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So today I arrived in South Beach Miami. I am here for a trade show for work. I have never been to Florida before, but so far it is very neat. Our hotel is RIGHT on south-beach, like literally the back of the hotel borders sand. We arrived around 4pm local time and posed around south beach, because it is Monday night there isn’t much to do. However, even on Monday night there is something neat going on – we went to a bar called ‘Mangos’ which is like this latin club / bar. It had live Reggae music and dancing performances.

As we walked around south beach I saw about 5 places with ‘reef tanks’. They were actually FOWLR with tons of aptasia sp. .

This week should prove to be tons of fun.

So I wanted to post some quick shots of the progress on my Planted tanks over the past 2 months:

3 Gallon Pico

From a few months ago

January 19th 2008

12 Gallon Nano

A few months ago

January 19th 2008

Today I went with my Wife and a coworker to Disneyland. I am no stranger to Disneyland, about a year and a half ago my Wife and I got yearly passes, and we renewed them again this year. Today we went, and we largely just walked around, looking at the people, and some of the things none of us had seen before. We went and saw some of the first Mickey cartoons, and looked around at the miniatures. Our coworker brought a book that had all of these secrets about things.

One of the things the cast members at Disneyland did while building all of the attractions was put “Hidden Mickeys” into the rides. We found a bunch of them, in the Snow White ride on the turtle on the stairs, in the Pirates ride on a piece of armor at the end, and a few more.

I took a bunch of pictures, we showed up at about 4pm, the lighting was gorgeous and I took a bunch of pictures of reflections in the water, I am really impressed with how they came out. They are really much better than most pictures I am used to taking. I am going to start trying to take more pictures, hopefully they will come out half as good as these.

So today I had a plan. A plan to make my tank look a bit more awesome than it did yesterday. I have several main problems with my tank.

1. Lack of color (other than the PINK of the Xenia and Bubble)
2. Lack of fish population
3. I lack check valves in my return lines, which could lead to a (very bad) spill

With some goals in mind I trotted off to the 2 fish stores, and Home Depot. LFS got me two buckets of fresh Catalina seawater. This particular LFS has great big colonies, but nothing that ‘exciting’ if you know what I mean – lots of the normal sort of stuff.

I went to the second LFS, this LFS is different because it has more exotic things. I picked up a big colony of Tri-color Red/Green Zoonathids, a Niger Trigger, a Spotted Mandarin, and some live brine. In reading this, you may think I am crazy, likely for a few reasons:

1. Spotted Manadrins are Impossible to keep! – That is true enough, but happen to use a few special tricks to keep mine up and going with such a small tank. First, I had a blue striped Mandarin long ago, he was sucked into a powerhead – it was downhill from there. So when I got home I put the spotted Mandarin into a bucket and filled it up with an inch and a half of water from my tank (the begining of my water change). I put a few hundred live brine shrimp in the bucket with the Mandarin. I left the Mandarin alone in there for a good 30 minutes while he feasted on the brine, then I plopped him into the display tank. As we speak he is grazing the live rock for pods and getting one every few seconds – but I suspect he is a bit full.
2. Niger Trigger – I keep shrimp, I love shrimp – they are the most interesting things in my tank right now. So you might be thinking that I am insane for putting a known predator of these into my tank. Well, not really. First off – the Niger Trigger is the most docile of all triggers and is largely regarded as docile, especially when introduced to an established reef environment (check). Secondly, they are only dangerous to shrimp. I have 3 shrimp in my tank currently. A (big) cleaner, a (giant) camelback, and a 1″ pistol shrimp paired with a goby. The Pistol is safe for obvious reasons, as is the cleaner. The Camelback is about the same size as the Trigger (the specimen I got is only about 3″ long). I haven’t seen any quarreling yet, and I don’t expect it going forward.

After my visit to LFS #2 I went to Home Depot and I picked up 2 check valves and some misc plumbing parts. I introduced the new fish as mentioned above and I turned off the return pumps. I put in the shot of live brine shrimp, and then I took the piping apart at the unions and installed the check-valves. I let the check-valves sit for a good 30 minutes with the quick-dry PVC cement before turning the pumps back on. During that time the fish went wild for the brine, but there was WAY too much brine to go around.

I made sure that my filter sock was attached properly and turned the return pumps back on. After about an hour most of the brine had either gone down the overflow or was eaten. I tossed the filter sock into the washer with a towel I had used, cleaned out the collection cup on the protein skimmer, and wham – I have a clean tank.

I rearanged a bunch of my coral today to move some of the coral that wasn’t liking the new and improved lighting, and made room for the 150+ polyp zoonathid rock. Specifically I moved one of my leather corals up higher ( it responded nicely to the new lighting so I figured it was happy). I moved a toadstool leather coral down and to the side (it hated the new light). I also moved my torch coral from the top, to the bottom side. All of these placements seem better for each piece than the position prior.

The Clam is still doing great, I am eying another. This time I think I would go for a blue (with stripes?) Maxima. The SPS frags that I got last week are looking good, their (tiny) polyps can be seen extending at various times, which is a good sign. Hopefully they will do well. Below are a few pic’s that I took today. Enjoy!

