Finally got my tank started up

[Ratrik13]

Here's the little Monti frag... it's a little pissed in this pic cause I had just moved it. I put it higher in the tank than it was because I didn't like how it was sitting and I noticed it was rocking in the current now and then.

The acro frag looks... ok... i think. I honestly don't know how to tell when they are happy and when they aren't cause the only ones I've seen in person were slowly dieing at the LFS (tissue recession mostly). I could actually see the polyps though, so I guess that's "probably" a good sign. It also doesn't seem to be slimeing heavily either, but I guess it's still to early to tell.

The Nephthea frag... it's a little less than happy, but my wife said that it was fully inflated earlier but then a snail or a crab walked over it. You can tell the polyps are kind of extending now, but it's still not inflated like she said it was before.

This is Big Red, the largest of the scarlet hermits. Man it's pretty, but makes me nervous as to the damage it could cause after all the hermit horror stories I've heard. first sign of trouble though and Big Red gets to live in the fuge.

The palys have been moved so they are probably a little annoyed with me. Their stalks seem to be a lot smaller than they were before, but I did watch them inflate and expel what I'm guessing was waste and ever since then they've been really thin in the stalk. On the positive side though, I've notice a few small buds appearing at the base of some of the larger stalks.

Finally, the FTS. I used the "museum" setting my camera has since I'm guessing it's designed for shooting photos through glass. For the other shots I use the macro setting and zooming in. Bad part is I have to take a ton of pics of each thing I post just to get one clear one. =P

 

[Zer0]

Your tank is freakin awesome lol. I love what you've done with the whole setup. Eveyrthing looks so clean and so perfect! I really like the pink zoas as well. And the mushrooms. I love the GSP's also, because those are one of my favorite corals. I love the xenias too. Great job ratrik

 

[thincat]

Great looking tank! In a month you won't even notice the extra shells. I dump in a few shells now and then just for the heck of it.HAHAHA
Looking good, keep up the good work...
PS: hermits will knock over frags now and again but not near as much as if you had a pencil urchin. They are Kings at that.

 

[Zer0]

Also, turbo snails. Those little losers knock over things like corals, rocks, frags.. and whatever else. At least that what i hear.. :/

 

[InfernoST]

Also, turbo snails. Those little losers knock over things like corals, rocks, frags.. and whatever else. At least that what i hear.. :/

My snails heard that, you're in big trouble now they are on there way to Jersey. LOL

 

[Ratrik13]

Nah, I figure the New York Turbo's are bound to have connections with the Jersey Crustacean Families. They'll probably just send over a few hard hitting mantis shrimp to have a chat with him about his lack of respect.

My two SPS frags are wedged in there really good atm. The green Nephthea frag is actually attached to the rock with a little epoxy. The paly is next on my list to epoxy along with the Xenia when it splits. I'd heard how bad urchins and turbos which is why I've tried to steer clear of them.

The really funny part is that my tank and my wife are the two most relaxing yet incredibly stressful things in my life! It's weird though, the tank keeps telling me to spend more time with my wife, but my wife keeps telling me that she'll kill me if I let this tank fail. So far though, I've really enjoyed my first try at saltwater, just can't wait till I get a fish! =P

 

[InfernoST]

Nah, I figure the New York Turbo's are bound to have connections with the Jersey Crustacean Families. They'll probably just send over a few hard hitting mantis shrimp to have a chat with him about his lack of respect.

My two SPS frags are wedged in there really good atm. The green Nephthea frag is actually attached to the rock with a little epoxy. The paly is next on my list to epoxy along with the Xenia when it splits. I'd heard how bad urchins and turbos which is why I've tried to steer clear of them.

The really funny part is that my tank and my wife are the two most relaxing yet incredibly stressful things in my life! It's weird though, the tank keeps telling me to spend more time with my wife, but my wife keeps telling me that she'll kill me if I let this tank fail. So far though, I've really enjoyed my first try at saltwater, just can't wait till I get a fish! =P

. I'm with you on the wife/tank correlation. Beautiful job on the tank, I'm looking forward to the progress (More Pics)lol.

