# Puff's 24 Gallon Aquapod Reef Tank



## Puff

I decided to start a thread to keep track of my reef tank and everything that it puts me through.lol

So here are the specs:

- 24 gallon Aquapod
- 150W HQI MH Sunpod
- 100W visi-therm heater
- 2 Maxijet 900s
- 2 Hydor Flo attachments
- Sapphire Aquatics HOB Refugium and Skimmer

- 21lbs Jakarta liverock
- roughly 30lbs arag-alive substrate (fiji pink)

the first thing i did was mod the aquapod. i did this by removing the sponges and bio balls and drilling a hole on the right of the overflow. then i used a 1/2" slip bulkhead. i then slid in a Maxijet 900 in the right chamber and hooked it up to the bulkhead with some 1/2" tubing. In the left chamber i removed the stock pump and inserted another maxijet 900. the two maxijets combined equal more flow than the stock pump, but with less energy consumption. i was expecting temperature problems with the sunpod on top, so i figure the lower the amount of watts the better. to the bulkhead i attached a hydor flo.

I bought the sapphire aquatics HOB fuge and skimmer combo. that fit in very easily into the back chambers, even with the added maxijets. all i had to do was trim one of the fittings.

First pic, from the top looking at the added bulkhead with the hydor flo and locline thingie









Birdseye view of the overflow









Side view of the refugium









This will be where the tank is. it's in a shoot-off of my room that used to hold my 55 gallon rhom tank. 

















Skimmer...in the box...









So on saturday i drove an hour across town and picked up some very nice jakarta live rock. I came home and added the liverock and aragalive to the tank. i filled the tank up partway then tried to slide the aragalive in...but it was still cloudy as hell.lol. so i hooked up a magnum HOB filter w/ micron filter to the tank and let it run for a few hours to clear the tank.

Still a bit cloudy









that night i was reading that i should have scrubbed the dead sponges off the liverock, so i went home and spent 3 hours making sure every bit was off of it. that morning i woke up and rescaped the tank. this is what i came up with.









With the blue and white LEDs on at night

















when i looked at the liverock under the blue LEDs i noticed some very bright orange and pinky colours coming from some pieces. i also saw a little worm thing cruising around, and a few pods.

this pic is way out of focus, but you can kind of see the bright orange in the center(ish)-left of the pic









the tank with the MH on w/ flash









this is the top piece of liverock, and also has the most life on it. today i found 2 tubeworms and some other thingies. it also has some cool planty bits on it, but they are very hard to get pics of.

















unfortunately today i also found an aiptasia. it's on a piece of the foundation rock though, so i have no friggin clue how to go about getting rid of it!


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## nismo driver

hhmm to of red x's, get those fixed and this will be a great thread


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## Puff

re x's...you serious? it shows up fine for me!

ill try to re-add the pics.


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## AKSkirmish

Pics are fine Puff...It's on Nismo's end....

I look forward to your progress here..
Everything looks great...And I really like your scapeing thus far...


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## Nevermind

Looks good puff, i like the way the LR is arranged







Did you get all the stuff in Van? I'm here for some schooling for the next 5 weeks, and im lookin to start a salt setup too.


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## Puff

i drove way the hell out to delta to get the liverock. it was a place called Ocean Aquatics. great place. the owners are the main employees so you get treated very well. the LR was cheaper too. about 5-6$ per pound compared to 9.99 for crappier rock elsewhere.

you might also want to check out King Eds Pet Centre in Burnaby. poor livestock, but cheap equipment and decent live rock.

would you guys say that the liverock is built too low? or is it a good height?

the reason i built it low was because the sunpod might torch some things if they are too close to the surface. i could always buy some more pieces, but im not sure if it would ruin the look of the tank.


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## nismo driver

its good not to fill the tank with the maximum desired rock because if you get large colonies of zoos they will be on decent size live rock


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## Coldfire

Very nice job on the set up Puff!!! That is a great looking tank, and has all the bells & whistles on it. Well done.


