Nart's Lagoon Build - Round 2!!!

Did y'all see me in the latest video from InappropriateReefer? At 5:05 and no. I'm not planning to eat those macro algae

 

Lookin' good Nart. So, you fragged a favite, huh? Favias and favites are some of my fastest growers, so I'm super interested in how that went.

You know it, I was not looking forward to that scape coming down. I was feeling quite morose about it actually... but honestly, if I saw that frag tank FTS in a B/S/T listing near me, I'd feel like I hit the jackpot. Do you think you'll sell most of the frags through your club?

 

stella1979 I'll let you know if any of the favites I fragged survives lol. It looked gnarly when I was dremeling it.... and I was worried about not trying to cut my finger off lol.

I had to look up the word morose. Awwwwwww................ Stella. Trust me. It wasn't easy doing it. I kept saying to myself "Benjamin, are you sure you want to do this?" it's a really weird feeling. My tank without my rock-scape and my 2 original clowns. I was especially sad about my 2 first clowns. But you know what, I re-homed them to a very very good home. A local reefer to me, the one who was letting me borrow his media reactor, hanna PO4 test kit, etc... when I was re-scaping the tank.

A little story on his tank, he doesn't have a QT either. his tank was pretty well stocked with like 2 clowns, gobies, etc... then he decided to get 1 more fish and that was the end to his live stock. Slowly, they all started getting ich. I let him borrow the Ruby's Kick-Ich. He said it cured them of ich, but a parasite of something wiped out his whole tank. His family was pretty sad. He had also gotten coral pests in his tank which started eating away at his corals. This guy was pretty bummed out. He freaked out when I told him I don't dip any of my corals and don't QT fishes either. He was just shocked lol. I wasn't bragging about it, was just telling him, that man... I've been getting away with it and he's just very unlucky. Anyways, this happened in October. He left his tank fallow till January 2018 and finally got a goby. I told him, you know what, I would love for your family to care for my clowns, because I'll be moving and I know ya'll would take great care of them. he was also a little worried that they might be aggressive with his fishes in the tank because my clowns aren't juvies anymore. I told him guaranteed, they will not bully anything in your tank. He came over Friday to pick up the clowns. Over the weekend he told me that the clowns are doing awesome. Made themselves right at home in the front of the glass, gets along with his wrasse and everything else. He also said that his kids love em since they are always out front. That made my day. It's hard sometimes you know? Especially when you raise and or grow a bond with 'em, but I am so glad that I made the right decision to find them a great home.

Yeah - I think mostly I will try to sell through my club. I'm not fond of listing on craigslist. Too afraid of weirdos coming to my place lol.
You know what's strangely satisfying though? is that having the IM25 set-up like a "for sale frag tank" style satisfies that "I need to go to the LFS to buy frags" haha.

 

Think I'm gonna start dipping since that guy that came to buy the nem said; “something is eating my zoas” it sent shivers down my spine lol. The one shop I actually use dips his zoas in detol and RODI literally about 10 times. Good to know your Clowns are good, that's one thing I couldn’t get rid of.

 

I'm glad to hear you're planning on dipping Grant. Gotta protect that garden. Shoot, with my zoa luck I was afraid something was getting them too. I've seen no evidence of that though, but only the lunars and tiny rastas survive. Good news is, a new tiny rasta polyp has appeared, so I'm up to 3. They've fooled me before though, so they're staying in the back.

 

grantm91 yeahh. I started dipping all my corals recently too. I don't want to test my luck anymore lol. I get a bucket of saltwater, add Bayer to the water till it gets nice and cloudy, small heater and powerhead for 15mins. Double rinse in clean saltwater. Visual inspection, toothbrush scrub, and then in the tank. It's way too risky this late in the game for us to get pests. It'll literally make us cry. Or at least I would... especially adding up all my Coral costs today...

You'll get there eventually Stella! Your zoas will start thriving. Hopefully. Zoas... pain in my butt. Hey. You should try utter chaos zoas next. Pretty easy and rewarding. They are so big In size.

 

I'd love some utter chaos! Not until I have reason to believe though... and I want to believe.

