Assorted coral and Clown fish swimming on a 'carpet anemone' (though the store kept saying it was a coral?!?). I got a slight sting from handling it. Either way, the Clowns love it.
Lizard's Secluded Reef(er) Pages |
Page 3 |
Well, the cycling of the tank is not complete by any means. The guys came over the other day to finish the staining of the stand and make adjustments to the doors of the cabinet along with a little odds and ends... or so I thought. Next thing I know, they added some coral and anemone to the tank!!!! Immediately red lights went off in my head but they kept saying there was no problem. Since I was home alone, there was very little I could do as far as communicating what I was thinking. As I sat there watching in disbelief for about 30 minutes, nearly all of the coral and anemone blossomed in the tank. Now I was a bit confused. Maybe the natural tropical seawater does have what it takes to get this tank off the ground early with daily monitoring and maintenance till the cycle is really complete. The protien skimmer broke itself in a few days ago and is working well. My wife and I have taken our time to keep the filter system pretty well clean and have already spent a great amount of time in front of the tank just watching and planning what we would want in there. Again, I am making no excuse for not having the cycle of the tank complete, but the guys said that they usually wait about 5 days before starting to stock any tank they set up. For better or worse... Here are the first inhabitants along with a few added fish over the course of the last 2 days as the Tet holiday (Vietnamese version of the Lunar New Year) is approaching and guests will be arriving soon. Some are still unidentified at the moment. I do expect some casualties before the tank cycles, but we will see if those guys know their local tank keeping stuff or not. |
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Assorted coral and Clown fish swimming on a 'carpet anemone' (though the store kept saying it was a coral?!?). I got a slight sting from handling it. Either way, the Clowns love it. |
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Close up of a red 'finger leather coral' and a green 'flowerpot coral' expanding. |
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3 of 4 Clowns playing and another red 'flowerpot coral'. |
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An anemone (left) and an 'Elegance Coral' (right) sitting in the breeze of the current. |
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A 'lunare wrasse' (left), but I saw him take a bite at the hermit crab. A Cleaner Wrasse (right) |
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A 'long-nosed file fish' (left, quite friendly in the tank) and a hermit crab (right) cleaning the bottom. |
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Ol' Gramps now with hair (anemone) and a starfish moving over it's eye. That one gave me a Paul Stanley flashback. Current look of the tank is to the right. |
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Now I have a pic of the top filtration. The one to the left has a pump on the bottom of the tank and the right has one in the middle-top of the tank on the other side. The overflow of both heads to the center trough and drops into the tank for added aeriation. I just changed out all of the filtration padding with new this morning (a few hours after this picture was taken).
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| Total in the tank as of this page: 4 crabs, 3 starfish, 2 sets of Clowns, 2 cleaner wrasse (though they hide all day), 1 lunar wrasse, 1 long nose filefish and another I haven't been able to get a picture of yet. 8 assorted coral and anemone, 150 lbs of live rock and a lot of hope that they make it over the next two weeks. This page is one of those 'don't do this at home' pages as the tank has only been up and circulating around a week now. Each of the fish, coral, and anemone are priced within 25,000-50,000 VND (about 1.56$-3.12$ USD each) at the LFS and are in abundance at the moment due to the Tet Holiday. Replacement filter padding for the entire system ran 10,000 VND (roughly 62 cents). |
*Special thanks to 'fishobsessed' for identifying the 'long-nosed file fish'.* |
An update on their progress through Tet real soon... |