Anselth's 70 Gallon Tech Tank upgrade

[Anselth]

Barb, sorry I missed your question! The sand is about 3" deep. It's deeper than what I had in the 50, and I like the change. Between the Sea Hare, Nassarius snails, and the Cucumber, I think it will be kept well stirred, although apparently we're getting a bloom of cyano along the sandbed. Shale said she's going to adjust the flow a bit more to the front to see if that helps.

[Anselth]

Another thing. I never noticed how much the black background makes things pop out at you until I changed tanks...The colors on my corals seem much more vibrant after the switch.

[Anselth]

Oh, Scott. I don't think it's a bad plumbing junction, although I intend to lower the return about an inch. All of the plumbing is flex hose, siliconed and clamped in place. I do have this weird thing where I get a burst of air bubbles from the return every once in a while, not sure what's causing that. I'm going to have a good hard look at the plumbing when I get back home to try and figure out what's going on there.

[BarbMazz]

Thanks for the sand bed info, Adam... no problem.. it's not like you're not busy or something! I like that look... I was going with 4" but that might be too much.. 3" may be the answer. I'm also going with a black background. I like that contrast, too!

[Anselth]

To be honest, the 3" sand bed was an accident. I bought a 40lb bag of aragonite and a 15 pound bag of sugar-sized and that's what came out...

[shale]

Critter update:
For the past couple of weeks we've been missing the sea cucumber. I looked everywhere in the tank and just couldn't spot him. Well, last night I finally looked up from sump to check out the bottom and there he was, sitting on the floor in the overflow.
With the new tank and setup, my little arms aren't long enough to reach all the way down to the bottom. Dentiod had some helpful advice (Thank you thank you!), part of which was just to pick it off the wall if I caught it climbing around.
The cuke (his name is Chaz, btw - Adam named that one) looked fine in the sump, so I decided to trust him not to end up in the sump overnight and I went to bed. This morning I got up and went to check the overflow, and he was high up on the wall, easily within reach! Helpful little guy.
So now Chaz has been retrieved and is back in the display. We’re going to make some changes to the setup a bit once Adam’s home so we can hopefully prevent that from happening again.

So here’s the tail end of him. As soon as Chaz was on the sand, he stretched out and took off. He made it from the front to around the back of the blasto in record time. Guess he’s in good shape.

[Dentoid]

Sarah!

[Anselth]

Scott, thanks for the help. i was at a loss

[althea2you]

cool cucumber!!! what kind is that? and nice job getting him out! woohoo!

[Anselth]

It's one of the Tiger Tail species, Sarah.

[shale]

The day after I put that tiger tail cucumber back in the tank, he vanished again. Didn’t see him for the rest of the week. Checked the overflow, checked the sump, nuthin. But I finally spotted him this morning, waving around under one of the rocks.

All the inverts in the tank are such characters. William the Bloody, our blue tuxedo sea urchin, has decided that appropriate camouflage to carry with him is this little suction cup. We use it to hold the small tubing in place to drip acclimate the inverts, and it must have fallen behind the rocks shortly after everyone moved into the bigger tank. So our little guy picked it up and stuck it to his head and he won’t let go. I’ve tried to gently remove the thing, since I’m not sure he should be wearing plastic, but I can never seem to get him to give it up.

Here’s William, rehearsing for his role in Wagner’s Die Walküre. Note that he’s not so much carrying a spear and magic helmet as a suction cup shield, a small colony of zoas and a bunch of chaeto for a wig.

[Anselth]

Looks like he's charging the zoos

[Dentoid]

That is so funny, I'm crying with laughter! What a great shot Sarah! A trained Urchin!

[shale]

We keep sea hares because A) they are fantastic wonderful creatures and B) they eat a lot of hair algae. But, when my sea hare (Gwendolyn) ate all the hair algae in the tank, I started feeding her nori so she wouldn’t starve to death.

Recently I’ve had some hair algae grow among the branches of the caulastrea. I figured, great, Gwen will eat it right up. Well, she ignored it for a long time, and then the other night, crawled up on top of the caulastrea and sniffed at it, and then crawled away without eating any of it.

Is it possible to spoil a sea hare on nori? I pulled some of the HA out myself and attached it to a rock with a rubber band (like I do with the nori) in the hope that she might eat it. No luck so far.

Hmmmm, watching and waiting………

see below: sniffing, and not eating. Bratty Gwen. She left the hair algae flattened, but very much intact.

[tbittner]

Now THAT is an interesting question! I can't wait to hear from some of the more knowledgable sea hare folks.