 

[fishmonkey]

looking GREAT man!

 

[Zer0]

Lol, well let them know they might as well start heading for Florida, because by the time they even get anywhere near here, i'll be in florida. xD

 

[InfernoST]

Lol, well let them know they might as well start heading for Florida, because by the time they even get anywhere near here, i'll be in florida. xD

LOL. They contacted the other families in Secaucus and called in a favor.

 

[bobothefish]

hey a go sleep with the fish for cryin outloud.

 

[Ratrik13]

Few small updates

Full tank shot, hair algae is totally gone. I used some of the aquarium safe epoxy to attach some of the frags and one of the coral skeletons. I learned something about it, I don't like it and I'll probably not use it again. It didn't stick well even when following the directions, it really messed with my skimmer, it seemed to irritate my corals and I found that one of my porcelain crabs had dropped it's claws the next day.

Pic of the "Neon Green Palau" Nephthea looks a lot happier. Good polyp extension and it's inflated to probably it's full size. It only get's mad when something walks on it. =P

Pic of the little Acro frag. I "guess" it's doing ok. I think it at least extends it's polyps. They are just so dang hard to see cause their so small. I'm having to kind of take it on faith that it and the Monti are doing ok.

Here is said "Indigo" Montipora Digitata, really hope it lives cause it's actually pretty in it's own little way. I'm actually starting to think I may like Monti's better than Acros based on the growth styles.

Finally, this is another full tank shot where I've marked out all the locations of the corals currently in my tank in RED and the last few bits of real estate left in my tank in GREEN. The only exception is that I'm guessing the Heteroxenia will spread along the yellow arrow into the green area labeled 3. Area 1 is nice four inch by six inch triangle shaped ledge. Area 2 is probably where a future SPS frag may go, the bad part about it is that it's pretty strong current ripping through there as the main intersection point of the powerheads is directly behind the arch. Area 3 is where I think the xenia will head and i figure I'll let it have a wide berth. Area 4 is prime territory that's gonna open up as soon as the xenia finishes moving which could be any day now. So, the reason for this whole huge set up is that I'm looking for some help deciding on what to put in these areas. I'd guess areas 1 and 4 are the upper end of medium on both lighting and flow. The area around 2 is some of the highest lighting and flow in the tank, so if my SPS's do fine that's where another would go. Anyway, I'm just trying to come up with something other than zoas or palys for these areas. It's not that I'm opposed to zoas or palys, it's just that I'd like to come up with some options. Heck, even if I'm pretty much limited to zoas and palys I'd appreciate some feed back on color recommendations.

 

[thincat]

Nice Scaping and when your coralline and corals start to grow it will look super.

 

[Ratrik13]

Terror in the deep!

Ok, well it's official, I have a mantis shrimp. I managed to spot him while i was watching the tank today. Having a minor freak out atm cause it's in the pink zoa rock in a part of the tank where I've had my hands recently. The good news is he can't be much bigger than an inch or so. Now I've gotta figure out how best to catch it. It's probably just gonna either go in my fuge or I may set it up a little 2.5 next to my computer cause I think they are pretty cool. Ok, I got the little guy surrounded now... I managed to get the rock outta my tank with him still in it. It's kind of nerve racking picking up a rock with a critter called a "thumb spliter" thats covered with stupidly toxic coral on it. Atm it's sitting in funnel that's clipped to the side of a small tank of SW I've been using for drip acclimating my corals. Just hope he gets hungry and pops out on his own soon, otherwise I'm gonna have to get nasty.

Oh, on a more optimistic note, I finally ordered my first fish. Ordered 4 Juvenile Red Tail Flasher Wrasse (Paracheilinus rubricaudalis) from DrF&S. According to their website they should be between 1 and 1.75 inches in length. Only thing that scares me is that it was almost $400 for all four and I didn't check with my wife first. =\ Now I've got about a day to get the finishing touches put on my QT tank and figure out if FW dipping them would be a good idea or not.

<edit number 2> Well, I spent all day trying to explain to my boss and my coworkers about mantis shrimp. Even made 'em watch some YouTube videos. They now think they are really fascinating and even went so far to name mine "Little Steven" after one of my coworkers who claims he's going to go into a bloodlust rampage anytime something goes wrong for him. I came home after work today and tried everything I could to coax the mantis from its hole. I finally had to break the rock with all the little pink zoas on it for fear of killing them. Strange thing though, I also found that I had a gorilla crab hiding up in that rock with the mantis. Once I finally got the mantis outta the rock (after breaking it into three pieces and royally angering the zoas) the kind of sad thing is that it was unfortunately dead. After compairing the size of the shrimp and the crab I now understand why they hadn't killed each other.

Here's some pics of the mantis and the crab... not sure what will happen to Kong (the crab) cause I'm tempted to just toss him into the fuge and let him live since he wasn't causing any problems so far as I could tell. For the record, the mantis was an inch at best and the crabs about the size of my thumbnail.

 

[Mitchell0605]

Nice. Looking forward to the wrasses arrival!

 

[thincat]

Sorry about the mantis. Might have been an interesting addition to your Fuge Oh well, at least the crab is okay. Good luck with the flashers. Google the name and read up on them the best you can. Your hardest moments will be telling your best "other".

 

[Ratrik13]

Calculated Risk

OK, so I decided to do something "stupid" and risky. I ended up placing the 4 flashers directly into my display tank after acclimation. I did this because (as odd as it sounds) they were looking extremely stressed from the shipping ordeal. I know it's a risky move and I'm seriously hoping it doesn't bite me in the tailfin. I felt that getting them into an established system full of places to hide and yummy pods to eat would help them bounce back better than keeping 'em all jammed in the 10 gallon QT I have for my set up. I never figured I would buy more than 1 or 2 small fish at a time, so I felt that the 10 would be ok. After getting these little girls into a 5gallon bucket for dripping... I just knew there was no way I was gonna be able to keep 'em all in a 10g once they started feeling better. The good news is I saw at least one of them catch a few pods and eat 'em and another one was actively swimming around checking out the rockwork, the other two are still hiding in the rockwork. Then again... it's only been 15 mins since I put them in the tank in the first place.

 

[thincat]

Well, I'll cross my finger for you.

 

[InfernoST]

I'm with TC

 

[Ratrik13]

Update

Figured I would do a small update, not has happened since I added in the fish. It's mostly just a full tank shot and a few shots of the flashers.

It's kind of funny, I'm not sure which fish is which in these (since they are all suppose to be same species and gender atm) but you can deffinatly tell the one who's going to be male when you watch the tank cause she always out cruising about. The aggression seems to be pretty well spread out, but I do worry that two of them actually ARE females. The two largest did look like they have the small elongated spine mid-dorsal fin when I was inspecting them in their shipping bags, but it wasn't as extreme as the pics I've seen of males.

Sorry about the blurry pics... these flashers are definitely "type A" kind of fish. Also, kind of seems weird to have taken so long on stocking my tank and now my fish stocking is almost done. The ONLY other fish I'd probably put in at this point would be a small shrimp goby pair and pistol shrimp. The monti and the acro are still doing well... so well actually that I'm considering getting another monti or two and was looking at a pavona colony my LFS has for sale. I'm looking forward to my Xenia finally letting go of that frag plug cause I've noticed a few small pearls of bubble algae starting to grow on it, so the sooner i can get rid of it the better. Anyway, that's pretty much it for my random comments. Just wanna say Thanks yet again for all the help and encouragement everyone's given me.