55g Tank build..

Laura and Jim will be hosting the May meeting this Saturday the 12th and it will be the usual of food, drinks, raffle and fun.
 
Doors will be open at 6:00 pm for social talk and the meeting will start at 7:00.  Parking gets a little tight and the city says you can't park on 4th but there is a parking lot a block away.   Meeting is usually held in the backyard so feel free to bring your favorite lawn chair, weather permitting of course.

If you need address/directions, contact a club member.

Best if you park at Mini Mall (where the spaghetti establishment use to be)
 
You will get to see his new frag tank set up in the making.
 
Hope to see you there!

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[Nate C.]

Looking nice Scott.  Glad to hear things are starting to settle in for you.  Having the diatom bloom finish up is always a good feeling.  :-)

[Nate C.]

Scott,

Did you say you got your drill bits from Harbor Freight?  I'm going to start working on the sump set-up for our frag system now that the big tank is basically done.  So, I'm going to need some bits for 1.5 and 1" bulkheads.  Don't want to spend a fortune on them, and I know you said you got yours for a few bucks somewhere, but I missed where that was.

Thanks!

Nate

[sscherin]

http://www.richontools.com/index.html

[Nate C.]

Great!  Thanks.  :-)

[sscherin]

Not much exciting to report.. diatom bloom is long over.. GHA is coming on strong..

We got a small army of blue legs, nerite snails, ceriths and nasarius in the group order..
The Ceriths have been laying eggs everywhere.. We are now seeing little snails all over the tank.. 

I've been looking all over for red leg hermet crabs but nobody local has any..

Heat is still an issue.. I may have to swap the Velocity for a cooler pump..
With the house getting warmer the tank is edging over 80 during the day.
Chiller would be a nice solution but expensive.

We stopped into PetCo today for Cat food..  The had this poor Kole Tang down in the live rock tank.. He had a cave and about 5" of tank to swim in..  We took mercy on him and brought him home..

So now we have the following..

Kole Tang
Purple Back Pseudochromis (Diatom Pseudochromis)
True Perc Clown
Lawnmower Blenny
Bi-Color Blenny

All are getting along just fine. No more fish.. I think we are full for now.

Zoas are doing great..
Ricordia is opening up big time
Mystery purple frags have grown into the rock and growing a bit.
Organ pipe was opening up every day but not for the last few days..
Water tests ok.. I'm not sure what it's upset about yet.  Maybe a water change will perk it up.
Niki want's to get some Xenia and leathers..

That's it for now.. Must sleep!

[Nate C.]

Scott,

May be the temp that is making the pipe organ unhappy.  It'll either adjust or keep being peaved...give it some time and see which way it goes. We've had pieces of it decide to die for basically no reason we could tell.  Other chunks sitting right beside them continued to grow and do well.

As for chillers, there are some small ones for decent prices on ebay.  I heard that there is a guy on there that builds his own, and they are supposedly pretty efficient, but still inexpensive - double the heat exchanger coils of standard, but not Titanium, he uses marine grade Aluminum.  Another option is to watch reeffrontiers.com they have a good for sale section for hardware.  We got a 1/10th hp chiller from a guy in Seattle for $240 or so.  It looked basically brand new when we got it, and the guy said he'd only had it for a couple months - just needed a bigger one.

Kohl tang will take care of that hair algae for you...if it's anything like ours, it'll be pecking at the rock all day long!  :-)

[luvnsalt]

Hey Scott- I have some leathers and Xenia you can have. Mine are getting too big for the tank and need to be cut anyhow. Of course the cutting part I still want no part of. Maybe before the next meeting if you want to come cut it and take some home you can.
Dashia

[sscherin]

Nothing too exciting in my world this month.

The pods have gone wild.. the things are everywhere..
They have a big apetite for Green Hair Algae and ate it all. Not a bit left..
Now they don't really care for Red hair Algae.. So much so that they chose to eat the entire chato ball in the sump rather than the RHA.. frustrating little monsters..

Snails are till a multiplying.. I have little cirith and nasaruis snails crusing all over and slowly gaining in size.
I've noticed a few new Stormatellas  in there too.. Happy hitch hikers.

Since the pods and blue legs don't appear to care much for the RHA I hired about 11 Red leg hermets to patrol the red puffball gardens today.. I hope they came hungry.

I think the cleaner shrimp is going insane.. No fish to clean so He's taken to groomng RHA puff balls for pods.

[na.lamar]

Are you sure it's RHA and not something like cynobacteria?  Which pretty much no CUC will eat.  I had a problem with it for a little had to increase flow and reduce phosphates.