Some new frags

Well on Friday morning I bought in a few frags to put in the tank. "Frags" for those who don't know is a term used in marine aquaria for "fragments" of coral. It's kind of like taking a cutting from a plant in the garden and replanting it somewhere else. These frags came from my marine tank at home.
It may have been a bit premature to put these in, but hey, it's just too tempting to have an empty tank waiting like that! Plus, these particular corals (acropora) are growing a bit out of control in our tank, so a little trimming didn't hurt them.

This tank, with it's lower lighting output is not ideal for most acropora, but we may be lucky and get a few species to grow. Anyway, Neil trimmed the pieces off the night before, and wrapped them in damp newspaper and put them in some water, ready for me to take to work. Having them sit overnight like that was probably not ideal and judging by how they looked by the end of the day, I'd say they may not make it. One had started to bleach, which we trimmed off and the other looked a bit flaky. We'll see how they look on Monday and turf them out if they are dead. Next time, we will trim them off fresh in the morning and bring them in. The white putty stuff you can see is called "Aquaknead". This comes in a tube and you cut small amounts off, knead it together and use it to attach frags to rocks. After time, algae grows over it and it doesn't stand out so much. Thanks Shannon for helping attach the frags.

The other few frags we bought in were Coralimorphs (or common name is mushrooms as they look like mushrooms). This family of corals come in a huge variety of colours and textures, some smooth, some fluffy. I think they are a great addition to a tank as they add a lot of coverage and colour and grow fairly fast. A couple of the morphs were on a little piece of rock, which we placed in the tank. The other two we just threw in. Later on, Neil came in and we decided it might be a cool idea to help them attach to one of the vertical rocks, so he used some toothpicks and secured them into one of the holes in the rock. Once they have attached themselves, we will remove the toothpicks. You can see this in the pictures.

The water was tested again and it was quite good. I found the ph test kit too.
PH: 8.2
Ammonia 0.5mg/l
Nitrite: 0
Nitrate: 0

If levels stay good for the next few days, we will look at adding some livestock maybe on Friday! Yippee.

Naomi :)

Tank Wishlist

I came up with some coral and fish that I think might work ok in our new tank.

Of course these would need to be added slowly and everyone needs to be happy with the selections.

Here is a pdf if you'd like to download it.
http://starfishblue.com.au/studiotank.pdf

Day 4

Tank still looking good. Discovered a very cute little slug, which I will try to get a photo of. It may be a nasty little coral eater when it grows up so will have to try to identify it now and deal with him if need be (evil laugh).

We did some water tests today, Ammonia (small trace) Nitrite (none) and Nitrate (tiny trace), so things are looking good for adding stuff soon. Might even add some little frags from my home tank tomorrow.

Hope to see some posts from all you other studio reefers soon, as people will get sick on me blabbing on!

Naomi :)

Day 2

Well it seems like everyone loved the tank and got a nice surprise on Monday morning. I was not working so had to wait until the next day to see how it was progressing.

Tuesday 24th April
Upon arriving at work, I was pleasantly surprised at how clear the water was and how great the tank was looking. There were a few little corals that had woken up and there was quite a lot of activity with the snails and everything just seemed happy :)

In the afternoon, Spencer, Shannon and myself did a 40 litre water change. Siphoning the water out was fine, but putting the fresh batch in involved stacking the 2 x 20 litre drums on top of a wheely bin to allow gravity to do its thing. None-the-less, it was better than having to lift 20 litres up above your shoulders.

Below are some pictures taken before the water change.

Naomi :)

Installation of tank

Well Sunday 22nd April saw the long awaited installation of the Clemenger BBDO marine tank. Neil and I met Ian (from Ivanhoe Aquarium) at the office at 7.30pm. Feeling quite sneaky and hoping we didn't run into a security guard, we took the trolleys from despatch downstairs to help cart the heavy items up to the 2nd floor. Luckily Barbarinos next door has a ramp which allowed us to wheel the trolley up to the lifts, however this did take a long time.

Because it was mostly muscle power that was required at this time, I left the boys to it for the next hour or so, while I browsed the net and updated my time sheets!

After the tank was put in place, the live sand substrate was scouped in. On top of that went the live rock. This took a little bit of time to get looking good, as you have to find rocks that fit together nicely and that are stable enough to withstand water current and creatures roaming around on them.

Once happy with the aquascaping, it was time to pour the water in, bit by bit. The tank holds approximately 235 litres, so this took a few trips up and down the lift to refill the 20 litre containers.

The tank is an all in one "Sun Sun" system, with trickle filter. All the sand and rock has come from Ian's display tank, which he was pulling down, so we are very lucky to have an instant biological filtration system already.

After about 4 hours, we cleaned up the room and left the murky tank to settle overnight. You can see a couple of mobile phone images below.

Feeling very pleased with ourselves, we left Clemenger and got Maccas on the way home.

Naomi :)