Ingy's new 110 gal Reef

[Ingy]

Couldn't catch the manderin do I'll get him when she tears her tank apart.
I did get a hammer, plate and palythoa. Had an incident on the way home avoiding a moron. Hammer broke right at the base into 2 drags. Didn't think it was a problem and I attached them to 2 separate rock bases. However when I put them in the tank I noticed a very small crack on one head. But when it started to come out a bit later that head kinda fell apart. Anybody had that happen before? Will that head survive?

Pics

 

[Ingy]

Anybody else have a cup coral that looks like a radar coral? Here's mine. I made up that name BTW.





And what may have caused that centre anomaly?

 

[Sniperhank]

I've never seen a pagoda cup like that before. That is straight amazing.

 

[Ingy]

Just picked up 2 small Blue Cespitularia corals for $11. Already starting to open

 

[Cichlid-dude]

Nice frags!

 

[ReefingMadness]

That hitchhiker crab have is prob a gorilla crab which equals bad for your corals and fish. They grow fast. Get him out of tank

 

[Ingy]

Thanks. Got him out a while ago. Unfortunately he was in a hole in one of my LR. I tried to coax him out into a bucket in the sump with low water levels, all to no avail. Finally had to "get rid of da problem".

 

[Ingy]

Finally got my mail order from JLAquatics in Vancouver. Great service for those in western Canada. There was a slight delay as they ran out of Kent part B additive, but they got it in 2 days later and then 2 days after that it all arrived at my door, on the island no less. Thanks guys.

I replaced the 2 old Actinic lights (coralife) with 2 actinic+ by Giessmann. WOW! so much brighter. I'm going to wait a week before replacing the white and fiji purple with 2 x 15K Blue+ lights. Pics to follow once the rest of the lights are in.

I also received my new Seachem test kits and I figured I'd post a couple results compared to my API kits.

Calcium
API at 360ppm
Seachem at 365ppm
only difference is the way the numbers are read. API seems fine.

pH
API at 7.8
Seachem at 8.1
Not very good for API as that is a significant difference.

Alk
API at 8dKH
Seachem at 11.2dKH or 800ppm (4meq/l)
Funny thing is both tests took 8 drops for colour change, but where API gives 1dKH per drop, Seachem gives 50ppm (0.5meq/l) per drop. conversion of 2.8 dKH/meq/l gives higher Alk (1.4dKH per drop). If I used API test with Seachem result calculations, results would have been the same. Hmmm

I will continue to use this online service for my test kits as they are only $14 per test (pH and Alk are 1 test) and I prefer the Seachem tests.

 

[Ingy]

Here's something interesting.

My Halloween Hermit munching on an empty shell. He's actually eaten quite a bit off the top and just moved to the sides.

 

[Ingy]

I finally swapped out my purple bulb and 10k for a pair of 15K bulbs. Wow!
Before, when all my lights were on (2 actinic, 1 white ,1 purple) all my green corals looked brownish. Green, but with a brown tint. Turns out that's what you get when you mix green & purple colours. Now that I have just actinic and whites, all my green pop much better.
Funny thing is, now that the purple hue to everything is gone, even my purple stuff looks better. It's not being lost in a purple haze, so to speak.

 

[Ingy]

Well, the new bulbs are working wonders, and the corals are thanking me for it. In fact my monti is growing so well, I'm thinking of fragging my first SPS. Its an encrusting Sunset montipora (thanks Carey for the ID) and it has grown over the small rock that was glued to the plug, plus the plug. It has encrusted the baseball sized rock the plug was placed on to get it higher to the light and has recently started growing on the large rock underneath.
For fragging, I'm thinking I'll wait until it gets more one to the larger rock before I cut it apart from the baseball sized rock. Then I was thinking on cutting the original plug free from that rock, leaving a plug sized hole behind. I'd then be able to sell both the small frag plug as well as the 'holey' baseball rock. But would the hole grow over again? Will the frag plug cut free from its own growth restart to spread? Basically, will the cut edges start to regrow?

Pic to follow off my phone.

 

[Ingy]

My montipora from when I first got it and today too.

 

[Ingy]

Another couple additions recently

 

[Ingy]

Come on fragging experts. If I cut out the original frag glued to epoxied to the top of the smaller rock, will the hole I leave behing eventually grow over with Monti? Will the cut edges start to regrow again?

 

[Sniperhank]

Come on fragging experts. If I cut out the original frag glued to epoxied to the top of the smaller rock, will the hole I leave behing eventually grow over with Monti? Will the cut edges start to regrow again?

If you leave some of the monti on the plug, there is a chance it'll grow over if that bit survives being cut. The cut edges will of course grow once cut! If not, everyone would have all these sps with one flat edge rather than the natural asymmetrical edges that grow out.

 

[erichm20]

Your tank looks great! That monti should keep growing anywhere there are polyps attached to the rock that's left.