Hart's 120 3/4" starfire expansion!

[gettaReef]

The pics still look pretty cool! Where'd you get the flashlight? I'd love to use it on my reef, but also really need a way to find where our cat has been urinating (!!!!). Good news that it's not a dead spot. I hope it heals over quickly!

 

[hart24601]

Here the light is, they are pretty cheap. I wanted to be sure to get 365nm, not 385 or higher as many are, they don't work very well. I also wanted lithium battery as I have some and they are so much brighter. The last thing it had that I liked was just 1 LED, not a cluster as those generally are pretty poor LEDs and they just add more to try and make up for it.

http://www.amazon.com/LMJ-CN®-WF-50...30736&sr=1-2&keywords=ultrafire+wf+501b+365nm

 

[hart24601]

I forgot to say, if you get orange/amber tinted glasses it makes the pet stains MUCH easier to see! It still has to be dark, but they helped me quite a bit.

 

[gettaReef]

Awesome, thank you!

 

[hart24601]

Playing with my camera tonight. Figured get some pics and FTS. The acro spot does look bleached, no clue why, but the close up I can see polyps at least before I uploaded. Hopefully it will come back, no clue why one spot would do that.

I got a new maxima clam from the LFS. It is a full 6" long when I transferred it I did measure. I like him because he is so fat! I have a love/hate with clams, they are my favorite reef creature, but they are so touchy. I had some fantastic ones, but I was stupid and skipped QT... I introduced one with some sort of infection. They clams were growing great, tons of growth, but after the sick one they all contracted some illness, expelling tons of mucus and bleaching. Infected every single one and some quickly died while others slowly died. Fingers crossed the infection has cleared, not much info about clam diseases. If anyone is curious I can provide more detail, I even tried treating in hospital tank with antibiotics that have been effective for nems. But anyway, fun pics at least!

 

[hart24601]

 

[jeremy]

Looking good!

 

[hart24601]

Thanks, keeps getting better, brown is slowly leaving the corals from before the transfer. Interesting how some color back up quickly while others take forever. The blue tip green slimer got so brown it's just now having a hint of green. Hopefully will just get better!

I didn't get a clear shot of the tangs from the front, but they are so fat. Feeding tons to condition the new anthias, tangs love it! They will be on diet time pretty soon.

 

[hart24601]

Oh those silly clams get me so worked up. (Get your mind out of the gutter!) At work all I can think about is getting home so I can see how it looks today! Happy it sits really nice on the bare bottom (in 300-350 PAR), one reason I wanted a fattie, plus they have more "guts" and IMO can handle stress better and have more reserves.

From hearing those in the industry, it seems like the amount of mantle extension varies a great deal between individuals with maxima. I generally like more mantle, but this guy charmed me, haha.

 

[hart24601]

Pretty interesting. Replaced the bearings in the the old mp40s last night. Wasn't really difficult, but getting the old ones off did take quite a bit of effort. It did make a pretty noticeable difference, not like new, but much better. Sadly the ecosmart driver (the other is the older type) started acting up before the replacement, the power junction isn't working quite right. While replacing the bearings I opened the driver and saw the plug for the DC power had come loose from the circuit board. Tired soldering it, but I am not great at that, and while not making it worse, I was unable to fix it.

So I swapped the dry sides, since even with new bearings the newer ecosmart dryside runs better - hooked it up to the old controller and put it back in the tank. The broken ecosmart will stay in storage until I decide if I value it enough to either get a new driver or send it in for repairs. I don't really need it, so storage for now!

 

[hart24601]

 

[hart24601]

Cali tort I have had a long time and a new yellow pyramid butterfly fish! I wish I had several, I really like them in person more than I thought and I hear they don't fight in groups, but I am pretty full on livestock now.

 

[hart24601]

I just noticed in the photo above I didn't clean the side glass... reefkeeping fail.

 

[hart24601]

Because I love clams:

It very interesting to me. Granted it's only been twice, but I have picked up large 5"+ blue maximas from my LFS and after a few days the mantle really becomes more intense. It was a good sign before and it really grew nice, so the fact it happened again with this new guy has me cautiously optimistic. I they have LEDs, but pretty weak, I wonder if it's just more intense LED light or what exactly triggers the more vivid coloration.

You can see the 1st photo on the left, and most recent on the right. The white balance and colors are pretty similar between the two, with the orange plate in the pic, just at a different angle. Greater mantle extension too, you can see how my urchins have been cleaning his shell!

 

[gettaReef]

What a beauty!

 

[Lilmatty5dimes]

Those are some nice clams. Is that on barebottom?

