75 gallon update - muchos grabados!

[MikeP]

Well I had enough of trying to trap my two belligerent honey damsels so ended up taking most of the rock out to catch them. They are now in my sump and I moved my bangaii pair to my 60 gallon in the process. Of course I had to reaquascape some which gave me a chance to hide some of my powerheads - of course I forgot to catch my yellow watchmen for Josh or the fire shrimp for Chad!:




Also having removed some fish (and a few shrimp) I had room for two new additions!

Meet Husker! my new Harlequin Tusk courtesy of the fine folks at Austin Aquariums:



Also on impulse I picked this guy up from Aquatek - just too cool, he's about 6" long and looks almost like an eel with a sailfin.



I also had the chance to stick all my leather corals on one side - may help some on the chemical warfare side - also Tubby the tang is in this shot:



The best I could do to get a pic of my gorgeous T.Maxima from Jim Norris of tanku.net !



Blenny madness continues - I present the amazing Venomous Fang Blenny! Unlike most blennies this group has a swim bladder and are actually very very peaceful unlike my mean as hell biColor. This little guy came from Gary at Aquadome in south Austin - one of the best fish selections in town!



I'm working on getting some more photosynthetic gorgonians to enlarge my gorgonian forest. The ones in the foreground are pterogorgia which are photosynthetic as well as the briareum / corky sea fingers to the right. The red and yellow ones in back are didogorgia species and are not photosynthetic - I am trying to spot feed bit long term they are hard to keep.



Lastly to show that they can be kept in a reef here is Shadow my not so shy Redtooth Trigger with a big ol smile for ya!



Comments welcome!

[RedDragon]

VERY NICE :-D :lol1:

[georgetownreefer]

Very nice pics......I am in the process of going ahead with the 55 gallon FOWLR.....I have my RO setup and I have a question for anyone who can answer it.....My RO storage tank is only 3 gallons how can I keep water until I get enough to fill my tank? What is the best way to store the water that comes from the RO?......


TIA,
MIsty

[Trae]

Awsome Mike,

What set up is it. Lights, filteration etc. and size of the tank. I have a 65 but it is 36" x 24" x 18". Yours looks like it is shallower or longer. But it may be due to your sand depth.

Thanks,
Trae

[MikeP]

Awsome Mike,

What set up is it. Lights, filteration etc. and size of the tank. I have a 65 but it is 36" x 24" x 18". Yours looks like it is shallower or longer. But it may be due to your sand depth.

Thanks,
Trae

Hi trae, lights are right now only 2x 250 watt DE HQI , Aqualine Buschke 10k bulbs on Bluewave electronic ballast and Sunlight Supply Reef Opitx III reflectors (thanks for the advice tim - they are awesome!). I need to add some Actinic supplementation - actually thinking of doing some Osram blue NO bulbs. Photoperiod is currently up to about 7.5 hours a day - will eventually be about 8 for the HQIs with actinics on for 2 hours prior and after.

For water movement I'm using 3 Maxijet 1200's on a Wavemaster Pro. It's a 75 gallon Oceanic reef Ready draining into a 30 gallon sump that contains an Urchin skimmer, a field of mangroves and about 10lbs live rock. Return pump is a Eheim 1260 with a split return line about 1/4 of flow goes to my refugium/lagoon/anemone tank which then drains back into sump.

The refugium has a 6" deep sand bed with about 50 lbs of live rock, seagrass, caulerpa, chaetomorpha, several types of Halimeda and gracilaria. It also houses 2 black perculas, one false percula, a burgundy linckia (doign great so far!) and my breeding Bangaii's. The refugium has 2 rio 600's in there to move water around but flow is gentle overall. I also have a buble tip anemone and a malu anemone. The heteractis malu stays buried in the sand much of the time. The main tank also has a 4" deep sand bed in addition to about 80 pounds of live rock. Refugium is currently lit by 4x 96 watt VHO but am going to place a single 250 watt halide over it as soon as I can get a canopy made.

This tank came about from condensing my 1+ year old nano reef and my 8 month old 46 gallon reef into one larger one. With about 150 gallons water volume plus 2 refugiums and 2 deep sand beds and all the rock it seems very stable - I have to top off fairly often due to the large surface area but I think all the exposed water allows for better gas exhange and oxygenation! Will be setting up my JimD special kalkreactor here soon when I get an affordable dosing pump.

Thanks for the interest!

[Ed]

Very nice setup Mike!

It is beautifully arranged.

Thanks for sharing.

-Ed

[Charley]

Not much I can add to the other postings except WOW!

Charley

[reefer]

nice tank, mike! that tusk fish looks wild!

[witecap4u]

nice tank, mike! that tusk fish looks wild!

Just weeks ago he was!


Sorry, couldnt help myself on this one.