Tank birthday, 40 years

[Paul B]

This week I added this guy. I was afraid my larger, old male watchman would kill it and at first he chased it all over the place but after a few hours he tired of that and now they just ignore each other and get on with their lives.
I am amazed at my algae trough and it is filled with all sorts of thick algaes of diferent colors. The water is having a hard time getting through but there is none of it in my tank. This thing has really stopped the algae cycles I used to get in this tank where it would cover everything.
Also for some reason a 3" montapora bleached a few weeks ago, I am not sure why, but I left it in the tank and didn't niotice it any more as it fell behind the rocks. Today my urchin carried it to the front like he does with everything that is not nailed down and the thing is growing back. There are 4 dime size patches of life on it and it was completely bare. I am happy about it but it is wierd. Another montipora is also growing faster than I have ever seen these things grow. This is just one of those strange things that we can't explain. I am leaning towards coral wars as nothing I can see happened and the rest of the corals are fine. The same thing happened to my Birds nest and now it is growing relatively fast.
In this hobby many of us go crazy when a coral dies but most of the time if it is only one or two specimins and everything else is OK there is nothing you could do. When we mix all of these complex creatures, sometimes from different oceans in a closed system, they, like us, don't always get along. They all exude chemicals and those chemicals degrade but sometimes not fast enough. These chemicals were designed to keep corals from growing too close in the vast sea, in a confined tank it is a wonder anything survives

 

[Paul B]

Today I had to clean out my algae trough as the water in it was almost overflowing. It grew so much brown hair algae that it was clogged.

As I was doing that I noticed this acropora and I would swear the thing grew an inch in a month.
It is hard to tell and I can't find a picture of it older than a month ago.
This is it 4 weeks ago

And this is it today.
Even some branches that I broke off and left there, fused back to the main structure. I only really added this guy because so many people told me that SPS corals will not live in my dirty tank.
The one to the left of the acropora is the oldest one in there and has also put on more than 25% of it's size. But, what do I know?

 

[Paul B]

Today I think I will go to a new LFS that opened up near here. I have a choice of about 6 LFSs with in a few miles of my house but most of them always get the same old boreing, common things. How many yellow tangs, angelfish and triggers do we need?
I want to get a male mandarin to date my female now that she became an adult and wears eye make up. I also need a male blue stripped pipefish before the female gets too old. She is already on social security and past what their lifespan usually is but I think she is a cougar and a male would do her good. Her last boyfriend died after a lifetime of, well, you know.
I would also like to get a female watchman gobi but they are very hard to tell the sexes, unless you can see her eyelashes. The female died after 10 years of egg laying and the male looks bored.
You rarely see anything new and exciting any more, but I guess if you do this long enough, you have had everything there is a number of times. :strange:
I have this grape coral that I got for almost free when a LFS went out of business. It was just about dead with only a sliver of tissue left. Now it is almost completely re grown and is my largest coral. It gets oil soaked pellets every day. I am still experimenting with this gel food and I am still not crazy about it. Clams are still my favorite food next to worms. Clams are also my favorite food and I have them every week. For the tank I buy a live chowder clam for about fifty cents and freeze it. Then I slice off thin pieces to feed the corals and fish. Clams are great because it is one food where you can feed the entire animal. Shrimp, scallop, squid and octopus are not as good because we are only feeding the mussle tissue where the least amount of nutrition is. That is the parts we eat, but we are not fish. Most of us anyway. :fish2:

 

[Paul B]

Today I added a small female mandarin in the hopes my male will find her attractive, or at least cute. She is too small to mate but they grow quickly. I am pretty sure she is a female but at this size it is harder to tell. My male does not yet seem to be excited as he just displays his dorsal fin and does not look happy with her. Either he thinks she is ugly, or she is a he
If that is the case, there is almost no way I could catch "him" But I should know in a day or so.
I just cleaned the algae trough which at this time is full of red filimentageous algae. Some months it is green hair algae but now it is red.
I really don't care what kind of algae it is as long as it only grows in the trough and not on my corals.
Also the fact that it is growing anyplace means that it is removing some type of nutrients from the water as it is supposed to be doing.
Everything including the SPS and LPS are happy, healthy and growing so all is well. Of course this won't last and some cycle of something will start but that is when the hobby is exciting.

I took some pictures. I can't get a full tank shot because the tank is so long and shallow.

I love this algae although most people would not

 

[maxxena]

congrat paul, i'm inspired.

