Jaw's 120 Journey

jaws789832 · Mar 11, 2015

Hi all, been lurking here a lot so thought I would start a tank thread. I am a relative noob to the hobby. Got started about 1 year ago, but in that time I have learned soo much and look forward to upgrading in the near future. I started with the intermediate series but didn't like the lack of adjustability so pretty quickly upgraded the LEDS to a DIY. I have 2 Tomato clowns, Orchid Dottyback and a 6 line for fish. An Anemone, Hammer, Monti, some Zoa's, GSP, Birdsnest, some Shrooms, and the dreaded pulsing Xenia (which I love). Everything seems to be thriving and doing well. Anyways here are some tank shots. I grow all my own live food, Brine shrimp, copepods, amphipods, black worms, Phyto, plus have a macro algae tank that I just set up. Would post some pics of all those but can't seem to figure it out atm. Anyways Happy reefing

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GreatWhiteTang · Mar 11, 2015

Nice shots! What kind of copepods do you culture, and do you strictly feed them live phytoplankton?

jaws789832 · Mar 11, 2015

Not sure what kind they are. I bought them from Reefs2go (which I don't recommend). I put them in a 10 gallon tank, and I feed them live phyto and a little flake food. The copepods seem to eat the phyto and the amphipods go after the flake. I have a little HOB filter on the back of that tank with some mechanical media and I have found that is the easiest way to harvest them. I have tried several methods to harvest, but I found by once a week cleaning out the HOB filter there will be a bunch of pods in there and that's where I pull from to feed the DT.

jaws789832 · Oct 2, 2015

Tank has been doing great. Started on a new upgrade. I bought a 120 gallon high on Craigslist over the summer. Finally worked up the nerve to drill it and have been going full steam ahead. Built my own cabinet. Its not professional grade but I think it came out great. The tank is cycling right now and parts are coming in as money permits. So far I have:

120 gallon high drilled to fit a reef synergy overflow with the bean animal type drain pipes which is working flawlessly and dead silent

Trigger emerald 34 sump
Skimz oval skimmer
Tunze auto top off
ecotech M1 return pump
ecotech Radion pro light (getting the second oone next week, that's why only half the tank is lit)
Getting the Neptune WAV pumps next week as well

Anyways here are some pics

Tahoe61 · Oct 3, 2015

Well that is an awesome upgrade, congratulations.

jaws789832 · Nov 12, 2015

120 update. Things are slowly but surely progressing. I have moved most corals and 1 fish to the big tank. A couple little mishaps but so far I haven't lost anything that wasn't planned on being lost. I wanted to frag the birdsnest coral because there was a lot of dead skeleton on the bottom of it. When trying to frag it, the only way I could cut the dead stuff off was to create about 100 little frags. I glued them all to several pieces of rubble so I could scatter them about the big tank, and probably lost about half of them. The other half seem to be thriving especially after I trimmed out the dead ones. Not sure if the Favia (At least I think thats what it is some kind of brain coral) is going to make it either but time will tell. Trying to dislodge him from the rock he was attached to didn't go so well and I caused some damage. His tentacles hasn't come out at all since moving him over but he still has color. The chalice though is loving it. Its already grown a bit since moving him and its tentacles come out in full force every night. I moved one anemone and it seems to have found a home already in the rock work. First fish I moved last week was the orchid dottyback. Wanted her to find a good home and have a chance to get to know all the crevices in the tank. Shes doing great and eating great with no competition. Next week I will move the other anemone and the 2 clowns. They keep laying eggs though so I was trying to time it in between hatches so as to not stress them out too much. The anemones are a bit challenging to move. The first one took about 3 hours and a lot of stress on my part (not to mention the critter. Its foot was lodges in a rock at a spot I couldn't get to so I had to do the hang upside down method and let it come off on its own free will. I had to clamp the container I was trying to get it into on the side of the tank to keep the water at the right temp then hang the rock it was attached to over the container until it let go. the second it let go I put a piece of rubble into the container and placed the anemone onto it where it eagerly reattached. I them acclimated to the new tank and placed it into the tank where the anemone immediately went on the move to finds its preferred spot. I removed the rubble and it was done. Anyways here is a few tank shots.

That last shot is in the old tank still. I just thought it was kinda a cool picture the way its all foggy. The eggs are right below the bottom (male) clown and he diligently keeps them clean and aerated. Momma just hangs up there in the anemone and occasionally comes out to chase off the 6 line wrasse when it gets too close.

