CMO's SPS Dominant 165G Mixed Reef Build (Triton)

CMO · Dec 28, 2018

Built a custom chiller and UV surround over the past few weekends.

Also removed the wiper units on my aqua ultraviolet UV due to rust. The company said this is likely caused by air gaps in the units with how I had them plumbed horizontally before. I order the twist housings and transferred my lamps in order to re-plumb with an upflow pattern and last outlet facing up to prevent air gaps.

CMO · Jan 10, 2019

New pre-quarantined Borbonias Anthias from TSM corals. This guy is super cool to watch and was very easy to acclimate with my already well established group of fish. No aggression whatsoever from either party. Highly recommend TSM coral. The fish arrived in a huge amount of water for it's size and ate from day one.

JPK · Jan 11, 2019

CMO said:
New pre-quarantined Borbonias Anthias from TSM corals. This guy is super cool to watch and was very easy to acclimate with my already well established group of fish. No aggression whatsoever from either party. Highly recommend TSM coral. The fish arrived in a huge amount of water for it's size and ate from day one.

Very cool, I’ve always wanted a Borbonias anthias. I visited the TSM site, they have some nice stuff. Is everything they have pre-acclimated, or was that a special deal for that particular anthias? I didn’t see mention of pre acclimation on any of their fish or anywhere else, maybe I missed something.

I’ve been following your system from the beginning. You have really done a great job with everything , very impressive.

Jason

CMO · Jan 11, 2019

JPK said:
Very cool, I’ve always wanted a Borbonias anthias. I visited the TSM site, they have some nice stuff. Is everything they have pre-acclimated, or was that a special deal for that particular anthias? I didn’t see mention of pre acclimation on any of their fish or anywhere else, maybe I missed something.

I’ve been following your system from the beginning. You have really done a great job with everything , very impressive.

Jason

Thanks for following along Jason! Yeah they don't say much on their site but I reached out to TSM directly and they confirmed that all of their fish are fully QT'd prior to sale. I originally caught wind of them from positive comments here on R2R related to pre-QT'd fish. Hard to beat the sale they have going on right now at $225 for the Borbonias - they're a nice size too.

CMO · Feb 2, 2019

Time to fight some bryopsis. A bit nervous about this given some of the issues noted with fluconazole and SPS but don't have much of a choice since it's expanding very quickly. I tried manual removal and also added 8 lettuce slugs for about the last month but neither are really reversing its course. The lettuce slugs definitely eat it but not fast enough. Added 3000 mg of Fish Flucon from Thomas labs today.

Here is one of the worst spots prior to starting treatment for comparison down the road.

JPK · Feb 2, 2019

Good luck! I had a ton of bryopsis in my frag tank a while back and treated with fluconazole. It worked well for me and all my sps were fine.

CMO · Feb 26, 2019

Happy to report that fluconazole worked well. Corals are mostly unaffected by the treatment and Bryopsis is gone best I can tell. However, the flucon did throw my water chemistry out of wack and reduced alk consumption pretty considerably. I also noticed PE loss on a few acros. Chaeto died back considerably but not completely. However, other macros (flame algae and gracilaria) were unaffected and continued to growth throughout treatment.

Updated Photo as of today.

justmee · Feb 26, 2019

Your tank setup has got to be one of the most organized I have ever seen...

CMO · Feb 26, 2019

justmee said:
Your tank setup has got to be one of the most organized I have ever seen...

Thank you! A lot of work upfront but makes it super easy to manage now.

CMO · Mar 3, 2019

Picked up this insane Trachy from the LFS this weekend (Ocean's Tropical Fish in Mission Viejo). He still has more of equal quality if anyone local is looking for one. Definitely my new favorite coral. It looks pretty much just like this in both white and blue light.

CMO · Mar 4, 2019

For the past few weeks or so I've noticed things seemed off in my tank. Certain SPS that always had good color and PE started to turn slightly green/brown and lose some PE. Some of my SPS also have also been excreting some sort of white slime like substance. Well, just got an ICP test that shows a good amount of Tin got into my system somehow so hopefully that explains it. Did one 20% water change and ran cuprisorb which removed all tin quickly. Pretty sure I found the culprit to be a metal basket I had attached to the inside of the door of my sump that was collecting condensation and dripping into the sump.

sam.veilleux30 · Mar 4, 2019

CMO said:
Picked up this insane Trachy from the LFS this weekend (Ocean's Tropical Fish in Mission Viejo). He still has more of equal quality if anyone local is looking for one. Definitely my new favorite coral. It looks pretty much just like this in both white and blue light.

Wowwowwow

CMO · Mar 10, 2019

Love this little guy. His name is Noodle. ;Happy

Ken101Ward · Mar 10, 2019

CMO said:
For the past few weeks or so I've noticed things seemed very slightly off in my tank. Certain SPS that always had good color and PE started to turn slightly green/brown and lose some PE. Some of my SPS also have also been excreting some sort of white slime like substance. I didn't think much of it and chalked it up to higher nutrients levels from my fluconazole treatment which knocked out my Cheato pretty good. Well, just got an ICP test that shows a good amount of Tin got into my system somehow so hopefully that explains it. 6 x 15% water changes are in order to correct this according to Triton. Fun. :mad:

Also CA is pushing 585 so time to turn down the dose of Core 7 part 2 relative to the other solutions which I've been dosing equally until now.

Have you been able to determine how the tin got into your system?

CMO · Mar 10, 2019

Ken101Ward said:
Have you been able to determine how the tin got into your system?

Pretty sure I found the culprit to be a metal basket I had attached to the inside of the door of my sump that was collecting condensation during my flucon treatment with skimmer cup removed and dripping into the sump.