Latest updates

Been an exciting couple of months.
Started with a few soft corals which have all settled in nicely.
I got a few free frags from an online order which have been fun to ID and watch. A photoS gorgonian and what turned out to be a green Pavona.
I recently got some nice frags for father's day (favia, chalice, candy cane and my first euphyllia (toxic splatter frammer)).
The favia has sent out crazy sweeper polyps, no idea if that's normal or it's going to war!

I also invested in a new light as my LFS were selling some Fluval marine 3.0 at half price.
My nutrients seem reallllyy low (PO4 0-0.03, NH3 0-5) which could be the softies or my growing population of spirorbid snails.
I need to expand my testing range now that I've got some LPS but at the moment I'm just keeping up with water changes and monitoring.
Got a strawberry conch who is great at keeping my sand bed clean and a team of trochus have made short work of my algae.
I'm only running my skimmer intermittently as I don't want the tank running too clean.
All in all it's looking great, all original fish and growing well. That might be the tipping point for an increase in tank size but so far everyone is playing nice.

Still recovering from my crash. My urchin miraculously survived after my having tried to remove him from the tank twice thinking he had died. My big Zoa colony is in a “hospital tank” at the LFS until it hopefully recovers. I have brown stuff generating bubbles developing around the tank which I worry is dinos but have been unable to obtain a microscope to check (why does no one on facebook marketplace ever respond?!). I’m going to do another water change today and then try reintroducing a snail and see how it fares. If it behaves normally I’ll start restocking my CUC. I did add a bottle of tigger pods to the tank and they seem to have survived.

Debating whether to add a UV to my tank to deal with the possible dinos, but I know if it’s the wrong kind it won’t help. The bubbles disappear when the lights go off, but the brown stuff doesn’t seem to disappear (hard to tell with the different in lighting).

I’m finding it difficult to get proper testing equipment. None of my LFS have nitrate tests other than test strips and the API reef kit, which may be what I end up with (at a $20 premium over Amazon but at least I’ll know it’s new).

I followed instructions from ChatGPT and made refractometer calibration fluid. Super easy to do with an accurate scale.

My copepod breeder bucket is coming along nicely. Water is turning green and smelly. The raccoons keep trying to get into it every night, and I’m also a bit worried it’ll overheat with the high temps but I guess we’ll see.

A calamity struck my tank, and unfortunately I’m still not sure exactly what caused it. The most likely culprit at this point was some reverse osmosis water purchased at a store, but I’ve got doubts about that. All the details are here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/help-with-my-murder-mystery.1116007/

In the end I lost almost all of my inverts. My urchin is still alive, but barely, and it’ll be a miracle if he pulls through (but miracles happen sometimes). Somehow a Nerite snail survived, and my hermit is alive but also not active. Everything else died within 24 hours. I’m sure I also lost some zoas and clove polyps, but don’t know how many yet. My GSP is recovering.

I did a half tank water change, ran Poly filter, added another bottle of FritzZyme, and for now that’s where I’m leaving things. I’ll do another water change before I add more inverts, but I want to wait until things have been stable for a while. I wish I knew what had happened, because the idea that something like that could happen again with no warning is frightening.

I’ll add more updates as things progress. The only other problem I’m facing right now is that things are too clean—I keep thinking I’m over feeding, but nitrates continue to test at close to zero. Can a bit of floss, a refugium, and some live rock be doing all that? I can turn off the skimmer but right now it may be helping remove whatever toxin was introduced so I’m leaving it on.

Woke up this morning to my huge nem splitting its self. Can get a video to upload

I saw Barbara, my bristle worm, come out of her home to eat all the snail eggs. Circle of life.

Finally broke down and bought some test kits. I opted for the Imagitarium reef kit drop tests because I’m poor, and I really just want to make sure things don’t get badly out of control versus chasing numbers (my tank is only soft corals for the foreseeable).

