Michigan Reefers banner
5K views 54 replies 15 participants last post by  drs2140 
#1 ·
This month my tank is 41 years old. I don't remember when I was 41 years old. :no:
 
See less See more
1
#28 ·
That is Some Awesome "Commitment" to the Hobby and I commend you HIGHLY for that as it's so rare these days... People Jump in with both fins (lol) without thinking about the hobby or the living creatures involved and whne they get board just throw all of that time and money out of the window...

Beautiful Tank!

What are the Dimensions?
How old are some of the Oldest Fish and Rocks?

P.S. Happy Birthday tank! And thanks for sharing!
 
#8 ·
#10 ·
I finally got the new DIY rock into the tank, but I had to remove about 15lbs of rock to do it and make a mess. I am still working with one arm so it was a little job.
You can see it on the right side of the tank, it starts to the left of the large gorgonian under the back of the bottle and arcs up and to the left. It was supposed to span over the rocks freestanding but I really don't have the room. Maybe if I remove most of the rock someday but it aint going to happen now. I had to move some large cement stands to the left side of the tank and I was able to return all the rock to the tank. It is still a little cloudy and the corals are not fully open but here it is.


This is the rock I put it. It is over a foot high



Then I did some work on the other side of the tank. That acropora is too close to the glass and I can't move it back so I ether have to frag it or do more major work.


Now I will have to make a bristle worm trap because every rock I move is loaded with them. I don't mind them but there is just too many. I will build something that collects a lot of them at once.
 
#14 ·
I am happy to say that in the 5 or 6 weeks since I installed this baby brine shrimp feeding station my skinny little female mandarin fattened up nicely and is now bordering on plump.
The first picture is when I got her, you can see her sides pinched in, especially under her dorsal fin and she resembled Twiggy.
The second picture is today.



 
#17 ·
I had to re design slightly my algae trough. The LEDs I had over it just were not bright enough so I got a strip of LEDs that are about twice as bright. When I had MH lights the trough used to get the spill light but the LEDs are more directional so I had to add supplimental light to the trough because it was only growing red and brown algae. Now hopefully It will grow green hair algae. I also re designed the way the water enters the trough from the skimmer. I used to have unacceptable splashing that used to make salt creep all over the place. Now I have multiple layers of plastic screening around the skimmer outflow and now there is no splashing and no bubbling which burst and splash on the lights and rear wall.



This acropora has grown at least three times it's size in a year and I can't clean the glass in front of it any longer. Whenever I go near it I accidently break off pieces so I have frags of the thing all over the place. Now I am going to try to move it to a larger space and move the giant mushroom in that place to where the acropora is now. I wonder how many frags I am going to have because there is no room to move it so I have to lift it out of the tank to re locate it.

 
#18 ·
After moving this all over the tank, getting bit to death and breaking a few pieces off this and other corals, I realize there is no room for this acropora. I temporarilly put it on this rock but it is just about out of the water and not sitting well. When I get time I need to do a major rock move. Of course I just re-aquascaped and removed a bunch of rock, but it is time again.

 
#19 ·
LOL Paul you could always have a frag swap based on pieces of that one alone.

I'm curious on the trough do you clean that weekly like an algae scrubber or do you just take some out from time to time.

One other thing I had been meaning to ask as I know we were talking about it over on the other site is what was you source of fish back in 70's I know virtually no one was able to keep coral yet, was there anything you were able to get local and/or right out of the Atlantic there.

Really amazing tank, thanks for sharing it here.
 
#20 ·
I do have a few frags from that piece now, but they are all tiny.
The algae trough I only clean out if the flow starts to be impeded from the algae. Usually it is good for a couple of months, then I roll up the screen and brush off some algae in the sink.
In the 70s there were very few places to buy salt water fish and there were only blue devils, dominoes and sargeant majors. That was it and I had to go to Manhattan for that. I always collected livestock from the Atlantic but that was the only tropicals, then they started with yellow tangs and angels.
Gradually when stores started to carry salt water they had a big sign in the window and they usually only had a 5 gallon tank with a few ich infested blue devils.
 
#21 ·
Of course a large rock in my reef fell down taking much of the structure with it so I had to go in there and re position everything. It is all precarious because I am very busy now and I don't have time to do it correctly. I got everything back and I even like it better now than before. I think this is the best aquascaping I ever did even though it all came about by accident. Now I have a bunch of acropora frags because I keep breaking the thing whenever I put my hand near it. I still don't have a good place for it but I am getting there.
That yellow wrasse I have is also much better but I can't figure out why. He is swimming much better and much of the swelling went down. He still has a dark patch on one side but it is also faded. I never saw a fish recover from that before as I know from autopsies that that is from internal bleeding. I will be amazed if he continues living but he seems fine. A week ago he was just swimming in spirals and could hardly catch food.
Wierd. :wacko:
 
#22 ·
Last night we got home from a trip in Europe. We were on a riverboat cruise in Germany, Hungary and Austria.
Anyway when I got home and saw the tank, the water level was down about a third of the height of the tank.
My tank babysitter does not know anything about fish tanks even though I left her some water and told her to add water if this happens. I even E mailed her and left a sign on the tank. My ATO is a very thin line and it goes 30' to a water supply near the ceiling. It only supplies a few drops a second and with such a small flow, air gets in the line. I lost some corals but not to bad. Mostly the tops of corals that were out of the water. The gorgonians also don't look great. Today I will cut off the dead branches. I also lost about 3" of the top of my large acropora but that grows fast. The fish seem fine but I just put the light on so I don't see the pipefish yet but he sleeps late. I was a litle concerned about the fish because with the lowered water level, no food was going in the water even though my tank babysitter was adding it to the container at the original water level. The next time I leave I will make two back up plans and a back up system as you can't truse people why don't know about aquariums. I am not going to tell her about the corals as she tries hard and is all excited to do this for me. The corals will re grow and not much harm done. It is what it is.

This is the riverboat we were on in the Danube. I took this from a helocopter we rented
 
#24 ·
Everything seems fine and I cut off some dead branches. I also made a bunch of frags as the acropora fell and broke. Now I have too many corals so today I went to a LFS to get epoxy and I got for $29.00 a 10" bubble coral. It has some dead spots which is why I got it for that price but they do very good in my tank so I am hoping to get it back to full health. If not, it is only $29.00

Castles are all over the place in Europe, this one was on the side of the Danube.
 
#26 ·
I have quite a bit of cyano now. When I left the tank babysitter here for a week I gave her pre measured frozen food to add to the tank and I didn't tell her to thaw it and rinse it because I didn't want to ask for too much. That little bit of frozen yuck made cyano form on about a quarter of the substrait.
It also didn't help that many of the corals died because they were out of the water.
The cyano is easy to eliminate, I just need a little time. I also want to get some corals to put in the space left by the acropora.
Today I also bought a nice, black shrimp gobi. I just hope it is not a male or my other, much larger gobi will harass it to death. He is in my tank but they have not met yet.
One good thing I notice is that the remaining corals look great, even the half dead bubbles that I got for almost free are practically back to normal with almost no dead skeleton showing.
They were a good buy.
 
This is an older thread, you may not receive a response, and could be reviving an old thread. Please consider creating a new thread.
Top