90 gallons of fun

[SeymourDuncan]

Zoanthids looking scary happy. Might take em out before they overwhelm me
I already see new heads!

The ricordia colony is repositioning itself as well

And mr lordheisser wants dinner

So do they

(Disregard my powerhead. Some of them work right haha)

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Fairy wrasse (a specific I'd would be cool)

Engineer goby! Good morning fatty!

 

[SeahorseKeeper]

Looking good!! I love the flower pot. I never had any success with them.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Looking good!! I love the flower pot. I never had any success with them.

Thanks alot! It is definitely a tough to keep coral. The trick with mine is this:
Placement under a powerhead:

This allows for indirect flow that also has a slight swirling motion.
It is nearly at the bottom of the tank under my LEDs which today are at
Blue:40% white 30% and increasing a little daily. I'm already brighter than the old pc on the 55.

Now feeding is where usually the hobbyists will get confused.
See the head?

There really isn't a mouth. So I look at other corals like this.
Zoos are a great feeding comparison as these also have no mouths (most of them)

So I feed them the same. The liquid leftovers of any frozen cube seems to please them both. When I feed I will spot feed the mouthed ones and the I squirt the juices at the mouth less corals.

So far there has been great growth on my flowerpot. With it closed still today you can see some of its new heads.
Almost unheard of in an aquarium but never impossible!

Believe it or not it came with a gorilla crab eating it and I rescued it from that.
Its eaten patches have slowly gotten smaller so I think I'm doing something right.

So!
Place it like a Duncan feed it like a zoa and you should be pretty good to go.
Don't touch it and don't let other corals close.

I will someday attempt to frag this beast once I feel it has grown back completely where it was gorillad up.

Thanks and here's my diatoms

I knew they couldn't resist coming out.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Seymour Duncan saw more Duncan. In my face.

First attempt at using a dremel on a coral was not a good one. I'm not a bad grinder in general, and have been schooled in sculpture since I was in junior high. It must have just not been my day!

Here's what happened last night.
Pulled the Duncan out to frag off its heads for some people. Simple. I see people hacking away at these things all the time. I normally use these dog clippers to cut branching Lps.

To attempt more accurate cuttings I busted out the dremel tool and went at it.

2 heads were all I wanted.
The first one zipped off nicely and landed on the water.

The second one also came right off, however some freak accident made the dremel catch the huge head and SPLaT
Right in the face.
My entire face was slimed except where my glasses were covering my eyes.

My hair was sticky and the smell was beyond anything.

Covered in slime and speechless I quickly put the mother Duncan back in the tank and glue the 2 loose heads to some rubble.

Then I ran straight for the shower.
After the shower I realized again why I took a shower and had a very rough night. It looked like this:

The frags looked fine. I always find optimism somewhere.
This morning I woke up way before the lights came on which made me anxious all morning until 10:00
Talk about a relief. I guess it only takes 3/4 of a Duncan head to cover a human face because here is what it looks like now.

Looks pretty good for exploding. Its other heads look really good.
If the injured head gets infected ill just cut it and that will regrow.

Here are the frags that came out perfect

Let this be a lesson to me: stick with what worked already. Haha

Or: Duncan's are hard to kill

Either way, this is not happening again!

 

[SeymourDuncan]

On better news:
My clownfish tank is rocked up and ready for some anemone action.

I'm doing bare bottom in this, and it will eventually have no powerheads to accommodate the anemones delicate body.

It is plumbed off the pump from that also goes to the 90g.
The overflow just goes right back to the sump of course. This tank is completely bypassable if need be.

All the rocks are small enough to fit in a 10g as well for the egg transfer.

210w Hagen pc lights. 7w per gallon good enough for ya!? If not I'm gonna just get another red breeder and call It a day.

And here is the sump room as a whole. So far.

I have a lot of reorganizing to do before I can make room for the water station and culture stations.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Morning (afternoon) 2 of the shredded Duncan:

Not loosin tissue or showing signs of rot. It seems there was just enough of its mouth guts to absorb some plankton as well during morning feeding

Its frags are doing great!!

The big polyp blasto is all opened up too! It should be back to its old self within a week.

