Haven't Posted On Here For Ages.

[johnnyjtaylor]

As the title says I haven't posted on here for ages and reading a few posts I don't seem to recognise too many names, but hey ho, if you remember me hello and if you don't hello
My tank is going through a bad patch at the minute, a few weeks ago I had the lighting fail and be off all day(as I was at work) and as it was a Monday,I had to limp along with a single marine white T5 until the saturday when I had an oppertunity to go to the LFS(never again, spare tubes now at hand ) The result of all this is my LPS have really suffered, my frogspawn has gone from 8 vibrant heads to 2 sunk in the skeleton ones, my brain coral has shown a bit of skeleton through the flesh and my candycane has lost several heads . However I'm sure they will all recover, the biggest bugger was that it was time to trade in some frogspawn at the LFS for credit . I'm also currently suffering the worst outbreak of hair algea for 2 years(related problem I'm sure), oh the joy!
So with all this I've decided its time to treat the old reef to some tlc. The first thing I've done is to get rid of my six line spawn of the devil, er I mean wrasse. He ate my cleaner shrimp, he ate my crabs(hermits and mithrax) and he ate my snails!!! I traded him in for a fire shrimp and bought a couple of red legs and a citron goby while I was there. I'm now going to gradually build up a new clean up crew and battle the algea, which seems to out compete the skimmer for waste as the water always reads 0 phosphate,0 nitrate and yet still lots of algea persists.

Its not all bad though, my soft corals are fine as are the fish

New commer


New Goby, hes very thin but eats well, so we'll soon have him fattend up!


Fireball pygmy


Clowns


Some Zoas


Yellow polyps


The left hand side of my tank, complete with algea(you don't get to see the right hand side its much worse)


Just click the little pics for big pics


Johnny

 

[shibby]

welcome back!

always nice to have a refurb of a reef, ive heard alot of bad things about 6line wrasses mine was as good as gold !

looks forward to see the revamp, cuc are better to observe then fish anyday anyway

 

[ben1987]

hi johnny, love that goby

 

[TigerIssey]

You have some lovely zoas and the clowns are gorgeous.

If you have room you may want to add a second fire shrimp. Seffie advised me to as you see more of them when they are a pair. I love mine too, little characters.

Will look beautiful when you win the battle with the hair algae. Another Emerald may help however Trod has had issues with hers moving rocks and having rock falls because of it.

 

[SkiFletch]

Heh, welcome back . Tough to hear about your troubles but at least the tank still looks good

 

[johnnyjtaylor]

TigerIssy, I won't leave just one lonely shrimp in my tank but my LFS charges £20 each for these, so the one I've got will have to wait for a bit to get a friend.

...... Tough to hear about your troubles........

They're not troubles Ski, just a bump in the road and a damn fine excuse for spending a bit of money on the reef , although with a baby on the way in August ,Mrs Johnny has me spending my 'hard earned' on fancy 3 wheeled prams etc. Still Johnny Jnr will need a nice tank full of calming 'fishies' to look at won't he

Johnny <------- heads to garage to drag out old 30g

 

[Truck]

looks good! some good photo's there, lovely zoas, if only i could get some that nice from my LFS, i will have to import some good one.

 

[johnnyjtaylor]

........lovely zoas, if only i could get some that nice from my LFS, i will have to import some good one.

Sometimes the bland ones colour up really nicely under decent lights, for example the ones in my pic had orange mouths at the LFS but very little blue, just a hint and a spec here and there, now as you can see they have coloured up beautifully.

Johnny

 

[johnnyjtaylor]

Went to the LFS today and got another fire shrimp to keep the other one company and scored myself five electric blue hermits(AKA blue knuckle hermits, AKA Marshall Island hermits{Calcinus elegans})

This little fella has hung around the front of the tank all afternoon(click piccys for BIG PICCYS)





He's ambitious too, think this is a little big for him






These are known for eating hair algea and being bulldozers, so I guess they will be pointing out all my loose rocks and corals.......... now wheres that miliput

Johnny

 

[TigerIssey]

You will not regret the decision to get another fire shrimp.

After feeding last night I sat watching the pair of mine for a couple of hours. Popping up through holes I did not even know were connected.

Took some great photos of them too. Best decision I made and the second has only been in a week.

 

[rabbut]

I'm sure those hermits should be awarded an ASBO. Most Blue legs will go after other hermits and snails quite aggressively...

 

[johnnyjtaylor]

I'm sure those hermits should be awarded an ASBO. Most Blue legs will go after other hermits and snails quite aggressively...

These aren't the more common blue legs to which you refer and I don't have and don't intend to get any snails, so no problem there...........................................................................
......................................................................

 

[bagu]

very VERY nice tank!

i love the clowns

 

[rabbut]

Fair enough They look cool, so if they are good to mix with other hermits, you have some cracking little additions. The one(s) in the photos above are real characters

All the best
Rabbut

 

[shibby]

blue knuckles are by far the best hermits =] although a tad expensive sometimes...