the 210 gallon in wall project

WOW!!! A 40 gallon change is more than my tank! LOL! I am glad the mushrooms are starting to look better! I think we are due for some new pics!

Yea, i do most my "fish shopp'n" in SA... up at aquarium designs... Jason has allways been good to me...

yea, new pictures, ok,

yea, doing a 40 gallon water change does sound like a lot, but really, with the way i'm doing it with the 2 tanks, its really pretty easy...
just open a couple valves, and watch the water levels... water goes out, water comes in... 5 gallons at a time for now, but i'm thinking of moving my tanks from under the tank to over the sump... then i really need to get serous about digging my underground salt dump tank.... hmmmm

Got some new friends today. They had each been in the store since early April and I don't know why no one wanted them. So I scooped them up. I got a new foxface and a new Banggi cardinal. Also got some pulsing zenias.

Pete was chasing the new foxface all over pecking and biting so I turned the lights off early so maybe they can chill tonight and be cool tomorrow.

Here's a vid.

[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vHEaLA5ehCA&feature=youtube_gdata]YouTube - The new friends[/ame]

Those are some great pics you took! And good luck with the new additions!

Nice video p5k. Is Pete the Blue Damsil?

Yeah,really nice video and pics.

thanks everybody... Pete is the first foxface... the new one is now named Repeat. guess that shows my age a bit... hehehe... anyway.. Pete is still chasing Repeat all over...Poor Repeat is forced to just hide in a hole in the rock....

The xenias are doing well... and the little Bangghi is eating already....

well, pete and repeat are still at it, but the baby bangghi seems to be getting a little more comfortable, not out front yet, but definately starting to relax a lil bit after being moved and all....

The xenias are looking really crappy, i think one of the damsels has been picking at them cause there are some of the "heads" are missing... so, i moved them down to the sand last night and put an eggcrate cage over them... that'll let all the water flow and most of the light in, but will keep them from being picked at... Lights havent come on yet, but they are already looking better than they did last night... i'll nurse them back to health, and then maybe i can figure out who's do'n the damage and remove them...

Foxface are peaceful until housed with other foxface, and then they're aggressive toward each other. Hopefully with the amount of room you've got they'll get over it. Keep me posted on it. I'd like to get a magnficent foxface but am a bit nervous about it.

well, when i had just the one, it was pretty cool, but a buddy of mine said that he would be less skiddish and hide less if there was another one, and i asked him about having more than one, and he said that its rare, but he has seen them fight, and he has seen them get along, so it could go either way... well, mine are still fighting...

oh, and the lights came on and i can see more of whats up with the xenias, yea they've been chewed on pretty hard, but there are some that are starting to open up more now that the lights are on, so hopefully the protective custody cage will help them out....

I know it main be a BIG pain in your tank but rearranging the rocks can help with that aggression thing.

huh???

He's saying rearranging the rocks might help with the aggression.

um, ok, how? kinda like thier both in a new environment, so now thier equals?

yep exactly. It's not a definite fix but, it has worked successfully

i woulda never thought about that... hmm, ok, well the wife is comming home early tonight, so maybe after she has time to decompress from her day, she can sit on the couch and give me directions on where to move each rock... cause i really cant tell what i'm doing when i'm looking down on a tank....

oh, and i forgot to tell yall about the plumbing re-arrangement that i did today... so i had that nifty internal pump section on my sump... well, i found out that it wasnt really regulating the water level in the sump, or rather, in the pump section like i wanted it to... so, i ended up adding a couple 3" 90's and about a foot of 3" PVC and so now the water has to fall into the pipe to get into the pump section, not like before where it had to be pushed up from under the pumps... kinda hard to explain, but now i know why my salinity was allways swinging back and forth, the water level wasnt staying steady like i thought it was...

the other thing that i'm seriously considering on the plumbing is turning the returns that are in the overflows into drains for a closed loop system... there are 4 evenly spaced places along the front of the tank for me to have returns spraying into the tank and towards the rocks, rather than having them blowing against the front glass, just causing it to algae up faster.... so, i have the SCWD in the middle 2 positions, and i was thinking, what if i take the back returns, tie them together, to the input of an inline pump, and then have that blow through the outter most front corners of the tank... heck, i could even get another SCWD for this too.. hmmm

ok, maybe these pictures will help.... in the full tank shot you can see where the SCWD is comming in and where the standard returns are... then in the shot of the back of the tank, you can see the inards of the overflow.. and the current direction of water flow, and in the idea i'm having, i'm thinking of using all 4 tubes, as drains...

whaddyall think?

I've also heard of people putting a mirror in the tank for specifc fish, the aggressor gets so preoccupied with the mirror that he leaves the real fish alone...go figure.

The re-arranging rocks thing helped HUGE for my Blue Damsel. The other trick is to turn off the lights as soon as your done, which de-stresses the fish first off, but also gives the new fish time to find their spot. Plus then the aggressor wakes up all, "Where the hell am I? Who's this guy...I must have had one too many mysis cocktails last night" :mrgreen:

that was gonna be my next question, lights on or off. i figured off, cool, alrighty, well all the rock has been re-arranged, even added 4-5 new chunks, and i'll have another batch to add in a a few more days... ...

The question is will the overflow slots be able to keep with two drains?I'm not sure but I'm thinking no.