Reflection

I have always wanted to try a reflection shot of my tabk once the coral growth has adequate coverage. 

Seahorse tank change of plan

First of all, change of plan. I decided seahorses are just way too much maintenance and work that I am not quite ready yet. So I am going to take time and put together a jewel tank- all the most colorful trinckets I can find out there in here.

I ordered my Tongan branching rocks from Bulkreefsupply.com. I was extremely pleasantly surprised with this shipment. These are the most beautiful rocks I have ever seen and for a really reasonable price! The shipping was amazingly fast as well! I would highly recommend buying from them.

Filled the tank with water finally. I did have to epoxy the rocks a little. Strangely enough, while there is no water in there, the weight of these rocks keeps everything in place. Once the water begins to lift the weight of these rocks, they begin to shift and tumble all over the place.

Tankshots update

This was actually an unfinished post from a few weeks ago. And during that time unfortunately the beautiful crocea clam has passed. I have also sold one of the rbta and set the other two into my newly setup 20 gallon drilled tanks upstairs

Setting up seahorse tank 1

So my wife and I have been talking about setting up a real peaceful species tank with seahorse. A friend from local reef group is selling his 20g drilled reef ready setup so I picked up this used unit.

It's a traditional 20g high with the top rim removed, in its place is a custom made screen to prevent jumpers. The overflow is built in but no plumbing in place.

My weekend assignment was to collect a 10 g tank to be used as sump. Bought plexy glass to build buffers and also purchased pvc plumbing parts.

I took a long time planning the pipes including valves and joints for easy moving, cleaning, and feeding time water flow control.

Frag time!!

It been a long while since I fragged anything, last week one of the local pet stores in town- Animart in madison, WI was giving away some of their never used fixtures for free. So I took a couple coralife power compact 130w lights to replace what I had on the mantis tank.

For some odd reason the green star polyps just dont do very well in my 92 corner reef while most other sps and lps as well as soft corals are thriving. So before the entire colony comes to non-existence, I decided to frag it and attempt to revive the colony in my mantis tank.

I then also fragged some soft corals, mostly pumping xenia and Kenyan tree, they grow like weed.

Vietnam Squamosa Clam from Divers Den

When I saw this 5" Vietnam squamosa clam posted on Liveaquaria's Diver's den I knew I had to get it.

The order was placed Wednesday afternoon, I received the shipment tracking info Thursday afternoon and the clam was delivered Friday morning around 10.

As always, Liveaquaria takes great care in their packaging.

Even after spending over 12 hours on the road, this clam does not show much sign of distress.

Placed the clam in my mid foreground

Clam opened up almost fully within 15 minutes of placement

Freshwater painted

Last week I decided to move my 42bow freshwater tank downstairs. The main reason is I installed a new faucet to my kitchen sink and it is not compatible to any of my python's adopters! So I have not changed the water for this tank for nearly two months, ew~

I used this opportunity to clean the tank, toss out an old Drs foster and smith hang on filter. Clean out my Hagen fluval filter(which I still think is the best hand on filter ever), bought a powerhead to increase flow, and painted the back of this tank black.