Howdy All

[addict]

Well, it looks like I'm gonna be back for a while... I'm kinda like a herpe... I go away for a long time, then show up when you least expect it.

Anyway, as of the beginning of the year, I'm no longer affiliated with RAG. There was a certain member over there that liked to spew a lot of BS (I'm sure many of you can figure out who it is), and I just had this nasty habit of throwing it back into his face... needless to say, it was him or me, and you can guess who got the boot.

So, it looks like I'll be needing a place to hang my hat, and I thought I saw a free nail here on the wall...

Anyway, I guess y'all will probably want a tank update... and I wish it was good news. I had a medium-sized tank crash about 2-1/2 months ago, and lost a good portion of my SPS...
My prized Hawaiian Rice Coral is now just a dozen or so 1/2 to 3/4" frags. It was so depressing that I considered getting out of the hobby, but when life gives you lemons, I figured why not make lemonade.

So, the tank is about 3/4 of the way through a complete overhaul. Everything's been rearranged, the sandbed replaced, corals fragged, valonia scraped, aiptasia's juiced, majano's eliminated, and a host of other stuff to get it back into top shape.

It's been a bit slow going, but it's getting there. I find that I'm getting to the enjoyability phase again, rather than being sick at the sight of my reef.

I haven't taken any photos recently, but hopefully within the next couple days I'll sit down with my camera and get some decent shots. I thought that getting a Nikon D70 DSLR would make taking photos of the tank easier, but I think it's added a level of complexity to it that wasn't there before, which makes me envy Travis' skill even more.

So, I guess that's about it for now... I just wanted to let y'all know that I haven't forgotten about you.

 

[Craig Manoukian]

Great to see you back Dave! I'm down near Pasadena and farther from you than in when I was in Reno. Kudos for hanging in there and can't wait to see those pics from your new camera!

 

[Witfull]

damn,,i was just talking about how i needed to get ahold of you in IRC....i had heard the news....welcome back to RS. sorry for anything that tranpired there,,,atleast you unbanned me,,,lol,,(waits for the access denied pop up)

pics required after such a hiatus~

 

[Witfull]

admin advisory: flaming of other websites is not condoned. there is no need to air dirty laundry in public.

there have been no posts deleted or modified. pre-emptive blanket advisory. PM's are beyond the control of admins authority, any content of any private messege are not libel to RS or any affiliates, content of such messeges it totally secure and beyond the means of anyone scrutiny.

public flaming of any site will result in a warning. etc etc

 

[addict]

Nice to see ya still wearing that badge Witty.

I understand that RAG is pretty controversial, which is why I tried to keep it pretty calm from the get-go... I know you're not addressing me in particular, but I just wanted to clarify.

Anyway, thanks for the welcome back (from both you and Craig), and to show my appreciation, I've attached a teaser pic. That's about an 8" collander, filled with about half of the valonia I got out of my tank... and I swear that a good 2/3 of that was attached to my Astreas.

I'll try to take some decent pix tomorrow and get them posted.

Once again, thanks. :angel3:

 

[Witfull]

yummy,,have a recipe to go with it?

 

[Woodstock]

:hallo: Hi David!!! Great to have you hear! :bigbounce Get on IRC and hang with us in #ReefSanctuary. It's nice to have your input on reefing questions there

Ahhhhh.... valonia, satan reincarnated I know EXACTLY how you feel about it. I had a horrible case of it too. I still have one or two spots but nothing like it was. A regal tang and low nutrients removed mine. But I since had to remove the tang because it was nipping at my frogspawn I just ordered a yellow tang I hope it keeps it in check as well as the regal did... we'll see. Good luck with it.

 

[addict]

Thanks for the Welcome Doni.

Well, it's been a long day so I was only able to take a couple of shots, and only one was really worth posting.

The front of the tank is now actually the 'side', and the right-hand side is now the 'front' (which isn't pictured yet).

But you can see how bare the tank is. The nice thing is that I'm currently working with one of the local LFS owners on a store website and a brochure for his cleaning/setup/maintenance service, so he said he'd hook me up on some more corals... so hopefully things will progress here soon.

 

[cheeks69]

Hey David Welcome back :whstlr:
Sorry to hear of your troubles what happened to the Clams ? Why did you replace the SB ?

 

[addict]

Howdy Robert... good to see ya.

We're down to two clams now... the squamosa is getting huge (which you can see up front), and we still have our dark blue maxima which is kinda visible over to the right side (hiding behind the rock). We lost two of our little babies to pinched mantle, and our light blue maxima just suddenly died overnight... one day it looked great, and the next there were just hermits picking through the leftovers.

Needless to say, it's been rough... here's what I've had to deal with in the past six months:

1. Red Bugs (again, for the second time)
2. Flatworms
3. Valonia outbreak
4. Majanos (those ones that I 'thought' looked so pretty multiplied into about 150 of the little buggers).
5. Aiptasia (which wiped out a good portion of the SPS)
6. Dinoflagellates.

By far the worst of them all was the aiptasia... when I did my red bug treatments I wiped out my peppermint shrimp population, and then the aiptasia population just exploded... they were everywhere. That's why the rock up front is pure white at the moment. It was so covered with majanos, aiptasia, turf algae and valonia that you could hardly see the rock, so I took it out and let it sit outside for about a month or so.

I replaced the sandbed because the old one was pretty loaded up with gunk, and was starting to grow all kinds of brown and red algaes. I bought 30 pounds of dry aragonite, and a 10-lb. bag of 'live' sand to seed it with bacteria. I decided against the rubble this time around, but the one drawback is now the astreas can't right themselves anymore, so once a day I have to flip the ones over that have gotten stuck.

 

[Rougiem]

Welcome back to RS!

Cheers!

 

[cheeks69]

Yes the Squamosa is beautiful as well as your Zooathid collection. I'm glad to hear you persevered that's alot to go thru but the tank appears to be doing quite well now.

I'm going thru a case of PM with one of my Croceas as well, did I tell ya this hobby can be very frustrating ???

 

[Woodstock]

Beautiful tank David!

 

[Witfull]

Beautiful tank David!

Ditto~

 

[Craig Manoukian]

Ditto, ditto, ditto!

 

[fidojoe]

You got me droolin'!!!

Welcome Back!!!

 

[addict]

Wow, thanks everybody.

Right now it still just looks like a pile of rocks, but I'm hoping that soon it will be more than just a rubble zone.

I'll try to get a photo of the right side today so that you can see the actual 'front' of it now. I kinda switched things around because I wanted to create a calm sandbed area for LPS, and the way the powerheads are positioned at the back meant that I needed my rockwork to block the flow a bit up front.

 

[RANDY]

Another Critter That Helps Keep The Valonia Problem In Check Is The Emerald Crab. With The Introduction Of Only 4 My Problem Is Under Control.

 

[addict]

Thanks Randy,
I did have a couple of emerald crabs in there at one time, but rather than keep my valonia in check, I caught them after lights out scraping big chunks of flesh out of my SPS!

Since then, I've had an aversion to emerald crabs... LOL.

 

[mps9506]

Good to see ya back man.
Good to see that you are sticking through the tank battles. It can be rough, but your tank does look good, so be happy about that
Again, good to see ya posting again.