Barney And Lyn's 5Ft Reef Tank (150G(Uk) System)

[xxBarneyxx]

Thanks seffie

I used rods for the central section but also put putty between the rocks as well. Using the rods does work but it isnt easy to line the rocks up together. If I was going to do it again I would use thicker rods (mine are about 1cm diameter) as then I could just drill the one hole rather then having to drill several and try to line them up (the 1cm acrylic rod is very flexible and I didn't trust it not to break using only 1 bit).

The whole idea was to leave a lot of swimming space, have plenty of separate levels for coral placement AND keep the rock structure as open as I could (you wouldn't believe the amount of crud under the rock when I took it all out of the tank). It didn't come out quite how I pictured it in my head but I'm pretty happy with it.

Photos dont show it that well. The right hand side looks like a pile of rock but there is actually a lot of space behind the rockwork. I probably removes about 20kg of rock in total (which is handy as I'm setting up the cube tank for the seahorses now and this should be just about the right amount of rock ). I'am thinking of building up a little bit on the back right hand corner and having an arch coming down towards the middle but not decided yet.

Oh yeah I forgot to say the rock at the front on the bottom left of the tank with the xenia on will not be staying in there. Neither will the top rock on the left with the xenia. These will go into the seahorse tank where I wont have to worry about them spreading and killing off other corals but there will be NO xenia in the main display tank anymore (I got sick of cutting it back and having to try to remove it from awkward places).

 

[ben1987]

looks good to me too, nice work...all the swearing was deffinatly worth it

 

[xxBarneyxx]

I made a mistake

Was at a LFS recently and they had a very healthy looking powder blue tang in at a reduced price. I know these are extremely difficult to acclimatise to a new tank but Lyn fell in love so we got it (plus a vectron 700 UV filter and feed pump so the reduced price fish ended up costing over close to £200..).

Unfortunately though it was perfectly fine for about 4 days (swimming around loads, eating well on frozen and flake but not really touching nori) it started to develop a film over its face (velvet) and whitespot and within 2 days it was gone

Really, really gutted and pissed off with myself as well. I really should have known better. Its going to be awhile now I think until I get anymore livestock for this tank.

On another negative note my clowns have done some serious damage to my bubble coral and ripped part of it out off its skeleton. Its still expandning both I have had to move to to a different part of the tank and its now in too high a flow area.The clowns also finished off the last two heads of my touch coral and have started on my sun coral! Now had to scrape my seahorse tank plan as the clowns are going to be moved into there. I would love to get rid of them all together but I just cant bring myself to do it (one of them was the first marine fish I bought and after the years I have had her I cant bring myself to get rid of her).

Phosphate is still a PITA and I still cant get my stupid skimmer dialled in right since rescaping the tank. It either doesnt skim at all or it seems to work until I close the door and then decides to overflow.

On the plus side the cyano (while coming back) is not half as bad (probably due to better flow rates on all the rockwork) and is much easier to handle.

Basically I'm pretty fed up with it all at the moment. There is stuff I want to do but just don't have the money to do it and nothing I do with the tank at the moment seems to work.

 

[ben1987]

Chin up mate...stick with it. ive been close to chuckin the towel in before too, aslo because of a poweder blue. but im still here

 

[xxBarneyxx]

No waffling this time. Just a few quick photos (yes I know I need to clean the bottom of the glass )

 

[seffieuk]

I so love that scape - it's perfect

I too know how you are feeling, I am feeling exactly the same at the moment - I have resorted to only having the lights on for max of six hours a day - this has helped a lot.

Also feel the same about my clowns, they are little boogers - but they were my first marine fish and are the reason i began marine, so can't bare to part with them!!

Hang on in there me old mucker

Seffie x

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Thanks Seffie, the Cyano really isnt too bad now I have re-scaped. There is a little bit along the back of the tank and a few spots on the rock that get it but it is growing very slowly this time and is easy to keep under control. Before I would clear it and within two days it was back. Now I only have to clear it every couple of weeks.

In the end I decided to just move the clowns to our cube tank. However the clowns have had other ideas and arent playing nicely.

The B&W clown took all of 30 seconds to get out the tank. The orange one though has been moved through at least 4 tanks and knows exactly what a net is and how to avoid it. Over 2 days we have spent probably close to 4 hours trying to catch him (2 adults with 4 nets cant catch 1 little clown fish!).

Yesterday I didnt feed them all day then put in a bottle trap with mysis in. He took one look at it then went nowhere near it again. Not feeding them again today and hoping that hungry will overcome him and he will go for it tonight.

One of the heads on my bubble coral has completely detached from the skeleton (thanks to the clowns). Its still attached to another head at the side and is inflating and looks overwise healthy. Not sure if it will survive or not though. I have seen some people saying that they can reform the skeleton but the chance of it surviving that long are slim. I'm feeding it every 2-3 days as well when I feed my sun coral.

