Latest updates

All my live rock is covered. Just letting it grow to whatever happens.

Hello!
I am 16 years old now. I am currently looking for long term corals and keeping my N03 stable.

The tank has been doing very well. With recent carbon dosing and a new skimmer I have seen improvements everywhere. Coral growth and fish health have significantly gotten better. I still have all my oldies with a few new additions.

Stock list:
Marble wrasse
Royal Gramma
2 Clownfish
Longnose Hawkfish
Sailfin algae Blenny

Coral:
Green mushroom
Orange mushroom
Devils hand
2 indo gold frogspawn
1 Aussie Green and purple Hammers
Pulsing xenia
1 Green toadstool
Palythoas
Gorgonian frag

Inverts haven't changed much.
4 Top crown snails
1 strawberry conch
1 serpent star
10 blue legs hermits
4 nassarius snails
1 whelk
10 astrea snails
2 ninja star astrea snails
2 turbo snails
1 peppermint shrimp
2 fuzzy chitons
2 trochus snails
1 Tuxedo urchin
1 Pincushion urchin

Thanks to anyone who still follows!

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Update september 2026, my tanks have less growing than before, because most of corals touched and tried to kill each others, it's quite fun to see before that i wished the Sunset montipora takes cover all the rock but now regret that it also kills the base of all acros !
I have to trim many fast growing acro (mostly the stag and table) to have more room for light and flow, but seem even when i'm using 8 powerheads, still lacking of flow in some acros.

3:30 PM ish and my udotea came in the mail.
Just introduced it to the tank back then, now it is 5:07 PM, and it is doing great.

Knopia on the far left bottom corner isn't doing well rn due to the hydroids which I have had issues with trying to eradicate so I will probably plan to replace the knopias with pulsing xenia or rhodactis soon.

Update as of 8/11/26 (had to put it here/reupload it here)

Unfortunately male standard ocellaris clownfish had perished on late June that year, got a second replacement back in July and introduced him after a day in breeder box and died for mysterious reasons roughly three weeks later.

Waited roughly two weeks, then on August 2 I got the third (and final) replacement male ocellaris clownfish, placed him into observation box for a day, female platinum chased him relentlessly before I put him back in 50 minutes later for 3 more days.
August 5th and I released him and after initial chasing the two go along far better than the second, and chasing/aggression by fem is much less now so massive relief!

I still feel guilt I put those two fish in stress, but at the same time it is ultimately a learning experience, that led to the success of the third.

Also got a tuxedo urchin on July 23 and corals doing excellent, also got kenya tree a while ago; that doing excellent.

Also I named the livestock as:
Female platinum: Kyys Nurgun (after a Sakha Turkic heroine in their traditional epic, Olonkho)
Male default: Nemo
Yellow clown goby: Shulmus (after the female shapeshifting food thief in the Kalmyk, Oirat and Western Khalkha (Mongol) epic of Jangar)
Cleaner shrimp: Astolfo (after the Fate femboy)

Just some photos taken after my water change yesterday. Things have balanced out after the trip and everything seems happy. Params:

Salinity: 1.025
DkH: 8.1
PO4: .02 (but again, the presence of algae leads me to believe that is not accurate)
Nitrates: 0-1ppm
Calcium: 450ppm

This tank started as a sps dominated system and has ended as a LPs / softy mixed system. The long tentacle decided to move back to the front and my female clown finally nestled in with it. I’ve also moved a couple of torches back to this system so they have more room to grow and hopefully but my colt in check lol.

The tank as been showing good growth and I’m super tempted to add something else to the top but feel it might not have enough room. I will be adding something else to more blastos to the garden since moving two of my torches to the 30 gallon in the living room.

Well, I definitely neglected this thread for a while! I’ll have to see about updating more regularly…

In any case, this tank’s been up and running for nearly 14 months now, with remarkably little drama!

I went through the inevitable uglies associated with a dry rock start from around month 6-12, though my laziness seemed to help me there… namely, I let hair algae grow out where it pleased for a while, just manually removing some when it got out of control… that seemed to work great to keep nutrients down, and keep all the tank’s lit real-estate from getting taken over by less desirable organisms!

I did have a bit of cyano pop up around the one year mark, though it was almost exclusively sequestered to the tank walls, and the overflow… the rock has become thoroughly encrusted with coralline!

I’m proud to say that I haven not lost one coral yet, though that’s likely because I very rarely add anything to this tank, so there aren’t too many opportunities for pests or pathogens to enter! (Having a observation/QT tank doesn’t hurt either!)

FTS as of today:

It’s still a bit dirty, I haven’t done a deep clean in quite a while… though, I’ve been having good luck letting nature take its course, so I’m hesitant to get too aggressive with my cleaning methods in this awkwardly shaped tank!

In any case, the frogspawn is at 7 heads, 6 on the torch… GSP is doing its weedy thing and trying to literally grow out of the tank (that’s likely to be removed before too long)… also, my two SPS frags are slowly but surely growing, quite to my surprise!

