The Rebirth/Rebuild of my 180g sps thread

[Acronuts]

Ok this weekend two fishes arrived from liveaquaria.com and I purchase a flame hawk from WWC.
Everyone is doing fine and acting like they are supposed too.
The Golden Angel is just as cute as can be from the moment I acclimated it to the intro to the tank it shows signs of fiestyness. Even the purple tang could not keep it from going to where it wanted to go.

Here it is in the holding cup right before it went into the tank.

No torn fins or signs of stress!

The swiss guard of course did its hiding thing but soon came out and about.

Don't look too closely or you'll see the scratches on the glass.

 

[Acronuts]

Here is the flame hawk. What a gorgeous fish!

This fish has character and a sense of humor IMO!

Horrible pic but these guys are ALWAYS hiding!

A hitchhiker on one of the snails, some kind of encrusting coral. Looks like a soft coral almost gorgonia type.

 

[Acronuts]

Ah Oh! It has started guys! This addiction is coming back!!!
Anyway here are the latest additions.

Mummy eye chalice

Two color war coral ( red and purple )

Regal Angel

And of course for the life of me I can't remember what this coral is.....

 

[naldopr]

juan estos son dendrophilia

[/QUOTE]

 

[Acronuts]

juan estos son dendrophilia

[/QUOTE]

Thanks naldor! For some reason I thought that this is what it was called but when I googled the name nothing showed so I left name out.
Gracias and miss ya out her in Florida!

 

[Acronuts]

Yep the disease is now at full blast!
My latest finds......
Aussie green blasto

This coral needs a better pic but it is a sympodium....it has florescent green tips and the base is blue, almost like a green star polyp.

WWC cherry bomb chalice

Regal angel in motion

 

[Acronuts]

Well guys I did some adjusting to some of my equipment.
I calibrated my ph probe and I was able to finally see that my ph fluctuates between 7.92 with lights off to 8.22 when lights have been on for 6 hrs.
Is this drop too much?
I was reading that the addition of kalk also increases alk. When I tested the Ca was 440, the alk was 11.2, the Mg was 1100. My alk is a little too high. I know I need to adjust these parameters especially since my coral load is not that high, yet. I also know I need to dose Mg. and increase it to at least 1300.Again not quick rush to increase because I do not have a large coral bio load.
I plan to do a 25% water change. First for one it is due and for the second reason is, cutting away any excess nutrients that may be building up in the reef like phosphates and nitrates.
I did add some fish over weekend.
This nice regal yellow blue tang

A Hawaiian yellow tang

I also wanted to let everyone know that the regal anglefish is eating flake food already!

The Golden angle is busy throughout the tank and is doing well too! He is a bit cryptic but does make entrances and exits throughout the reef.
My caps have started to grow as the edges are showing signs. I will post a pic this weekend.

 

[kirsten]

Watch your pics of fishes first ,i love these swimming angles !

 

[Acronuts]

Watch your pics of fishes first ,i love these swimming angles !

Thanks kirsten! Is your tank made from the guys who have that show on TV called "Tanked"?

 

[Acronuts]

Here are some of the pics I promised of those caps plus a few others and a couple of new additions as well.
Blue ridge Tyree monti cap
Compare the pic from the post above to the pic of it now. Not explosive growth but enough that you can see the ridge starting to happen

WWC red Monti
Same thing compare pic above with this latest one

Finally was able to capture a pic of the cleaner shrimp this morning when the lights were off and only filtered light was coming in from the window.

Here is a pic of the green chromis going after the seaweed. They will eat anything!!!

 

[Acronuts]

Here are my latest NEW additions
I picked this one up at WWC. Not very common. Its called a Stylocoenellia sp

I replaced the mystery wrasse that had jumped out of the holding 55g tank back when I was redoing the tank. This is such a good looking wrasse!

Possum wrasse is a funny fish. I have seen this fish look dead and then it swims around like its alive and woke up!

 

[Acronuts]

Well its been a few weeks since my last post.
Things in the tank are coming along. I am finally getting some coralline algae! There must of been some hair algae spores in the water I had used from the old setup because I have patches of hair algae in the tank.
I certainly do not want to add any chemicals that get rid of this algae so for now I am keeping an eye on it and being extremely hands on with water quality. Planning to purchase a Hanna meter to really check my phosphate levels. For now the salifert kit is showing around 0.003 to 0.005. Not sure if this is too high.
You guys can let me know.
I also am noticing where the build up of detrius is accumilating. These areas are showing signs of less flow so I am planning on adding another 2 korelia pumps then this summer will add two more mp40's ES models.
I bit the nerves and bought some SPS acros. They have now been in the tank for 1 week and show very good signs, PE great! These are the first acro's in the tank besides the monti's.
So far none of the angels are touching the monti's or the acro's.

