Mike and Terry's 300g Reef
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Wendy, That is our male Bellus Angel.
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Thank you for that awesome compliment and for taking the time to post in our thread!
WOW! Every time I visit this thread it keeps getting better! Truly inspirational. Makes me want to get a reef set up again so bad. Thanks for sharing your reef and awesome pics!
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Dave, Thank You for that awesome compliment!
The fish in the 6st pic is our male Bellus Angel. We'll edit the original post and include names in case anyone else has questions.
Jay, Thank You for the wonderful compliment and for taking the time to post in our thread!
Chuck, Thank You so much for the compliment! :bigsmile:
-M&T
revhtree
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You're photos just get better and better and trust me they are hard to beat at this point!
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Thank You, Andy! That means a lot coming from you... :bigsmile:What a beautiful reef. You guys definitely have one of the most gorgeous reefs out there
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Rev, Thank You for that AWESOME compliment although I think you are being way too kind! :bigsmile:
Stay tuned for some top down coral shots in the next day or two...
-Terry
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
I've been taking some top down shots the past couple of nights and couldn't resist sharing this little gem which is fast becoming my new favorite coral:
Aquacultured DFS Blue Polyp A. austera. I purchased it from LiveAquaria Divers Den last year as a nicely encrusted frag. It is now over 3.5", growing like crazy and has colored up beautifuly.
-Terry
Aquacultured DFS Blue Polyp A. austera. I purchased it from LiveAquaria Divers Den last year as a nicely encrusted frag. It is now over 3.5", growing like crazy and has colored up beautifuly.
-Terry
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Thanks Brett! It was green with a slight hint of greenish yellow when it arrived. It's the only sps coral we've ever had that has true yellow coloration.
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KoleTang
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Great tank Mike and Terry! Nice choice in lighting as well.
You say that your first tank gave out. Was that a marineland as well?
Do you have any issues running two skimmers? I have heard people say that they will be "fighting" eachother, but that does not make much sense. If you go to very large zoo setup they have multiple 8-10 foot tall skimmers. And that guy in wisconsin with the 20,000 gallon tank has three skimmers running.
You say that your first tank gave out. Was that a marineland as well?
Do you have any issues running two skimmers? I have heard people say that they will be "fighting" eachother, but that does not make much sense. If you go to very large zoo setup they have multiple 8-10 foot tall skimmers. And that guy in wisconsin with the 20,000 gallon tank has three skimmers running.
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Thank you Lucas! Our first 300g was a stock Marineland 300dd. Our LFS made modifications to accomodate extra drain lines and our closed loop. The bottom seal ruptured before we hit the 6 month mark. This tank was custom built by Perfecto (Marineland) and has bottom euro bracing as added insurance against a bottom seal failure.
As for our skimmers, we stock heavily and they eat well, so both skimmers get a good workout. Running two skimmers has some advantages: redundancy (handy when one comes offline for maintenance), more oxygenation, and of course better nutrient removal. Some could argue that we are over-skimming, but we do frequent water changes for essential trace element replacement. We also have very limited nuisance algae problems - there's a bit of valonia that the sailfin tang can't get to
and the water quality is consistently good - which is an imperative for us.
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
A few top down shots:
A. millepora:
A hyacinthus
Purple Monster acquired from Copps as a very small frag which is now about 3.5":
We love the color of this staghorn:
A. millepora:
A hyacinthus
Purple Monster acquired from Copps as a very small frag which is now about 3.5":
We love the color of this staghorn:
revhtree
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Great shots and that Purple Monster is awesome!
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Thanks Rev! That purple monster is a very slow grower and that's the best pic I have ever gotten of it. It's difficult to get a good shot because of where it sits in the tank. Top down shots in that area of the tank are awkward at best and it's a stretch to get the camera box positioned over the coral and then I have to take the shot blindly, hope I aimed right and rely on the camera's autofocus to get the job done, LOL!
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Mike&Terry
Wrasses, Angels, & Tangs, Oh My!
Thought we'd share a small technical update...
We've been running a Ca reactor to keep calcium and alkalinity stable for several years. We switched from a smaller Deltec Ca reactor to the GEO 818 a couple of years ago and also run a GEO Kalk reactor to help mitigate the lower pH associated with running a calcium reactor. Over the past 2 years, the demand for Ca and alkalinity in our system has increased significantly and we eventually reached a point where we were topping off with 100% kalk.
After a kalk over dose scare in November of last year, we made the decision to separate Kalk dosing from our fresh water top-off and as a result, made it more difficult to keep our pH in an acceptable range (dropping into the lower 7.7's).
Of course we tried some obvious things (pulling in fresh air, adding air stones to our sumps and running the lights for the frag tank/refugium at night) with no discernible difference in pH.
After looking at several options, we decided to setup CO2 scrubbers using soda lime. If you've not seen this, it's a granular hygroscopic calcium hydroxide used in CO2 absorption applications like SCUBA rebreathers. We placed the dry media into our TLF reactors which we then connected to the air intakes on our skimmers. A CO2 scrubber does not remove CO2 from the water column, rather it reduces CO2 in the air that passes through the reactor and into a skimmer.
We have been running the CO2 scrubbers on both of our skimmers for approx 3 months now with good results. The night time low normally stays in the lower 8.0's range and occasionally will dip into the upper 7.9's. The daytime pH ranges between 8.2 and 8.25 - We can live with that!
We purchased a 5g bucket of medical soda lime which should last several months. We replace the granules when the media is exhausted (media turns blue) which is approx every 2.5 to 3 weeks.
We've been running a Ca reactor to keep calcium and alkalinity stable for several years. We switched from a smaller Deltec Ca reactor to the GEO 818 a couple of years ago and also run a GEO Kalk reactor to help mitigate the lower pH associated with running a calcium reactor. Over the past 2 years, the demand for Ca and alkalinity in our system has increased significantly and we eventually reached a point where we were topping off with 100% kalk.
After a kalk over dose scare in November of last year, we made the decision to separate Kalk dosing from our fresh water top-off and as a result, made it more difficult to keep our pH in an acceptable range (dropping into the lower 7.7's).
Of course we tried some obvious things (pulling in fresh air, adding air stones to our sumps and running the lights for the frag tank/refugium at night) with no discernible difference in pH.
After looking at several options, we decided to setup CO2 scrubbers using soda lime. If you've not seen this, it's a granular hygroscopic calcium hydroxide used in CO2 absorption applications like SCUBA rebreathers. We placed the dry media into our TLF reactors which we then connected to the air intakes on our skimmers. A CO2 scrubber does not remove CO2 from the water column, rather it reduces CO2 in the air that passes through the reactor and into a skimmer.
We have been running the CO2 scrubbers on both of our skimmers for approx 3 months now with good results. The night time low normally stays in the lower 8.0's range and occasionally will dip into the upper 7.9's. The daytime pH ranges between 8.2 and 8.25 - We can live with that!
We purchased a 5g bucket of medical soda lime which should last several months. We replace the granules when the media is exhausted (media turns blue) which is approx every 2.5 to 3 weeks.
