My 28gallon JBJ

B

Bwidner

New member
Was pointed to the website via reefcentral, glad I found it since I got a violation for asking what was mcf lol. I hadn't had a tank for two years, previously had a mixed reef(which became SPS dominant as time passed) 125 gallon when I lived in New Mexico, decided for a bit smaller tank for the time being until I am settled down and know I won't be moving for a long time. Tank was up for 5 years never had any major issues. I apologize ahead of time for the crappy pictures, took them all from my droid first my camera was broke, and now that it is fixed I can't find the cord so I will be buying a new one in a few days.

A few things that I really love about the reef scene in chicago is the multitude of LFS choices, while in Albuquerque there were 5 or 6, however I would never have bought anything from all but one, the other greta thing is the community, much more helpful and talkative than in Albuquerue!

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Chalice
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Fire Shrimp
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Monti Cap
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Ricordea's
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Blueberry encrusting muffin
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Brain(looks like a lobo, too bad its too small to get a good pic, it has great coloring)
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FTS-learned my lesson to take one the day before the tank gets a full on srubbing
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Once I get the new cord I will take some growth pics of the corals and compare to the day I put them in the tank. Tank has been running for 3 months now, most of the rock was bought from 46cobraguy over on RC so there was no cycle(ammonia was never present trates spiked for 2 days before plummeting) have added the livestock pretty slow, added the CB early april, and the clowns from blake over at mcf a few weeks ago. Coral introduction has been spaced out, most of it from Newfish and MCF, although got the chalice and the watermelon zoas from a local. The acro has shown not only amazing growth but shortly after adding the clowns the polyps started turning green as well as areas of the skin getting a slightly green tint. Hopefully with the actual camera it will pick that up.
 
Welcome, I like the black substrate. nice tank. Yeah, MCF is probably one of the nicest reef stores out there. too bad reefcentral doesn't like them. reefcentral only members are really missing out.
 
The thing I found amusing about RC and MCF was that from what I have been told, MCF was banned for attempting to get someone to endorse them...so for marketing, I am just really glad that this website is around because I have never been a big fan of RC. With the black substrate I am really glad I went with it instead of black sand, I had seen some tanks with black sand and loved the look, but something told me to go with the live sand that wasn't pure black. Really happy I did because even with it not being completely black I do need to stir it up quite often as the algae becomes visable.
 
Taken with an actual camera(not the greatest but better than my droid)

FTS
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Acro
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Blueberry Muffin Monti
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Ric's
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Blue Brain
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Zoa Rock
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Monti Cap
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Onyx Clowns
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Thanks, yeah I am looking forward to the growth, not going to add much more for now, maybe a few SPS frags, and hoping to find some different zoa's to put on the rock I have them isolated at and then just let it all grow out from there. Been fighting a microbubble issue from day one pretty much, the return tubes are getting a little salt creep on them and no matter how much I try and get them on better they won't go, thinking I may just need to replace all that plumbing.

The rock work is interesting lol, I feel like I have a little too much, and will most likely pull the rocks stacked behind the monti cap to give me a bit more real estate. I am also thinking about adding a sump for a bit added water volume and putting a fuge or scrubber in there too try and limit the algae on the glass.
 
Wow it's been a long time with no updates, kinda forgot about this thread but to play catch up between the last post and early august I added
Birdnest frag
Cotton candy hydno frag
Derassa clam
Some deep water zoas
acan frag

The acan frag got flipped while I was at work prob 2-3 days after bringing it home and it died....end of july early august I got slammed at work and started putting in 50+ hour work weeks for the better part of a month...with that I forgot to test parameters for 2 weeks and my acro stopped having the full PE it had shown since it came home...tested the water and i had traces of phosphate....started aggressive w/c did 20% every 3 days for 2 weeks to bring the levels back down. Unfortunately I lost the acro(tried fragging 4 times) the cotton candy, the birdnest, and my monti cap is struggling but it may pull through. A few weeks ago my clam stopped showing full extension and then kaput, it was dead looking around it seems something was muching on it coming up through the foot.

The tank is recovering now, and over the next month or two I will be adding a UV and most likely a sump, as well as looking into a new lighting solution.

Anyone have any UV nano reccomendations or lighting?
 
