Updated 9 Gallon Reef Pics

Well, some of my Coraline has turned white instead of the deep purple it was, so that's kindof a bummer. But other than that things are growing and looking very nice. No algae or cyanobacteria to be seen! I keep the refugium light on growing a bundle of Chaeto back there pretty much at all times. I imagine I'll need to order some more lights here pretty quick just in case these go out anytime soon. Never can tell with stock lights...anyway, here are some pictures!

Here is the front tank shot as it sits on my desk here at work. Hard to get anything done with this thing but it sure does make for attractive decor.


My two Clownfish, kids named them Nemo 1 and Nemo 2 of course :)


These are my two SPS (Small Polyp Stony) Corals, they branch and grow all different ways. Pretty cool to watch them grow over a period of months or even weeks.


This is one of my favorites, it's called a Frogspawn, it's a LPS (Large Polyp Stony) and is pretty mean to anything that it touches.


The CandyCane LPS Coral, another one of my favorites, it will eventually split and grow into more 'heads' and branch out. It has feeder tentacles that come out of it at night, looks really cool!

Bathroom Project

Well, I spent the better part of 2 weekends ripping out part of my bathroom walls, redoing the guts and re-tiling the wall. It all started with a musty odor with visible mold and the wife having headaches. The house we moved into 4 years ago was already 30 years old. It's a big house for what we paid for it though :) Well anyway, I took a rubber mallet to about 20 square foot of the wall all around the tub where the mold was visible. As it turned out, it was rotten all the way to the insulation. So I ripped that out and replaced it and a few boards. Here are some photo's of yours truly right before I took out the existing tile with extreme prejudice and the mess that resulted. (it's pretty gross, fair warning!)




After replacing the insulation:



A word on plumbing, HELL. The plumbing needed to be replaced obviously, it really dated the house and I wanted something new anyway. Little did I know I was going to drop $60-70 on Sharkbite connectors to install the new system. If you've never heard of Sharkbite fittings and you are ever going to do any copper pipe work, do yourself a favor and check these out here. They work miracles and you don't have to solder anything. Unfortunately I was so involved in what I was doing I neglected to take some pictures of the new shiny copper fortune I had created that would never be seen again (hopefully). Anyway, once this was done it was time to seal it all up...

So some genius decided they would use regular drywall behind the tile instead of some sort of mold-resistant cement backing so I decided to fix that and installed Hardiebacker Cement board. Let me tell you, this stuff is a royal pain to cut. Not to mention I had to double-back the boards (1/2"x2) in order to keep the right depth. I am glad I went with it in the end though, because it's solid and will resist mold and mildew.




So the tiling was not fun. Here's the story. I had purchased tile from Home Depot because it was the only place in town that stocked the 'Bone' color tile that matched the rest of the wall. Well, I start to throw a few pieces up there to see how they would look ... the grout line was off by 1/16" after about 3 tiles because the edges of the tiles I purchased were beveled. This completely stopped me in my tracks and I searched and searched for the next week trying to find the correct tile color without the beveled edges on the tile. Here's a picture to illustrate:



Fed up and ready to complete the project, I just decided to improvise. I put in a border (just the border cost me $60 in tile, highway robbery I say) and changed the pattern of the tile from straight to angled. I borrowed a wet saw (and a beer or two) from my neighbor and started measuring and cutting the tile I got from Home Depot with the hated beveled edge. Took me all durn weekend to cut all those crazy angles. Once I finally finished tiling Sunday evening I threw the grout up there and installed the faucet and handle assembly. I finally finished this project up at 12am sharp on Monday morning. Amazingly, after 2 weekends of this, I am still married but I'm sure my kids doubt my sanity now after seeing Daddy in the bathroom for 18-20 hours all weekend talking to himself and ignoring everybody with a funny look in his eye.

(click to enlarge the pics)




Next project, retiling the floor. Although I don't expect this to take much effort I hold no illusions about Mr. Murphy and his antics...