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7 Nov 03Again, alot has changed since our last round of photos. The tank now has well over 100lbs of live rock, all nearly covered with awesome coralline algae. We sold our bubble anemones along with our Tomato Clown, but still have our large long tentacle anemone. Our fish now include a Percula Clown, Yellow Tang, Yellow Goby, Frimani and 3 Blue-Green Chromis. All of our fish have grown to be fairly large specimens for each given type of fish. We've gotten rid of most of our Xenia, but still have many other corals in their place. The pictures below are the latest of the tank. Click here for bigger versions of these images. Tank, stand & hood Large brown long tentacle anemone Brain favites coral Very large brown button polyps Large brown button polyps Purple striped mushrooms Large cynarina button coral Hairy mushrooms Toadstool coral Toadstool with hairy mushrooms Purple tree gorgonian Small cauliflower coral Large cauliflower coral Both cauliflower corals with gorgonian Yellow tang, Percula clown and Fridmani with coral Tang's tail with gorgonian Feather duster with purple mushrooms Xenia 20 July 02 Still more photos! Two bubble tip anemones. These two used to be one until it split. Our Yellow Goby hanging out in his favorite Long Tentacle Anemone. A new addition to the tank, Encrusting Xenia. In just a few weeks we've already split it to a couple different rocks. It grows VERY fast. 18 May 02 More photos! Entire tank - compare pink algae to photos below! Entire tank - compare pink algae to photos below! Right side of tank - close up Clove Polyps Colt coral - was a scrap cutting just a couple months ago! 16 May 02 Alot has happened since the last update! We added several other fish to the tank, but... The Blue Tang sadly arrived to our home with a case if Ick. Since we didn't quarrantine him before putting him in the big tank, the Ick spread to all the other fish in the tank. Since we are trying to grow lots of delicate corals in our tank, we can't use any harsh chemical treatments to kill the Ick parasite. Even using the best "reef safe" treatments, we still had some Ick left in the tank after a month of treatments. We lost all of the fish in the tank except Gennie, the Tomato Clown and Sonny, the Yellow Goby. We're now waiting until we move (in about July-August 02) to do any big changes or fish additions to the tank. Since the December update, Bryan deployed with the Air Force for several months. During this time, Tanya learned that a 110-high tank is too deep to reach the bottom & move stuff around. We've also run into a nearly constant protein layer on the top surface of the water that, without a built-in tank skimming unit & sump filter system, is a huge pain to keep in check. Our plan once we move is to change out the 110-high for a 75 gallon tank. Both tanks have the same 18" x 48" base, so our stand and hood are interchangable. We're buying a tank pre-drilled and setup for a sump system. This will let us remove all the powerheads and other "dangling" things in the back of the tank - giving the tank a more realistic look. The shorter tank will help Tanya do the maintenance while Bryan is out of town too! Because of all the fish problems, we've concentrated on the invertabrates. The tank still has only two fish, but our coral population has grown. Probably the most easily recognizable change to the tank is the explosion of coralline (pink!) aglae we've had over the past several months. Shortly after adding the big lights to the 110 gallon tank, we got a bloom of brown algae. After that we got green algae. Now all the once bleached white rocks & coral skeletons are spotted (and some COVERED) with awesome pink algae. We cut our original Gorgonia coral into three seperate "bushes" and all are growing like mad. Our largest Gorgonia coral is now about 14" tall and our other 2 are almost as big. We got a Colt coral clipping (about the size of your thumb nail) from our local fish store & it has grown to about 6" tall & 4" wide! A feather duster clamped onto the same small piece of rock the Colt coral is on & they both compete for space there. Our Star Polyps and Clove Coral (a type of star polyp coral) have both spread to cover the rocks we got them on & have also continued to grow onto the neighboring rocks! We'll soon trim the corals free from the neighboring rocks and move them so they'll start to grown onto other rocks. We've learned several hard lessons with this tank, but one of them we NEVER thought would happen. While starting the tank up last summer & fall we read lots of material (opinions/forum posts) that said never to mix anemones and corals. My previous experience with anemones told me that they just sit there & don't really bother anything else. For the most part, that's been true with our anemones. After moving a couple rocks & power heads for routine cleaning, our largest long tentacle anemone got upset with the water flow around his home & decided to move. This anemone was about 6" across and in his trek to find a better home, he trampled across several (expensive) corals causing severe damage (i.e. death) and walked up a wall and got caught in an intake to our canister filter. Luckily, I was home the day it happened & the anemone didn't spend too much time halfway sucked into the filter intake - but any time was too much! After turning off the pump, I spent the next 3 hours with this 6" very