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afex2win.com
KT phone home
Jul 28 2006

better late than never

i told ya’ll that i was gonna redo my website. I know i’ve been spouting that line for a few years now, but this time i meant it. i guess having a grown up life gives you alot more free time in the afternoon than i’m used to. on that note, houston is great. lots of things to see and do (read: money) and my apartment is nice (read: money). but somehow i still manage to not have any in my bank account when i need it. once all these moving expenses get paid off maybe i’ll be able to save some.

one of the main reasons i changed my layout was due to the change of focus of the site. i got rid of the useless crap and only kept the important stuff. those 3 things are listed at the top of the page. :] i plan to post regularly about my reef tank to track it’s progress (now that i’m doing things the right way since i can afford to) i’ll keep those posts in the “reef” category so feel free to only read from the “life” one.

Jul 25 2006

cleanup crew to the rescue

as i saw the rise and fall of the diatom part of my cycle, i ordered a cleanup crew for the ensuing green algae outbreak. from eTropicals.com i ordered 20 astrea, 20 cerith, and 20 nassarius snails. i decided i’m not going to use crabs or turbo snails this time around. i never really saw the crabs working in my last tank and those turbo snails are just bulls in a china shop. only 40 of the snails arrived (cerith was backordered), but they got right to work. i’ll probably end up getting some more, but this should do for now.

mid cycle - 7/25/06 astrea snails

also in the mail came my newest gadget. it’s a reef fanatic ph/temp monitor. pretty neat stuff. since i’m still cycling i’m not too worried about keeping my pH at 8.2 but eventually this thing should help out alot

IMG_2407 protein skimmer and pH meter sump area

Jul 20 2006

flatworms :[

not a good start, but i’m not letting it get me down.

along with the batch of LR i purchased from a member of MARSH, i also got a couple of balls of chaeto for my fuge. turns out his stash was infested with flatworms. after tossing the cheato, i still had quite a few of the guys in my fuge, so i decided to hit them while i was still cycling.

flatworms flatworms

i got a bottle of salifert flatworm exit and went to town. it may have been a little demented, but my girlfriend and i had fun watching those little guys keel over when it started to take effect. i’d say it killed about 90% of the flatworms, so i dosed it again. i still have a few that refuse to kick the bucket, so i’m probably going to end up using the rest of the bottle to make sure they’re all dead. since i dont have any livestock yet i’m not worried about the aftermath.

you could say it was lucky timing though, since i found out i had flatworms right when i was expecting my new media reactor in the mail! so i was ready with carbon once they started releasing all their toxins into the water (like it mattered, but anyway)

TLF phosban reactor

Jul 17 2006

75g reef v2.0

so here starts my new reef journal. hope everybody has fun looking at all the pictures. :]

to get everybody up to speed: my first attempt at reef-keeping was back in college from may 2004 to april 2006 (most of 2004 was spent researching and saving money, so i really didn’t get started until december 2004). i kept mostly softies, but i did have a nice frogspawn and a couple of sps pieces. since i was in college, the entire operation was low-cost from the get-go. most of my corals were give-away frags from LARC meetings and the only real piece of equipment i had was a protein skimmer. but i made it work. even with weak PC lighting, my corals thrived. in that year and a half, i learned alot about the hobby but never had an opportunity to go to the next level. that is, until i was offered a job in houston after graduation. long story short, it inspired me to restart my tank.

and this blog will be a journal of that restart. i’ve kept all the equipment from before, except my lights, and will be using my new “grown-up money” :] to use the lessons i learned as a budget reefer and make this a success. i plan to focus on SPS corals with some LPS thrown in for good measure (80/20 split). for fish, i’m looking into getting a school(5) of bartlett’s anthias and a purple tang, among others.

here are my current specs:

tank front tank front - 7/16/06 tank right tank left