KimP

I think one of the new basket star hitch-hikers I found is giving the tank a thumbs up in approval!!

So later the next day I finally had an idea for the rock stack. I took out one of the rocks from the original stack and put it on top of what had been the top rock. That rock fit so perfectly that it's almost like it was made to go there. I sits in a notch on top of the previously top rock and wraps around the skimmer box for a perfect fit. I used some epoxy just to be sure! I love how it makes a shelf and I am so happy with the way it looks now. I'm still playing around a bit with the aqua-mags, but after pulling one and a half out of the tank, I think I'm happy with the look. If anybody has advice on coral placement, or any ideas on how to improve things, please let me know! I'd love to hear other's ideas on my tank

So now we're around a month ago. I enlisted the help of atxmandarin of Oceans of Austin to help with the aquascaping. I knew what I wanted to do but needed his awesome stash of LR and the muscle to lift the very heavy soaking wet rocks out of and into the really tall tank. I moved the horses to a small tank, all the coral and macros to my qt, and had some new water on hand. He brought some awesome rock and set up this rock structure. It's very stable because it's made up of mostly huge pieces of rock and it has tons of tunnels and space. It's not against any of the glass, although in 2 places you could barely slip a piece of paper between rock and the glass Oh, and at some point several months ago I had changed out most of the black sand to white. I was mostly happy with it, but I wanted it to reach as close to the top of the water as possible. The original plan was to get some tonga rock from him at a later date because we were out of time. So here it was at this time with all the coral and fish back in...

Alright, now that that's over ... By this time I had gotten rid of all the fake plants and started adding more macros and corals (thank you to the people that gave me free frags - vwmike and stoneroller), and was up to speed on flow. I was still running my canister, but cleaning it just about every week and using it to run carbon and sometimes other media. I had been buying pre-mixed saltwater for a year or more by this point too and staying on top of water chemistry which was great. I had also bought a T5 fixture which I thought was great...more on that later... After joining this group in Jan of this year, I learned about aqua-mags. I thought, hey! that's exactly what I need! I like the look of rock walls, they don't weigh anything so I don't have to worry about rocks tumbling down, and I'll have lots of places to stick coral. So I ordered a bunch of them and half-hazardly stuck them all over. I love aqua-mags btw, I just couldn't get them to look right. I still had no freaken idea what I was doing....

Here's one of the only old fts I can find. All of the others are zoomed in on the seahorses That's fine though because literally nothing changed from day 1 of putting the rock in all the way to Jan of this year when I took the pic! The plants are all fake and I was using a coralife compact fluorescent that I never changed the bulb in until maybe Feb of this year - so I had the same bulb for what, 3 years?! I also was running a fluval 305 canister filter that I hardly ever cleaned, and a remora skimmer that I hardly ever had plugged in. But hey, the horses were happy....and so was all the hair algae and cyano... Don't laugh too hard - I had no clue what I was doing as far as aquascaping.

A quick history on my tank. Picked it up on craigslist on a whim after only keeping a few freshwater tanks in my past. Didn't know what exactly to do with it but I liked the amount of water for such a small footprint. It's only 18"x20" but 30" deep. I thought, WOW 47 gallons, that's HUGE!! (lol...) After browsing the web I found out this is a problem because of the small surface area for gaseous exchange, but that a tall tank is great for seahorses. Seahorses? I love seahorses! I had no idea you could keep them in a tank in your house So I found a few pieces of LR at aquadome, threw them in, and I believe I even mixed the salt in the tank - with tap water Luckily I had enough sense to leave the tank be while I did about 4 months or so of research on seahorse.org Finally ordered 4 erectus - 1 female and 3 males in late 2007. Things went along just fine for a couple of years, I never changed anything, just enjoyed the horses and trying to raise some fry. I had a bout of pop-eye in one of the males, and that was an adventure to say the least. I had to put a tube down his throat every day to tube feed him until he was better. That's something I never would have thought I'd ever do!!! Had another male get a terrible case of pouch emphysema that was manageable for almost 6 months or so before we had to euthanize him. Poor guy. I had my son in Dec 2009 and as you can imagine, basically forgot about the tank for a year except for very basic maintenance and used Oceans of Austin for most of it, which is where I met atxmandarin, and he's been a great resource ever since. Last Dec I decided to fix up the tank and get some more horses and that's when I found the ARC. Boy have I learned a whole lot from yall!! A couple of the members on here ever-so-nicely dropped hints that my aquascaping was lacking to say the least. I had always been frustrated with it, but never knew what a nice reef tank could look like. After some good nudges , and lots of time spent browsing FTS, I finally took the plunge and re-did my aquascaping, with atxmandarin's help and brian.srock's tank as inspiration, along with some tanks on reefcentral. This shape of a tank is so challenging, and continues to be, but it sure makes a great seahorse tank, and hopefully will morph into a nice reef tank. Now if the baby stays asleep I will post the semi-embarrassing pics of what my FOWLR tank was and the not embarrassing anymore pics of the reef it is becoming...

