Man,
What a weekend. I didn't have time to do anything on the tank, but I figured I would tell you guys how I got to where I am right now.
I started researching Reef Aquaria back in 2000, when I got married and moved, I planned on breaking down my planted fresh water tank (which of course I had to do to move it) and set it back up as a Fish Only w/ Live Rock Tank. (just fish, no corals or inverts) however, my apartment at the time did not allow fish tanks over 30 gallons, and I had a 55. So, I converted to another blooming passion, Carnivorous Plants. (that 55 still has my Bical, Truncata X Vetchie, and several other neps in it. Including a 5 year old home depot nep which is suprisingly, one of my favs.) Fast Forward to 2003, I am working at a nice big company again, pulling in enough money to consider starting a reef up again. I started doing hard core research but again outside interference, my contract was supposed to be for 1 year, it lasted 8 months, and I was unemployed for a couple months, I did however, get hired back to a new contract at the same company in december. I january, I build my first tank.
A 30 gallon hexagon with 40 lbs of live rock. The first inhabitants were a pair of Electric Blue hermits, and emerald crab, and some dward zebra hermits. That was the situation for about 3 months. During that time, the tank blossomed a ton of micro fauna known as Copepods and amphipods. Then I added the PJ Cardinals, (which decimated the 'pod population) and later, 2 maroon clowns, which unfortunatley did not pair up and proceeded to attempt to kill each other. They were removed, and sold. Here is a pic of one of them.
That clown, and it's almost partner were eventually sold to friends, and I bought two much much younger ones, each was less than an inch at initial purchase, one rapidly became dominant and made the transformation to female. Here is a quicktime movie of them playing in their anemone.
http://www.digitalflytrap.com/Movies/DSCN0614.MOV (requires Quicktime)
You can see one of the PJ cardinals in the movie, (they are named Jammies and Rompers. Anyone guess why?)
Coral went in around this time too. Along with the bane of reef aquaria. One one of my Coral Frags (read 'cutting' to associate with plants) came in with what we call a hitch hiker in the reek keeping world, an Aiptasia Anemone.
You can see it
here, the Coral is a green trumpet, a very nice speciment, look below it in the shadow, you can barely see a little star shaped critter. Within a month, that aiptasia became 10, when I started killing them, it became 200. It is a never ending battle.
The tank was humming along very nicely (except for the constant fighting to kill the pest anemones) until late in the year when I switched to a new position at my company and my schedule went to 12 hour nights. I hardly had time to work on the tank, no water changes were done for a month, and I was just throwing food in before collapsing in exhaustion, this contributed to a hair algae bloom, and caused the Aiptasia population to get out of control again. When I finally adapted to the new schedule, I had about 800 aiptasia anemones, they stung the green trumpet I posted above to death. It was time for a biological control. I worked hard at bringing the tanks rapidly swinging parameters back under contrl for a month, and used a kalkwaser paste to kill as many of the pest anemones as I can find. Unfortunately, once hair algae takes control, it is hard to get rid of. So I invested in an item called a "PhosBan Reactor" this required the addition of a new pump.
before adding the reactor though, I purchased 4 little nudibranchs called Berghia, they eat only aptasia, they were expensive, but a better control than peppermint shrimp that would have attacked my feather dusters and bubble tip anemone as well. They made short work of the surviving visible aiptasia, and since once you have aiptasia you never get rid of it, They had a food source they could feed on, at one point, there were about 20 babies, but the population stablized at around 8.
Then, I added the Phosban Reactor, and this is supposed to pull phosphate down to 0 in the tank and help remove algae. Two days after adding it, my schedule changed again, and I ignored the tank for a couple weeks. This turned out to be a highly fatal mistake.
The new pump was defective, after a couple of days my average temp raised from 78 degrees (appropriate for a reef tank) to 89.8. This heat wave caused all my crabs, my berghia nudibranchs, and most of my coral to die slowly. My anemone and several Mushroom coralamophins expelled their symbiotic algae in displeasure, and I came home one day to find a tank that was once colorful, bleached white. I was devestated. It took me a while to narrow in that the new pump was the problem, but I did find out that it was the cause. My fish survived, and my star Polyps and Zoanthids survived. You can see them in the following picture.
These mushrooms survived as well (the beautiful Rhodactus (purple and orange) on the far right perished as well.):
as did my pulsing pom pom xenia
My purple Millaporia did not:
At this point, I decided the 30 was pretty much 'dead' and to move my fish into a temporary tank of greter size to ensure stability, and give myself a little breathing room for the possibility of future disasters. I had purchased a 110 gallon tank for my wife a month before, and was restoring it by removing scratches and such before installing it in her office for her fancy goldfish. It became a temporary refuge that is still up and running. This tank is not without it's problems either.
It was originally plumbed with an Iwaki MD70-RLT, a pressure rated pump that sucks down energy like a black hole eats matter. Because the tank and stand were very tall, the pump was always in overdrive, and causing heat issues. When I removed it, The temp dropped from the mid 80's to the mid 70's. Yay. However, algae is still an issue, and without the bhergia to control the aiptasia, they have skyrocketed back into astronomical numbers, I estimate there are 2000+ in the tank at this point. this is partly due to the fact most of the heat damaged coral did not die until it was in the larger tank, this fueld algae and aiptasia growth.
Several water changes later, a new pump, and the phosban reactor running full bore, the algae stopped growing, now to get rid of it. I purshased a Purple Tang my wife calls "Mr. Nibbles" he can be seen in the following quicktime movie destroying algae. (eating it!)
http://www.digitalflytrap.com/Movies/ptang.mov
The tank is very ugly, the lights I had on my 30 hex were not strong enuogh to penetrate the depth of the 110, so the corals had to be puto n PVC and egg crate racks to elevate them higher in the tank. Mr. Nibbles is about the same diameter top to bottom as that of a baseball. If you look closely, you can see the clowns pop out for a second near the bottom of the frame.
I have not made any major investments in this current tank, I am in a holding pattern until the new tank comes on line. When I purchase the new live rock, which must be cured in the new tank (allowing dead matter to decay, and water to stabilize) the live rocks and corals in the 110 will take a vacation at Camp Instar. Instar is a friend of mine that breeds copper banded butterflies, and Berghia. The CBB's are a gorgeous fish that eats feather dusters, and AIPTASIA. He is going to put the rocks in his tank and allow the copper bands to denude the aiptasia off the rocks and coral for 3 weeks. So that when I add the rocks to the new tank, it won't immediately become an aiptasia farm. 8 brand new baby berghia will return home with the rocks to maintain a low aiptasia population.
I will post plans and prices for the new tank shortly.