Belle's 3x2x2 slice of the Ocean

[bellinayu]

Since I have a bit of time on my hands now, thought I should start my own tank thread. I'm not sure how committed I'll be updating it though. My reason of doing this is hopefully to know more reefers in the community.

Being a scuba diver, I've always love the ocean and marine creatures found below - so fascinating and peaceful. When my hubby and I moved into our new home, there was a space which we didn't know what to do with. I managed to convince him to put a marine fish tank. This was the start of my journey. We started off with a 4x2x2 tank designed and built by one of the sponsors (shan't mention names). To cut the long story short, that tank did not work out in the end and I dismantled it after 2 years. Notice that the "we" has become an "I"

Anyway, after taking a short break, I came back with to a smaller size tank. With 2 years of reefing knowledge, I was better prepared to plan for this tank. However, I must say that we will never be satisfied with our tanks and we will never get our dream tank. On 15 Dec 07, the tank was delivered. I designed this tank to keep LPS and fishes. No more Tangs.

I cycled for about 1+ mth before slowly adding back my corals. To fast forward, this is a pic of my tank in Apr 08.

In Jul 08, a friend by the name of Drato, influenced me towards keeping SPS (also know as the dark side). He is my "si fu" with regards to keeping SPS. You can see a few "sticks" in the below FTS.

That's all for now. Will continue my story another day...

Oh ya... forgot to add some bio data...

Tank display size: 3 ft x 28”x 24”. 12mm thick

Tank Age: 3 years (to date)

Tank Equipment (To date):

ATI 6 tubes Powermodule mounted on light mounting rail

Deltec 850 Skimmer with an Ehim 1260 feeding pump

Deltec PF501 Ca reactor with a Milwaukie PH controller fed by an Ehim 1250 tee off to FR unit as well

Skimz FR with Rowa Phos media, changed every 2-3 months

Modified Kalk reactor with skimz body connected to water top up unit

Return pump is an Ehim 1264

Artica 1/5 chiller with an Ehim 1262 feeding water back to the tank

Wavemakers: Tunze 6085 and 6055 with single controller

Using GF pipings

[yikai]

finally a tank thread!

do post pics of your latest tank!

i remember you are one of the first reefers i ever met in this forum about 2 years ago.

i came to collect chaeto

You grew the chaeto in a white bucket in your balcony attached to your tank. I still remember the black clown pair and the nice rockscape.

[bellinayu]

finally a tank thread!

do post pics of your latest tank!

i remember you are one of the first reefers i ever met in this forum about 2 years ago.

i came to collect chaeto

You grew the chaeto in a white bucket in your balcony attached to your tank. I still remember the black clown pair and the nice rockscape.

Yup, Lemon. Still remembered our meeting. I've torn down the algae scrubber in that white bucket. Too lazy to maintain it. It was quite a good nutrient export I must say. If I ever have another tank again, I would design it with a refugium in mind. My black clowns and black cap are still around.

[yikai]

Yup, Lemon. Still remembered our meeting. I've torn down the algae scrubber in that white bucket. Too lazy to maintain it. It was quite a good nutrient export I must say. If I ever have another tank again, I would design it with a refugium in mind. My black clowns and black cap are still around.

wah.

long lived residents

[Soul]

Nice setup and equipment choices, can see in ur latest FTS u've been clearing space at the top areas for more sps hehe ... try to get frags instead of big colonies is my advice. Can have more variety that way, easier to glue on and they will grow naturally towards the lightsource. However make sure u place the right species at the right place for amt of flow needed.

[kueytoc]

Excellent Setup !...besides the lovely flowering Sunnies...seems like U are also diggin' into meaty stuffs...Pratas/Wesos/Trachys.

[klyve]

Nice, saw the rock scape recently and WOW its so natural and nice with all the sps growing out so nice....

Sis waiting for you to show us your latest FTS.....

[bellinayu]

Excellent Setup !...besides the lovely flowering Sunnies...seems like U are also diggin' into meaty stuffs...Pratas/Wesos/Trachys.

Hi Edwin. During my lps days. I absolutely love sunnies! Would buy frozen cyclo to target feed them. However, have to given them all out once I went into sps. Can't afford to pollute the tank. You're so right about having a thing with meaty corals. Even till now, I left the front portion of my sandbed for these doughnut corals-scolymia vitiensis, cynarina and trachyphyllia.

To each it's own. My selection of corals and fishes are skewed towards certain species.

