Islandoftiki

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. :-)

I know they're crazy expensive, but probably worth the investment in the long run. If I upgrade to a bigger tank, I can move it to the next tank--up to about 50 gallons if I recall. Plus, it should make the corals much happier, and over the life of the tank, you'll probably spend more on corals than you will on the Vortech. And if your corals are really happy, they'll grow faster, you can frag them and sell them to pay for your Vortech. Plus, in a 10 gallon tank, there isn't room for a bunch of big ugly powerheads, so this just seemed like the right choice even though I didn't like spending that much on it.

I've been reading up a little on this, and it seems like the prevailing wisdom is that you don't necessarily want full-on waves... Both pulsing modes are probably the most useful. Short pulse is capable of creating waves in appropriately sized tanks, but it should not be tuned this way. The key in pulsing modes success is the fact that it gives large amounts of osculating flow then a break in between. If timed right the undertow during the break from flow can help to buffer corals from the backside and keep them from being damaged by too much flow from the front side. This is the best setting for a mixed reef because it can provide high flow for SPS corals without damaging LPS and soft corals. Full Article: http://www.3reef.com/forums/filters-pumps-etc/elite-reef-vortech-mp10-review-103845.html

You can put the Vortech into a short pulse mode and if you get the length of the pulse right for the size of the tank, you'll get a wave type of water flow in your tank. Apparently corals and fish LOVE this. We shal see. The zoas and GPS I got on your live rock are very pleased with the new digs!

We'll see. that was one of the main reasons I bought the MP10. I think the fish/corals will appreciate a more natural habitat with waves.

For those who are still up, here's a picture with the moonlights active:

Hammer and wood chisel just made that large rock on the left a little smaller. Wood chisel ruined--well, it's now officially a rock chisel. Fair trade, IMO. Water is up to temp and holding steady at 77.6 degrees on a temporary Hydor theo 25 watt heater that will eventually take over heating in the 2 gallon pico when I disconnect it from the RKL. So far, I'm really happy with everything. There's plenty of tweaking to be done, but this is a good start. Water flow in the tank is amazing and I haven't even messed with any of the special functions of the MP10 yet. I just put a ball of chaeto from my 2 gallon into the AC70 and filled the first chamber with filter floss. No chemical filtration yet. I added some Nite-Out nitrifying bacteria. Probably not necessary, but I'm pretty sure it can't hurt. By the way, the sand bed is non-live medium-coarse aragonite about 1-1.5" thick. I'll probably steal a couple tablespoons of sand from my 2 gallon to help seed it just for fun. As for lighting, this one is getting a 24" T5 HO fixture with separately controllable daylight, actinic and moonlights. Might add some LED's... we'll see. Lights are off for the next couple days.

Everything up and running! Live rock is in the tank. I'll play with the rockscape once it clears up and I can see what I'm doing a little better. Beth, my fiance is a potter. I took the pictures in her pottery studio because the light is way better in there. :-)

Everything up and running! Live rock is in the tank. I'll play with the rockscape once it clears up and I can see what I'm doing a little better. Beth, my fiance is a potter. I took the pictures in her pottery studio because the light is way better in there. :-)

Getting the water up to temp. Heater is going and I'm taking a quart of water at a time and heating it for a couple minutes in the microwave and dumping it back in to speed up the process... And... It's cocktail hour.

And check out that wicked plate coral in the middle of the tank!

Half-full!

Hang on to your hats folks! Here we go! Equipment ready to be assembled! AC70: Media Basket in AC70: Next up, MP10!