Zoomonsters 200g Build Continued

zoomonster

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Well... this build actually started 22 months ago and my build thread was on another board, that bans even mentioning this board, I've grown somewhat tired of. Been there since near the beginning, probably 90's, and had something of a rocky relationship as have many but that's enough about that. Many of my preferred vendors are here like Unique Corals, Battlecorals etc. and I finally made the jump.

Anyway I built my first saltwater tank about 89-90 when I was living near Philadelphia (remember Martin's Aquarium in Philly?) and it rapidly turned into a reef tank. I've gone through various phases of mixed tanks but mostly into Acro's and some LPS and softies now. Been in the hobby since except a few years when I was forced into the nomad lifestyle by the economy and moved around quite a bit (software engineer by profession). Eventually I ended up here in Florida (born here) and got back into it with a passion when I finally bought another house with a certain degree of permanency. Still have a lot of roots in Houston, where I mostly grew up and went to school, but going back there is probably never going to happen.

Anyway on to the aquarium...
 
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zoomonster

zoomonster

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A lot more pics to come (especially of residents) but this was basically day one.

This build got off to a rocky start actually trying to get DSA to build and deliver my tank. After what I went through with them small wonder they are now out of business. Other than that its been a good tank/stand and fortunately no issues since my warranty is now useless. I've gone through some equipment changes (mainly MH to LED and powerheads) since I started this but this is my current setup.

Tank: DSA 200 w/black back/bottom, center overflow, 3 X 1" drains, 2 x 3/4 returns
Stand: DSA Black with PVC liner
Sump/Refugium: Precison Marine R36+
Lighting: 5x Kessil 360WE Tuna Blue controlled by Apex
Return Pump: Waveline DC6000 Internal/External Pump w/Controller
Heaters: 800W Finnex on Corallife controller on Apex
Skimmer: Super Reef Octopus XP3000int w/ Bubbleblaster HY-3000s
Reactor: BRS GFO & Carbon Reactor
Calcium Reactor: GEO 618, Caribsea ARM Coarse media, AquariumPlants electronic regulator and 10g tank controlled by Apex PH probe.
Calcium Reactor: Nextreef ML1 inline for effluent with Caribsea ARM Coarse media
Controller: Neptune Systems Apex Gold, with added PM1, 2x temp and lab grade PH, WXM wireless module, powerbar and leak detection. Magnetic probe holder.
Powerheads: 2x MP40WQD
RO/DI: BRS 5 Stage Water Saver PLUS RO/DI System - 150GPD.
ATO: Tunze Osmolator Universal 3155 Auto Top Off.
Kalk Reactor: Aquamedic KS-1000 (fed by ATO)
Ozone: Ozotech Poseidon 200
Ground: 1 x Titanium ground rods
Refugium Light: 6500K 100w CFL w/ gooseneck fixture
Misc: ATC refractometer, Tom's stellar air pump.

Misc other
Redsea test kits + Hanna Phosphate.
Salt: Reef Crystals
CaribSea Aragonite Seaflor Special Grade Reef Sand
CaribSea Ocean Direct
BRS Granular Ferric Oxide
BRS Small Particle Lignite Carbon
Caribsea ARM Reactor Media Coarse
Mix of KZ and Aquaforest additives
Wide assortment of food
Mix of Hawaiian, Marshall rock and other.
Some Real Reef Rock
 
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zoomonster

zoomonster

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Let me jump forward a little bit. I had something of a alkalinity crash a while back that cost me a number of frags and colonies of Acropora, Montipora, Seriatopora and Stylopora. Quite painful but a lot survived and RBTA's, mushrooms, ricordia, zoanthids, and my one LPS brain were unaffected. Anyway I've been slowly adding back some stuff and have gotten some stuff from Battlecorals, Unique and reef pets (plus reef-a-palooza next weekend). I just ordered some stuff from AquaSD so going to share some eye candy. These are better pictures than I will likely take. Getting better but still struggling with my Nikon D7100 and Kessils.