Tri-color wwc acro

Green birds nest

Green tenuous acro

This is next one is a nice one! Except I can not remember its name! Will have to call the guys at WWC.

 

[Acronuts]

Update:
Been very busy traveling for work and trying to get hair algae under control with extra water changes and siphoning out as much with each water change as I can. I am not adding anything that would produce extra phosphates so its gotta be coming from somewhere. It was time for me to look at my RO unit at possibly not doing its job throughly.
After looking at what I would be spending on a new Membrane filter, plus three other cartigdes the cost would be over $100.00. My unit is more than 20 years old. I never purchased it brand new and I know I have had it for at least 15 years.
I ordered from Filter Direct, after winning a bid on Ebay, for a 7 stage RO/DI unit. I can not believe that I will be getting a 5 gallon tank, plus a host of other items for $150.00. It will be here early next week and I will post details as soon as possible.
A couple of weeks ago I added a few more corals.
Here are the latest pieces:
Purple tip tabling Efflo

One of the fastest growers Tyree Setosa

Deepwater acro bluish tips

Gorgeous blue tip tenous

 

[REEFKEEPER10]

Man your tank is going to be nice ! I'm a fan of the angelfish for sure.

 

[Acronuts]

Man your tank is going to be nice ! I'm a fan of the angelfish for sure.

Thanks reefkeeper, it's a work in progress and I am hoping to get a hold on that hair algae by really controlling my water quality. Since it is a young tank I do not want to start adding chemicals to control something that every tank goes thru. With better water quality and as the tank matures it will go away.

 

[skinz78]

Do you have any clams in your tank? The reason I ask is because I had a 20g tank that was just riddled with HA and I added a 5" Squamosa just temporarily as sort of a QT and my tank was clear of HA withing 4 days. Just a thought.

 

[Acronuts]

Do you have any clams in your tank? The reason I ask is because I had a 20g tank that was just riddled with HA and I added a 5" Squamosa just temporarily as sort of a QT and my tank was clear of HA withing 4 days. Just a thought.

Wow never thought of that skinz. Might be worth a try. I do have to think about it thought since I have the Pygmy angels. I do know that it is definitely my RO water unit. It's done and will be replaced by the next water change.

 

[Acronuts]

Update ......May 29th, 2012
Well finally I was able to attack my hair algae problem first hand! I made several slow changes so that I did not shock my system which at this point is only 7 months old.
Change 1
Three weeks ago I bought a 7 stage RO/DI because I knew that the one I had was faulty and was not doing its job due to the fact that I continued to grow hair algea at a fantastic rate! Whether this was the only contributing factor? Most likely not!

After installing the RO unit I prepared my water to make a 25% water change.
Change 2
Because of the current corals I had I did not want to do less than 3 hrs of light so in this department I only gave 3 hrs. less than the normal 6 I was giving them.
Change 3
I am making a point of changing my filter socks every three days as opposed to every 2 weeks. I realized that as the socks became clogged and they overflowed, I got a lot of detritus build up in my middle part of my sump. This I am sure was like a buffet all you can eat for the hair algae!
Changes 3 and 4
Changed and added carbon and a Brightwell's Phosphate remover pellets. I saw almost an immediate change and the green algae started to turn grey. This allowed me to siphon the dead out.
Back on my road trips and I could not make any other changes. As the initial water change lost its effect so did the carbon and the phos remover. I noticed the algae come back as I thought it would.
I knew that a bigger effort was needed so I planned on this past weekend to do major stuff!
Scrapping the rocks, glass was a MUST!!! The whole process started at 9am and I did not finish until about 7pm that evening!!
WOAH!!!
Major lesson here DO NOT SKIMP ON HUSBANDRY and YOUR WATER CHANGES!!!
Here is a short video taken with my iPad of the before.


As I started to remove water I scrapped my rocks

 

[fishguy95]

You have a rather nice system. Do you have a refugium. If not then, I would suggest that you install one. It would help with your algae and your PH swings. Can we see some pics of your filtration?

 

[Chameleon]

very nice...i just read this whole thread and now I want to upgrade to a 180 from my 60. Love the aquascape and good luck with the hair algae. let us know if you figure out where the extra phosphates are coming from. I am a rather new reefer with an 8 month or so old tank and have never detected any phosphates or nitrates since initial cycle. not sure what I am doing wrong/right but I have even tried leaving the filter sock for 2 months just to see if I would get nitrates and still couldn't get them to become detectable. I really love your fish!!!! thats part of the reason I want a bigger tank. but I think I would get a resounding no from wifey and landlord. Congrats on overcoming your mojano! I look forward to seeing your tank down the road with some nice colonies like your previous tank FTS.
-Cham