Acan looks a little behind, but its feeding tentacles are out so I will be patient with it o course. The last one I fragged had no issues so this one probably won't

Why so small? You may think I'm insane for fraggin frags but when your tank is packed with huge colonies if corals you still want to add that "one more" so this is my plan.

The ocean is huge, my tank is not. Why not make the corals proportionally equal? I can fit 60 heads of a brain in a smaller spot than 4 huge colonies of them. Plus it will look like skittles.

All the acans I have will eventually be placed on te same rock an form together. At least that's the plan.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Ok, today I redid my protein skimmer to account for the new tank. Early on it has already produced.
This is after 5 minutes.

The skimmer is a 5g water jug with a pond pump. I made a Venturi intake and the internal level is fully adjustable.

And the prefilter is an empty magnum 350 media container!!! Sticks perfectly over the intake to keep any critters I may not want pulverized.

It also acts as a stand for the pump!
After writing this short update the skimmer made more poo.

At this rate ill be out of water by sunrise woohoo! So glad its working as expected.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

And another poo

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Triple tank sump! Love basements.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

This is darker than my coffee
Glad to say I made this beast.

Now maybe I can find an empty bucket to replace that tote and use that for a sump for something else!! Haha
Still tweaking the level in the skimmer

Didn't want valves, all I do is twist the PVC that comes out and it makes the drain higher, akin with water inside.

I've been going a little higher each day so I'm hoping soon it will be at its sweet spot and will be pumping that gunk out hard core. It should. I feed like I'm the one eating!

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Wow! This skimmer is kicking butt!

The collection pan is 2 inches deep! This is less than a weeks work.

I reroute the hose for aesthetics. Plus I have to cram more tanks down here! Through the back door of course

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Here is a shot of one of the snowflakes and the tang.

The sailfin Molly

Fairy wrasse

Engineer goby, before he was scared by his shadow. His partner is somewhere in their tunnel system.

And there we go, the smaller possible male snowflake.

All the fish are doing great and I'm thinking of adding a mandarin pair. The sump has an insane population and I even see them during the day in my display.

I had some other fish the lfs marine acclimated but they didn't do so well. I don't think they did it very slowly. So I will stick with marine only for now.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

And now the corals!
Flower pot: thriving.

Thing 1 and Thing 2: fatter than ever!

Blasto is growing fast!

The acan rock will have one head of every color I find at one point.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Leathers are molting and growing too

This one is in the reflection.
It will one day stick up I hope.

And my gorgonian, which is soon to e moved to my friends tank is doing insanely well.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Can you find all the polyps?

And green star plague. Round 38. Score Gsp:38 me: 0

Might as well throw in the shroomage

 

[SeymourDuncan]

And finally: not everything goes as planned.
Galaxea seems to be sad, which may have came this way since I'm not familiar with it as much. I have been dusting it regularly but it still wants to slowly bleach.

And if you remember my Duncan coral exploded on my during a virgin dremel experience.
Here is it healing!!!! Its got new fingers and its flesh has all reconnected to the bones.

I fragged 2 heads off of it.
Here is one from my tank and I have one to my girlfriend in pic 2

If he comes out ill snap a pic of the umbrella mushroom too.
He ain't nowhere to be found. Wait!!!
Found him.

He is smack dab in the middle. That's a good shot of him compared to my experience with viewing the tank lol.

 

[SeymourDuncan]

And now the drum roll please:
I present to you my full tank shots as of today:

 

[SeymourDuncan]

Just for my records:
Round 2 skimming, lets see what I pump out this time!
I left the ring so u can see how deep round 1 got. It was thick and dark.

And the sleeping clowns in the breeding tank

 

[SeymourDuncan]

I saw some natural sun spectrum bulbs on sale. 65w cfl 6500k w/ built in reflector. Hmm...that's the color if my tank when the sun rises through the window...which looks amazing mixed with the LEDs.

So I took a couple old lamps apart and wired the sockets to a timer.

Now the tank lights up right when the sun does, then the blues come one, then the whites replace the cfls and they come back on for a few hours at noon for full light then it reverses to dark.

The added bulbs

Sunrise

Dusk and dawn

High noon
And I still have not found movie theater style curtains. I might have to make some.