112 gallon mixed reef is looking like a reef again

[andrewkw]

I usually update this thread once a month but I will twice this month. I started this "build" thread in June 2017. Really the tank was reset September / October 2016. I moved into my house September 2016 and in some ways it's scary to think I've been here almost 2 years but on a day to day basis it feels like forever. I recently compiled this video about rural reef keeping. When I say it's closing in on 2 years here it feels crazy, but when I talk about the corals I got 6 weeks ago, that feels like 2 years ago...

besides the struggles and successes I've had there is some cool drone footage showing just how isolated of an area I live in.

As for the actual tank other then the fact the big maricultured acro I got 6 weeks ago is dying a slow death in my frag tank everything is doing well. The other new pieces I got at the same time are all growing noticeably. I will shoot a may update video on the tank soon but for now here are a couple of comparison photos. I started doing at least a monthly photo session on my reef may 14th 2017 so all these comparison pictures are exactly 1 year apart. Some stuff has really grown, others not so much. The first 6 months + was just keeping things alive. I was really upset about the losses and broken tank, and the last 1 year plus things have been thriving. In another 6 months to a year I will probably have this tank where I want it to be.

Frogspawn hasn't really changed much in a year.

2 weeks ago I got 4 frags off this piece that is the same size as it was a year ago, but there are also 2 colonies BIGGER then the original + I've gotten about 10 small frags of it.

The biggest 2 changes are these 2

I have moved some things over the last year, but last year I was able to take a picture of my elegance coral from the side. Can't do that anymore..

Long term I think I want to add a tiny bit more flow, a bit more light. Either increase to 4 Kessils or just add 2 more blackboxes (I have one between 2 Kessils on the sps side). I would like more sps but it's a challenge in a softy dominated tank. In the summer I hope to cut back some of the softies. I have about 100 kenya tree frags that I can hopefully get rid of. Even if I got $2 each for them I'd be thrilled.

 

[andrewkw]

Video update for May :


I did lose 2 things. Maricultured sps are probably not the best idea in a soft coral dominated system. Also my rhyzo managed to eat my Mandarin. I did lose an Anthias a long time ago but really only slow moving fish can be caught by the tentacles. Even my own hand I've had a bit of trouble getting it off (without tearing the coral not without getting eaten).

 

[andrewkw]

June update :
For the first time in more then 10 years I successfully had corals shipped to my door. If you haven't followed this build thread for the past 2 years I've lived in a rural area after living near tons of great LFS. After the previous disaster of trying to get UPS to ship to me, Fedex not being available I had basically given up on anything but airport to airport. Even that sucks because so few vendors ship Air Canada cargo which is the only airline that flies here. So lately I've ordered a few things of amazon and they have been coming next day. After another order and talking with the driver a couple of times it turns out Purolator can deliver stuff to me shipped from most places in Ontario next day! Great news. It does still come ground so that means the package will spend all night in a truck and all morning / afternoon the next day but at this time of year that is not really an issue.

Since I didn't exactly have high hopes I just placed a small order. Nothing too crazy but pieces that filled specific spots in my tank. I got a montipora setosa frag, a micromussa, and a pink leptoseris.

Debating fragging my big green leather. It's fallen over and I can't get it to sit upright anymore unless I use a large chunk of epoxy and or glue. So it's either frag or relocate. I'm also considering bringing back some frags of existing corals and covering some of the bottom with palys. Check out the video for more on it. I try and take my time with ideas because as soon as you start tearing things down and making big changes they almost never come out how I picture them in my head. It's either going to look way better or worse. While I certainly enjoy working on the reef I try and avoid doing anything detrimental.

 

[andrewkw]

Did a little tweaking and I think I'm getting real close to having this tank how I want it to be. Of course I still want more fish and corals ect but as far as working with what I have I feel like I am near optimum alignment. When things settle in I'll take some more photos. For now here is the Rhyzo after feeding this morning.

