Sean's 8.5G Rimless Reef - 3/07/2013

An accurate FTS with the help of Adobe Photoshop to correct the color balance.



Skimmer hard at work.

 

Looks great! Wish I had your photo skills

 

Thank you!

I just wish my reflection wasn't in the shot. I should have filtered it out. lol.

 

Tank is a little over two months old and I go off to college in 5 days. Wish me and the tank luck. lol More updates for the tank in a month or two.

Just getting things packed and ready to go...

 

Going to purchase Brightwell Aquatics supplements soon...anyone know who many ml to dose per day? My tank uses up about 25.5ppm calcium daily (and I forget the amount of alk. that gets used).

 

Small update on the tank...

Had a few larger aiptasia in the tank, so Dad got "Julian's Thing" and also some kalkwasser mix from Drs. Foster & Smith online.

He also said there seems to be some excellent growth and coloration among corals, especially the monti cap, which is partly encrusting onto the rock again.

Skimmer wasn't working making many bubbles, but he took it apart and cleaned it; I think it's back to normal now.

 

I hope he gets rid of the Aiptasia.

It's good to hear that the Monti and your other corals are doing good

 

Tank is looking good. I would like to see more of your pluming a little more

 

Thanks!

There is no plumbing with this tank. I don't run a sump; I just have the skimmer (deceiving, huh? ) and 2 powerheads.

 

I'm home for the weekend. Unfortunately I forgot my camera!

I'm impressed with myself. Despite losing >200ppm cal. per week (we have been doing water changes, but it's probably closer to 300-350 by now), the monti cap has gotten quite large, at at least 6" across, probably larger (hard to tell with the water depth, looking from above). The color is much more pink, less orange than it used to be, but is a more intense color, showing strong white growth tips with much encrusting and plating patterns! Lots of PE. Frogspawn is fully extended, LPS have more eyes (feeding tentacles extended) and zoanthids are showing new polyps.

I will test water parameters this weekend and also glue down coral frag plugs.

Salinity level was 1.030. Dad was only topping-off every couple of days. So I fixed that and got it back to 1.026.

Skimmer is producing lots of micro bubbles, which doesn't hurt anything, but is very annoying. I am not going to bother with that until I'm home for Thanksgiving break when I have more time.

We still have about 15 aiptasia of varying sizes, some on rock, others on frag plugs. I will need to get those this weekend as well.

I am so excited for what I see long term for this tank. The plan is to keep it up for several years, while I'm in undergad. at least. No plans to upgrade until then. Next year when I get an apartment I will go SPS-heavy, adding dosing pumps, apex jr, and the large variety of SPS/LPS you see on my coral wishlist on page 1 of this thread.