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gerbilbox

First Corals and Other Things

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by
gerbilbox
, 01-03-2011 at 03:39 PM (2000 Views)
I'm scaling up the cliff that I fell off of. Nothing unusual kept me away from Reef Addicts, but I just got lazy



The biggest news is that I added my first two corals yesterday! The bad news is that they're acclimating to the light, so my lamp hasn't turned on yet; I'll post photos later. I have a small colony of zoanthids (Zoanthus, orange with green tentacles green) and single head of branching hammer coral (Euphyllia parancora, green tips on brown tentacles). I drip acclimated them for an hour and then dipped them in Coral ReVive. The hammer was a little stressed—it retracted for many hours and expelled some zooxanthellae—but it's much better now. I've read that it's not usually for hammers and their kin to show acclimation stress, so I'm not worried.

When the cycle ended last month, I added Trochus and Stomatella varia snails from a local reef store, and I ordered from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms to fit my Indo-Pacific reef goal:
Dwarf zebra hermit crabs (Calcinus laevimanus)
Periwinkle snails (Littoraria)
Amphipods (Grammarus)
Bristle worms
Spaghetti worm
Sandbed clams (Tapes)

I really like watching the hermit crabs run around and climb over everything like kittens.

The hair algae was practically eliminated. I dropped a few pellets of Ocean Nutrition Formula Two to test my clean up crew further, and it takes a little while but they'll eventually eat it up, especially the amphipods and hermits.

Not long after my last post in November, I upgraded from 10g to 15g. I realized my existing equipment could support it, I had some extra rocks and sand, and it would be easier if I upgraded before I added coral. I just can't go bigger than 15g without buying new equipment and taking a sledge hammer to the wall. When I move into a bigger apartment someday I'll probably get a stand with room for a proper sump.

Tank with cheap eBay LED moonlight. I'm not sure if I like the spotlighting effect or if I should buy another LED strip. The tank is a little cloudy right now, but I hope that will clear up soon with filter floss and activated carbon.


View from above. I removed the mounting legs and secured the light fixture directly onto my tank to increase light at no extra cost! The glass cover has reduced evaporation a lot and the heaters work less (my room is somewhat cold), and it now protects the fixture as well.


Reverse lighting AquaClear-70-turned refugium running with Chaetomorpha, filter floss, activated carbon, heaters, temperature probe, grounding probe, top-off airline. It's crowded and not exactly pretty, but it works. It keeps the mess out of the main tank.


I'm a big fan of taking reasonable precautions and going on vacations. There are now two heaters, ReefKeeper Lite controller, Penn-Plax B11 automatic emergency air pump, and dual switch auto-top-off with snail guards (from AutoTopOff.com). I think I'm now reasonably guarded against heater failing to turn on, heater failing to turn off, power outages that aren't too long, and mischievous snails that want to ruin it for everybody. All this should work without my presence. I strapped everything to a peg board to organize the resulting mess.


FYI, my ReefKeeper Lite is set to Celsius so don't panic about the 25.3 you see in the photo (about 77.5°F). One of the many annoying quirks of the RKL is that it doesn't show what temperature scale it's using, but otherwise it works well. I got used to Celsius in college, and I calibrated the temperature probe using an old but accurate lab thermometer that only has Celsius.
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Updated 01-07-2011 at 03:08 AM by gerbilbox

Categories
‎ Tank Entry , ‎ New Additions , ‎ Electrical , ‎ Lighting

Comments

  1. melev's Avatar
    Very nice update. I don't know why your images are showing up small. I tried to edit to make them show up full size but it wasn't giving me the normal command option to do so.

    Kittens. hehe

    I like your power center up on the pegboard like that.
  2. gerbilbox's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by melev
    Very nice update. I don't know why your images are showing up small. I tried to edit to make them show up full size but it wasn't giving me the normal command option to do so.

    Kittens. hehe

    I like your power center up on the pegboard like that.
    I just realized how I could make them bigger by getting the URLs to the attachments and inserting the URLs into the IMG tags. I should probably downsize them now that they are rubbing up against the sidebar. There's are thumbnails that appear at the bottom of the post now, which I don't mind, but it seems a little odd for it to appear.
  3. melev's Avatar
    If you keep the images around 800 x 600, that's pretty good. Mine are 770 x 512. Some people post 1024 x 768, but the right column hides part of the images and on a mobile phone you don't see much of the image at all. I'll remove the small ones (attachments) now.
  4. gerbilbox's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by melev
    If you keep the images around 800 x 600, that's pretty good. Mine are 770 x 512. Some people post 1024 x 768, but the right column hides part of the images and on a mobile phone you don't see much of the image at all. I'll remove the small ones (attachments) now.
    Yeah, I think 800x600 to a side is good, but I'm too lazy to change them right now. Thanks! Is there a way I can remove the attachment thumbnails from my end?
  5. melev's Avatar
    Yes, you can. When you are in the full editor, scroll down to Manage Attachments. A small window will appear. The bottom row of images are what are attached, and you can click on the tiny "x" of each image you want to remove.

    Since I removed them already and there aren't any more attachments, you won't see this option in this blog.
  6. gerbilbox's Avatar
    Quote Originally Posted by melev
    Yes, you can. When you are in the full editor, scroll down to Manage Attachments. A small window will appear. The bottom row of images are what are attached, and you can click on the tiny "x" of each image you want to remove.

    Since I removed them already and there aren't any more attachments, you won't see this option in this blog.
    Hmm, that seems to work for a short while, but not long afterwards the images disappear entirely. I tested this on my most recent blog post and the same thing happens. I remove the bottom row attachments. Images are nice and big and works, but a short time later they disappear, and when I return to manage attachments the images are gone from there too.
  7. melev's Avatar
    Hey, where did they go? Go ahead and re-upload them. It can be a little goofy at times, if you don't host your images elsewhere. Once they are in the manager, I know there is an option in the lower right section of the window that says "Insert Inline" and you'd check off all the ones you want inserted and they will do just that. Once done, they shouldn't show up as attachments at the base of your entry.

    I've been posting blogs here for over a year, and have added images just about every way possible. Some are better than others, but in the end it works. I just wish I could insert images directly from my iPhone like I can with tapatalk or on facebook.
  8. gerbilbox's Avatar
    If I insert them inline, they always appear small. If I remove the inline tags (but keep them in Manage Attachments), but use the image URLs so I can get them full size, they will appear as attachments at the bottom...blah!

    Thanks for all your help but I'm just going to sleep. I don't mind this oddity terribly as long as the images show up.