Pancake-shaped live rock with Zoanthids

Gotta put this one up for sale in the local reef club.

Aquasculpture of 50 gallon Reef Tank & Radion XR30w Installation

The Radion LED light fixture was installed over the 50 gallon tank. I used 1/4" Molly toggle bolts to install the custom hanging kit to the ceiling. I had to make over-sized, messy holes (I should have read the link and used the nylon toggle anchors, instead) in the ceiling and will have to putty and re-paint it, but the aquarium kinda takes away from you ever noticing the holes above.

I installed the software and programmed the fixture to Natural mode.

Then, I aquascaped using a minimalist approach; I used only 4 large live rocks from my main 110 gallon reef tank. Two of the largest rocks were drilled to accept an acrylic rod between them so that they could support each other with no wobbling. I tried using acrylic rods on several small pieces of live rock, but it just looked too much like Shish Kabobs to me. So, the small pieces went to the refugium for later use.

I had to pluck off dozens of green majano anemones from the rocks. And, with a lot of diligence, I plan to keep up with removing these pests until they're completely eradicated from this tank. It should be easier to access the rocks with this cube tank, but I have a feeling the Aiptasia will move in once the majanos are gone. My main tank kept sprouting majano anemones from areas I could not access, so I just gave up.

Here's a night time pic of the tank in its bare-bottom format. I'm thinking of buying some sugar grain sand to cover the bottom. Then, I'll fill it up with livestock from my main tank. I was trying to avoid the "pile of rocks" look, but it still looks like a pile of rocks! Ha! I'll be sure to separate the pieces when the sand bed gets installed.

The Downgrading

I recently purchased a 50 gallon Starfire glass cube aquarium (born on 29jan2012) with a glass sump and stand from an SDReef user. The tank, stand and accessories were still in their packing boxes as he had decided he'd rather go with a larger setup. Since I've always wanted a glass tank to take better shots of my specimens and I was thinking about downgrading to a smaller tank, I went for the purchase. So far, I've replaced the main pump with a Tunze 1073.40 (still trying to "break in" and waiting for the humming to dissipate).

The 1" bulkhead was not easy to tighten (without over-tightening) and I've got a mini-micro-leaking going on. The rest of the plumbing is working out. I've got more work to do, but at least I can get an "instant reef" from my main 110 gallon reef tank.

I'm now stuck at the "aquascaping" part. I want to go with pillars of rocks rather than a pyramid pile of rocks in the center. More on that, if I'm successful, later.

Reef Warfare

Wow. After yanking out a few majanoe pest anemones from the tank, something coincidentally triggered a reef warfare among the yellow birdsnest coral (the dead, white coral in the middle of the pic) and the brown, stringy Pavona behind it. The Red Planet coral to the right of the dead birdsnest also suffered. There is some tissue death at the base of the Red Planet, but it has since slowed down, so I think it's going to stabilize. If not, I'd have to frag it to pieces so that I won't lose $100's of dollars of a worthy coral. Meanwhile, I've noticed that there are parts of the yellow birdsnest coral that have BGA at the base which seems to have protected it from further tissue death.

RKE updated

After determining that the RKE head unit was corrupt, I sent it in for repairs. It somehow got fried after I did the firmware updates. Who knows what did it? But, it wasn't too much of a loss for me since I actually got the free V2 head unit trade-in when it was available back when. So, I went ahead and purchased a replacement unit and it's been up and running since May 3rd.

With the NET module working, I was able to look at the data that's been recording. Temperature reflects San Diego weather that affects the house:

The pH is fluctuating with lights on/off as it should (a spike marks a water change):

I still haven't bothered calibrating ORP since I don't really use it to push the tank in either direction. The spikes correspond to the water changes that are done once every 2 weeks. The ORP is inversely related to the pH.

The data are not uploaded to any website just yet since the router I'm using is not able to act as an access point. I'll have to search Craigslist for some old router or get a fancy Airport Express that I can hook up to a sound system and listen to Airtunes for my big fat Airhead.

Hammers for Sale!

...and 5-6 heads of hammer corals for sale!

Here's an example of the Mother colony:

Fungia for Sale

Get your green, hot Fungia's for sale!