 

[Paul B]

Thank you Maxxena

 

[Paul B]

My 5' algae trough just about fell into the tank. It was so full of hair and other algae's that it filled up with water and became too heavy for the flimsy acrylic angles that I had holding one side of it to the side of the top rim. I remove the entire thing to make new (flimsy) angles. I don't have time right now to re design the thing.
I cleaned out the algae and it was very thick and heavy. I also rescued uncountable brittle stars and amphipods but I also lost plenty of them.
It is back together and working like a charm. My skimmer is going crazy now from all the "gook" that came off the trough when I removed it.
I think I finally took a decent FTS

 

[Paul B]

I noticed that I have this wierd bubble algae growing only on my cement rocks. Randy gave me an Idea and suggested that it "may" be the iron that is attracting the algae to the cement. It could be another chemical in cement but I will try iron first.
I made a slab of cement about 6 square inches and I ground up some nails with a grinder into the surface of the wet cement. I will let it cure for a week then put it in my algae trough. The trough is there to grow algae anyway and I want to see if I can enhance that ability with iron filings.
I want as much algae growing in the trough as can fit.
I love this stuff. :tongue1:

 

[Paul B]

The test plugs are done and soaking in fresh water. One has iron and one is just cement. In a few days I will put them in my algae trough. I am really hoping the iron sintered one grows more algae, if it does I will line the entire bottom of the trough in the stuff in the hope that it will grow more algae. I think it will. Of course it may also grow more algae in the entire tank and that would not be what I am going for but you have to experiment to learn these things.
The tank is running beautifully with nothing receeding or dying. All the SPS seem to be growing and the LPS are all doing great from being fed clams and oil soaked pellets every day. I re designed my live worm keeper so I don't have tobuy worms very often, they don't get caught in the powerhead and seem to be breeding but I am not sure about that.
Have a great Christmas which is also my birthday.
Take care
Paul

 

[Paul B]

I think I have too many animals in my tank now and I need to stop adding things.
I also realize that In all these pages I don't think I ever mentioned what is in the tank.
I am going to try to list the animals but not the corals because I can't remember names to save my life.
I now have a copperband
2 fireclowns
a bluestriped pipefish
2 mandarins
an algae bleeny
a yellow wrasse
a rainsford gobi
2 unidentified red and yellow stripped cardinals
yellow clown gobi
4 various gobi's one is a watchman
and 4 chromis, two of them I got today and I never seen this type before. They are silver with a yellow horizontal stripe. Not extreamly great looking but If I never seen it before, I got to get it.
I don't know how many grass shrimp are in there, maybe a dozen and about the same with hermit crabs and mud snails. But there is a cool decorator crab and of course an arrow crab, you got to have an arrow crab.
I am sure I missed a few but thats all I can remember.

 

[cybermeez]

Is that little dish a version of a Mandarin Diner? BTW did "she" turn out to he a she?

 

[rookie07]

Paul,
I think putting an age (when you can remember it) next to each fish on the list above would be very interesting to people. If i recall correctly, the fire clowns are 17?

Looking good as always (although i suspect some of the last set of pictures had a few repeats).

 

[rcharliesam]

Amazing tank.

I too am curious about the ages of the fish.

 

[Paul B]

I think putting an age (when you can remember it) next to each fish on the list above would be very interesting to people. If i recall correctly, the fire clowns are 17?

So you assume I write this stuff down.
I can guess.

I now have a copperband less than a year
2 fireclowns, one is 17 the other is about 5
a bluestriped pipefish, maybe 2
2 mandarins, one is about 3 or 4 one is new
an algae bleeny, I have no idea
a yellow wrasse, maybe two
a rainsford gobi, 3
2 unidentified red and yellow stripped cardinals, less then a year
yellow clown gobi, about 2 or 3
2 wierd looking yellow striped chromis I got today
4 various gobi's one is a watchman, they range from about 12 or 13 to about a year, one may be 5
The oldest fish was a cusk eel, I lost him in an accident at age 18 and my moorish Idol who I lost in the same accident was 5.
I give away a lot of fish to either hobbiests or a public aquarium.

I recently lost my pair of 13 year old hermit crabs
These guys

 

[rookie07]

13 yr old hermit?!?! That is amazing!

 

[Paul B]

Both of them were 13. They disappeared the same time, maybe they eloped.

 

[rookie07]

Both of them were 13. They disappeared the same time, maybe they eloped.

Maybe they both had facelifts and you can't recognize them anymore?

 

[tenMann2]

Are the new chromis you referring to look like this?
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/prod_Display.cfm?c=720&pCatId=1430

I had two, that looked like this but changed to jet black in like 8 months and grow to 2" from 1/2" in the same time.

 

[ohana888]

Both of them were 13. They disappeared the same time, maybe they eloped.

sorry to hear - they were monsters! the bottles look at least 20? HA! btw, wanna do lunch again?

 

[Paul B]

Are the new chromis you referring to look like this?
http://www.liveaquaria.com/product/p...20&pCatId=1430

I had two, that looked like this but changed to jet black in like 8 months and grow to 2" from 1/2" in the same time.

If they grow to 2" and are a menace, I see a chromis trap in their future. I am glad you told me, I was going to get more.

sorry to hear - they were monsters! the bottles look at least 20? HA! btw, wanna do lunch again?

Sure, why not.

Phil, you may be correct. I think those hermits went on weightwatchers and now look like this