It mostly confined what I’m seeing on my even lousier test strips: my nitrate is very low (5 ppm), my ammonia is 0, my alkalinity is low (7, but I’m slowly building up with Marine Buffer). My phosphate shows between .25 and 0 (I’m going to also test some RODI tank water from LFS for a control). I might also try doubling the water sample to 10 mL with same amount of reagent to see if I can get a reading, which could theoretically let me test lower limits (my eyes test as very sensitive to color variation).

What I find interesting is that I’m doing the things that aren’t generally recommended—I have yet to do a water change, the only filtration I’m using is filter floss and carbon (and chaeto), and I’m feeding my fish twice a day and I’m still at very low levels. The power of live rock? Either way, I’m adding a protein skimmer in today or tomorrow, so they will help keep things stable. I’ll plan to do my first water change soon—I’m willing to be lax, but this isn’t a science experiment and I’d rather not mess everything up.

Added a Green Coris Wrasse, and a Zebra Eel!

The tank is about to hit 2 months. Right now just keeping perimeters in check. Still have not hit a major algae issue … yet. Corals are looking to be in good shape. I’ll update more once I start adding more corals so it’s more exciting to look at. My goal right now is to really just keep things simple. Down the road I have the idea to put a doser and controller on board, mainly for when I am on vacation I have a sense of ease. Let me know if anyone has any suggestions.

I received two gifts from snails recently. The first is some eggs apparently laid by a cerith snail. I guess that’s a good sign things are OK. The second was some algae brought in on an Astrea snail shell. I saw it growing on it and didn’t think anything of it until I start to see some tiny little feathery things growing in my tank (too small to photograph). I believe they are shoots of Bryopsis algae. Aw hell nah. I immediately ordered some Reef Flux—I’ve seen enough “how to deal with pest” videos to know that Bryopsis can really only be treated with chemicals. Thankfully it sounds like Reef Flux is generally safe for everything else in the tank. A number of people said microdosing actually worked fine, so I’ll start with the lower dose and go up if necessary. These are so small that I don’t need to do anything drastic yet.

I also received an order of copepods from Reef by Steele, but UPS decided to leave them in a hot truck for a day and a half longer than necessary so I ended up with a bottle with no visible life. For me this wasn’t an inconsequential investment so it’s a bummer for sure, and certainly not Kent’s fault. Maybe he has recourse with UPS since they didn’t even attempt delivery. Maybe they’re just shell shocked, but considering I see a pile of dead pods in the bottom I’m not optimistic.

I first noticed diatoms in my tank about four days ago, and they’re already dramatically reducing in quantity and the CUC is doing a good job of turning the rocks back to white. No idea if this is typical or not.

I guess I’m supposed to be using this thread to add updates, not the other one, so I’ll try this.

My plan has been to try and respond to problems as they arise, but I realized that I was setting myself up for hassles with only relying on a tiny refugium and some filter floss to handle nutrient export. It might be OK now while there’s little in the tank, but since I want to do water changes less often I realized something more was probably needed. I purchased a used Bubble Magus MiniQ protein skimmer and will set it up once it arrives. I was originally planning to run it occasionally (and still may), but then I read an article which indicated that they only capture about 35% of wastes, so that still leaves plenty left over for healthy bacteria, corals, and other tank critters.

I just installed one of the new, to me at least, Nature Dimensions N-Clear Fleece Roller filters. I was happy to see that they have an option to make it fit on a UNS Dual AIO, which my Landed 35C fits. At least the filter socks fit, so I assumed that it would fit with the adapter. It fits great. No more worrying about filter socks when I have to travel for work!

Up next, getting the Hydros collective all installed as well as the Fish of Hex CO2 scrubber!

Few FTS and Top Down shots from the last couple of weeks.
New Zoa's in the frag tank growing out at the moment, all the SPS is going great.

Kenya tree dropped it first buds today while I was scraping the glass and dosing with coral snow.

Please see attached, more to follow soon!

added a nice new purple torch to the tank yesterday and it's settling in quite nicely. here's a semi-decent photo of it