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Ashton's Waterbox 15


Ashton

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52 minutes ago, BobcatReefer said:

In a tank that small, I would avoid GSP like the plague.  It is bulletproof and will grow like the weed it is, so unless you put it on it's own little island*, it's only a matter of time before that entire rock structure is covered.

 

*If  you do make an island, I would suggest raising it up out of the sandbed and hovering it.  GSP grows towards light, so it won't go underneath in the shade.  If you leave a GSP rock on the sandbed, it will eventually grow out onto the sand as well.

 

 

Welcome to ARC!

I'm going to put it on the back wall. I figure if it looks bad I can scrape it off with a razor blade. My first attempt at this failed miserably as it had fallen off by the morning.  I'm using Gorilla Glue Gel but even despite it being a gel it seems to immediately disperse in the water when I put the frag into the tank.  I'm going to try again, but for now I'm waiting to see some polyps come back out as I seem to have royally pissed it off trying to press it onto the glass. Once it seems to be doing okay I'll take it back off the sand bed and retry the glue process.

31 minutes ago, Dogfish said:

They can eat stuff off the chaeto until you start feeding your tank. You wont see big population growth without feeding unless you have an established tank.

Josh is great, I just got in on the 2 for 1 pod deal from them.

Yep Josh mentioned that if I want a big population, I can feed a fish pellet every so often and keep the tank fish-less until the pod population really takes off.  Really glad @Sierra Bravo mentioned it, both because it seems to be a great company, but also because it's Texan ;)

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12 hours ago, Dogfish said:

They can eat stuff off the chaeto until you start feeding your tank. You wont see big population growth without feeding unless you have an established tank.

Josh is great, I just got in on the 2 for 1 pod deal from them.

I need to know more about this 2 for 1 deal!

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It was a roti deal sorry for the mix up. They had the pod deal around christmas

Hi dana,

Just a friendly reminder that today is the last day to take advantage of our Buy One Get One Free on Rotifers deal. We feed rotifers daily at Pod Your Reef because they are a natural and perfectly sized feed for corals and filter feeders. To take advantage of this sale make sure to add two or more rotifers to your cart and use the coupon code "freerots" at checkout. 

Happy Reefing, 

Josh 

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  • 3 weeks later...

Alright figure I should probably post an update!  Sorry it's been so long.  I've been trying to get pictures to post here but had a really hard time filtering out the blues and the purples.  Thankfully, I saw someone mention using Google's Night Mode and since I have a Pixel 2, I gave it a try.  The results were astounding, so I'm finally ready to post an update.

Things have been going well this far and there's a few new additions.

First, I bought 3 frags from RCA, and these have all been in the tank for several weeks now:

Random zoa frag:

47011405661_09054be63d_b.jpg

 

GSP (which has now fallen after being glued to the back wall 3 times and now lives on a small rock against the back wall):

33136152658_04718fd464_b.jpg[/url

 

Leather

32070207507_32d007e471_b.jpg

 

I planned on leaving just these three for a little while with a clean up crew, but saw someone here in the livestock forum trying to get rid of some of the last inhabitants of a tank they were shutting down and couldn't resist as all 4 were things I already wanted.

Torch Coral:

 

33136152538_250e280cf0_b.jpg

Frog Spawn (This poor thing still hasn't opened up after 2 weeks, hoping it makes it and is just taking a while to adapt):

47011406381_e9c2b4ea2a_b.jpg

And last but certainly not least. A Yellow Watchman Goby:

47011406121_2b1bf8652c_b.jpg

And his best bud/roommate, a tiger pistol shrimp:

47011405891_d28f9cab3a_b.jpg

 

The goby+shrimp pair has added a ton of entertainment value to the tank if nothing else.  They're very active, especially during feeding time when the shrimp always snaps at the goby until he'll venture out so they can both get food.They've definitely made it clear I can't leave anything on or near the sand that I don't want being stolen.  This far, they've stolen the GSP frag once after it fell off the back wall, nearly every empty shell in the tank, and I've even found several live members of the cleanup crew flipped upside down and used as a makeshift barricade in the front of an entrance to their "lair". 

 

I've been monitoring parameters and everything's looking good except that I have been seeing weird nitrite spikes without an accompanying nitrate spike.  I'm not sure if the nitrates are being controlled from something else in the tank or if my test kit is off, but either way everything seems to be happy other than the frogspawn.

 

For now, I want to get a new powerhead and add some more random flow in some parts of the tank that don't get much.  I'm currently looking at an Aqamai KPS, but haven't decided yet.  Additionally, I need to get some sort of filter basket for the back compartment.  I've been waiting for InTank to release theirs, but they still haven't finished the Waterbox 15 ones, so I might just try to make one out of egg-crate for the time being to hold my chemipure and filter floss.  

 

 

I'll leave you with a FTS:

33136152818_57c7ea5bcc_z.jpg

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So I was picking off some aiptasia that made it's way in on the frogspawn and it made me wonder what the tube like shells were all over the skeleton. I had originally assumed it was feather dusters or something similar.

 

I did some research and discovered they were likely Vermetids.. I was especially interested to learn about Vermetids releasing stringy "slime" into the tank and potentially irritating corals. I'd been seeing lots of stringy goop coming off the fragspawn that I had assumed was from the frogspawn itself not liking something in my tank. Sure enough after manually removing all the Vermetids the frogspawn has been opening more and more each day (finally!)

 

Yesterday (after the second week in a row doing a 30% waterchange despite perfect parameters), I decided to step it up with some slightly more challenging coral. I ended up with a Montipora Cap that's way too big for my current scape but I plan to glue to plugs on the back wall(found this for cheap at RCA, they said a local reefer brought it in, maybe one of you? 😊). I also picked up a nice frag of meteor shower Cyphastrea

 

Google's nightmode is at it again. First pic is under daytime lights and you can tell where a hermit just walked right across the middle 😂

IMG_20190211_175342-01.jpeg

 

And this one's under all blues right before lights off:

IMG_20190211_214353-01.jpeg

 

Looking forward for a new Aqamai KPS to get here soon, along with that I got some magnets to mount the Montipora to, and some reef roids to try out.

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