 

stella1979 if you can source utter chaos locally for like 3 polyps. it's only about $30. I am almost certain utter chaos will do well in your tank.
Unfortunately, imo, I think you started out with hard strains of zoas to care for. the small rasta frag that I have are very temperamental. It was doing well right? in my new scape. as soon as I took it down and put them on plugs, they are acting like they did from day 1. so annoying. meanwhile, you have my utter chaos just out and about... ahhh... it's nice to look at ya know. so yeah - utter chaos. for sure. BELIEVE!

 

stella1979 LJC6780
We talked about carbon use before in reef tanks.
Here's a good watch about carbon.

 

Enjoy!

 

The worst thing is il miss active Nart on the FL when you actually get busy with the move. Great video, the editing and just the tank overall, Love ! The coris wrasse and scooter shimmying across the sand haha.

 

Love the video but I’m pretty sad about it too.. so many feelings! If it were me, I don’t think I would have gotten through it without crying like a baby. But there’s bigger and better things coming.

 

All the feelings Lchi... I've been waiting for this video. The IM25 was the first salty thread I started following here, so while I'm sad to see that awesome scape go, it sure makes a pretty frag tank and I can't wait to see what's next for the tank.

Can y'all even believe how cute that scooter is? Watching her wake up was definitely the highlight fo me.

Wish I could get that Utter Chaos frag, the Kelley Green Psammo and a piece of the Merletti. Nart, I saw your offer to DC Reefer... totally cool bud.

 

Sad for sure, but can’t wait for the next build. Hopefully she approves that 500 gallon

 

I'm glad y'all liked the video at least lol.

Sooooo some terrible gut wrenching news. At least to me. The IM25 has been in near perfect condition. Not a single scratch on the glass. Last night I was in a hurry to scrap and clean the glass and didn't think of it much... but this morning as I'm checking in the tank I notice hairline scratches ALL over the glass on ALL sides.



So annoyed at myself on how this happened. Still no idea on how I was able to scratch up my glass everywhere. Ugh.

I just tried the Kent's scrapper on the mirror



Found the culprit
I had recently started going past the sand bed a little to scrape the algae on the bottom glass. I guess I some how damaged the razor blade in the process as well. Ugh. Feeling a little sick to my stomach. I know. First world problems

 

Ugh... gut wrenching is right. Aren't there ways to fix it though? I'm unaware of how or what to use, but I'm sure there is a way to buff them out. In a Joey K of DIY I watched recently, he mentioned 'erasing' scratches in passing, but there's probably a video on his channel. Perhaps it's a bit lucky that the tank is soon to be empty?

 

Ugh... gut wrenching is right. Aren't there ways to fix it though? I'm unaware of how or what to use, but I'm sure there is a way to buff them out. In a Joey K of DIY I watched recently, he mentioned 'erasing' scratches in passing, but there's probably a video on his channel. Perhaps it's a bit lucky that the tank is soon to be empty?

Yeah - I also remembered that you can buff out hair line scratches on glass.
But man... what a gut wrenching feeling when I looked at the front side of the glass and went WHAT THE BLEEP! and then looked at the other side of the glass and went OMG... and it just kept going. I've been babying this tank since Day 1. It must be like "You're shutting me down?! I'll show you!"

 

My tank is scratched too, not so much so since switching to the magic sponge. I just can't help it its even happened on my 120 fw tank that I know had literally zero scratches when I got it, its so annoying.

 

I'm just being a big baby and want to cry right about now lol.
I hate it when things aren't perfect!!

Hey - I use the magic sponge from time to time. However, I was able to scratch the IM10 just a bit with it. It picked up a spec of sand near the sand bed and I dragged it up while cleaning. I found that shaking the magic sponge with each cleaning stroke was the safest to avoid scratches.

Speaking of scratches... a few years ago, I bought a brand new sports car. Two weeks in.. I strolled up to a grocery store. In and out 15 minutes. Came out to a grocery kart right on the driver side door and left a decent sized dent. whoooooo weeeeeeeeee.......... I almost raged out hardcore lol.

 

I've got one... I got a car that was not brand new, but it was the newest I'd ever had. Not 3 days later, J was sitting at a red light at 6am when a police officer slammed into him hard. The guy didn't even slow down, so it must have been that he was distracted and didn't see the light. This was my first car that didn't show signs of age. I definitely cried and raged over that. I must admit, if it's gonna happen, it may as well happen with the county, because they paid up.