upset anemone wrapped around my hand and arm trying to free him from his painful perch. The anemone is still alive, but never really recovered from the accident. Anyway, dead coral + anemones stuck in filter intakes = Don't put anemones in your coral tank! Since we can't follow our own advice, we still have 2 long tentacle anemones and now 4 bulb anemones. We can't figure out why, but our long tentacle anemones are just not doing well. They are surviving, but that's about it. Our bulb anemones, however, are growing like weeds! Gennie loves all 4 of these anemones and keeps them well fed. If you remember (or read below), we originally bought 3 bulb anemones. Gennie adopted the largest of them as her home & for a while rarely strayed more than 6" away from it. The other 2 bulb anemones grew, but "Gennie's anemone" probably doubled in size from December to February. In March, the anemone all the sudden curled up into a little ball and looked as if it was going to die. After several days, the anemone puffed itself back up & revealed to us that it had split in two! Yes, anemone reproduction in our tank! Gennie has since expanded her home to include all 4 bulb anemones and they are all doing well. Gennie has become so territorial that you can't even put your hand anywhere in the tank with out it getting attacked. That has to stop or we'll never be able to add any other fish! Sonny, our yellow Goby, hangs out sitting on top of one of the long tentacled anemones quite often. When I first saw the fish there, I thought he'd get eaten - or at least stung - by the anemone, but nope! Sonny loves to sit right in the anemone. The anemone he sits in is next to the bulb anemones that our Tomato Clown favors. Maybe the Goby just thought it looked like a good idea...?? More pictures soon! 12 Dec 01 Last weekend we added a young Blue Tang to the tank. He was getting picked on by the Royal Gramma, so we moved the Gramma to the 29gal tank for now. I put together a 2 minute video of some of the stuff in our tank - including the new fish. It's about 3MB to download and it's in windows media format. Download the file & unzip it to view. Click here for the video zip file This is the new Blue Tang. 1 Dec 01 Since the last update, we've added some more rock & lost the carpet anemone. The carpet anemone was doing great (see the pictures from 3 Nov), then one day it just turned inside out & died. We pulled it out of the tank & found a 1.5" long orange & black spotted worm eating on him from underneath. We're not sure where the worm came from, but our guess is that he was the cause of the carpet amenone's demise. There are still only 3 fish in the tank. Two Percula clowns are on order, but they haven't made it in yet. We just had our first hair algae show up in the tank, so it's time to start thinking about adding a Blue Tang. We've added more snails & hermit crabs - now totalling about 30-35 snails and about 10-15 hermit crabs. We also added a coral skeleton stand to put rocks on in the center of the tank. You can see it in the first photo (the white stuff) holding up the rocks in the middle. The green & brown anemone is doing great! The Gorgonia coral after many cuttings. 3 Nov 01 This past week I have bought several new things. Here is what the tank looks like today!! Here are some pictures of the new stuff: This is the beautiful Green/Brown Anemone: Purple Sea Plume: Bright Geeen / white carpet anemone: The pictures below is stuff I've had for a while but never put online... This is the Star Poylp with a bright green Moon Coral on the side: White with Purple Tips anemones... open and closed 27 Oct 01 It is sooo much fun buying new stuff for the tanks..... This is the new Long-Tentacled Dk. Brown/Lt Brown Anemone. This is the new Yellow Goby 24 Oct 01 We brought home 3 bubble anemones today. Gennie, the Tomato Clown, took about 10 minutes before she was playing all over one of them. She is playing in the biggest of the 3. On the right side of the photo is one of the smaller anemone. Gennie loves this thing!!!! 19 Oct 01 Finally... the tank cycled!! We added all the rocks and fish back in and some extras that we just bought. During the cycle period, we had a Diatom algea bloom. So we added 25 snails and 5 hermit crabs to the tank. Tanya propagated the Gorgonian coral, and now we have a Gorgonian on each side of the tank. The Quatantine tank is now empty. We are going to put a bubble amemone and a pair of Perculia Clowns in here later this week. 12 Oct 01110 gal tank during tank cycle period. Trying to cycle out all the ammonia and other bad stuff. Below is a picture of our 29 gal tank, otherwise known as the 'Quarantine Tank'. As mentioned earlier, everything was moved in here due to problems in the 110 gal tank. Gennie, our Tomato Clown, is in the top left hand corner, the Royal Gramma is in the middle and getting ready to swim thru the Gorgonian Coral. Our Mushroom coral is on the gravel, bottom left corner. 29 Sep 01: The good news: Let there be light!! The hood is now 99% done and is complete with 4 very very bright 4' VHO (very high output) flourescent lights for a total of 440 watts of power. All that's left to finish on the hood is to install the cooling fans. All of the pictures of the tank taken before today are with the old (30watt) light. There's a huge difference! 