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## Puff

speaking of bells and whistles...the tunze osmolator should be here today or tomorrow. that will go on immediately. i also got a wavemaster pro...but im debating whether to put it on or not, as i have 2 hydor flos on the two ouputs right now and i like how that is going (way more flow than with the split locline thingie that came with the tank).

i killed 2 aiptasia yesterday. found one more last night and what i thought was a cool zoa ended up being a baby majano...so the lime juice is coming out again. the 2 aiptasia i nuked yesterday are completely gone. the liverock where they were is clean.lol

i also saw some weird colour in my tank last night. it ended up being a slimy neon green colour under the blue LEDs. they looked like little stars. but i couldnt figure out what they are. either very small aiptasia (like without any tentacles yet) or some other thingie...i have no clue. so i rescaped the area around that piece of LR so that i would at least be able to get at the culprits with a needle if they end up being something bad.

i also found another tubeworm yesterday. it was in my fuge on a cool chunk of rock that i had overlooked. the little "finger" of rock has about 3-4 different colours of coraline on it, then this cool orange tubeworm. i put it in the main display because i love tubeworms, and the piece of LR is cool. i found another baby tubeworm this morning. so the TW count is up to 7 now. interesting little creatures.

there is also another type of tubeworm. it has BRIGHT red fingery bits. it almost looks like the tentacle-y bits on a flame scallop. the tube it comes out of is white, and about 1-2mm across. it's impossible to get a pic of because it is so small though.

FTS from yesterday (will update with new one tonight hopefully)









"Finger" rock. the tubeworm comes out of a little hole on the left side about 1/4 to 1/3 the way down the rock.









Best pic i could get of the majano







(Too bad that it is a pest, as it is actually kind of cool looking. bright neon green mouth)


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## nismo driver

i miss the days where every little single bit of isolated life could keep my interest for hours, now i have soo much stuff to look at i over look the little stuff that used to facinate me.. those tube worms will be all over the place eventually, im not sure when it happended but i had an explosion of red tube worm growth now they are all over a couple of my rocks.

lookin good, just imagine how much time will just disapear in front of that tank once its ready for coral.. if you ahve a g/f she will become jealous of the tank as you spend more money on it then her and pay more attentio to it then her.


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## Puff

well i cant stick my weiner in my fish tank...

or can i???


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## Coldfire

Congrats on finding stuff all over the place. I still love finding new crap that comes out of the LR. The bright red tube worms are great. I have several colonies of them in two different places.


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## Puff

got my Tunze Osmolator, wavemaster pro, and the extra test kits i purchased.

at first i stared at the tunze like an idiot, as all the words seemed to be in german...but i finally found some english on there!hahaha.

the osmolator is a cool piece of kit. looking forward to getting it set up.


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## Mettle

take pics


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## Coldfire

Puff said:


> got my Tunze Osmolator, wavemaster pro, and the extra test kits i purchased.
> 
> *at first i stared at the tunze like an idiot,* as all the words seemed to be in german...but i finally found some english on there!hahaha.
> 
> the osmolator is a cool piece of kit. looking forward to getting it set up.












I do that as well with a new piece of equipment that I have never seen. I remember the first UV I bought. I turned it upside down, then rightside up, then upside down again like a retard. Once I figured which way it when I started attaching the hose. I couldn't figure out how the clamps tighten down to prevent leaks. Then, it all came together in my mind and I was like WTF is wrong with me?


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## redbellyjx ©

cool build! What exactly is an osmolator? Is it a device for controlling ozone?

Cant wait to see pics once you start stocking it.