Anyways happy reefing

jaws789832 · Jan 11, 2016

Heres a few updated shots:

That last one is in my QT tank. 2 blue Reef Chromis. They have been qt'd since Dec. 10th now with no problems noted. I will probably put them in the DT in another week or 2

jaws789832 · Mar 22, 2016

jaws789832 · Jul 22, 2016

everything is doing pretty well/ All the fish are fat and happy. The only think that took a fast turn is my birdsnest. In a day it just up and died.

jaws789832 · Jul 27, 2016

Couple of new picks of the gang. All 3 of them swim together all day and no fighting going on that I can see

jaws789832 · Aug 4, 2016

Quick update. My anemone is getting huge and constantly causing me to have to rearrange corals. He seems to like to stretch out to wherever I place corals. His foot doesn't move he will just stretch in directions I don't want him to.

I had to move my torch to a new location and once I did that the anemone is now stretching towards the hammer. I have to beat him back every so often but he doesn't seem to get it LOL.

that's my sump area. Its a bit messy and things are a bit tight in the stand but it seems to be doing the job

My Chaeto grows like a weed. I pulled out about a basketball size piece about 2 weeks ago and it looks like I am ready to pull out about the same amount. Its funny, I had a hard time tracking it down in my area, so I thought I would put it on Craigslist to give it away for free if they come get it. I only got 1 taker and we haven't been able to meet up yet so I have just been throwing the stuff away.

I know there has been a lot of discussion on the forums about what light to use for a refugium. I use the Rapid LED PAR 38 Refugium light. I had tried all those light bulbs that people stated they get at home depot and yes I got growth but nothing like I get with this light. It was night and day and I highly recommend it. The first week I out it in I got about 10 times as much growth as with the other lights. Now I can barely keep up with it.

jaws789832 · Aug 16, 2016

My wife laughs at me because I will spend hours just staring at my tank. This is me and my cat at feeding time. She climbs on top of the tank and watches everything
intently.She enjoys it almost as much as I do.

revhtree · Aug 16, 2016

Nice job and looking great!

jaws789832 · May 20, 2017

Thought since I had the camera out I would do an update. Since last I posted here I have acquired a few new fish That I talked about in other threads while I was QT'ing them but I haven't posted anything here so I thought I should. Couple of issues I am dealing with are aptaisia and cyano but all in all the tank is doing great with good growth and fish all seem very happy.

I got a couple of captive bred Mandarins from Algae barn about 6 months ago. I put them in my observation tank for about 2 months to get them eating frozen and since they were so small I wanted them to grow up a bit. I added them to the DT about 4 months ago and I couldn't be happier with them. They are eating like pigs, both frozen and live copepods which I stock to my tankabout once a month. I had a brine shrimp feeder based on Paul B's design but they didn't seem interested and are content to wait for feeding time for the frozen and pick the LR all day for pods so I took it out.

I had tried many methods to get rid of the Aptaisia, peppermint shrimp, berghias, even aptaisia-x to no avail so I thought my next addition would be a copperband butterfly and see if it would help (plus I think they are the coolest looking fish). I went out and got one from my LFS. It looked fine there but when I brought it home I noticed it had a white cauliflower looking thing on its fin (it took a couple of days for it to show up in the observation tank).

So after about 2 months in QT, no meds, just good husbandry, it cleared up and I decided the time had come for him to go into the dt. I didn't know how the 2 tangs were going to react so I put him in an acclimation box for about a week.

The other fish paid him no attention so after about a week I put him in. At first everyone got along and there were no problems, but after about another week the powder brown started flaring up around him and chasing him a bit. He kept him cornered by the monti on the left side, and I didn't like the way things were going. Soon the yellow tang joined in and I felt the Coppeband didn't have a chance so I took action. I spent about a day and trapped both the yellow tang and the powder brown, and threw them into separate acclimation boxes.

They weren't happy but, both ate fine and I kept them there for about a week. When I finally released them it seems they had learned their lesson. The Powder brown doesnt't pay any attention to the copperband now and the yellow tang only occaisionally will swim at him but not chase him. They all get along fine and the aptaisia actually seems to be disappearing. The coppeband absolutely loves blackworms and will eat them out of my hand at feeding time.