Feelin Clammy

Ack... so less than a month from the day I purchased my first clam, it has for whatever reason deteriorated and died. On its last day, it pretty much closed up shut and was holding the position for at least a full day.

I don't think water parameters were an issue but maybe lighting was? Maybe something else was irratating it as well, I can't pinpoint it quite yet. I guess I'll hold off on the next one until I upgrade my lights or see if I can do some more research on what may cause the problem.

I do have potentially harmful snails in the tank but I feel like if they were indeed the harmful kind instead of the look-alikes, they would have eventually migrated into the clam instead of staying on glass like they have been even after introducing the clam into the tank. *Sigh*

When Ideas Backfire...

I'm REALLY trying to go for a colorful tank in my 90. After seeing some pictures of brown tanks from some of the local sell off threads, I'm starting to appreciate my tank more seeing how my corals for the most part haven't browned out on me yet.

I wouldn't say I have the most exotic fish collection, but the colors do cover a wide spectrum between my 9 fishes. Also, while I'm not sure if this is right or wrong, I now have three (blue, orange and purple) lankia stars in my tank.

So anyway, after going on Reef Central and seeing a number of tanks with multiple angel-fishes in a tank, I thought it'd be a great idea if I got a flame angel to add some red to my fish population. My main concern was that my Potter's Angel wouldn't be happy but I figured if they can co-exist for a day, then things would be good.

Well, my thought process pretty much mirrored Homer's thought process when he thought he was smart in the following episode...



Let's just say the Flame angel is the most expensive sushi I've ever bought for my Potter's. Maybe next time when I have a 500+ gallon tank and I learn to put all the same kind of fish in at the same time, I'll try again.

More Coral Pictures!

So this weekend I pretty much did nothing except for chillin, partying and learning how to use the camera. (Oh, we bought a cake too; just because.) By learning the camera, I mean reading the manual and pretending to understand and taking a whole bunch of pictures until a sharp one came through... below are some more pics from the cam and my collection.

Red / orange / pink monti cap from Big D. More orange now than the other two colors.


An acro that's slowly turning from brown to green and purple.


My red zoas. I just like the mix in this shot.


My peach zoas. Possibly rainbow? I dunno.


My tri-color tort from Kayla. This is a good one. I've been trying to get the tri-color in the pic for like 2 weeks now. All the pictures thus far have been all blue but I'm getting closer to capturing how cool this piece is.


My new clam from Capp Bay.


Artist (wedding day style) pic of the dog.


Ahh... and here's my favorite, the Mandarin.

Pics from the LFS (Cappuccino Bay Aquarium)

One expensive hobby into another... *sigh*

So I recently bought myself a Canon Rebel XTi. With the new website launching and me trying to sell and trade frags of my stuff, I just got tired of not being able to take nice pictures of my collection to show the world. So yes... after a quick research into what's new in the world of DSLR cameras and getting recommendations from local reefers who are MUCH better at taking pictures than me, I opted for the Canon one due to their reputation in the industry for good equipment as well as cost vs. other cameras in the market.

Anyway, I'm still trying to learn the whole white balance, focus, light, aperture and yada yada things... but below are some pics I took from one of the LFS in my area whose been known to have great selection in terms of corals and clams. Don't let the poor pictures take away from the quality of the corals. The pieces here are amazing...

A pic from their baby clam section.


White balance is off, but still a nice piece!


The owner told me what this was... but I forgot. It's kind of like a goniopora I think. (I should have bought it!)


Blue zoas... though these didn't look like they were for sale.


I REALLLLY want this one. (Anyone know what it is?)


This pic doesn't do the acro justice... the tips are almost tiffany blue.


Anyway, hopefully I'll learn to take some better pics in the near future as I figure out the 140,000 buttons and settings that are on this camera.

Frag tank ordered!

"Cheddah comin!"

Hopefully that's what I'll be saying in a few months... I just ordered a new custom tank from GlassCages.com; it's a 24x18x12 frag tank. I think they recently got a new customer service woman to help make the business more friendly. If I remember correctly, the first time I researched the company the general consensus on the forums were that the tanks were decent, but customer service could be better. I guess they're working on it.

The tank should be here in a couple of weeks... luckily they just happened to have an Atlanta delivery scheduled 2 weeks from when I want the tank. I will do another review once it actually gets here.

Water changes... what are water changes?

I admit, when I only had a couple of fish and my bio-load was way low... water changes came as common as a lunar eclipse. However, having recently added a couple more to my list, I now do them about once a week. If you cringe when hearing the phrase "water change" but like your fish and your investment, then this picture is for you. Can you see which one of three buckets below is used water?


This is your water in five gallon buckets.

This is your water after your fish have peed and poo'ed in it.



Any questions?

How To: The Tunze Nano Stream Mod

As mentioned previously, I recently picked up a pair of Tunze Nano Streams (model 6025) to add some flow to my tank. While these power heads have been troopers so far, reefers are always looking for ways to improve a situation if anything can be done. Much like the iPhone, I think Tunze really did themselves a dis-service by announcing new models of the Nano Stream but failed to meet the demand of the public at the peak of our interest. What I mean is... the 6-8 months between the iPhone announcement and when they will become available, the idea will most likely be copied a few times and as a result sales will suffer. The same goes for Tunze... we are shown three versions of the product so we now know the Nano Streams can in theory, pump out so much more. However, so far we've been watching the carrot dangle in our faces and can only sporatically (at best) find the base version; guess what? Sales will suffer or mods will be done!


So what do you get when you combine a bored teenager with some tools and some free time to break things? You get the Tunze Nano Stream mod. I can't take credit for this since some guy with much more free time than me thought of this... but I do thank him for it.

So basically the idea behind the mod is simple. Chip off a part of the inner tube so more water can be sucked up at one time to be propelled through the tunnel. Sounds simple enough. While Tunze claims the inner tube is needed to prevent the propeller from breaking or starting up backwards, no one who has attempted this mod thus far has had any major issues.


The easiest way to cut out the inside is to use a Dremel tool. For this project, I used the saw attachment.


While cutting the inner tube away, you can try to smooth it out so that the curve matches the inside of the sphere and that no misc. plastic bits are still half attached to the protective sphere.


This is what it looks like after you cut away the big pieces and smooth out the inside. It's nothing spectacular to see but the results are phenomenal! Most people that have done this mod (including myself) are seeing about a 50-70% increase over the designed flow output. Seeing how my Nano Streams don't have a permanent restarting problem, I do highly recommend doing this mod if you own the Nano Stream. If you mess it up or end up not liking the mod, you can buy a replacement cover from Tunze for $10. Also, since the mod will generally give you output of the mid-tiered model, you've just saved yourself $30 and the anguish of waiting for the release 6045 model. Want to see the original thread that started it all? Have more questions? Let me know.