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## Puff

so i tested my water a couple of days ago and all was good. i went to a local reefer's house yesterday to buy some chaeto (2$ for a big ball of it!). i was talking to him about my tank and stuff and about my water tests. he was like, "oh, i have some frags if you want some." so i had a look. he had some cool colt coral, green sinulara, some mushrooms and some zoas. i love zoas, and know that adding a few polyps to my tank wont affect the bioload too much...so i got two things of zoas. one rock is probably about 4" across, and has maybe 4 different types of zoas. some purple, some red, some neon green...they look really nice. the guy also gave me a VERY small frag (maybe 2-3cm) of this really nice expensive zoa that he got imported. there's maybe 5 or 6 really small polyps on the piece of LR, but they are bright neon green and a bit of orange...pretty cool. he also gave me a small frag with a nice blue mushroom on it. after acclimating the mushroom last night i had a close look and found maybe 4-5 other small mushrooms on the rock as well, mabye 1cm across. 2 are red, 2 are blue.

tonight im going to go buy some reef roids or cyclopeez to feed the new additions.

pics to follow.

the tunze osmolator is basically a really cooly named auto top off!lol. it utilizes a sensor to measure the water level, as opposed to a float switch, which can SOMETIMES fail after a while..but not always.) the tunze uses a float switch as the emergency backup to avoid an overflow. ill take pics of it all later on.


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## Puff

i got a very small CUC yesterday:

1 trochus snail (my favourite so far...so hilarious)
1 very small astrea
2 nassirus 
3 very small hermits. 1 seems to be a blue leg, the other seems to be red..they are so small it's hard to tell though. but they are one or the other.

the bivalve that i found a few days ago has set up shop as well.

i found the smallest bit of bubble algae on the rock with my zoas on it. i think ill take the piece out and make sure i gingerly remove the bubble algae so it doesnt spread. i might wait for the bubble to get larger though, as right now it is very small, and i dont want to risk it spreading if i mess up.


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## Puff

sorry for not getting an update up here sooner, but ive been incredibly sick with some bad food poisoning for the last week and a bit...so i havent had the energy to do it.lol.

New FTS









well i recently added a small CUC. a few hermits, 5 small nassirius, 3 cerith, 3 small astrea, 1 trochus. i also bought a very small fighting conch and will be feeding it some seaweed and see if it wants to try some pellets or other bits and pieces.

everything is doing good. im getting a small amount of green algae, but the CUC is taking care of it. the water parameters are great.

i also recently added a couple of small frags. first off i got a small (3cm or so) piece of LR with some nice zoas on it, i also got a piece of live rock (around 3-4") with a few polyps of 2 or 3 types of zoas. i also got a small rock with a blue mushroom on it. i got the frags from a local reefer who i have always admired the tanks of. he gave me a great deal (also picked up some chaeto from him). when i went to put the mushroom in the tank i discovered 2 really small red mushrooms on the same piece of LR.

fast forward to today and i was at the LFS. i saw some nice stuff but wanted 1 other type of mushroom to keep to satiated for a while. i eventually found a piece of rock with 3 really nice browish coloured shrooms with bright green stripes. i asked about the price and it was 20$...which is cheap at this place. so i got them.

well i got them home, acclimated them...and went to put them into the tank...as i turned over the rock to inspect it (as i was giving it a quick scrub) i found what i thought to be another mushroom. as i was looking at it...IT MOVED! "WTF?"...it was one of these things ive seen in another persons tank... a really flat slug/snail thing with a small shell...only the shell on this thing looked almost like an opal, and the meat on it was white. i later searched and found the name, stomatella! this thing is hilarious. works up a storm as well. i put the mushrooms into the tank and another "wtf?" they have completely changed colour! now they are full irridescent green with a purply background...?!?!?

new shrooms are on the bottom rock. blue mushroom on top.









after the shroom rock was in the tank for a bit i noticed some life popping up. about 5 more tube worms!

anyways...on the top piece of my aquascape i was having this vegetation going absolutely crazy. i got a couple of members of the CUC to try to deal with it, not expecting anything at all...but giving it a shot. well it seems to be working! they've cleared off a couple of decent sized patches so far. the main critters that seem to be doing the most on the vegetation are 1 of the ceriths, some of the hermits, and a few of the nassirius.

the fighting conch is also a hoot. there is plenty for it to eat right now, but i found him scaled one of the sloped pieces of liverock, picking away at things all the way up. i thought they were supposed to stay on the sand level?lol


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## nismo driver

looks like things are going nicely.. looks great..


