the way you can always see the frag lump or plug under them. Maybe I could hollow out a frag-plug sized depression in a nice piece of live rock and put it in flush with the rock so it looks more natural.

Tonight's project was to move all of the ricordea to one rock. The only rock with no corals on it so far. I can't say that they were too excited about being razored off of their current rocks and rubber banded to the new rock, but they should be ok in a week or so. Top left, fluorescent pink and blue with fluorescent green mouth. Middle two, Fluorescent blue and purple with fluorescent yellow mouth. Lower right, light green with fluorescent orange.

A couple of new pics: My sixline being curious as always. The war coral frag is just starting to grow down onto the rock. My xenia and a couple magicians in the background. GSP: AC70 Filter/Fuge: A couple of FTS:

Sorry for the indelicate nature of this post, but my elephant ear mushroom coral just released from it's oral disc something truly disgusting. Wow. Nasty. Ick. I do have a real question though. Should I target feed it now? Also, I hear these things can eat fish. Is that only fish that host, like a Clown fish? I see no way this thing could possibly catch my sixline.

Looks like I'm going to be a daddy to some delicious babies for my sixline. The one on the left just dropped her eggs down to her underbelly.

Quick update. Looks like my cleaner shrimp have assumed gender roles. I'm not sure if they call it the same thing for marine shrimp as they do for freshwater shrimp, but the larger one is obviously "saddled" carrying eggs in the ovaries just behind the head. I'm guessing after she molts, the eggs will drop down and she will become "berried" and the male will fertilize the eggs. So there should be a batch of babies for my sixline to eat before too long.

You gotta love this guy. Every time I walk up to the tank, he comes to greet me. He gave my fiance a manicure earlier. They do a very thorough job.

I thought you all might enjoy something a little different, so I threw together a quick video of my tank at "dusk" with only the actinic lights on. My sixline had a full tummy and is getting ready to go to sleep for the night. The cleaner shrimp are new as of yesterday and seem to be getting along really well.

A few new additions: Pete and Re-Pete: Giant fluorescent green mushrooms: A tiny frag of War coral, hopefully will encrust the rock behind. I'll take it off the plug and glue it to the rock soon. A beautiful fluorescent pink and blue ricordea with a green mouth: And a small colony of zoas (don't know if they have a name. Don't care either):

Show and tell time! Things are going great in the new 10 gallon tank. The clean up crew has been hard at work getting the tank nicely cleaned up. One of my favorite new inhabitants is this crusty old Florida cerith with a fan worm attached to his shell. Another one of the cerith with his fan worm. My recently fragged Xenia. GSP, Zoas, etc... Hungry Favia. It wants brains, brains! Wait, it is a brain... Some miscellaneous corals.

Oh, and I got a real score. One of the Florida cerith snails came with a little tiny feather duster worm attached to it. It looks like like it has a paddle wheel steam boat exhaust stack on it.

My full clean-up crew came from Reef Cleaners yesterday and I unleashed a herd of snails into the tank to take care of the diatom bloom. I went with 5 Florida ceriths, 4 medium-small nerites, 4 Nassarius Vibex, and pile of dwarf ceriths. That's in addition to the already existing pico crew that transferred over. The went all sickhouse on the diatoms last night. They should have the tank sparkling clean within a week.

Double post...

Yeah, that air in the pipe of the AC70 is due to the the tiny AC20 impeller not being able to move enough flow to clear it. It doesn't seem to be the source of the noise. I'm getting the same noise with either impeller (and no air in that tube). It may just be normal noise for the AC70. You can't really hear it with normal ambient room noise and the top off of it.

Ok folks, here's a quick video I threw together in about 10 minutes while I was feeding Maddy (That's the name my fiance gave the sixline). Sorry about the lousy sound track, didn't have time to find something better. Any thoughts or suggestions for stocking the right side of the tank near where the MP10 is? There's probably too much flow for mushrooms or other low-flow corals. Any changes or improvements you would do?

I wore gloves to handle it. Made that mistake last time, you have to wash your hands in vinegar a couple times to get the smell off. This morning, the small piece that I super glued to the rubble is up and pulsing. The one that I had to cover in bridal netting is wiggling around. I didn't check the stump, it's in the pico, which got moved to the basement temporarily.

Couldn't keep the hands out of the tank. Moved some rock around to where it'll probably stay. I also fragged up my Xenia into three pieces. Boy does Xenia smell bad when you have it out of the tank...

Ok, here's a little update. Everything is going great with the 10 gallon tank. This weekend, I transferred everything from the 2 gallon pico to the 10 gallon. I started by draining the pico over half way and started re-filling is slowly over an hour or so with water from the 10 gallon to acclimate everything. The two tanks are pretty similar, same salinity, temp, pH, etc etc. After getting everything acclimated, I moved the live rock and corals over first. My pom pom crab held on tight to the main piece of rock as it moved to the new tank which left only my little sixline wrasse all alone and very confused. Once I got all of the rock situated, I managed to net my sixline without her jumping out of the tank. The pom pom crab found a comfortable spot pretty quickly and has claimed it for himself. My sixline hid behind the largest rock for about 20 minutes and then started slowly venturing out. By the end of the evening, she had made a pretty good cursory examination of the entire tank, but stayed close to cover most of the time. The next morning, I came downstairs to find her thoroughly comfortable in her new home and frolicking in the water flow of the MP10. She's been very active and as always is very personable and curious about us when we're around or sitting in front of the tank watching. I'm going to turn the pico tank into a QT tank and keep it in the basement for now. It'll eventually go into the room with the African Grey parrot. I'll have some live rock and soft corals in it to keep it interesting, and some snails and possibly a hermit. The 10 gallon tank is super awesome. I'll try to get some pictures/video up in a couple days. I'm still in the middle of moving in with the fiance, so I don't have a ton of time. That's probably good, it'll keep me from digging around in the tank so much this week and give things time to settle and become comfortable.

Ok, so how soon before I start transferring things from my pico to the 10 gallon? I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get a cycle. The live rock is fully cured from J-Dog's established tank, and the sand is non-live aragonite. So far, Ammo, nitrite and nitrates are still holding at zero. I would expect if there was going to be any die-off, it would have happened within the first week. I've been dosing Nite-Out bacteria as per the recommended dosage. I'm going to move everything over from the pico to the 10 gallon and change some stuff up on the pico and start it back up in a slightly different configuration or convert it back to freshwater so I can have some shrimp at home. :-)