RedArmorPalys-RetailPrice50SALEPRICE15_zpsixne8gjq.jpg

SupermanMilleColony-RetailPrice200SALEPRICE120_zpsjhdlleon.jpg

RedRingAssassin-RetailPrice100SALEPRICE30_zpsbdjbnvez.jpg

RainbowTable-RetailPrice50SALEPRICE40_zpsj27a87ww.jpg

SpecialLoripes-RetailPrice50SALEPRICE20_zpshpuscpjp.jpg

RainbowStem-RetailPrice50SALEPRICE30_zpspwqknene.jpg
 
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zoomonster

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FairyTalePikachuColony-RetailPrice200SALEPRICE120_zpsdpkokapj.jpg

BeeStingAcro-RetailPrice50SALEPRICE20_zpsvnna0uzp.jpg

HornetMorphs-RetailPrice50SALEPRICE20_zpsr0rv4jxk.jpg

AussieRainbowStylo-RetailPrice50SALEPRICE30_zpstorwfck6.jpg

BlueMansMille-RetailPrice50SALEPRICE30_zpsjhwhisp9.jpg

BlueBerrySunday-RetailPrice50SALEPRICE20_zpsazjl5x5h.jpg


Plus a 10 pack of assorted acropora frags. That will be interesting and will have to try and get some pictures next week. Good mix of stuff and nothing I had before except the Rainbow Stylo. If you hadn't guessed Millipora's are one of my favorites but that Pikachu I'm drooling for.
 
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zoomonster

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The fish... Aside from the obvious criteria like compatibility etc. picking fish is about color and uniqueness for me. Plus I've generally stuck with smaller fish so I can support more. My two largest fish are a purple tang and a yellow bellied regal tang. Other than maybe a powder blue those are the only tangs that really do it for me. Yellow tang is ok but aside from more common they have always seemed more prone to disease especially HLLE. My purple is flawless but my regal has some HLLE issues going on and considering doing away with activated carbon, at least for a while, to see if any improvement. Probably would help to switch to more expensive pelletized carbon.

In the past 2 years I've lost a few to jumping, disease or just unexplained disappearance. Perhaps most perplexing is the China Pearl Wrasse and the Multicolor Lubbocki that I got weeks apart and had for several months and they both disappeared within a day of each other (pretty certain dead). Both were quality marine fish, both were fat, seemingly healthy specimens and both had no issues eating. Food was mostly garlic and selcon enriched hikari mysis and bits of other assorted flake, pellets, phyto etc. Both by the time they died both were much thinner, somewhat emaciated but had no outward signs of disease. All my other fish including wrasses have no issue. I've had fish disappear that showed up again 1-2 weeks later but pretty certain these are just gone.

Less those two this is my up to date list

2 Bimaculatus Anthias Pseudanthias bimaculatus
Carpenter's Flasher Wrasse Paracheilinus carpenteri
Cleaner Common Wrasse Labroides dimidiatus
Coral Beauty Angelfish Centropyge bispinosa
2 Exquisite Fairy Wrasse Cirrhilabrus exquisitus
Flame Angelfish Centropyge loriculus
Flameback Angelfish (African) Centropyge acanthops
Hoeven's Wrasse Halichoeres melanurus
Lawnmower Blenny Salarias fasciatus
2 Lyretail Anthias Pseudanthias squamipinnis
Multicolor Angelfish Centropyge multicolor
Pink Margin Fairy Wrasse Cirrhilabrus rubrimarginatus
Potter's Angelfish Centropyge potteri
Purple Dottyback Pseudochromis porphyreus
Purple Tang Zebrasoma xanthurum
3 Red Belted Anthias Pseudanthias rubrizonatus
Red-Lined Wrasse Halichoeres biocellatus
4 Resplendent Anthias Pseudanthias pulcherrimus
Six Line Wrasse Pseudocheilinus hexataenia
2 True Percula Clownfish Amphiprion percula
Yellow Belly Regal Blue Tang Paracanthurus hepatus var.
Yellow Coris Wrasse Halichoeres chrysus
 
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Other than Ventralis probably my favorite anthias are bimaculatus and resplendent. This is my male and female bimaculatus. The pictures do them no justice and that female on the right is easily the brightest, most electric fish in the tank.
 
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I have three resplendent females and a male. This is a couple of the females. Can't find a good picture of the male but the females are actually more interesting.
 
