| 125 Gallon Salt Water Aquarium | ||
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125 Gallon Tank on 01/01/2006 01-01-06 I finally upgraded to Metal Halide lighting. After much research, I ended up buying a Coralife 72 Inch Aqualight Pro, 3x150W HQI MH Lamp + 4x96W PC + 4x1W Lunar LED fixture. Thus far I'm pleased. The lights have been online for around three months. Initially I didn't phase them in slowly enough and lost a couple of my SPS corals that had acclimated to the PCs. I also had some bleaching in my favorite orange zoanthids. Hopefully they come back fully as I rely on fragging them to keep the habit self sustaining. Otherwise, as you can see in the picture above, everything is very happy. As for livestock, not much has changed. I added a couple of SPS frags after installing the new lights, but haven't had time or money to add much else. 04-15-05 The tank is looking better than it ever has. I recently added several new clams and some interesting zoanthids. More specifically, I added an orange crocea, and three small hippopus clams. In an effort to encourage coral growth in the thank, I've been putting much more effort into ensuring the water parameters are consistently where they need to be. This seems to be paying off as all my corals and fish seem to be much brighter and happier. Also, I'm definitely noticing an increase in the growth rate of all my corals. This is good because, as I mentioned on the main page, I'm trying to make the hobby self sustaining by growing and selling interesting corals. See the Frags for Sale link to see some of the corals I'm currently selling. 02-20-04 A lot has changed in the tank. I added a 5 gallon hang on tank refugium, three new power heads, replaced the main tank bulbs, removed a couple fish, and added several new animals. Also, I started regularly tracking the calcium, alkalinity, pH, nitrates, and temperature, and dosing with a two part supplement as needed. The extra attention to water quality and current has done a lot to improve the overall health of the tank. There's visible growth on all the stony corals and most the soft corals are looking good. Unfortunately, my Copper Banded Butterfly fish started picking at my clams so he went back to the pet store. He was a cool fish. Also, my juvenile clown fish was eaten by the monster green carpet. 11-22-03 As you can see in the two pictures above, a lot has changed in the tank. My (tank raised) clowns started hosting in my tree coral shortly after the top picture was taken. They eventually "loved" the coral to death. I haven't been able to find another tree coral to replace it, but I'm still looking. The tree coral was one of my favorites. You'll also notice the green torch in the bottom left is no longer there. He died after getting a nasty case of brown slime disease. I've lost several torch corals to this disease and have decided to no longer try and keep them. Another big loss was the green acro at the top left of the tank. I've been able to keep other acros alive (note the big green acro in the center of the lower picture), so I don't know what I did wrong with that guy. The big brown leather in the upper picture was fragged into ten or so pieces and distributed around the tank and to several friends/stores. There has also been several additions to the tank: I've added a couple varieties of yellow leathers, a devil's hand leather, a green carpet, a squamosa clam, some xenia, a lobo brain, two gorgonians, a finger leather, a rock anemone, a couple pieces of live rock, a blue spotted jawfish, a sexy shrimp, a decorator crab, a large yellow serpent star, a large red serpent star, a blue globe urchin, several varieties of ricordia, several varieties of zoanthids/zoanthis, some red mushrooms, a thorny oyster (that croaked), a couple varieties of cucumbers, a fromia star, and some other stuff I can't think of right now. During the time between the two pictures, I started adding chemicals to the tank to raise the pH. It took me a couple months to figure out that the additions had raised the alkalinity to the point that calcium additions would immediately precipitate out. It took consulting the good chemistry Dr. on Reef Central and many water changes to get the problem resolved. For the most part, the problem arose because I was focusing on a couple measurements in the tank (calcium, pH, and nitrate) and ignoring the other measurements. I've since started taking more frequent readings of more variables. I'm sure I'm still missing something, but I've had a lot more success. When I first got into the hobby of reef keeping, a wise man told me to buy the best hardware I could afford. I didn't listen to him. I recently replaced my two Red Sea Berlin counter current skimmers with a single Dual Bak-Pak unit. The Bak-Pak works a lot better and didn't cost much more. Oh well... 04-06-03 I recently added another 60 lbs of live rock, several new corals, and two Tricnidad clams. With the exception of the clams, the large ricordia mushroom rock (far left center in the picture above) and the yellow tipped green torch (bottom left in the picture above) all of the new stuff was taken from existing tanks which were being broken down or from the Rocky Mountain Reef Club Frag Swap. The Frag Swap is an annual event where reef keepers in the Denver area get together to share "clippings" or "frags" from their tanks. The Tricnidad clams have evolved to host brightly colored photosynthetic algae in their mantles. Both the new clams, a crocea and a squamosa, were tank raised and seem to be doing well. I bought the rock for next to nothing from a ReefCentral guy in Superior (Thanks, Justin! ) who was moving. Most the rock was totally covered with life. Two of the three ocellaris clowns have paired up and are hosting in the tree coral. Clowns normally only host in anemones, but will sometimes host in other anemone like corals. The paired clowns have doubled in size. The third clown is still part of the "family" but is much smaller as it is, and will most likely remain, sexually immature. Oh yeah, there's also a large blue linkia star I bought from a local fish store. The carpet anemone crawled into a filter power head, and got chopped up pretty good. With some help, he eventually got out of the filter and seems to be recovering... Check out the new pictures. 03-03-03 This tank has changed a lot since the last round of pictures. I recently added 25 lbs of "lace rock", a reef safe variety of rock harvested in Utah. It'll take a few months for the rock to become "live", but it was cheap and its' harvest doesn't harm wild reefs. I've also added several new critters. Most of the animals were bought from local reef keepers. In particular, Chad "FreakyReef", from Reef Central, gave me the two large tan leather toadstool corals. Thanks Chad! In addition, there's a large beige long tentacled carpet, a new mushroom rock, several small finger leather corals, several pulsing xenia corals, yellow polyps, and green star polyps. Also, I added the final two fish, a Blue Tang and a Copper Banded Butterly. My wife Heather gave me the tang and my folks gave me the copper banded butterfly. Check out the new pictures. I think you'll enjoy them. 02-03-03 I've only had this tank for around a month, but its progressing nicely. A good friend of mine named Carl gave me the tank, stand, and all the hardware. I refinished the stand to match the existing furniture, put a layer of sealant on the exposed silicon, cleaned and traded the existing hardware for the two external pumps/heaters, purchased a glass top, and purchased new lighting. I wasn't going to add anything beyond a few pieces of rock, but a guy I met on reefcentral.com was breaking down his tank and needed to get rid of the livestock. Pretty much everything you see in the tank is from him. I haven't been able to identify all the animals yet, but everything appears to be happy. I'm looking forward to watching the tank evolve. I don't have any immediate plans for the tank, but I would like to eventually put in tricnidad clams, corals, pacific anemones, and several varieties of invertebrates. I will most likely also add a couple more fish, but I intend to keep the fish and therefore the nitrate to a minimum. Currently, the nitrate levels barely registers. The next purchase for the tank will be a protein skimmer. |