Love the new corals. Those radioactive dragon eyes really pop under your leds! How are your petsmart anemones doing? I've never seen clear ones - cool!

Oh man that sucks Sorry your start in the hobby has been a crappy one! Hopefully you are paying your dues now and it'll never happen again. Hope you are able to get it fixed.

I can grab it. I'm right near slaughter & manchaca.

+1 they sure do make an interesting addition. I always get asked about it when someone new sees my tank. Lol...the chiton and the brittle star now that freaks people out!

I need to pick my order up asap after delivery too. I've had a chiton for quite a long time now and it's incredible. Not only is it just a neat creature to have, but the area of rock it farms is stripped clean of everything except some bryopsis. I'm not positive it eats established hair algae because I don't have hardly any, but I'm sure it prevents it from getting going. Mine only farms a certain area though, which is why I'm ordering more It does eat coraline if that's important to you.

I bought a mushroom a while back that looks exactly like the ones you pictured and they called it a bleeding heart mushroom.

My order's complete for 34.15

I just found another one. I don't know exactly what type of tank you're setting up coral-wise, but you can have one if you want to give it a shot. I'm going to do my best to keep them alive, but without crashing my tank I have lots of reading to do still. Anybody out there have experience with something like this? Or even keeping a NPS tank?

I was going to join in with y'all and just grab mike's stuff and whoever else south that buys. Or if someone else south grabs mine that's great too! I want to pick mine up asap because I'm getting another chiton.

Alright, I'm in for $25 or so.

I'd say it's maybe the size of a quarter. On closer inspection, some of the branches on it's legs have branches. What a cool creature! This tank never ceases to amaze me.

Wow, if this is really a basket star that is so cool. I'm almost positive it (and possibly others) came in on a gorgonian I just got last week. I remember when I was holding it down while the epoxy hardened, I noticed a few of these things wrapped around the branches. I didn't think much of it because I was busy getting the new corals in place. Geez, I hope it doesn't die. I hate to get things and have them die in my tank. It is in my seahorse tank and I have always heavily fed the tank because of not only the seahorses but I also keep sun polyps and a couple NPS gorgonians. I'll have to research how much care this guy needs. Thanks for all the input. I'm so relieved to know what this thing is!! I let it out of my rubble box first thing this morning and it went immediately to one of the gorgs and wrapped around it. I felt kinda bad about isolating it last night

I will probably jump in on this. Anybody else south ordering?

Found this crazy thing last week, thought it was a cool micro brittle star but now I'm not so sure. It's out and about all the time, day or night. As you can see in the pictures it has legs that branch at the ends. This is what made me second guess the brittle star idea. I've never seen a starfish with branching legs - not that I've seen it all Then I noticed it has these things sticking out where I would expect another leg to be and I found it sticking these things into a zoanthid polyp this evening. I stuck the little whatever-it-is in my rubble box for safe keeping till I figure out if he's a good guy or a bad one. I did do some internet searching and actually found a picture on wet web media, but there was no discussion I could find on what the heck is up with the crazy legs or if it's reef safe. Any thoughts?

Wow, I think that looks great. The erectus is so cute! I'm glad to see a picture of them at this stage. Best of luck with the setup! What do you run in the canister? Are you using it for filtration?

I was hoping you had an update Those aqua mags won't take long at all to color up.

Welcome to the group. Looks like you're doing really well with your tank!

I had a great time too. Thank you for hosting!