 

[andrewkw]

July has been a relatively quiet month for my reef. I just added one piece and it's a pretty plain paly my one local friend wanted to get rid of. I stuck it towards the back filling a piece of live rock that wasn't going to be covered anytime soon. I am looking at ways to increase sps growth in this soft coral dominated system. First up is to run more carbon to see if that at all helps with chemical warfare. I did start a separate thread about this if you'd like to chime in : https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/can-i-increase-sps-growth-in-my-softy-dominated-system.425093/

The first step is carbon, since I just bought a gallon of rox. I typically only change carbon about once a month in the tank when I change gfo, it's use is really slight polishing but I have pretty clear water. Since it's high quality carbon I'm not concerned with running it more frequently but if I don't notice any sort of change after a couple of months I'll try something else. The other obvious ideas are more flow and more lighting.

As I do every month I also shoot a video on the tank to further document the changes.

 

[andrewkw]

Monthly update of my main reef :

More or less things are still great. The tank looks great, but something is a little off. My monti caps have died for unknown reasons. The biggest change is my alk has slightly risen but we are talking .3 and more than likely this was caused by the fact the monti caps are no longer consuming alkalinity. It's leveled off at 8.0 I previously ran the tank at 7.7 but I don't chase a number as long as I get the same number or close to it week in week out I am happy.

I have been experimenting with running more rox carbon, from monthly to weekly changes. I've backed that off to every other week. The interesting thing is the reason why I started doing this was in an attempt to encourage SPS growth and they are the only corals to show any sort of effect from this. Polyp extension on most isn't as good but they are all still fine less the caps. My montipora setosa is showing lots of growth so clearly it's something to do with just caps. I even put a frag that was originally sourced from this tank, grown out in my frag tank which gets its water change water from this tank and as soon as it went back in this tank it started going downhill.

Other then that softy growth is great so I'm going to look at cutting things back over the next month.

You can just barely see it in the cabbage coral above, but it's starting to rip into 3 pieces. It grew nicely down the rockwork only it's gotten so big it can no longer support it's weight. When the bottom falls up it will open up the front a bit.

Video :

 

[Maritimer]

The tank looks amazing, save the monti mystery!

It made me smile to see your C. truncatus bristletooth tang, as I have a young one in my QT. Yours is a beauty!

~Bruce

 

[andrewkw]

Thanks! I still want to add a few more corals and fish eventually but this tank is getting very close to filling up.

 

[andrewkw]

The reef has taken another step back this month:

First it was just the monti's but now almost all my sps are struggling. My alk "swing" is just 8.0 to 8.3 which of course was 7.7 to 8.0 last month. I do test this roughly weekly and 8.3 was the highest I tested. I suppose I will finally reduce dosing since I'm not sure what else to do.

Looks like burned tips but alkalinity is not that high. No serious changes to NO3/PO4/CA/MG/Temp as well. It sucks some things are struggling but you know what things have been going so well in this tank for so long something like this was bound to happen. Realistically you don't see too many soft coral dominated systems that have more then a few SPS doing well. Something tiny is perhaps out of balance, or the soft coral warfare has just caught up. What is really interesting though is I have frags of the sps in my frag tank and all of the frag tank water comes from water changes from this tank :

Even the "dead" monti caps are regrowing in this mess of a tank that also has a ton of softies. What is different about the frag tank. It runs at a slightly lower alkalinity more in the 7-7.5 range as I don't test this tank as much and it gets most of its elements from the water change water from the main reef - approximately 20% weekly water changes, and the odd time I will test which will almost always show low and I'll do a little by hand dosing.

What else is different? In the main tank I carbon dose and dose amino acids. I also run gfo. Actually the frag tank is skimmerless as well but I don't think that is a factor there are no fish so the only bioload is target feeding. Even cleanup crew is very minimal. I probably should send away for an ICP test, but again if this tank is fine with 100% of it's water coming from the problem area I doubt there is something seriously wrong with the water. It shouldn't be the lighting because again they were grown out in the display and fragged. Finally I played around with flow a bit, but realistically even with just 2 powerheads and a return I have a pretty nice flow pattern with the softies swaying and the detritus accumulating in just a few spots.

