30 gallon tank - Pic Intensive

[hoho19]

I haven't posted pics of my tank and wanted to get some feedback. The pics are hosted on a slow server so give them a little while to show up.

Well this has been set up for about 4 months now. Here is a full tank shot.



My parameters taken this past weekend are:
Ammonia: 0.00 ppm
Nitrite:0.00 ppm
Nitrate: 20 ppm <---I suspect this is my water
Calcium: 440ppm
Alkalinity: 7.875 dKH
pH 8.3
Salinity: 1.023
Temp: 82.7
I know that my alk is a little low and I'm slowly hoping to get that up to around 10 or so by using some baking soda.
I have about 15-20 pounds of live rock. A little low, but that's what it is :-P It has an 18K PowerGlo™ florescent light in there.

I use RODI water (started with tap water, but now use RODI) from Purely H20. It's a vision series one. They are redoing their website I think so I can't link to the specific one.

It has a DIY 10 gallon sump and refugium.


The light over the refugium is a 6.5K Daylight Spectrum™ Compact florescent from Walmart. It was $8.
The return pump is a 500gph through a SCWD™. This provides wave-like action in the tank.
A Precision Marine ES100 protein skimmer is driven by a Danner Mag 7 pump. That provides 700gph through a skimmer rated for 100 gallons. It's probably overkill on my 40 gallon system but oh well

It's cooled by a computer fan. I still need to build an enclosure for it so I don't stick my fingers in and and loose one :P


Vertebrate inhabitants:
3 firefish - Nemateleotris magnifica




3 Mollies - Poecilia sphenops - These were converted from freshwater. They were used to cycle the tank. There were 7 to begin with. 2 first generation and 1 second generation remain. I don't have a current picture for them. But here is an old one. The 24 carat gold in the front and the black one are the survivors.


1 Lawnmower Blenny - Salarias fasciatus




Invertebrates:
2 Cleaner Shrimp - Lysmata amboinensis


6-10 blue legged hermit crabs - Phimochirus operculatus


1 Mexican Turbo Snail - Turbo fluctuosa
ACK I have no picture of him. I should take one :P

Lots of tube worms!


lots of q-tip sponges


Corals:
2 Xenia Colonies - Xenia umbellata and Xenia elongata. Currently they are a little agitated. They are new as of last week.
Xenia umbellata



Xenia elongata



1 Frogspawn coral - Euphyllia divisa



2 mushrooms - Not sure here...If anybody could help that'd be great.
red with white spots. I got these from ace and jeff respectively.



red with white stripes



3 button polyps of some sort. If anybody has an ID on those that'd be great. These are from Jeff.



1 colony of green star polyps - Pachyclavularia sp.
These aren't doing that great and I don't know why. They come out sometimes but not very extended. :(

[1460sun]

1 colony of green star polyps - Pachyclavularia sp.
These aren't doing that great and I don't know why. They come out sometimes but not very extended.