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## Puff

im really psyched about my CUC. they're hilarious to watch.

when i first put my trochus and first astrea snail in i got a hilarious comedy sketch played out before my eyes. the astrea was tiny...probably 1/8th the size of the trochus. well the astrea was slowly making his way to the glass to start cleaning...the trochus wanted to get there too...and is faster than the astrea. so the trochus starts hauling ass. it comes up on the astrea...and gets up on its back!! trying to get a ride. the astrea poked it's eyes out and looked at the trochus like "WTF are you doing buddy?" and the trochus was perched up there looking like he was trying to ride a bull.lmfao.


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## Chapz

Beautiful tank set up. How many lbs of live rock did u purchase?
I just am so amazed at the tank set up from scratch.


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## Puff

hmm..i THINK it was roughly 21lbs of live rock in the display, and another 1 or 2lbs of rubble in the fuge. i smashed up one piece of live rock that was probably close to a pound because it just didnt fit in anywhere, but had some nice coraline on it. so some of those bits are in the fuge, a couple of the pieces are in the display.


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## nismo driver

plenty of more entertainment headed your way, i had some sanils in my tank that laid egg sacks all over the glass for about two months, i think it eventually got eaten by a worm but it was doing a good job of keep the algae off the glass but mucking it right back up with eggs, so for a few months i would see a teeny tiny astrea every now and then and last night i saw a tiny one but it was not so tiny, atleast a 14 inch across.. so it was pretty cool to see that the astrea was able to reproduce in my tank and survive all of the hell it has been through between an upgrade from a 10 to a 20 then moved from queens to jersey then upgrading again to the 45 and the mini cycle of adding 20 lbs of un cured base rock.

hopefully your mushrooms will be happy and start to divide, once those things get going its crazy how fast they can multiply but it also kind of varies on the specific species, i have some that will divide like crazy when conditions are right and anthoer that wont..


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## Puff

well the blue mushroom now has two mouths...not too sure what that means....

i read that with mushrooms they expand really big if they arent getting enough light. but when they expand they lose a lot of colour. ive placed the mushrooms lower in the tank, but in direct light, and they seem to have "shrunk", but their colours are a lot brighter and more vibrant.


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## nismo driver

Puff said:


> well the blue mushroom now has two mouths...not too sure what that means....
> 
> i read that with mushrooms they expand really big if they arent getting enough light. but when they expand they lose a lot of colour. ive placed the mushrooms lower in the tank, but in direct light, and they seem to have "shrunk", but their colours are a lot brighter and more vibrant.


mushrooms arent much differnt then regular land based mushrooms. they dont require alot of light and can multiply rapidly under the correct conditions..

i have seen ricordia with two mouths that didnt split..

if you ever saw the old science lesson of cells splitting were you have two round cells then they look like they are bieng pinched in the cinter then all the sudden there are two, thats pretty much what mushrooms do.

ive heard of guys taking a couple of mushrooms and chopping them up fine and letting them swirl around in the tank and months pater teh bits of mush room will start to regrow. another method of aiding splits is to just cut right down the middle witha razor but they can just heal back..

probably one of the most simple corals but still really really interesting


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## Puff

yeah. im keeping it at these 2 types. i want to grow them down the vertical front right of the rock work. i also wanted a nice ric at some point.

after seeing a local reefers 220G crazy ass reef tank, and how he had it set up, i kind of took a bit of inspiration from it. he planted all his corals in their groups, and they were all growing better (from what i saw over the times ive seen his tank the last couple of years). ive started a mushroom section (which will spread onto the sand), a zoa section (on the left), then the back and middle is reserved for cooler stuff. i eventually want a small frogspawn, and some xenia. both of which i can get from this guy for really cheap.

i have a question though.

when is it ok to add a feather duster? and when should i add fish?

i was thinking of adding a small fish in a couple of weeks or something...but im not sure. i know what fish i want...so it's a matter of adding them in the correct order. i like the hi fin red banded gobies and can get one readily...and i figured that since they are the shyest of the fish i wanted, that i should add it first...but im not sure.

i also wanted a pair of clowns and a blenny...but im still deciding on what one to get, as my first option is hard to find around here.


