Mat's 255 Gallon Rimless Aquarium Build

Well, since I have been iced in the last couple of days, I have been working on the aquarium a bit. A while back, I was having allot issues with aptasia. I bought about 12 peppermint shrimp. That didn't work, and they seemed to disappear, so i bought about 3 more rounds of them. I dont think any of those peppermint shrimp ate one aptasia.

The only way I was killing them was to use Joe's Juice or a KalK+ mixture to burn them out. Well anyway, they always came back.

Anyway I bought a Copper Banded Butterfly. This guy is awsome! He has been in here a couple months I think and I dont see one...I mean one aptasia in the aquarium.

Introducing the "Terminator"!
 
Now I have found a new problem. My green Stag is being choked out by some type of polyp. Its killing my stag from the bottom up! Here is a pic of the polyps killing my stag. I'm going to take the coral out tomorow and cut it off the rock and reglue. Then i'm going to put some Kalk mixture on the polyps in the tank to kill this stuff. I see a new batch of them growing on the rock in another spot as well. Its going to get the same treatment

Anyone know what this is?
 
Really nice tank, Mat, congrats.

How's the copper band in your tank? Nipping any SPS? Is he a good eater, and what foods do you see him go after most?

Do you know the name of the red SPS to the right of your green stag in the photo above? The coralite structure makes it look almost like some kind of branching cyphstrea to me.

Thanks!
 
The copper banded butterfly fish is awesome in the tank. He is always picking at the rock and i cant find any aptasia in the tank anymore. i have not seen him pick at an acro or anything. Even if he did, the effects would probably be so minmal. He eats brine and mysis shrimp....he is a good eater. He will even eat a bit a algae here and there.

Yes that is my pink branching cyphastrea. Its a really nice piece. I have had it for years. I have a really cool red and orange cyphastrea as well.
 
Awsome tank !!

How has the Trigger worked out for you ? I am looking into getting the same one, but want to keep a peaceful environment.
 
Thanks

Well the Trigger was basically a big whimp when I first got him. He would swim to a spot in the tank where I think he wanted to brace himself but I would coax him out. AFter a few weeks he got allot better. They are peaceful. My chromis was beating mine up at first, but he has grown a spine now and doesn't take everyones crap. He will eat algae from my hand and is a teddy bear. You have to be careful though, because he has sharp teeth.
 
Well while my protein skimmer was out and I was gluing corals, I found these yellow clove polpys on the back of my mummy eye chalice, so I cut them off the rock and placed them on their own rock. I didnt glue these down well, so I have lost a few more. I havn't seen these anywhere, but I think they are pretty awesome! I placed my peach and green cloves within a patch of sps and they are thriving. They dont seem to bother the sps.
 
I love that cyphastrea, tank is awesome too. Any updates, are there any frags you have available? I would like to see a current full tanks shot if possible.
 
WEll, I have torn down over 2/3rds of the aquarium and rebuilt the aquaiurm with new live rock. The reason I broke it down was because the montipora confusa was taking over the aquarium in the left side and my sunset monitopora was taking over the middle of the aquarium. The montipora confusa was about two feet long a foot deep and over 8 inches tall. I decided to just take it outside and let it dry in the sun and bake for a few days so I can re-use the skeleton in my calcium reactor and re-use the live rock. Of course I did hand out a few frags here and there. The same with the sunset monti.

I get rid of most of my zoo's and allot of my Big SPS colonies to make room for some LPS. I'm now going to fewer SPS and a little more LPS for the new look. I will post pictures of the conversion from a few pics I took from my phone.
 
Just wondering do you dose any type of coral food? If so do you run a low nutrient system?


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Thank you.

No I do not dose any type of coral food on a regular basis. The corals do eat when I feed the fish. What ever gets to them via the flow, they get and that is about it. I dont do any target feeding. Too much work [smilie=wink.gif] .
 
Well the tank is not in great shape right now. My last two goals was to get rid of the beast. That was the montipora confusa, and beast two, which was my sunset montipora. I was able to get the beasts out of the tank. It was getting to be too much work to cut these corals back all the time. I have replaced allot of the mother corals with new live rock. I have placed about 60-80lbs of new uncured rock in the tank. It is now recycling a bit, but most of the corals do not seem to have an issue thus far.

This was the beast.
 
After getting it out, I decided to let it sit in the sun and bake. I want the coral to completely dry out and I will re-use it in the calcium reactor to feed nutrients back to the corals. I havn't tried this before, but I think it will work. I'm not for sure how long it needs to dry out, but I will wait a couple weeks before I put in the calcium reactor. Right now, it doesn't smell much anymore but I want to make sure that the dead coral doesn't create a cycle for me. This is what it looks like so far. I think I ned to wait till it turns completely white. I will hit it with a hose if it doesnt get there soon. Then I can break it up.
 
The other beast was this sunset montipora. It was trying to eat my nuclear candy cane as you can see in this picture. I removed this beast as well and replaced the rock with the new live rock. When I took this one out it broke up allot of my SPS coloines as well as my nuclear candy canes. I have a bunch of colonies now.
 
My Branching cyphastrea is doing fine. Even after adding the new live rock. When I removed all the monti's allot of colony's got broke up, including some big chuncks of the cyphastrea. You can see some broke branches here. I had about 3, 4 inch frags of it, but they all parished for some reason. I guess my tank took a spike when I put the live rock in (It was exspected), and killed the frags. This is the new spot for the cyphastrea on a new fresh rock. This rock should color up in about a month once it cures fully.
 
Now this is one of my favorite acros that I had to chizzle of fthe rock as well, but I dont think this one is going to make it. Now that the new rock is causing a little brown algae in the aquarium this guy seems to be fading a little. I fragged a piece of this guy and it doesn't look good either.
 
Hey Mat,

I'm coming over to drop off your crown leather frag and pick up my frag of that cyphastrea. [smilie=lol.gif]

Cheers,
 
I'm making room for it that is for sure. I do have the right side of the aquarium pretty much done as far as the rock stack. I pretty much left it alon and added some things beside it. My Lakers scroll has now been moved from the back of the aquarium and moved to the front as a show piece. Here is a pic. Now I will have to get rid of my regular scroll as I dont have a whole lot of room right now with the new stack.....but that is in progress. We shall see what happens.
 
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