I still use a magnetic scraper on all my tanks, but I do stay a good inch or more away from the sand. For that lower area and the bottom glass I use a soft toothbrush. It does pick up sand I'm sure, but the bristles don't have enough force to cause scratches. Knock on wood, I have 5 tanks and only one has a scratch.

 

Holy smokes.... I can't even imagine that kind of freak accident happening. Just glad Joey is A-Okay!

I have my fingers crossed for your tanks too Stella haha. I never thought I could scratch up the IM25. I was wrong. Very, very wrong.... haha

 

you guys are making me paranoid now about my brand new 75 lol.

 

Paranoia and reef tanks go hand in hand.

 

Jayd976 the paranoid is real..... haha.

I guess if you can't laugh at yourself... life is going to be rough for ya.
So.... here's me laughing at myself. Ha... Ha... Ha-ha. Nope. It's not working

 

Had an awesome time today with InappropriateReefer stopping by.



I finally opened a Instagram account! Follow me at MightyNanoTank

 

The Reefing big dogs ! Did he take anything from the candy shop ?

 

Oh yeah. He took a bunch of stuff... I can say I'm clam less now lol

 

Clam less Nart, geez, emptied my Frag rack too today. Not sure to just be happy of the £55 Or because I was just starting to enjoy the frag rack novelty watching the two little torches wave was fun lol.

 

Just check out this maxima... so hard taking a pic because it's so small. I had to zoom in but the blue colors in person really pop.

 

I hate how cameras never catch anything like the eye does in person. However.... that pops even in the picture! I think when you get your big tank you should get one of those red electric clams. My LFS has them and they're super cool loooking.

 

I hate how cameras never catch anything like the eye does in person. However.... that pops even in the picture! I think when you get your big tank you should get one of those red electric clams. My LFS has them and they're super cool loooking.

I heard those flame scallops aka electric clams are very hard to keep in captive.
Man... I really can't wait to settle down into my forever home already so I can start my dream build. I think some plans have changed and I am going to go with a small clam as a center piece and just let it grow out and design all the rock-scape and corals around it.
Love clams... as you seen on my instagram account lol.

 

Love your clam! Do you feed him/her? Just out of curiousity what would be your dream tank build be?

 

That's one sexy maxima, I always wondered how hard they were to keep

 

That's one sexy maxima, I always wondered how hard they were to keep

Love your clam! Do you feed him/her? Just out of curiousity what would be your dream tank build be?

Pretty hard to keep. The maxima clam actually just died on me over the weekend for no reason.
I feed it phytoplankton and saw it exhibit feeding behavior too.

Jamie - my dream build is ever evolving lol. But ideally, 3 QT tanks and a 93-120 gallon cube tank with a corner overflow.
1 QT tank for fish, the other 2 QT tanks would be for corals in a two step QT process before it ever goes into the display tank.
I love cube corner tanks. I would run a huge chaeto refugium in the bottom, along with the Triton method, where you no longer have to perform any water changes.
Stocking, would probably be a pair of Biota Mandarins along with a Kole or Yellow tang.
Fill the entire tank up with rainbow/gold Acans, jawbreaker mushrooms, and 1-2 designer specie zoas.

 

sorry you lost the maxima A bummer, especially when it seemed to be eating..

 

Aww I'm sorry to hear that. On the bright side, your dream tank build seems awesome hope you get it one day!

 

Pretty hard to keep. The maxima clam actually just died on me over the weekend for no reason.

Things like that don't happen for no reason, they happen for a reason that we may not yet understand.

Sorry to hear about the clam

 

Things like that don't happen for no reason, they happen for a reason that we may not yet understand.

Sorry to hear about the clam

Of course. I should've said "I had no idea what caused it"
Thanks all about the clam... it's okay though, I knew going into this that it was going to be a challenge.

On another note... I saw these mushrooms from WWC's eBay sale last night and just had to have 'em.
Starting to become a rare mushroom collector... the addiction for corals is real...




(Pictures are taken from WWC's eBay posts during my purchase of these frags)

 

I'm trippin' over that Blue Star shroom and now I want one badly! The addiction is too real!

 

Ive had such hit and miss luck with mushrooms, I think due to my strong lighting and low nutrients. I do have some really cool spotted mushrooms that have spread a lot.