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This is a female red line anthias. These were actually some of the first fish that went into this tank. Not the most stunning of colors but a cool mix of oranges, pink and the eery translucent blue fins and eyes. You can just barely see the bar on the female and even on the male it really only gets bright when he gets aggressive. No issues with the asterna's but I have been eliminating them none the less.

I was playing around some more with taking pictures with the D7100 this weekend. Still a ways to go but pics are getting better. A lot of camera tweaks but in a nutshell... I'm disconnecting the Kessil's from Apex and running 100% power and about 90-95% color and then setting white balance. Anyway took quite a few pics and getting a higher percentage of usable pics.
 
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The tank today. The skylines a little lacking from the loss of some acro, monti, seriatopora and stylo colonies but that's a work in progress. Except for the brain pretty much everything in here was grown from frags accumulated over about the last 20 months. Tanks been up 22 months and I think I started with SPS around 2 months. I have ton's of frags both old and new but as far as anything that qualifies as a small-medium colony whats left is... red planet, rainbow pocillapora, purple milli, blue tipped stag, bali shortcake, garf bonsai valida, purple nana, tricolor valida and phonape. As far as what was lost I'm just not going there. You can't really tell from the pic from tons of florida ricordia, yuma's, nepthea piece, assorted mushrooms and some zoa's. Isolated down on sand there's some GSP, xenia and clove polyps. There's also 7 RBTAs in there down from 16.

I listed fish above but there's also 2 Bangai Cardinals in there I left off.

As far as scape... yeah I'm a little old school and not terribly creative and basically have the wall. I do OK at stacking but even this needs some more work. One thing is though I've never been a fan of permanent rock scapes I can't move around. Likewise with frags I like to mount them to pieces that can be picked up and moved around. All the rock on left and right is a mix of real Hawaiian, Marshall and some misc other. The center part in front of overflow is real reef rock.
 
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Speaking of Florida Ricordia this is where I started off with 25 assorted (only 2 green) from a collector in the keys via Ebay. He tends to come and go and this is not the place in Puerto Rico. If I remember right these were $200 shipped. These got glued up into 5 good sized rocks which are now 5 awesome colonies plus assorted stragglers about the tank. They are beyond counting now but probably at least 60+. Always loved Ricorida (and Yuma) but they are one of those corals best appreciated under heavy actinic. Otherwise they are a little nondescript. You can see part of two of the colonies in that Melanurus Wrasse pic above. If you want Ricordia other than diving this is the only way to go vs. $15-$40 a polyp (or mouth) you find in stores or on Ebay as a "rare" coral.

What's sad is I checked Ebay and neither vendor is there. Looks like one place in Miami has that cornered with dubious pictures and prices.
 
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The stuff from Aqua SD showed up today. I had ordered 10 specific pieces and a 10 pack of acro frags. I was kind of in a hurry unpacking but I noticed several bags marked freebies and overall I count 2 small colonies and 23 frags. Everything had the usual bit of shipping stress (plus dipping) but no brown outs and just two are on the white side. Most of the stuff retained enough color to tell what it was and just two frags needed to be re-glued.

Out of the 10 pack and freebies I only got one piece I already had which is red planet. That worked out well and no complaints there. The only gripe is that out of the specific pieces I ordered (other than 2 colonies) very few seem to be the frags that were pictured during the sale. The one that really stands out is the rainbow stylo. The pictured piece had a very nice shape vs. this one a no paw branch but it is the biggest of all the frags. Overall I have not tried to figure out what everything is but its looks like maybe 9 milli's (two might be a prostratas) with what I ordered and the 10 pack.

A lot of times when I order stuff like this I like to post original pics and actual pics for the sake of comparison. Pics of the colonies in a bit.

This pretty much does me for a while. I will be at reef-a-palooza sometime this weekend and there's a few things I might buy. Mostly there to look around and socialize and laugh at some of the "look at me.. I have some of the most ludicrous names and prices for the smallest frags you will find anywhere guaranteed" vendors. Of course you can find that anytime in Orlando o_O
 
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zoomonster

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Those are the two small colonies and the pics are pretty accurate with a little boost in saturation to show what color they have. Both need some time to acclimate and get some color back from shipping stress.

Those are fairy tale pikachu and superman millie.
 
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