Thanks gus, its slowly coming back around after the troubles I had with it, with work slowing back down I will have some extra time on my hands here in a few weeks and will continue to upgrade a few things and hopefully make a trip to MCF and newfish to pick up some new corals to start restocking after the losses I had. How is your Moorish doing? Havent had time to be on the forums in a few months
 
Sorry to hear about you losing some of your corals and clam. Hopefully everything else recovers for you.
 
Everything seems to be doing great other than the blue brain, about a month later the cyano seems to be gone, I am going to keep with the weekly 15% water changes versus the bi weekly 20% I was doing(I unwittingly missed one which got me into this mess) since it won't cause mayhem if I am slammed at work and miss one and then somehow think I did it(also set up a recurring alarm for sunday afternoon to yell at me so it doesn't slip my mind following a 60 hour work week). It seems like the ric's and the chalice absoluletly loved the "dirty" water as their growth exploded in the last two months, the chalice especially grew 6 new eyes and really has started growing from being just a flat peice into a very nice looking one.

Heading out to mcf this weekend to pick up a pair of Blake's babies to replace my carpet surfer, I am very excited about that as the pair I did have just had so much more personality than the pair I had previously for 6 years. I'm sure there is no way I wont be coming home with some more corals lol.

I am going to look for a frogspawn for the clowns this time around, gained some space with some of the losses so I want to at least attempt to give them a home, and I will not put a nem in a tank this small as I know that in no time it will pretty much have grown to take over the whole tank.
 
So frustrated right now, picked up another onyx pair from Blake at MCF yesterday, aggression with the coral beauty was minimal completely died off after an hour in the tank, no aggression during feeding....this morning I wake up to only seeing one clown, upon feeding the same. Start breaking down the rock and I find both the coral beauty and the other clown dead, both beat to hell....appears overnight they really had it out....thats 4 losses in the 7 months I have had the tank, versus a grand total of 5 in my previous large tank I had up and running for 6 years.

Now I couldnt get the rock back how it was and I am unhappy with everything I tried, prob going to head back out to mcf in the next week or two to pick up some rock for a complete redo of the aquascape(although it will leave me with prob around 10 lbs of fiji and tatoka that I have no room for).....picked up two great looking acans and a really nice sps mini colony that needs to color up....once the tank clears up and everything isn't royally pissed I will post some pics.

Really leaning towards not getting anymore fish in the tank as I just hate seeing animals die, even moreso when its on my watch, in my previous tank the four I lost were a blenny that the clowns chased into their nem, a blue tang that died in quarantine, a butterfly fish that carpet surfed out the back of the canopy, and a blue chromis that got snagged by the purple lobster(found him half eaten at the mouth on the burrow the lobster had dug)....now having lost 3 clowns and a angelfish is really upsetting and I can't help but wonder if the higher aggression levels are due to the smaller tank, which makes me not want to add anything else to it....
 
I'm so sorry to hear that...try to keep your head up. This hobby has many headaches, but the greatest satisfaction from a beautiful tank that replicates nature and it's beauty.
 
Good news, last night when I fed the one remaining clown it seemed to be in much better shape and ate quite a bit, the new corals all looked really happy, great PE from the acro and both Acans were nice and puffed up. Not sure what I am going to do about the fish situation, leaning towards maybe just getting another clown and maybe a goby or a few chromis and calling it a day on fish and just keep it lightly stocked.
 
Just stick with a pair of clowns and call it a day. Maybe a goby in a few more weeks after the 2nd clown goes in. It sounds like you want to stock the tank just for the sake of stocking the tank, doesn't sound like your stock list is something you really desire to have.
 
When I planned the tank I had planned for a Coral Beauty, a pair of Clowns, a goby(I say a goby in general because I had never decided between, Blue Gudeon Dartfish, Blue dot jawfish, a Catalina, or a Sleeper Green Banded) and potentially down the line maybe 2-3 blue chromis. Which is where the list comes from above, basically my original plan minus the angel.

After what happened this weekend I am convinced that is similiar to what caused the first to go carpet surfing, as they were too small to fight back and aggression was rare when the lights were on, so I am nixing the angelfish from the tank. I also know how clowns can be and that is my dilema in adding further fish, in my old 125 they had their nem and never strayed far from it at all, where as here they do not and I don't want to add anything else and watch them bully that to death.
 
Just a word of caution on those banded gobies, they are sand sifting factories. Expect anything and everything in the lower half of your tank to be snowed on.
 
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