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## nismo driver

with a goby blennies and clowns order shouldnt make much difference, with shy fish its not really going to make them more or less shy, its not that they have low self esteem they have very few defeneses and hide alot to stay alive in the wild. if your getting these fish from differnt sources it would be best if you had a quarenteen tank and add them once they have been qt'd and you can be sure they are healthy, if you get a hifin goby and add teh clowns a week later then the goby dies it will be harder to know why and avoid it happening again and marine fish are exactly cheap.. if you cant set up a qt tank then it would still be a good idea to go slow so you dont go from zero to sixty with bio load.


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## Puff

yeah

im debating what small fish to add. i wanted a goby...but i read that they need to be fed up to twice a day...i was wanting fish that could go a bit longer without food...as i was planning on feeding the tank every 3 days or so to cut down on the waste produced.

i definitely want a pair of clowns...but now im not sure what other fish to get. i like six line wrasses...but they CAN be assholes...i know that if i did add one that it would be best to add it to the tank last. my water params seem to be staying good, so im not sure when i could add my first fish.

any ideas??

so today i was looking at that top rock in the my tank (one covered in veggies.lol) and it was pissing me off. so i pulled it out and spent about 30 minutes scrubbing it clean.i got MOST of the plant material. but i found a new hitchhiker!! a little tiny crab that has made a little burrow in the rock! the carapace (?) is about 1cm across, and the crab is a kind of brown sandy colour. blends in perfectly with the rock. at first i thought i was hallucinating again and that the rock was moving.lol.

as soon as i put the rock back in the tank the 2 tubeworms that i havent seen in over a week popped up. one of them is a good size too, bigger than any other in the tank.

i also found what appears to be a small featherduster. it differs from the other tubeworms ive found because the colour and pattern of the feathers is completely different.

my fighting conch is cracking me up. this guy LOVES to climb the rock work. i also found my trochus snail today, after not seeing him since i added it. the nassirius snails are the funniest though. they're like a little pack of elephants cruising around waving their trunk around. i dropped a little food pellet in to give them something to munch on and this one nassirius chased the pellet around the sand for like 5 minutes. he would get close to it, then the current would move it just out of its reach. pretty hilarious. all of the hermits have changed shells now as well, so i think that for the time being my snails should be relatively safe.

the mushrooms are doing quite good. the blue one opens up HUGE every morning. sometimes about 4+ inches across.

today i took out one of the hydor flos (the right side one) and replaced it with some locline. i found that there was a bit too much current on one part of the tank, and by switching to the locline i have fixed it.


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## nismo driver

Puff said:


> but i found a new hitchhiker!! a little tiny crab that has made a little burrow in the rock! the carapace (?) is about 1cm across, and the crab is a kind of brown sandy colour. blends in perfectly with the rock. at first i thought i was hallucinating again and that the rock was moving.lol.


did you get a good look at its claws? sometimes its a good idea to isolate an unknown hitcher when you get a chance until you ID it, there are more crabs that you dont want in the tank then crabs you do want.. generally hermits are the limits anything with pointy claws almost always bad, not pointy almost always questionable. i had an emerald mythrix for a while and he was very cool and the best aglae eater ever but eventually he got a taste for my leather and would pick at it every chance posible.. had to go.


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## Puff

yeah. he did have slightly black claws...so he is going to get tossed in the fuge...or stabbed....

i like randal's gobies as well...i guess it will all come down to what is available.

right now i could get some black perculas...so im thinking pretty hard about getting a couple of those...

i want to eventually get a tridachna crocea. right now the lfs has 1" ones that look really nice, but my tank is nowhere near ready for a clam!


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## Puff

damn...i have a decision to make.

do i buy a pair of black and white perculas that are captive bred from australia...

or do i go for a pair of ORA Percula...which i think are false percs.

being a noob i wouldnt want to "waste" a pair of the black and white percs if i messed up...and the ORA percs would be "hardier"...but i like the black and white percs with the orange faces..which im not sure if these ones have.


