EvilTwin's 75g tank - Frag Outpost Forums - Coral Propagation and Reef Aquarium Forums

EvilTwin · 04-20-2006, 08:32 PM

It's been a while since I've updated. This month has been tough with life and work and such. We were away for the holiday, so of course I was paranoid about how the tank would be for three days without me. I had an automatic feeder set up but I don't know how well it worked while I was away. Nothing died that weekend, though. So that was good.

The purple gorgonian is completely gone. The only thing left is the internal skeleton. I wish I could have done something to save it, but it just didn't seem possible. At least it was free.

I lost my hippo tang after two weeks of battling some kind of parasite. At first I thought it was ich and treated for such in a QT but it did no good and she perished. That was a tough two weeks.

I have a BAD diatom outbreak going on and I suspect it was because my DI water filter was out of juice, so my silicates were up. Lots of silicate in my local city supplied water. What is interesting is that the growths of algae, which is spreading in sheets across the bottom, is starting to curl up on itself, so maybe it it finally running out of nutrients in the tank.

Other than that, things appear well. The anemone twins (Thing1 and Thing2) are doing well, and one of the clowns is hosing all of the time in both. It is keeping the other clown from going into either anemone. I have some type of sponge-like creature that has been growing on the back of a rock and has nearly doubled in size. Some baby snails have been getting much bigger and I see them much more often. I have some pics to upload so they will be coming shortly. More to come.

Teeka01 · 04-20-2006, 10:18 PM

I am really sorry to hear about your losses.

EvilTwin · 06-03-2006, 04:33 PM

It's been a while since I have posted anything about my tank as it's been a bit hectic these days. I spent a lot of time battling a red slime alage problem which now seems to be under control. I have built and installed my first attempt at a sump. Since my tank backs up to a wall that is empty on the opposite side in my basement, I was able to plumb through the wall and place everything in the unfinished area of the basement. The most notable and desirable effect is that my skimmer is now in the sump and I can't hear it. The plumbing took two evenings to do along with a few trips to Lowe's. Here's the final pics:

Initially, I was concerned about things running too slowly. The overflow box I have is a Tidepool SOS, which has an interesting mechanism that helps keep it quiet but slows the flow down a bit. It took some adjusting but I finally have it working well. I removed one one of the sweeping powerheads I had as they weren't doing a great job and put in the 400gph unit I have. Lots of flow going on right now. The nice thing about the sump location is it gives me options for plumbing in a good RO/DI unit there and space for a water recepticle for auto top-offs as future upgrades.

As for my critters, the fish all seem to be doing well. My clowns have each adopted one of the two BTAs. The BTAs continue to grow:

EvilTwin · 06-03-2006, 04:35 PM

My corals are another story, and I've been a bit concerned about them all lately, hence the changes in the tank setup. My green button polyp is not looking good after it spawned three new polyps in the last month or so. It seems to have collapsed down on itself. The other smaller polyps appear ok:

I have had an explosion of baby snails, which all appear to be Trochus snails. I had only one of these left in my tank and it seems to be laying eggs continuously. Here's a baby:

EvilTwin · 06-03-2006, 04:35 PM

The free digi frag that I got a while back does not appear to be growing well. In fact, I almost can't tell if it is still alive or not. It's so hard to see any polyps but it looks like something is there:

My blushing finger leather has receded a little as well, I think due to a lack of flow. I've fixed that so we'll see how it does now:

EvilTwin · 06-03-2006, 04:36 PM

The xenia that I had has all but died off. It still manages to stay around and I'm hoping it will get better:

So that's where I'm at right now. Water parameters seem to be as they should be. I suspect the slime outbreak had some negative effects on the tank but now that it is under control I hope things will improve. More to come. Suggestions always welcome.

FragOutpost · 06-06-2006, 09:13 PM

Glad to see that you have your sump setup in the other room. Your setup looks great. I wish that I had enough room on the other side of my tank but on the other side of the wall that my tank backs up to is a hallway.
The digi and xenia are looking a little rough. Xenia is pretty resiliant and can recover in the right conditions but the digi looks like it is beyond hope. What is your ph and alk at? The leather is looking great though.