Option 1 is to pull my hair out trying to get every single coral I can get my hands on (which really isn't that much out here in the middle of nowhere). OR start a new tank. I have an empty 90 gallon that used to be my fowlr, which I'm currently in the process of converting to an sps reef. I'm not planning on removing every single sps from my mixed reef. However if I get new ones they will go in a tank setup with sps in mind.

It's an issue but lots of other corals are doing well in the tank as well as all of my fish.

Monthly video which is basically just talking about what I posted above

 

[andrewkw]

Still working on October update, however I wanted to share something I finally finished today: I'm not 100% sure if this is nepthea or sinularia. Scroll up and you can really see it grow. I also did finally frag it recently as one branch was just sticking out too much. It has been resting against the front glass when fully expanded the last few months. The actual colony is glued to a piece of rock that was wedged in my rockwork. As it's gotten heavier it started to droop and finally fell out of the rock work. I took a small 1.5" piece of pvc jammed the base in it and glued the coral to the pvc and the pvc to a small piece of live rock which I also glued to my rockwork and reluctantly slightly to the back glass. I am not a fan of attaching things to the glass, however my tank is only 18 front to back so I have to use all the space I have.

I used a ton of thermoplastic polymer glue so I can remove it when the time comes. This "glue" isn't really glue but bonds well enough. The coral took a pounding in the 2 days of gluing but it's opening up well and should only get bigger. You can see the pvc pipe from the front ever so slightly but it should cover in coraline quickly. From the side its a little more noticeable. If it bothers me I will put some star polyps over it but the mushrooms on the rock work will probably grow over it before I get around to that. Here are some pics. I will take some more of the tank and a video for this month shortly.

Old side view

New side view

The last picture is from the worst possible spot. Will post this view in a month or 2 when it looks a little more natural. For now though I am quite pleased. It looks like there is maybe even room for another coral or 2 as well

 

[andrewkw]

Some more pictures from this month as well as my video update.

Besides the big aquascape change above everything is pretty "normal" softies growing out of control. Most LPS thriving. SPS other then pocilipora meh. This is a relatively new thing in the tank. IE the last few months when the tank itself has been setup about 2 years and much of the livestock is upwards of 10. It's just gotten to the point where many sps don't want to thrive. That's okay though it's a soft coral dominated system. LPS are my main love and by the end of next month my SPS dominate system should be at least partially up and running.

I don't believe the parameters are to blame, I would guess possibly chemical warfare but it's hard to be sure. It's also probably not worth pulling my hair out for. I have slowly let my alk drop to 6.5 by decreasing my dosing of alkalinity only by 50%. Acro still appears to have burnt tips but are not significantly worse. Raising back up to 7-7.5dkh which is about my norm.

I do have a couple of fish in QT as well. They are on their 3rd transfer for ttm before isolation beings. Besides being skittish they seem fine and are eating well. A female blue throat - which honestly I like better than the male. I look at her like a poor mans sargassum. This is my first trigger fish since I started this tank way back in 2006. Of my fish fish one was a pink tail trigger. I believe velvet wiped them out but that's not a surprise as everyone looses their first fish. Also a female swallowtail (Genicanthus caudovittatus). I actually had the opportunity to purchase a pair but decided to get the small trigger and small angel instead. While I like the swallowtail she in no way replaces my old pair of masked swallowtails (Genicanthus semifasciatus). I hold out hope one day of getting another pair in a larger tank. This should pretty much stock me for fish, if both make it through QT I will have 10 fish in the tank so maybe a couple small guys but nothing else medium or large.

