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jlanger's 120gal Arts and Crafts Inspired Reef Build (1 Viewer)

Here's a few pics from this morning.

Who needs anemones when you have LPS corals?
The pair of perculas really enjoy using the Duncan colonies as surrogates. The female is very territorial over these two colonies and will give you a quick nip if you invade her space.

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The male Splendid Pintail Fairy Wrasse has settled in very well with this community of fish.

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Here's a top down view of one of my newer montipora corals; Flowerpot Montipora.
The blue polyps complement nicely on the green plating coral; not to mention the blue and greens represented in the zoanthids and mushrooms close by.

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And how about these red polyps standing out against the green tissue of these tips of Forest Fire Digitata?

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Love the pintail fairy wrasse Jason! It's good to see that those ceramic blocks are working well for you! I've had Seachem Matrix in my sump for about 2.5 months and from what I've read people start noticing better results around the 3 month mark.
 
Nothing new to report.
Still managing nitrates. Still contemplating an ATS. Still planning to change out the sand bed.

Oh... the clownfish laid another clutch of eggs this past weekend.
And I did manage to accidentally get a top down photo of my male Pintail Fairy Wrasse!

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Man I also need a ats. Any thoughts of maybe getting couple guys together to cut the pieces out and then build it ourselves?
 
deneed4spd said:
Man I also need a ats. Any thoughts of maybe getting couple guys together to cut the pieces out and then build it ourselves?
Click to expand...

I'm in the design stage to make a scrubber that will fit/work with my sump layout. I want something that is appropriately sized, convenient to maintain, doesn't interfere with other parts of the sump and ultimately looks good. Not easy to fit all of those into design; yet.
I'm lucky enough to have personal access to a CNC router and CAD design software so once I figure this out, it should be quick to produce.
I just need to sit down and finalize a design.
 
Before I start any production work on an ATS, I thought I should start with a simpler project. A project that would involve many of the processes that are used to create a functional (and well constructed) ATS; something with a few critical measurements, something to practice my bonding skills, something to hold water in/out and something that I have wanted to make for a while now.

Here's my test subject; a porthole for my camera.



Success!!!
The lens fit the tube on the first draft and the bonding process was watertight.
This porthole is rather shallow, but it does allow me to get better top-down shots without worrying about the lights reflecting off the water's surface. I may make a deeper porthole to use with the macro lens.

Here's a couple of the first quick shots I was able to take with the porthole attached to my camera lens.

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eschulist said:
Awesome pictures Jason! Whered all your fish go?
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Thanks! I was too excited to try out the porthole that I spooked all of the fish into hiding.
My lights had already started to ramp down for the night and I cranked them back up to full intensity. And I basically just dove right in with the porthole and started taking photos.
Over the next few days I'll try to get some more photos without creating such a disturbance.
 
Each night before lights out, I check on my tank to see if anything needs some attention. I usually feed the last of the days food and watch the fish (specifically the wrasse pair) for any signs of courtship. The male pintail wrasse displays a brighter red color and white spots appear along the base of the dorsal fin.
While watching the fish, the male anthias was doing his daily dance routine of diving under the females and displaying his fins. I noticed that my dominant female Lyretail Anthias was huge. I mean huge! She has always been quite robust, but she had a really big belly. Her behavior was strange. She would chase the smaller females into the rocks and then come back to the open water column and wait. The male would dart along side her and do a little shimmy and then go back to finding the other females.
I watched this go on for about half an hour before I decided to grab my camera to document this behavior. Within a minute of recording, I captured this...



I was able to document my Lyretail Anthias spawn in my 120gal aquarium!
I was so excited that I stopped the recording to tell/show my son what had happened; as he wants to go into the marine sciences for a career. By the time I returned to the tank, the lights had completely gone out and all of the fish were nestled into their sleeping spots.

From the video, it appears that the fish like fresh fish eggs. The Midas Blenny seems to know what is about to happen as it hovers close by and takes a few bites before the male anthias chases it off.

I can't tell you how long this has been going on, but I know that the anthias have been dancing for years.
I can say that I have been exclusively feeding all of the fish a variety of the LRS Frenzy Blends; including the Fertility Frenzy blend. My clownfish pair have spawned frequently; just this month, in fact. In my other tank, the Bangaii Cardinalfish have spawned and I'm curious as to the behaviors of the goby pair.

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Very cool, well done
 
Jonty said:
Very cool, well done
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It appears that we were just looking at the wrong fish yesterday.
Thanks again for making the long trek and stopping by.
 
It feels so naked and dirty...

 
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