My Reefer Rocks order!

Okay, I've been waiting for this purchase for a loooong time. Everyone said Reefer Rocks is great, but until I experienced it for myself, it's just hard for me to confirm and spread the tales. Well, I can now finally, GLADLY say that the link I placed on the right side of this page to Reefer Rocks' website is because I'm a satisfied customer.

After a few emails to Cap'n Jer (who was as pleasant as Cap'n Crunch) on a Saturday afternoon, I managed to work through their online order process and order myself 10 lbs of rubble and about 35 lbs of base rock. The whole order came to about $100 but what was the best part was that I got to see the rocks before placing the order.

After filling my tank up with my existing rocks, it appeared I only had enough rocks to fill up about 50% of my tank. So in addition to getting some more live rocks, I needed some dead rocks to help me build my pile up. Below are the rocks I got in my order.






I'm glad to say that the rocks all have great shapes and holes to them and over time they should look a lot better than the rocks that came to me live. There are tons of tunnels within these rocks which will be great if you are trying to keep pods and not have them all get picked off by your mandarin. The rocks do come somewhat sandy since they were dug out of the ground instead of picked up from the water, but I assume all the sand/rubble is clean so nothing to worry about there. In addition to the rocks, I also got a couple of pens (that I desperately needed in my house) and a keychain which I didn't need, but it's still cool to have.

I would HIGHLY recommend these rocks to any reefer who needs to build up their column.

Ouch, spikes hurt!

The transfer of critters into the new tank unfortunately have not all been smooth sailing. While everything did survive for a few days, I did manage to lose my Potter's Angel and Bi-color blenny on the same day. Ouch. The Potter's Angel did show signs of stress for a couple of days as her colors started fading and stayed there for 2-3 days. She also went to the skunk shrimp's cleaning station a lot during those days for some cleaning. I guess right now it seems like I have a case of ich even though the clown goby seems fine. All of this was about a week ago.

The water bug bit hard! It's time for a upgrade.

R.I.P. 29 gallon tank! You were great and you were definitely the best tank I've ever kept to date... but you have just been phased out for the new 90 that I've always wanted. Now, I am a big fan of sump setups but since I had to compromise and upgrade with as little money as possible, I decided to opt for more real estate inside the tank and recycle my HOB fuge and my Remora skimmer on the new tank.


Thanks to Capp Bay (LFS) and Tony for the stand, I managed to quickly grab up my 90 gallon setup.


The last time I painted my tank I found the tape-off technique rather easy, so this time around I went with the same painting setup. After discussing it with my two reef friends, I decided to do this one with a black background instead of blue.


Just in case there was any doubt on what size this tank is... I tagged it.


Here's the tank ready to take place of the 29g. Bridget and my reflection got in the way.


Here's a pic with the new lights! I can't wait to use it.


Unfortunately this time I wasn't able to avoid the sand storm because I had to transfer sand from the old tanks to the new. The tank did clear up within a day with the skimmer and fuge running though.

I've already ordered another 50lbs of LR from International Marine Fish since my tank looks bare... er white. (http://intmarinefish.com/) Anyway, I hope the rocks that come will be full of life and shapes.

I will say, the move was not easy... after transferring both tanks into the main one, it was only still half full. DOH! I also had to make a bunch of salt water and wait for it to be ready to get the tank done. It only took me till... hrmmm 5am! On the second day, as I proceed to put the fuge light onto the back fuge, I realized I was too ambitious and shoved the tank too close to the wall! So, I ended up emptying about 65% of the tank so I can shuffle the tank about 1/2" away from the wall. DOH #2. At least the hardest part is over and now I just have to wait and aquascape...

The importance of drip loops

You never think your tank is going to overflow... but 9 out of 10 aquarium owners have probably had some spillage at one time or another. This is the tale of mine, and I must say, it's great that I learned the lesson with only some minor damage. The alternative may have been my house burned down or something worse.

If you remember from my last post, I placed a large Mexican turbo snail in my HOB fuge to combat the red cotton algae problem that's currently in there. For whatever reason, this snail wanted to graze on acrylic instead of the ball of chaeto and cotton algae. Well, when I took a nap but before dozing off I started hearing the low water sound of my pre-skimmer struggling. Knowing that I had the auto-top off system, this should have made me get up, but it was a Saturday and I was tired and lazy.

Well, about 5 minutes afterwards, I heard my UPS beeping as if the electricity was off. Seeing how the rest of my house was fine, this could have either A.) been a brown out or B.) something wrong with the aquarium. I had to go turn off the beeping so I finally got up.

Well, it was unclear to me at the time, but somehow, somewhere my tank either started leaking or there was a flood somewhere. For the time being, it stopped but there's definitely a puddle in front of the tank. I checked behind the stand and it was relatively dry so after some further investigation, it seemed that the snail went towards the return flow hole, my HOB refugium overflowed, the water trickled down the heater wires and went straight into my power strips. It shorted out my timer one and tripped the GFCI switch of my dining room.

After some cleanup, I tried to start the electricity again and my day/night timer strip started smoking. Doh.

I guess the good news is that I only lost a cheap power strip to learn this lesson cause had I used the drip loop the first time, I could have lost a lot more water before I realized what went wrong. The HOB pump was about 1/3 of the way into the tank and a much bigger flood (10 gallons) could have happened if I didn't get any warning signs that got me up from my nap.

So lesson learned, don't put a giant snail in your HOB that could block the flow and use drip loops so you don't start the fire, that was always burning... since the world's been turning.