Doratus' 40G - updated 4/29/2012

Awesome thread. Just skimmed through the whole thing. Your tank looks awesome and has come along ways. Your images are AMAZING. I need to budget for a camera. What do you use?

 

Wow, thanks. ;D


My camera is an HTC Aria. :-[ (takes great pics tho I agree)


THANKS FOR ALL THE COMMENTS FROM EVERYONE!

 

So you are telling me that these were taken with a CELL PHONE??????

 

Yep. I had to play with the settings, but yes. haha

The funny (depressing) thing is, I dropped my original phone and it broke into a thousand pieces. That was the phone that took the pics you just posted. Through my replacement plan I got a new phone, same exact model, but the pictures just don't seem as good as they were with the old phone. That first phone was some kind of good-picture-taking phenomenon.

 

How in the hell? Are they edited with software afterwards or did you just upload them as-is?

 

No editing other than to re-size the images, which actually reduced the original quality somewhat.

I found that, at least my phone, when I zoom in all the way I get the highest quality. With cameras generally the more you zoom in the more distorted the picture is but with these digital cameras it's as if the greater the zoom the more details it can actually see. It's weird.

 

Updated FTS. (battle with nitrates/cyano is coming to an end!!!)




A slightly less cool pic, although perhaps a bit more accurate in terms of color and lighting.



The plastic bottle at the bottom is there to protect the brain coral from being harassed by my clown fish. If anybody has a more permanent solution I would be ever grateful.

 

I still can't seem to get my Nitrates down below 10-20ppm. I'm starting to think that maybe there isn't enough live rock in the system. I don't want to load the sump with LR and have it become a detritus farm, and there really isn't any room in my display unless I load up the back wall behind my little island.

What do you think?

I'm ordering a BRS bio pellet reactor in the upcoming group buy, should I just wait and see how that works? I'd love to be able to not need the bio-pellets forever, and not have to rely on anything for good water quality. Although I guess that is what everyone wants.

 

If you have 40lbs of live rock you should be fine. Clean all of your equipment thoroughly to remove as much detritus as possible. Cut back on your feeding and increase cleaning frequency. Add a fuge with macro algae if you don't have one. 10ppm and lower will be fine for a reef.

 

Update 8/10/2011

Quite a few changes for this update:
1. Removed Six Line Wrasse
2. Added what I believe to be a Filamented Flasher Wrasse (some kind of flasher to be sure)
3. Added ORA Banggai Cardinal pair
4. Removed giant kenya tree
5. Added SPS frag where kenya tree used to be
6. Consolidated all Xenia into frags to be donated/sold
7. Removed Watchman goby, and Clown goby
8. Added ORA Mandarin
9. Added various shrooms and zoas
10. Switched 8 month old stock lights to ATI
11. Added BRS bio pellet system
12. Completed top cover

...and I still feel like I'm missing something.

(1,2)The Six-Line had to go because it would not play nice with the Flasher Wrasse. (good trade in my book)

(3)The Cardinal pair are awesome. I've had them for about 10 days now and they are eating frozen food like there is no tomorrow. One had a little fin nip going on which has since completely healed up. Now I just hope they are actually a pair and not two males or two females. (check out the pic and tell me what you think?)

(4,5,6)I decided I needed more room for the corals I really want, so I hacked down the Kenya tree and traded it for an acro frag. I half expect this SPS to die so it's just a cheap experiment really. I also took all my Xenia and moved them on to rubble pieces so I can get rid of them. Simply throwing a living creature in the garbage while it's still alive just doesn't seem right to me. Either way, I now have a lot more room to play with.

(7)The Watchman Goby was removed because he basically stayed behind the rocks all day. He didn't do much to clean the sand either, which was the reason I bought him in the first place. Trying to battle nitrates while having a large fish that serves no purpose to me just didn't make sense.

(8 )The clown goby started to nip at my new SPS frag, and he was bothering the leather that he had made his home. I feel bad for the little guy because he didn't do anything wrong, and he really seemed to be happy in my tank. It's my fault for not knowing that he would eat SPS, not his.

(9)I added an ORA Mandarin basically on a whim. The Mandarin is a fish that has always been on my list but I never wanted to take the risk for my sake but also for the sake of the fish. In fact I did buy one shortly after my tank was established and of course it died of starvation. Long story short I got a green ORA Mandarin for a highly discounted price after watching it eat frozen food with my own two eyes. The Mandarin has only been with me for 2 days, but is already eating frozen, so I think it should work out.

(10)The stock T5's I had running were never good bulbs to begin with, not to mention they were 8 months old. The new ATI's make it feel like a whole new aquarium. (check out the pic)

(11)In my battle against nitrates I finally broke down and purchased a bio-pellet system from BRS. The system is up and running with no problems, now it's just time to wait and see what happens.

(12)This was something I probably should have done before anything else on this list, but I had to wait for the BRS group buy to start before I could buy the clear netting. (DIY window screen style)


Whew! I feel worn out just making this post. School starts again in exactly 12 days so it feels really good to have gotten all of these things accomplished. Now I can focus on school because the only maintenance should be water changes and top-offs. BRS says to leave your system alone for 8 weeks after introducing bio-pellets so it's like a win-win-win (yes, 3 wins) situation.

I'm very pleased... Now if I could just figure out how to get the dang clown pair to stop messing with my brain!

New Mandarin.



Cardinal pair. I believe, in both pictures, that the male is the one on the bottom and female is on top. What do you think?


I put the reactor directly into the sump. I realize this is probably unorthodox but it minimizes head pressure, which is a concern with the maxi-jet, and leaks will never be a problem. I don't see anything wrong with this method, but if you do, please let me know!