bleachandvomit

Added my Helfrichi today! I was expecting him to hide immediately and not come out for a while... which was not the case. He hovered in the middle of the water column and all of the resident fish came up one by one to greet and check him out. Male maroon touched nose to nose for a few seconds and I think they will be best of friends. No aggression to speak of which is awesome. When I first added the Mystery Wrasse, everyone picked on him for a few days so I'm really glad with how things turned out. ...

So over the last two weeks I've added some new critters. I joined PMAS and found that the local forums are a good place to buy livestock on the cheap.

Monti caps (Green, purple, orange) - 10$ each
Frogspawn (2 heads) - 10$
Hammer (3 heads) - 10$

2-3" GBTA - 10$

I got the monti caps last week to kind of "test" the water, they are starting to encrust on the rocks a little and havnt browned out, which is a good sign that my nutrients ...

I originally wanted to take a purist approach and only house Clowns and BTAs, however, the more I looked at my rockscape the more I envisioned a SMALL variety of corals. I would hate to waste PAR and flow on an anemone that can adapt to low/low conditions, so here is a coral dream team.

Assorted BTAs on left side of tank
Zoas on the foreground "arm" of rocks
Table Acros right in the focal point, high flow, directly under lights.
Monti Caps all down ...

So the DIY stunner strip was a failure. I gave it a chance, and the two daylight bulbs simply overpower the blue LED's.

I decided on ditching the LEDs, and swapping one D-D aquablue + for an ATI blue plus. According to the PAR levels by Grimreefers, this will actually take away about 2 - 5% PAR overall, but give a nice actinic look.

I tried the two daylights alone, and just couldn't force myself to like the aesthetics. A few of my mushrooms dissolved as well, so I ...

Both of my tanks actually are finally cycled!

The 17 gallon stabilized a few weeks ago and since then I've added my orange and darwin clown pair, and a small flame hawkfish. Most of you might think a hawkfish is not suitable for such a small tank but I like to push the envelope. He's not cramped at all and he loves all the perching spots, including my mag-float that I have resting horizontally. The 17g has also had a cyano outbreak, from the post-cycle or from overfeeding. Another ...