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## Puff

so i got a pair of clowns yesterday, and this morning a local reefer gave me a free orange digitata frag and a small frogspawn frag.

the clowns are doing awesome. i really like them already. one is really amiable and likes to watch me, the other is still a bit shy.

i found what i believe to be a colony of hair worms today. i thought it was a plant up until today. i was looking at all of a sudden i noticed all these arms moving around grabbing stuff out of the water! pretty cool IMO. most of them are on the piece of LR that kind of sticks out on the right of the tank. but there is one amongst my zoas that im going to remove incase it hinders their growth.


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## Puff

OK, i finally got around to snapping some pics today. i tried some with both of my cameras, because i was having really bad luck getting good shots with my "good" camera because of the bowed tank front.

since the last picture update ive added a few small frags, and one rock. i also finished off my CUC and got a feather duster.

- pair of small A. ocellaris
- 1 small neon green frogspawn
- 1 small orange digitata (free from local reefer when i got frogspawn)
- 1 small pulsing xenia frag
- 1 small piece of liverock w/ neon green star polyps (these things are BRIGHT green. they stood out amongst about 10 other GSPs they had there...)
- 3 scarlet reef hermits
- 7 small nassarius
- 1 cerith
- 1 trochus
- 2 astrea

everything is doing REALLY good in the tank. the frogspawn is expanded and bouncy, the xenia is pulsing away (within a couple of hours it was going great), the featherworm lost none of its feathers in transit (even after a 2 hour bouncy trip in the snow) and is out all the time grabbing stuff. the GSP took the longest to come out, but also required the most moving around when trying to find a place for it.

the clownfish are hilarious. when putting them in the tank my net wouldnt fit, so i used my hand to scoop them up. one of them swam in to my hand and let me move it, the other one eventually let me. they are like puppies. constantly moving, constantly wanting attention. when i try to take pictures they keep getting in the frame.lol

the plant stuff that was growing on my top rock was PISSING me off so i scrubbed it all off. notice how it's finally bare!lol

Before:








After:









sorry for the pic quality, it's hard to get it focused. i need to get a tripod.









































This is some plant that is growing on a back rock. i like it, so im going to keep it.


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## Puff

so i added a couple of small new pieces today. some guy was fragging bits out of his tank because it was overgrown. i got 2 small pieces of lime green monti cap, 1 piece of hot pink monti cap, and a frag of alien eye chalice.

the polyps on the pink monti cap were out within a few minutes, but i have the lime green ones in a different area and couldnt see them as closely. the alien eye chalice is freakin cool!


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## nismo driver

those are a sweet species def need pics of that


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## Puff

i paid 10$ for 2 small frags of lime green monti cap. then 10$ for a frag the size of the two smaller green caps of the hot pink. then 20$ for a 3"x3.5-4" piece of the alien eye chalice.


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## Trillion

Puff said:


> well i cant stick my weiner in my fish tank...
> 
> or can i???


lmfao

wow your tanks come a long way since its started

do you ever plan on going bigger

if im thinking right that sps frag you got will out grow that tank but it would take years!!!

do you want those percs to breed???

itd be nice cause if you could rear the off spring in that tank you could trade them for coral and other supplies!!

that be nifty!!1


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## Puff

i need to update this thread.lol. instead of updating here i had just created new threads.

one of my clowns jumped







so now i have 1 clown, 1 bicmaculatus blenny, and a royal gramma. some of the updates are in the saltwater pictures section i think...or it might be in this subforum.


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## Trillion

damn sorry to hear that man, no worries though you can always by another but i know how the bond forms to the 1s you already have???

thought you had a hood

what happened???

still everything else is good i hope!!!


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## Puff

well i replaced the dead clown with a royal gramma, and it is way better now. more colour, and more importantly zero aggression.

i dont use a hood, as i use a 150W MH and it would boil (not literally.lol) the tank pretty bad if i had a hood on there. im thinking of using eggcrate, but im not so sure. when i go away for 2 weeks ill definitely be putting some form of cover on.


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