 

[hart24601]

Thanks gettaReef! Fingers crossed about it, looking good so far.

Those are some nice clams. Is that on barebottom?

Yep it's on barebottom. I once kept clams in a cut tupperware container with sand when going BB, but if they are over a couple of inches they seem to like sitting on BB just fine.


Couple updates, well really vendor reviews:

About a month ago I ordered some Berghias. I noticed more and more aptasia, spreading faster than what I could kill them despite the wand and aptasia-x. I used them once before with good results, but I tried a new vendor, reeftown. Price was better than most places, but still not cheap! Anyway I got 11 medium guys, when delivered they send 2 extras which is always nice! They were shipped in a hard plastic container so they wouldn't get squished. I was pretty happy. There were even eggs in the container. For the 1st week I was able to see 1 or 2 at night, now they have all disappeared, but that is pretty much how it goes and I was surprised to ever see them even at night. So now the waiting game starts. The flow is really heavy, so will just have to see how they do, but when trying to blow them off their shipping container it really takes a good "puff" of water. I put all 13 in the same spot and there is plenty of food for them in the area.

2nd review is for bluezooaquatics. Normally I get livestock (fish) through liveaquaria and coral through unique corals or cherry, but I had really been wanting pyramid butterflyfish you can see above. I looked for about a month with no luck anywhere including ebay, but finally saw them on bluezoo, ordered 1 as that was all they had, then just last week they got 2 more in. So now I have 3. I was impressed with BZ, it was cold here last week so they waiting on shipping since these guys are hard to find, but kept me in the loop by calling and proposing dates. Got the other 2 and they are in great shape, so big thumbs up for bluezoo!

 

[hart24601]

I don't know how this article escaped me, I try and read just about everything clam related I can find but if I had seen this before it escaped me:

Feature Article: Coral Coloration, Part 9: Tridacna and Other Photosynthetic Clam Coloration, With Observations on Possible Functions ? Advanced Aquarist | Aquarist Magazine and Blog

This seems to give hints to why the blue mantle gains intensity. Sounds like the best guess would be to reflect the blue to prevent photo-inhibition. It's in ~350 PAR, but that is LED light which is blue heavy and underrepresented by the meter, plus I run blues almost 15hr/day, so that is a ton of blue light over the entire day.

 

[hart24601]

So I got a really nice big frag of red cap from a local reefer and was deciding what to do with it. I was just going to put it on the rock, but after some stewing about it I decided to try and attach it to the back glass since I have good depth with the ceramic rock layout. I don't know how well it will work, I have had coral on the back of my nano, but that was a plastic back, not glass.

Initially it was pretty disappointing, I couldn't even get the superglue to stick on the glass. After smearing it with my finger it would just come right off with the slightest pressure. I gave up but last night tried again with a different strategy. I thought about it and it seems like flat frag plugs would give a better surface area on the glass and allow the coral to be glued better - so I took two of them for better distribution, and put glue/waterweld epoxy/glue and squished them on the back wall (after cleaning glass), apply pressure until the waterweld expanded to the edge of the plug. I also outside of the tank put a coat of glue on the face of the plug, it's easier to glue glue to glue when mounting the corals rather than frag to glue on the back of the frag. Wow, that sentence is confusing.

So I put the 2 plugs on the back and let the epoxy harden for 1hr. I have, in the past, rushed waterweld and unless I wait for around 1hr things never go well because it's still soft. While this was going on I used more epoxy to create a thicker base for the long thing cap frag. I glued epoxy to the cap and then shaped the epoxy flat where it will contact the plugs for more surface area when glued. I also waited around 1hr before continuing.

I then joined the cap to the plugs without too much fuss. I wish I had placed the plugs a bit higher on the back, but after the initial frustration and all this work I didn't want to pull it all off and move it. I put a small frag of green cap above the large red one to hide the ugly plugs - hopefully it will all get covered in time, but this helps the look for now and I like multicolor caps. I also put a small frag of orange digi on a plug next to the glass to help with encrusting and hopefully strengthen the attachment. We will see.

The local reefer also gave me an interesting monti that isn't really a cap, but plates out and then grows up, sort of like spongodes, but it looks like a bit more plating. This one looks like it can almost become invasive, so I did another frag plug on the wall as described above - a bit higher and to the side - should be interesting to see the growth form and easier to control it there.

No idea if it will work and keep the coral on the back, but it worked overnight at least, lol.

 

[hart24601]

Bit ugly right now and you can't see the depth, the cap is at least 4"x5" chunk, but here is the idea with a phone pic. Would have been neat to mount vertically and see how it encrusts or plates out, but I didn't think about it until it was in place!