Whitereef's tanks over the years

Later on in 1999 I went out and purchased a 75 gallon.  It was setup for a few years on my half wall between my kitchen and living room.  While it was setup I used 4 NO fluorescent bulbs, HOB protein skimmer, refugium with sand only, fine crushed coral sand, and live rock.  The tank was okay, but I never built it into the wall like I had hoped.  However, during that time I had a tang that was out of control.  He would intentionally splash water out of the tank and it was causing damage to the wall the tank sat on.  The splashing forced me to move the tank to a different location, the front bedroom.

I remember moving everything and it actually turned out not to bad.  While I had it setup in the front bedroom I was able to witness my encrusting gorgonian spawn, clowns laying eggs, and a good growth with several different corals.  Also I did an upgrade to my lighting and went with 4 VHO bulbs.  They were a great addition and allowed me more freedom in the creatures and such that I could put in to my tank. At that time I also stopped using my protein skimmer as it was a pain to keep clean and was messy.  Also Mark and a few other people had moved away from protein skimmers, so I thought I would try it.  Without a protein skimmer my weekly 5 gallon water changes became more important.

Edited by WhiteReef - March 16 2011 at 9:52am

Then in 2009 I added in several pieces of live rock, sand, and critters from Tampa Bay Saltwater.  I love the stuff, but was never really able to get rid of all the pesky pests and lost much of the delicate life that came in on the rocks.  I blame much of it on the lack of a skimmer and not feeding the tank enough.  Right now things are looking much better as I am being more dedicated to keeping my tank parameters stable and feeding more often.

Edited by WhiteReef - March 21 2011 at 12:13pm

I LOVE THE SPONGE. I have been wanting to get some sponge for some time. Beautiful!
 Pam

Just updating to add in the videos of things in my tank or were in my tank.  Add one to a previous post as it fits better there.

I thought I would add some info and later I will post a few pics.  My tank has been doing well for some time.  The pods have been growing like crazy.  I just hate how my anemones move around.  Since I started feeding phyto every day the anemones have been doing much better and the rest of the tank too.  Because I know my nitrates are a bit high and the refugium holds a large cano mat, I had Tyler build me a skimmer.  Right now I have not had time to install it or play around to see how I can get it to fit, but once I do I will update you all on it.

With how small the sump is and with the reduced space due to the skimmer I am still trying to figure out a way to get some chaeto or calerpa growing in it. Also I saw a pair or ocellaris clownfish at Fish4U I had to buy. They are doing well and I will post pics once I get a good one of them.

**pics added












Edited by WhiteReef - September 05 2011 at 1:29pm

Some notes on the system. I found the manual for the skimmer BK Mini Manual. Also I had an interesting guest show up in my tank the other night.









Edited by WhiteReef - November 16 2011 at 10:58am

What kind of worm(?) is that? The one swimming around. Looks like a large bristle worm, but I've never seen them swim like that.

Edited by Deluxe247 - March 02 2012 at 11:02pm

Thats the exact same thing that hapened to me. The one spot that wasnt covered just had to be where they sleep.... :(  on the bright side your tank looks amazing:P

An update of sorts to my tank. I have been battling two different pests and I think I might be getting the upper hand on one of them. There was a long stretch where I was having cyano building up on the sandbed and rockwork. The things that I did that have slowly yeilded good results. First off I stopped using tap water for my top off. The next one I cleaned my skimmer cup every other day (this improved the amount of export). Also I tried the no light thing and it helped, but not for long since the stuff just kept marching. Along with everything else I cleaned the rocks with a toothbrush in the tank and sucked out stuff off of the sand. Along with that I used phosguard and started doing a twice a week water change for 3 weeks. Now I have scaled it back to once a week. Something else I cleaned up some clutter on the sand by moving a few frags up into my rockwork. So far it is looking better.

The other pest is one that I have not way to know if I can get rid of completly or not. It is a small snail that likes to act as a parasite on my snails. As a result I have lost a lot of snails over the last year or two as a result of them. Luckily they have not attacked my clam. I see them in small groups on my snails sometimes. The only thing aside from manually removing them it to try getting a wrasse that might eat them (not ready for that yet). However, the snail die off may have been linked to the cyano outbreak.

Also I had an interesting thing happen with my derasa clam. It was not staying on the rock shelf and kept falling off. I assumed it was unhappy there, so I moved it to the sandbed. That was a bad idea. The tissue that holds the two shells together was eaten by something while in the sand. Since then I move it back and for the past several months it has been happy, but the tissue does not seem to growing back yet. The nice thing is that it extends its mantle and looks happy, but it is not growing.