So after 1 year with my Reefbreeder Meridians in my hybrid T5 setup, my corals have really taken off. With all of the growth, I am getting some shading at the bottom front of my scape and figured an Reefbreeder Edge fixture would be a great addition. I went with the UV/Blue combination knowing I could increase the 3500K and 5500K whites on the Meridian and my Purple+ Ati bulbs in my dimmable fixture to balance things out. First of all that Edge Bar, wow! it's sturdy, well made powerful and what a pop with my corals. I don't even think I'm going to get past 25% after acclimation.

The Edge came with an articulating bracket that I managed to retrofit to slide into my aquatic life fixture, but it extended to far out, so I just went with three foot zip ties. It holds the fixture in place perfectly on the angle that I need and considering everything else is black, you barely see it.

Moved all the sps and most of my LPs to a 20 gallon aio system. Tanks has been doing great since splitting the bio load with another system.

Longhorn Cow needs some attention.

My live rock disappeared after seven years. It’s been a long time since I’ve been able to see my live rock.

TL;DR: Copepods are visibly thriving on the sandbed. Kalkwasser dialed in at 7.5 dKH. Three new corals arrive Tuesday. Dead snails removed. GFO on hand. Everything is stable.

The Pod Discovery
Yesterday: thousands of copepods visible on the sandbed. Not hiding in the rocks, not microscopic — visibly crawling everywhere under the lights.

Tisbe and Apocyclops from Pod Your Reef are establishing and reproducing. Fed by AB+ dosing every other day. At 79°F in a stable system, they’re in their happy place. Doubling every 2–4 weeks.

Kalkwasser Dialed
The gravity-fed dosing system is working. Here’s the journey:
• Apr 14: 6.9 dKH baseline (corals consuming faster than replacement)
• Apr 15: 6.6 dKH (check valve was blocking drip)
• Apr 16: Removed backflow preventer, opened airline valve
• Apr 17: 7.1 dKH (drip working, added 2-gallon water change)
• Apr 18: 7.5 dKH (stable, holding)
• Apr 19: 6.8 dKH (didn’t refill dosing container yesterday — lesson learned)
• Apr 20, 5:45 AM: 7.5 dKH again (fresh batch + consistent refilling)
The key insight: Kalkwasser systems work, but you have to refill the dosing container daily. Miss a day and the container level drops, flow slows, alk drops. Simple math, but easy to forget.
The evaporation guard tradeoff: Kraken Reef lid is working too well. Less evaporation = fewer ATO cycles = slower kalkwasser delivery. Removing the guard temporarily to increase evaporation and ATO frequency until alk holds consistently. Once parameters stabilize post-corals (week 6–7), putting it back and dialing drip rate accordingly.
This is the real lesson of reef-keeping: every system affects every other system. Installing a lid changes evaporation, which changes ATO firing, which changes kalkwasser delivery, which changes alk stability. It’s a web.

Dead Snails & Ammonia Spike
Found a couple stinky snails in the empties I’d removed during the initial CUC check. They were decomposing and spiked ammonia to 0.25 ppm (API test — false read). Hanna ammonia checker showed 0.07 ppm (trace, normal).
Removed all questionable snails. Ammonia dropping back to zero. This is what an established cycle does — one small ammonia source, the bacteria process it without drama.
Current CUC count: ~60 snails + 1 conch. Quality over quantity.

GFO Arrived
Kolar Labs HC GFO (700g jar) arrived. Phosphate at 0.25 ppm still high (target 0.03–0.1 ppm).

Starting conservative. Gradual phosphate reduction = no coral stress. Going in today after the new corals settle.

Wave 2 Corals — Tuesday
Order placed and arriving:
• Pandora Zoanthids — vibrant, hardy soft coral
• Aussie Teal Duncan — beautiful LPS, branching, low aggression
• LA Lakers Scroll — underrated LPS, unique coloration
All three established vendors.

Added a few NPS

After the last flash sale, added some to the tank thanks to WWC and Alex!

Loving how the tank is coming together and wild to have a mixed reef (which has been the dream) after only 10 months.

The Wife and kids chipped in and bought me a beautiful PC Rainbow fragrance and a new Yellow Tang for my BD! Both tge frag and YT are stunning. I long story short I acquired a YT a few months back from Biota ant it was doing great and growing but my dam Powder Blue harassed it relentlessly until it killed it. Well the PBT has been re-homed and eventually I was planning on getting a new YT. My family beat me to it and added the PC Rainbow to the mix. Both are stunning! I want to thank my friends @Pieces of the Ocean for helping my wife! Especially Jessica and Chris as both were a surprise I was unaware of. My family at POTO are the best!

I looking good and they start growing really fast. Im cycling my nyos g2 440 and after the vacation i will swap tanks.

Reef update