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FarmerTy's 215 gallon - No Water Changes SPS Tank


FarmerTy

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Kids are great at that age when they sleep. I have some great pics of our boys and we used to sing/talk to each other while they slept, or at least their mouths moved to the beat.

Tank looks great Ty. Glad to see if before the coral growth explosion.


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Nice! You have two regal angels? They are fine together?


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Yeah, had one that I got about a year ago which only ate pellets oddly. He wouldn't touch anything else and almost still doesn't. He branched out into nori and now live black worms.

The juvi I got from a fellow reefer in San Antonio that had him for a year. I introduced him when I moved houses and most of the fish were none the wiser. The other regal noticed him and will dash at him to assert dominance every once in awhile but he mostly doesn't care. They are my favorite fish so I figured it didn't hurt to have two of them. [emoji4]

The smaller one will eat almost anything which is nice.

I'd say one of the most difficult fish to get eating that I've ever encountered. Its best to go into a fully mature reef with little competition for food and non-aggressive tankmates. If you don't have those conditions, don't even bother, it'll die on you.
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Popped up at Frank's Tanks in Dallas this last weekend after we attended a wedding there.

Gotta say, much respect for a LFS to put such an effort into SPS! Here's his show tank.

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I was feeding the fish and took some top-down shots while over the tank.

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Corals crammed into my sump until I can get a chance to aquascape.

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Man I love large staghorns


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They really know how to fill up an aquascape quick!
I ALWAYS go to Frank's when we go to Dallas!


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He's such a cool guy. I bought a bunch of frags and he gave me a piece of a high-end coral just because.
Everything is looking great

Thanks Jimbo. I hope to be able to touch it again in about another week. Just been tossing in food and making such corals don't touch and sting each other.
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It looks like a super pro move Ty! I'm glad that most everything worked out. How do you like the closed loop? Are you getting a lot of flow out of it? All of the holes make me nervous and I've never had one before. 

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It looks like a super pro move Ty! I'm glad that most everything worked out. How do you like the closed loop? Are you getting a lot of flow out of it? All of the holes make me nervous and I've never had one before. 

Thanks Sascha. Like most things in life, I'm sure I got super lucky with the minimal losses, especially with the gritty decision to move without water.

The closed loop was just me repurposing the old overflow drain holes for my UV setup. I just recently moved the UV sterilizer to the new house so I haven't gotten a chance to get it up and running yet. I'll let you know how 6 holes in your tank glass works out for me. [emoji85]
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  • 2 weeks later...

Loved going through your tank swap / move build Ty!  Beautiful corals and fish selection!  I'm sure you have been asked a million times, but how do you acclimate / train your angels to avoid nipping or flat out munching?  Did you get them all very small and keep them isolated until you were sure they would only accept what you feed them? Seems so risky, I've never had luck keeping ANY angels, even pygmy angels! They all wreaked havoc and were eventually sold or traded.

When I get back to a larger system I'm going to pick your brain on this topic!  I'd love to have angels again.

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Loved going through your tank swap / move build Ty!  Beautiful corals and fish selection!  I'm sure you have been asked a million times, but how do you acclimate / train your angels to avoid nipping or flat out munching?  Did you get them all very small and keep them isolated until you were sure they would only accept what you feed them? Seems so risky, I've never had luck keeping ANY angels, even pygmy angels! They all wreaked havoc and were eventually sold or traded.

When I get back to a larger system I'm going to pick your brain on this topic!  I'd love to have angels again.

 

Luck...! Lol

 

But seriously, it's luck. They might might nip or munch, they might not. Ive had 2/5 flame angels not touch anything, a Koran that didn't for a year and then started, and I'm 2/6 on emporers nipping.

 

You never really know, best system is to just keep them fat.

 

 

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Yeah, that has been my luck, Juiceman!! I kept a variety of angels back in the 80's & 90's, but of course, I didn't have SPS, clams and tasty little acans and such, haha. I saw Ty's tank and was floored at the luck he has with having that many angels.  It certainly changes the entire tank when you have the beauty of angels in it.  I was just hoping he had some magic sauce he would share with me, lol.

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Luck...! Lol
 
But seriously, it's luck. They might might nip or munch, they might not. Ive had 2/5 flame angels not touch anything, a Koran that didn't for a year and then started, and I'm 2/6 on emporers nipping.
 
You never really know, best system is to just keep them fat.
 
 
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Juiceman is officially in charge of all social media interactions for my build thread. Please address all your questions to him. [emoji12]
Yeah, that has been my luck, Juiceman!! I kept a variety of angels back in the 80's & 90's, but of course, I didn't have SPS, clams and tasty little acans and such, haha. I saw Ty's tank and was floored at the luck he has with having that many angels.  It certainly changes the entire tank when you have the beauty of angels in it.  I was just hoping he had some magic sauce he would share with me, lol.

