Sniperhank's UPGRADED 55 gal Build

[Sniperhank]

Well, imagine you pay 20 dollars for a plate of shrimp scampi including tip. A scarlet cleaner is about 24 dollars. Now keep in mind, these aren't the same shrimp we eat. The shrimp we eat are brown and not very interesting to watch due to them burrowing in the sand, from what I've been told.

[bigbanker]

Bleh. The very idea of eating a shrimp. :s

Any who glad you got a cleaner. My PETCO is unable to order them atm. My lfs has babies for $55 vs the $18 at PETCO.

How is he doing

[Sniperhank]

Fine. Enjoying the weekly PWC I'm sure.

[Sniperhank]

State of the tank today, things continue without change...unless you notice my orange plate. Thing keeps moving all over the place, it needs to stop. It keeps pushing itself up onto the other plates, open brain, whatever. Pretty annoying...but so beautiful.
Currently planning on a major cleaning of my sump, it is a mess. This will include my skimmer, as hair algae grows and is being pulled into the pump. Totally not helping the lack of skimming already going on.

[San Raphael Catfish]

Lawn mower Blenny time?

[Sniperhank]

I'd have to catch him and move him into the sump...which I didn't clean. Lol.

[Sniperhank]

Well, things continue to go well in the tank. I upgraded the GFO to ultra efficient GFO. I'm continuing to watch to see if the sps color up more, I think that my bird's nest is but I want to continue to watch since doing this has been spuratic at best...I decided that I needed to have a car payment since I finished the last one off several months ago. So that will push back upgrading the tank, but in the long run that is probably in my best interest.

I spent time cleaning up the sump some. Removed hair algae that was being pulled into the skimmer's pump and that started growing over the red bone grass. That stuff is still pretty awesome macro algae. Glad I bought it.

During this time, I moved the massive bird's nest to remove the byropsis that started growing behind it. In doing so, I found where all the eggs of the pyramid snails are. They are all over the dead insides of the bird's nest. Any thoughts on this? Think this should be something I do a coral dip for? Even if I dipped it, I don't see a good way of getting the eggs out of there...even being gentle with a toothbrush would cause me to break pieces off. I always accidently break chunks of it off. The thing is pretty large in the tank and there are just too many frags of it.

[Sniperhank]

Well, fed the tank today. I was quite surprised...the blood shrimp is MIA. He always comes out when I feed. Looked around and no sight of even his corpse. Hopefully he is hiding and molting. But, while looking for him I looked at my hairy mushrooms. Wow, the one is as large as the palm of my hand! Took pictures, but it is in the blue heavy part of my light cycle so I apologize ahead of time.

And my coco worm which is still doing nicely, surprisingly. Very quick to retract into the tube if anything comes near.

[Beengirl]

Wow! Those are some big mushrooms!! Glad to hear the coco is doing well! Looks great!

[Sniperhank]

Ironically those mushrooms could easily be traded off. They live in the back of the tank and I often forget they are there. I wish I had a larger sandbed, I'd trade them off in a minute for more sandbed corals...a favia maybe.

[Mrc8858]

I got favias and no mushrooms even though everybody asks for them lol

[Sniperhank]

And we have talked heavily about swapping. I'm up to a 36 inch 4 bulb t5ho, 2 stage ri/di, tons of zoas, and hairy mushrooms. Lol.

[Sniperhank]

Who found a marine betta at Petco? This guy.

[Zippo1313]

Congrats and thanks for saying it that was made me lol

[Beengirl]

Originally Posted by Sniperhank

Who found a marine betta at Petco? This guy.

No way!!! So cool!! I've never seen one at Petco. Lucky!

[Sniperhank]

It is soo small. Only reason I pulled the trigger. Nothing is smaller than it in the tank. Made me realize how things have grain in the tank. There was a target mandarin as well, didn't realize they looked so cool. But my green mandarin was the size of this guy when I got him. Double the size now.

[Sniperhank]

[Bearchumjs]

Lovely fish Hank!

[Sniperhank]

Now we just hope it isn't dead and just being shy like they usually are.

[Sniperhank]

Found the betta this morning. Now I know where he's hiding. Also got the skimmer skimming nicely, turns out it had red bubble algae growing I side the pump restricting flow. That and with the purigen and high efficiency Gfo in the reactors we are looking good.