Full Tank Shot

Red and Green Zoonathids

Purple Clam

My Bicolor Blennie has been picking at my new clam. He was banished to the fuge. I chased him into a piece of live rock an d put it into the fuge until he swam out. I additionally banished 4 of the aggressive Snails – I saw one of them crawling on the clam.

With all the new light I am getting a slight diatom bloom on the glass – to be expected. Additionally, some of the coral is a bit freaked out by all of the light. Specifically the Xenia sp. and the Toadstool leather. The new SPS and Zoo’s are doing great.

So with my new metal halide confidence I went to the LFS today on a mission, and ended up with the following:

•  5″ purple and blue Crocea Clam. This was the smallest, and best looking of the 4 Crocea clams that my LFS had. They have had them in stock for like 6 months and came out of a local tank. I am confident that it will do well under my new lighting. After being in the tank for about 10 minutes it has already opened up a bit and is moving water.
•  Tiny Green  branching Acopora frag. It doesn’t look too good but I’m told that the parent colony was bright green. We will see how it turns out.
•  Tiny purple Montipora frag. This postage stamp sized frag is alread molding over a tiny piece of rock. I selected it over a few other ‘floating’ pieces. It is bright purple, matching the Crocea.
•  5x Zoonathid Polyps frag. These polyps look great, they are green red and blue. I shoved them into a crevice in some live rock

I suppose I have to start checking my calcium levels to keep these guys moving. Although with the tiny frags, I suspect they aren’t going to be much of a load on the calcium. I want to get a realtime digital PH gauge so that I can dose more confidently with Kalkwaser to alleviate any calcium problems, and keep AK in line.

So the power went out here sometime yesterday in a very odd way. It was like a 24 hour continuous brownout. There was enough voltage to power incandescent bulbs (with very low light output), my cell phone and laptop charger, and that’s about it. The CF lights on the tank were on, but very dim. The pumps were on, but just clicking, unable to make any water move. I powered the whole tank off with the master switch.

It went out like this sometime yesterday. Now all my networking equipment was up, which is good – but that was useless because our cable carrier’s equipment was down.

The power just came back on full a few minutes ago. I power my tank back on. Last night when I went to sleep the tank was at 78 degrees, the normal temperature of the tank. Right now it is at 72 .

Most things look okay. It looks like I lost one head of frogspawn for sure, and maybe my hammer coral. I think if anything is going to die it will take a few days to know for sure.

My freshwater tanks were fine, nothing adverse in there. Yet they are not nearly as sensitive as my reef tank. I don’t even run heaters in my planted tanks, and could likely get away without a pump in my 12 gallon!

Much to my delight and surprise the new halide lighting fixture that I ordered on Wednesday arrived yesterday. Last night I set it up on the mounts. It was only on for a few hours but WOW what an amazing difference. The unit has a great fit-and-finish and the 14k Metal Halide bulb looks fantastic with the true 192W of true atinic CF.

I will take some pictures in the next few days and post some before / after shots.

One of the big reasons that I waned this light was so I could house some clams. They are the best looking thing in reef tanks I think. After my system gets used to the additional light (I am expecting an algae bloom) I think I will pick one up.

I have had my current (192W CF 50/50) lighting fixture for about a year. I need to replace the bulbs. In looking into getting new bulbs I decided that I should just get a new, more powerful fixture. I selected a fixture with the following specs:

• 1x 250W Metal Halide 14k
• 2x 96W CF Actinic

I am thinking I am going to hang it from the celling with some wire. The fixture is not designed for this but I think I can rig it up to hang from the fan vents in the top. It also has standard mounting brackets which I may use.

Now with the Halide lighting I can keep things like Clams and SPS, which I could not keep with the CF alone.

Additionally, I am going to attempt to get my reef on real parameters. This means actually testing various settings and adjusting things based off it. I have a feeling that I have a few things awry. Some of my coral do GREAT and others do AWFUL, examples: My Torch, Bubble, an Xenia do GREAT. However, Zoonathids slowly whither and die, as do Gonaporia. Muchrooms do OK but don’t seem to grow as much as they should. I suspect a Phosphate or trace problem.  To put this into perspective, I have never tested. Like not even ONCE any parameter in my aquarium other than salinity.  I don’t do any dosing other than weekly 10% water changes with real saltwater from Catalina.

I am going to pick up a test kit at the LFS today so that I can hopefully get the problem(s) identified before the new light arrives in a few days.

Yesterday my wife and I rode our bikes to the local coffee shop for a quick cappichino and treats. This particular parking lot is a stone’s throw from LAX, and is on the corner of a busy street. We sat on the patio so we could watch the cars, something I really enjoy doing. This had the added benifit of making sure our bikes didn’t get lifted by a passer-by.

Anyways, we see this guy hop into his Black / Black Ferrari 612. When it gets closer we notice the GIANT (22″?) chrome rims on it, clearly exposing the now 5″ gap between the Carbon-Ceramic brakes (with the signature yellow paint) and the wheel. It ruined the car.

Ferrari (and Pininfarina) design good cars. They don’t choose rims, rim size brake disk size, or any of that other stuff lightly. The 612 has a well balanced, soft design. Throwing giant rims on it is like garnishing a beautiful Kobe Fillet with a slab of lard.

So, if your reading this and you own a Kobe Fillet, leave it well enough alone and enjoy it.