Crap, We Might Be Moving
Okay, it’s a new year. Let’s get the fishes back in motion!
His New Year's resolution was to be adorable. Done and done.
The tanks are in great shape, thanks to plenty of free time and lack of money to add new livestock. Nothing encourages tank stability as much as being completely flat-ass broke — if the only improvement you can make is to maintain what you already own, what you already own ends up looking spectacular. Still, it’s been raining here almost non-stop since September and Santa was good enough to bring us a new roof, so the fish can stay warm and dry. Or warm and un-electrocuted, whatever.
Unfortunately for them (but fortunately for us), we might be moving within the next year. Brown loves his job so we’d stay local, but we’re looking for a house in a different area of town. This is the Perfect Storm for a reef tank, and I have two of the darned things. If we needed to move long distances or if we were to move immediately, it’d be a no-brainer because I’d have to break them down, sell off the livestock, and start from scratch. A planned local move is all sorts of inconvenience because I can hang on to some or all of the livestock if I manage my time and resources.
(And there’s the little voice that keeps saying: Moving will be a great opportunity to buy and set up that 220g reef with dual overflows you’ve always wanted! but that’s a given. Also: see the part about being flat-ass broke until we pay off this roof).
Oh, and we have to get the kitchen floor replaced if we want to show the house. It’s the original linoleum that came with the house and while peeling and huge gouges all the way to the concrete are fine with us, they won’t do us much good at the negotiating table. As the 30g is smack-dab in the middle of the kitchen, odds are that if I have to get rid of one reef, this is the one to go.
I don’t want to give up the 30g. It’s been a headache with the peyssonnelia and the bubble algae and the worms and the lighting and the countless other junk, but it’s also an amazingly healthy established reef. The fish are huge, the coral thriving, and the sand stays bright white naturally. Self-cleaning sand is something of a holy grail in a reef — I don’t know where it came from and I don’t know how to duplicate it.
Frogspawn under actinic lighting.
*sigh* Practically speaking, the 30g should be broken down. Since the really cool thing about reef tanks is that your investments can literally grow over time, I’ve been putting together a livestock list to do some price comparisons.
The most valuable livestock is the mated pair of black clownfish. They are over three years old and the female is more than four inches long. A mated pair of young juveniles goes for $140 so I could easily ask two to three times that for an adult pair.
The Euphyllia paradivisa is probably the next most valuable livestock. Frogspawn coral are pretty common but mine has ten heads and is frighteningly enormous. I’ve seen large frogspawns go for $100 and up, but I’m not sure how many people are looking to spend this much on common livestock. Fragging it down to single or double heads would likely be the best way to move it, and at $30 to $50 for a small frogspawn it would increase the profit margin.
Nothing else in the tank could be considered a big-ticket item, unless you count the life rock encrusted with softies. There are blue and green mushrooms, some (ha!) lovely star polyps, some (ha hah hah hah!!!) blue snowflake anthelia, along with a dozen varieties of zoanthid and branching SPS. With the exception of the SPS, I think these would be fragged down to smaller pieces; the SPS should be scraped off of the rock and moved to the 65g, then sold later. Some of the SPS is getting rather large and the unique blue-greens and purple-greens would probably sell for $100 and up if I let them encrust to frag plugs.
Anyhow, just organizing my thoughts for the next year and trying to get DigiClown back on a normal schedule. More this week when Stuff In My Tanks resumes.
The Digital Clownfish 