Like Juiceman said, just luck. I will say having almost 90% SPS in your tank is very helpful because even if they nip, it doesn't matter as much because sheer volume if coral helps them spread it out a bit.

I feed my fish a ridiculous amount of food so I don't really believe keeping them well fed does much. Its just behavioral and I don't see them nipping because of hunger, just out of habit and preprogramming. I'm sure it doesn't hurt though.
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3 minutes ago, FarmerTy said:


Juiceman is officially in charge of all social media interactions for my build thread. Please address all your questions to him. emoji12.png

 

Haha, well it just goes to show the tightness of the reefing community here in Austin! :)

3 minutes ago, FarmerTy said:



Like Juiceman said, just luck. I will say having almost 90% SPS in your tank is very helpful because even if they nip, it doesn't matter as much because sheer volume if coral helps them spread it out a bit.

I feed my fish a ridiculous amount of food so I don't really believe keeping them well fed does much. Its just behavioral and I don't see them nipping because of hunger, just out of habit and preprogramming. I'm sure it doesn't hurt though.

That makes sense, I guess there is always tradeoffs in the hobby, I tend to love having a clam or two and they never worked with any type of angel, so I guess I need to decide what I want more, LPS and such or angels and SPS!  It's actually a tough call!  Thanks for sharing, Ty!

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That makes sense, I guess there is always tradeoffs in the hobby, I tend to love having a clam or two and they never worked with any type of angel, so I guess I need to decide what I want more, LPS and such or angels and SPS!  It's actually a tough call!  Thanks for sharing, Ty!

That's a pretty easy call for me. [emoji6]
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  • 3 weeks later...

Long time since my last update but I've been trying to work on the tank here and there when the baby, work, and life allows me to. Let's just say if I get enough time to feed my tank each day, I'm happy. I only get to check alk every couple weeks, thankfully the CaRX keeps it pretty solid.

Here's what has been going on the last couple months to the tank:

Last I left you guys... Got the tank in there, lights over it, crammed rocks and corals everywhere and walked away. I got all the life support systems in and that was all I had time for. I still top off manually 2 months later as I haven't had time to set it up yet. [emoji26]

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THE GOOD:

Got Nick and John of Ndestructible Welding to modify my old stand to repurpose as a frag tank stand. If I haven't mentioned it already, they did an amazing job and great quality work. The red stand was completely fabricated by them including adjustable stainless steel feet and pull out walk board (which I have yet to complete the board on top of it).

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Drilled for overflow
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Added sand
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Top down shot with tons of reflections. Corals have adjusted to the move, growing again, and regaining some lost color.
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Also got an electrician to install two dedicated circuits to the tank room. I had him nest them together in the same box.
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Finally did it... Going all T5. I'll use the old led/T5 combo over the frag tank once its setup but for my display, I'll be going with an ATI 8-bulb fixture.

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THE BAD:

ICH! Sadly, I wasn't able to get the giant UV sterilizer over to the new house for a month and paid for it. With the overly stocked tank and a powder blue tang that has no resistance to ich at all, it was trouble by the time I noticed it.

I caught all the fish I could except for the yellow flanked fairy wrasse and the Midas Blenny and back into the tub they go for tank transfer method.

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I rotated between the frag tank for the transfers.

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I got the UV finally hooked up and it's been destroying ich in the tank until the fish return.

Cyano party! The cycle caused by the tank move caused Cyano in the tank. I expected this and diatoms because of the new sand but oddly never got diatoms. I dosed red slime remover yesterday so it should be all gone soon and my skimmer and reactors should pull out the rest of the nutrients from cycling to get back to square one again. Anytime I have a major change in my system and cause a cycle, I'll get Cyano and just let it run its course for a couple months as everything balances out and then zap it with red slime remover. It never comes back after that which is great.



Surprisingly, other than a little STN on some stags which stopped quickly and the 99% loss of my ORA Hawkins Echinata colony (I saved a nub), all the corals made the transition amazingly. I did lose one though, which surprises me as its the hardiest acro ever, my ORA German Blue Polyp acro but I honestly just kept it in the sump the whole time before and never put it in the display. It may have really died of a broken heart... [emoji22]
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THE UGLY:

 

Lost 5 more fish at this point. Powder blue tang and potters angel died from ich, yellow flanked fairy wrasse and Midas blenny died from sea cucumber nuking my tank when it died of starvation from the new sand, and blue star leopard wrasse died from a bacterial infection in the tub.

 

My emperor is also being treated for a bacterial infection but he's unkillable.

 

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