After reading around loads on it I ordered some liquid phosphate remover from tanktests yesterday as well. Hopefully this will finally take care of my phosphate issues that have plagued this tank pretty much since I set it up. The idea is that I will get the phosphates back down low again (unreadable on a test kit) over the course a few weeks (hopefully) and then go back to using GFO based phosphate remover in the reactor to keep it low.

Tank is looking rather empty now as it only has an algae blenny (that blends into the rock most of the time), a coral beauty (again another one that is in the rockwork at least half the time) and a spotted mandarin (small, blends into the rockwork and spends half the time amongst the rocks hunting for pods).

The coral situation isnt much better either..

However I'm going to hold off buying any more livestock until the phosphates are down. I'm not worried about the fish in there while I treat the tank (I will drop the phosphates very slowly to give all the livestock time to adjust) but I don't want to put new livestock into a tank where the phosphates are going to be constantly changing for at least a few weeks.

So basically tank is just ticking over at the moment.

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Just a couple of photos I snapped last night on my phone with the main lights off:

Preview of the new cube tank where the clowns now live. Hasn't been properly scaped yet and I need to sort out the mess of equipment in there.

I have started using liquid phosphate remover now too (two days in say far). I was actually fairly surprised when I did my tank tests before starting to use it. I haven't tested for at least a month and my phosphate has actually gone down by itself in this time to 0.025 (was closer to 0.05 before!). Not sure If I fluffed up on the test kit before or if the cheato and phosphate reactor have really kicked in now.

 

[Morri]

Some nice looking corals there Barney

I am a big fan of Bubbles and the Pink mouth tubastrea with yellow polyps is very diffrent

Would be intrested how you get on with the liquid phosphate remover have heard differing reports

 

[seffieuk]

Thats a nice looking cube Barney what is it?

Seffie x

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Its a "wave" cube. No idea other than that as we picked it up second hand.

The liquid phosphate remover hasn't had much effect so far (in fact phosphates seem to have gone up) However I have only used it for about 4 days so not really given it chance. For the moment though I'm putting it on hold as we have some new members of the tank and I dont want to add anything at the moment while they settle in.

Will get some proper photos of the fish later but there are 3 wrasses and 3 anthia's (managed to get a male and two females). Quick phone photo below which conveniently shows all the new fish together

 

[ben1987]

it is nice looking? aqua one?

 

[xxBarneyxx]

I think it is. I tried looking it up on the net but couldn't see anything that was exactly the same.

 

[Morri]

Nice I see are the Anthias Wreck fish or Resplendent Anthias ?

A cleaner Wrasse not sure which sea but guessing not red sea not dark enough for a Red Sea

A Halichores iridis Radiant Wrasse Nice fish

Ehm 3rd one cannot see very well looks like a Fairey of some type but hard to tell

I am a fan of Wrasse and Anthias hope you have a nice tight closed lid just in case they get spooked

 

[xxBarneyxx]

Nice I see are the Anthias Wreck fish or Resplendent Anthias ?

A cleaner Wrasse not sure which sea but guessing not red sea not dark enough for a Red Sea

A Halichores iridis Radiant Wrasse Nice fish

Ehm 3rd one cannot see very well looks like a Fairey of some type but hard to tell

I am a fan of Wrasse and Anthias hope you have a nice tight closed lid just in case they get spooked

Wow, you have a bloody good eye to be able to name them from that blurry photo

Anthias Wreakfish (lyretail anthias), fairly common but one of my favourite fish.

I ummm'ed and arrr'ed over getting the cleaner wrasse. I have always been of the opinion that they are one the the species that are better off left in the sea as they provide a vital function in the wild and their survival rate in captivity is apparently not great (poor shippers and difficult to get to eat due to small mouths and not adapting well to prepared foods). I checked with the LFS to see what it had been eating and it had been taken frozen brine shrimp which was a good first step (at worst I was just going to have to culture baby brine shrimp).

Fortunately though it does take frozen mysis as well, I just have to make sure I get the smaller mysis and at worst cut it up a bit. I'm going to be feeding them (small amounts) 4 times a day anyway to keep the anthias happy so hopefully I shouldn't have any issues with the cleaner wrasse. It is amazing to watch it cleaning the other fish as well, the anthias stop completely still vertically in the water column and open their gill covers for the wrasse to come and clean them.

That reminds me as well. Can anyone recommend a good vitamin enrichment product? I plan to start using this mainly for my clowns (to get them into top breeding condition) but also wanted to use it for the anthias as well as they sometimes have nutritional issues.

Edit: Forgot to say. I have a piece of fine weave net curtain over the tank at the moment (firmly attached). Ordering egg create today to cover it over full term. Normally I would have got the egg crate first but my LFS very rarely has any reef safe wrasse in stock and I had to get them