[bellinayu]

Nice, saw the rock scape recently and WOW its so natural and nice with all the sps growing out so nice....

Sis waiting for you to show us your latest FTS.....

Hi klyve. Learnt rockscaping from my Si Fu. I changed the scape 2x due to different reasons. The first was changing from lps to sps and the second was due to an algae outbreak which wiped out most of my sps. Glad to hear that the ws valida is coloring up in yr tank. I usually stay away from ws shipment as I can't retain the colours of those acros with just using 6 tubes of t5. The yellow acro is from Gchoo. Heard from him that it's a rare pc. When he came my house the other day, he was enquiring about it and I told him I gave to a reefer who was using mh.

Do post a pic of them if u have the time

[bellinayu]

Nice setup and equipment choices, can see in ur latest FTS u've been clearing space at the top areas for more sps hehe ... try to get frags instead of big colonies is my advice. Can have more variety that way, easier to glue on and they will grow naturally towards the lightsource. However make sure u place the right species at the right place for amt of flow needed.

Yup, will usually leave my top real estate for the more light and flow demanding sps like millis and acros. Agreed that frags would provide variety but colonies give that natural feel so in my opinion, I would get a few mini colonies as well. That pic is not my latest fts as it was dated jul 08. Akan datang... Would want to document my tank thread in chronological order.

[Guest]

Is my ehiem pump still working well for you ? Nice to see you started a tank thread here, and do keep the updates coming..

[bellinayu]

Is my ehiem pump still working well for you ? Nice to see you started a tank thread here, and do keep the updates coming..

Yup, the Ehim 1250 pump is working fine as my kalk stirer. Tks Larry! I hope the tank thread will help to widen my circle of friends in the reefing community .

[hijackng]

Picture, picture.....

[Gouldian]

We started off with a 4x2x2 tank designed and built by one of the sponsors (shan't mention names). To cut the long story short, that tank did not work out in the end and I dismantled it after 2 years. Notice that the "we" has become an "I"

Where got "I" only, at least someone help you with the clearing of your 4x2x2.

[bellinayu]

In Dec 08, I've decided to re-scape to get a new look and to turn it into a SPS reef tank.

Dec 08 & Jan 09 FTS

In Sept 08, I got this tri colour Valida from Wei Soon. I was not able to hold it's colour so I quickly passed it to Drato to baby sit it. He was able to bring back the colours but not the intense purple when it was in Wei Soon's tank. Just curious to know if any reefers have managed to hold the intense purple? In Wei Soon's tank, he put it as close to his lights as possible (return pipe or top of overflow).

FTS for Mar, May and Aug 09

[yellowtang]

Very nice colourful reef with depth. Cant wait for your sps to bring your reef to another level.

cheers

[Soul]

Fwah nice man, whats lacking is probably more red amongst the rest. Get a rose mill or red planet!

[cedricang]

Nice to see your tank thread here, hopefully your war with the algea will be a history and can start enjoying reefing once again for a good considerable of time

[wilsontantw]

Yet another stunning transformation.

Can't wait to see the 2010 shots!

Power to the dark side!!

[pravin_9124]

awesomeeee tankkk

[bellinayu]

Yup, you can say that again. Thanks so much for helping to baby sit some of my sps and due to your TLC, saved quite a few of my montis. Without your help, I would have started from scratch.

I had a bad battle with hair algae which wiped out almost my entire sps collection. I basically re-started my tank. These were the 3 of my favourite sps (purple polyp on yellow base monti, purple milli, blue stag) which I lost and did not manage to find them back again. The monti and milli were from Drato.

[kueytoc]

No worries...these SPSes do appear in shipments here. Juz gotta 'fine-tune' ya ears to the ground when & where these shipment arrives.

[desideria]

belina!! finally a tank thread from you.. many years of experience condensed into 1 page. so you also decided to go to the dark side..... I haven't yet. I"m still content with LPS and zoos.. at least I hope to grow a nice collection of them. i just love fishes and feeding them too much to be able to have such clean water for SPS hahaahah Good to see your tank thread!

[yikai]

i just love fishes and feeding them too much to be able to have such clean water for SPS hahaahah

couldn't have said it better. me too.

that's why i'm contented with semi-beautiful SPS

[cedricang]

Haa...dont mention Bel, but must admit that was quite a challenge when i baby sit your babies, thank God most turn out ok when you restarted your tank. Btw, I think your kaki base blue polyp monti is really florishing over here, please come over and i will pass you a good size frag.