Sk8r
03/06/2006, 10:15 AM
Well, I think it's officially up and going. It's a 52 corner with a 5 gal sump, 250 MH, 2 actinic bulbs...Urchin skimmer, a little large for the tank.
I'm sort of an old/new hand (been at this most of my life) with a 7 year recent hiatus---so all the technology has changed, and I rate myself a newcomer with this no-filter stuff.
The tank is an old/new, too: we lucked into really old rock---someone was breaking up a tank and we got heavily corallined, very inhabited holey rock, complete with unidentified life and a number of aiptasia...3 much-abused mushrooms, probably ricordia, 2 metallic purples, a smaller-than-fingernail sized bit of hammer coral, sponge, featherdusters, christmas tree worms, a peanut worm, assorted polychaetes, bristleworms of epic size, a starfish the size of an eraser tip, and dark red algae.
Unfortunately we couldn't mount our lights. I decided to cycle without. Then we thought of the full-spectrum sewing lights, and used those and the actinic only---we were two months waiting for the lid that would let us mount the MH. The sewing lights probably saved the mushrooms. The hammer was doing great until the first water change, when it lost its grip and disappeared. We have a fullsized cleaning crew, and went through a moderate hair algae phase: the glass stayed pretty clean. One of the hitchhikers turned out to be grape caulerpa: I was less thrilled. We now have an emerald crab, and peppermint shrimp. Perfect water conditions. Big bloom of copepods, all over the glass.
I acquired some pale green zoas. Everything still thrived, our lid came in, the MH went on, and we then acquired a pink stylopora frag, two acroporas (youngii and cerealis) and a capricornis, plus a 3 head candy cane...a tiny yellow watchman and a firefish.
Water tests a little high in calcium, alk, mag, but not out of bounds. So far so good. I now have the ability to test for myself rather than running to the LFS, and we got some aged live rock with a handful of green stripe and purple mushrooms to finish out the rock, making a neat large cave behind the line of old purple rocks, which makes the shrimp and fish think they're unobserved. The shrimp seem to know where I want to put specimens and obligingly do in just those aiptasia: we have a few surviving, but the shrimp seem to get the little ones.
Pretty happy here. The fact that we don't even have to scrape the glass (the copepods eat the algae off, I suppose, and the fish take after the copepods) is quite amazing. My experience persuades me that starting with even one really, really old rock is a real benefit. Best present anyone could get, who's just starting a tank.
I'm sort of an old/new hand (been at this most of my life) with a 7 year recent hiatus---so all the technology has changed, and I rate myself a newcomer with this no-filter stuff.
The tank is an old/new, too: we lucked into really old rock---someone was breaking up a tank and we got heavily corallined, very inhabited holey rock, complete with unidentified life and a number of aiptasia...3 much-abused mushrooms, probably ricordia, 2 metallic purples, a smaller-than-fingernail sized bit of hammer coral, sponge, featherdusters, christmas tree worms, a peanut worm, assorted polychaetes, bristleworms of epic size, a starfish the size of an eraser tip, and dark red algae.
Unfortunately we couldn't mount our lights. I decided to cycle without. Then we thought of the full-spectrum sewing lights, and used those and the actinic only---we were two months waiting for the lid that would let us mount the MH. The sewing lights probably saved the mushrooms. The hammer was doing great until the first water change, when it lost its grip and disappeared. We have a fullsized cleaning crew, and went through a moderate hair algae phase: the glass stayed pretty clean. One of the hitchhikers turned out to be grape caulerpa: I was less thrilled. We now have an emerald crab, and peppermint shrimp. Perfect water conditions. Big bloom of copepods, all over the glass.
I acquired some pale green zoas. Everything still thrived, our lid came in, the MH went on, and we then acquired a pink stylopora frag, two acroporas (youngii and cerealis) and a capricornis, plus a 3 head candy cane...a tiny yellow watchman and a firefish.
Water tests a little high in calcium, alk, mag, but not out of bounds. So far so good. I now have the ability to test for myself rather than running to the LFS, and we got some aged live rock with a handful of green stripe and purple mushrooms to finish out the rock, making a neat large cave behind the line of old purple rocks, which makes the shrimp and fish think they're unobserved. The shrimp seem to know where I want to put specimens and obligingly do in just those aiptasia: we have a few surviving, but the shrimp seem to get the little ones.
Pretty happy here. The fact that we don't even have to scrape the glass (the copepods eat the algae off, I suppose, and the fish take after the copepods) is quite amazing. My experience persuades me that starting with even one really, really old rock is a real benefit. Best present anyone could get, who's just starting a tank.