440 watts should be enough to grow any kind of coral we can think of. We can't wait to get more coral. The bad news: Friday we did a 50% water change in the 110 gallon. There was no ammonia (biproduct of life in the tank) in the water before the change. Long story, but there are 'helpful' bateria that grow in fish tanks that actually eat ammonia and convert it to less harmful chemicals. An established, or cycled, tank shouldn't have any ammonia in it. Well, after the water change, tests showed we had a huge amount of ammonia in our water. Some corals get pissed about 0.1ppm and alot of fish start to die not much above that. Not good. Turns out, our tap water (from a well), has a boat load of ammonia in it. it's definately not supposed to be there. We noticed the problem fairly quickly, but we still lost 2 of the 4 fish in the 110gal tank. We moved all the coral & fish to our 29gal quarantine tank until we can get the big tank back under control. Our tap water shouldn't have ammonia in it, so until we get that one figured out, we're sticking to natural sea water and bottled water for any water changes we do. It'll probably take 2-3 weeks for all the levels to smooth back out in the big tank. Stay tuned... 110 gal tank with the hood & new VHO lights. The smoke test...no smoke! old lights...new lights! 29 Sep 01: Today I cut all the wood for the hood & put it all together. We're changing our doors out, so there's still gaping holes where nice doors are supposed to be. The stand & hood still have some trim pieces to be added before they are finished, but they at least look like a stand & hood now. Tanya ordered the four 110W 4' VHO bulbs for the tank. We're using two Actinic 03 and two Actinic White bulbs. 440W of light should be plenty to make all the coral and anemones we can find happy. We should get the lights installed in the big tank within the next 2 weeks. We removed the coral from the 110 gallon tank until we get the lights going there. The mushroom coral I have in the small tank is growing rapidly. We're thinking Xenia is probably going to be the next coral we add. The new hood - mostly assembled. 22 Sep 01: Today we added a 2" Royal Gramma to the 110 gallon tank and some coral to the smaller tank. We're using the small (29 gallon) tank to quaratine fish if they get sick & grow some live rock & corals. The 29 gallon tank should have enough light for most corals, so we added some Mushroom Coral to it. We also added some low light coral (Gorgonia Coral) to the 110 & it's doing very well. This is our new Royal Gramma. This is the new coral in the 29 gallon tank. 15 Sep 01: With the live sand & water ready, we took the first opportunity we had to add a fish to the mix. Due to all those nasty recent events messing up the nation's air travel & shipping system, the local pet shops had very few fish to choose from. The fish plan for the tank is to have 3-5 clownfish, a school of 3 blue/green chromises, a royal gramma, a neon goby, a blue tang, a queen angel, and a handful of hermit crabs, cleaner shrimp and snails. I've added a Prism skimmer, two Powersweep 228 powerheads, and two 200w heaters to the tank, so it's ready for fish! I ordered all the light fixtures & a Icecap 660 electronic ballast, but I have to finish the hood I'm making to put all that on, so for now, I only have 40 watts of light. That's enough to see in the tank fine, but not enough for most corals & anemones. We picked up the first clown today. We got a tomato clown. We're planning the other 2 clowns to be Percula Clowns since they are semi-easily bred in captivity. This is Gennie, our Tomato Clown. 9 Sep 01: It took 5 trips to the beach to get enough water & sand to fill the tank. We are using the local salt water from the Gulf of Mexico. The Destin area has some of the cleanest water I've seen - so why not use it!? The filter is now running with the salt water & we managed to get tons of critters in our live sand collection. Things are looking good so far. We should be buying lights & the remaining filters & powerheads this week. Fish & coral shouldn't be too far off. 8 Sep 01: We finally got enough people gathered at our house to lift the tank onto the stand. We filled it with fresh water & ran the filter to make sure everything was water tight. 3 Sep 01: Oh how I need to buy a tablesaw... I finally got all the wood cut for the outside of the stand. I finished most of the building part of the project for the stand, so Tanya took over & did all the finish work. I still have to make the trim piece that'll hide the lower 2" of the fish tank, so the top of the stand still looks a little abrupt. Tanya just started on the doors, so expect those soon too. I ordered the first of our filters last week, so we should be able to do a leak test this weekend. Stay tuned! 25 Aug 01: After spending all weekend searching hundreds of miles of pet shops for the perfect stand for our 110 gallon soon-to-be salt water aquarium, Tanya & I have decided to build the stand and hood ourselves. Today I finished the design & started on the construction of the tank stand. The tank is roughly 48"x18"x30" and when filled with all the water, fish, sand, rocks & coral it'll weigh in at almost 1500lbs. So, the stand definately needs to be beefy. I built a 2x4 support structure for the inside of the stand. It'll have 3/4" oak attached on the outside with two 13"x17" doors in the front to allow access to the filters & storage space under the tank. After I find a tablesaw, I'll get the outside put on & we'll stain it to match. Here's the stand as of today: