Salt water, Dec Update

A number of fortunate circumstances lead to me upgrading the saltwater tank last month, overall I'm happy with the results.

My birthday rolled around and allowed me to buy and Aquaclear 70 so I could mod it in to a refugium. A bag of black sand went on clearance at work the week before, which I saw as a sign from the heavens that this tank was ment to be a 10 gallon. The other issue was one of light, I needed to raise the tank so it would be closer to the light, so since I needed to empty it anyway, might as well up the size.

The Aqua Clear 70:
The AquaClear was by far already my favorite filter, just for its pure versatility and toughness. I've run many of these dry for hours at a time (unintentionally) and they keep on kickin'. My enthusiasm for the brand only increased when I found this mod for a nano-tank refugium on Nano-reef.com.

El Fab's Simple Guide to Pico Tanks

The link is halfway through the article at the AquaClear mod instructions. The gist of it is: Shorten the intake tube, reduce the flow by removing the tab, dissect the media basket and use the parts to make chambers and add a light for cheato.

Something fuzzy for a change

The newest addition to our family, Nibblit:


We adopted her about two months ago and she has been a delight. Her hobbies include spilling water glasses and playing whack-a-mole with the dog.

Playing Catch up

So much to post, I don't know why time flies, but it does....
I acquired a crested gecko some time ago, and never took pictures

Introducing Betty Boop, a tiger striped dalmatian that someone didn't want anymore:



She lives in the large terrarium with the two red-eye and two big-eye tree frogs, which hasbeen replanted and need to be photographed as well.

YCG

I realized that I havn't posted a memorial for my little yellow fish....he disappeared about a week after relocating the tank....so sad, but you know, I saw another at the work the other day....

hmmm...

sorry little yellow fish, you were my favorite, you will be missed

Here is what the new setup looks like....I got ride of the homemade stand, and found this 55 gal stand on clearance. Much homier now.
My friend gave me this still as of yet unkown coral frag...I'll let you know when I identify it.
and if you look real close to the left of the ricordia yuma, you can see its little baby, I finally had a coral split...horay.

(Bigger pic on the click through)
The green thing in the bottom right corner is the skeleton of the bubble coral that finally bit the dust. I cant get a good shot of it but I aquired a very small piece of green star polyp thats just to tiny to see.

I went ahead and got some cheato in anticipation of refuge build I would like to do.

Just found the camera....

I don't think I'll ever catch up...there have been a lot of additions to the tanks....we'll see what we can do about it.

Bubble coral imminent failure

The bubble coral isn't doing very well....it makes me sad. The bubbles haven't been out for about 5 days now and there is algae growing on the skeleton....sad sad sad.

I had to walk next door to hasting to look something up on the bubble coral. I have not been able to find any specific information online or at work. But luckily they had a book on marine inverts which stated that the bubble coral will retract its bubbles only when it is being poisoned by poor water quality or other corals...so I'm trying to fix that now.

Saltwater success

I'm way behind on updates on this one, there are lots of new additions and a rearrange.
First I got a great deal in June, two finger leather frags for just under 20 bucks, one has attached well and the other is taking its sweet time. But the polyps are extending so I hopefully they are doing ok.


The only concern was that in such a small tank, leathers have a tendency to poison other corals when they shed there waxy coating. They did this soon after i put them in and siphoned it off just in case, but by then I had already added the bio-zorb and was counting on it to do the trick.

About a month ago I added this guy, i had been wanting a peppermint shrimp and about the time I was ready to add something else he appeared at work so of course I snatched him up.


I decided to do a re-arrange when the bubble coral came in on a shipment to see if I could get it to fit, I actually researched it first unlike the finger leather coral. Shame on me.

And here is some random pics that came out nice.

Garden Update 1

We will start with overviews of the three beds before we get into details and potted plants.

My first bed:

This year I have:
2 varieties of tomatoes
pees, which promptly died
cantaloupe, story to be told
a giant carrot
jalapenos
2 varieties of zinnias, one dwarf, one giant
white antler looking plants,Dusty Miller
snapdragons that refuse to bloom
sun impatiens
a giant onion
basil
bell pepper plant, very successful
mexican heather
chives from last year
a grapevine I was given, it dominates the picture because it has been trained back on itself ,many times for lack of a proper trellis


Bed 2:
This year I have:
more white antler things
the Rosemary from last year that has been pruned back many times
a little white flowering plant
a mystery plant
a red mexican bell pepper plant that is beautiful
a purple vining flower that refuses to climb, clematis bees jubilee
gladiolus
a maiden head plant
Cosmos that have refused to bloom until now




And finally the 3rd bed, the shade bed:
Caldniums
many hostas
club fern
a red plant
a rescued plant that my boss almost killed
and 2 varieties of fig plant


Ya know, two days ago i could have named all of these....I will have to go look at all the little tags when its light out.

Mistaken Identity

What I thought were Xenia, are in fact not:

I found a wonderful description here on Pet Solutions. The difference seems to be that Xenia has several heads or hands on one stalk, whereas Anthelia only has one head per stalk.

My new secret weapon

I LOVE this stuff:
It does a wonderful job of keeping the water free of toxins from corals and lasts for 3 to 6 months depending on your bio-load. As long as you keep your pre-filters clean that is. That is the only drawback I've seen, I have to rinse the pre-filters about every three days to keep from forming a nitrate spike.

Before I added the bio-zorb, I wasn't using any sort of sponge in the filter, just a back of carbon that I changed weekly. But this has definitely reduced my costs.

New Saltwater Additions

A rock I inherited a while back(all the mushrooms had died on it and they didn't want it anymore) has one survivor:

While I was taking pictures look who is looking back:

Peek-a-boo
A gentelman from East Texas Reefers gave me these:
Two ricordia yumas


and a watermelon mushroom
Such a camera hog:

Got it!

The elusive Gobiodon atrangulatus!:
Now turn:
Ok, now everyone together!:
The kenya tree decides to open:
Pretty crabs:

My flowers