Buying these fish was tricky. There are no LFS near me. Shipping here is only airport to airport - and I still prefer to see a fish in person. This was the first time I was in a fish store in months! - Obviously given the current climate not much corals, a few aussie and tonga pieces and really not that many fish. It's a lot different when you feel like you have to come home with something - since it was 6hrs home from the store vs when I used to browse shipments weekly and occasionally come home with something. While the store was 6hrs home it was only a 2 hour detour from a wedding so it's not like I drove 12hrs just to get these guys.

These clove polyps look bigger. Must be my imagination...

 

[andrewkw]

November update : I've been working a lot on converting my fowlr to a reef https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/90-gallon-mystery-budget-build-i-have-no-business-starting.453967/
but I've also been working on this tank. I am using a light over my frag tank for the fowlr so that meant I had to remove many frags. Most came from this tank and a lot made their way back. Some got overgrown over the years and others were just moved around.

My toadstools are looking amazing. I actually think they may have spawned in my frag tank since I found 5 tiny babies
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/s...-possible-they-were-produced-sexually.494377/ the fact they all originated from one frag does leave me skeptical and the frag tank is really just an out of sight out of mind coral overflow / occasional qt tank.

Since I moved the green leather to the back the 2 in the front almost look like gigantea anemones with super long polyps swaying. Check out the video if you want to see them in action. Otherwise I added a few new corals which is exciting since there are almost no new corals around me in the middle of no where. This is about the only place someone who's been in the hobby about 13 years can get excited to locate a spec of green star polyps I did locate a frag of red discosoma mushroom that excites me. It's actually the first coral I bought back in 2006. I sold the colony maybe 10 years ago but occasionally a few pop up in the rocks still. That hasn't happened as much lately if you look at some older pictures in this thread they are there but they have since been overgrown. I grew one tiny one I found out and put it back in the tank. It's nothing overly special but it's nice to see I've kept this coral the entire ride.

The acro that has been giving me trouble seems to be slowly recovering. I managed to carefully cut off some dead tips and its slowly bouncing back. Probably won't add any sps to this tank anytime soon since that will be the focus of the new tank. The one issue I'm having which I almost hate to admit because I'm such a big supporter of them is I believe my asterna starfish or at least some of them have developed a taste for zoanthids only. They ignore palys but I've lost a few zoas and some frags never really grow and I've caught more then a few on them. Maybe there just isn't enough algae for them to eat in here. This is something I'm going to monitor. I usually remove about 50 in a water change but there are 1000s in here.

 

[andrewkw]

It's almost the end of the year. That means I'm running out of stuff. On this lazy Sunday I mixed my last gallon of alk and calcium solution, did some testing which normally I am pretty good at but have been slacking lately. Calcium seemed really low 350ish so I made some adjustments. The one acro which is on a slow decline is again declining but it's doing well in both my frag tank and new 90 so it is what it is. I could remove it and chop it up and save some more frags but I am going to try and get it going in this tank again since I have more of it.

No new corals this month but added a female swallowtail angel and a female blue throat trigger that I originally purchased back in October. Towards the end of QT the trigger was harassing the swallowtail but once I separated them the swallowtail was fine and now that they are in the display it's the trigger that mostly hides. Other then some minor fighting with my tangs they've adapted well and become part of the reef.

These pictures are with the late afternoon sun hitting the tank so they are a little washed out. I managed to block most of the glare and don't run a crazy blue tank anyway. I'll add an updated FTS and a video in the new few days.

 

[andrewkw]

Tank is still looking good this month, but with another month of nothing added which to be honest is the slightest bit boring. I'm not saying I'm bored of the reef because I'm not, I just still haven't gotten used to the fact I can't just add anything or at least look anytime I want 2+ years later. The last time I went reef shopping was October but that feels like forever ago...

One thing I really did notice this month is a few things are slowly disappearing due to overgrowth of other corals. I'm in the process of cutting some stuff back now. My coral overflow tank is basically full. I do have one semi local friend who sells frags but there is very little market for most things here, never mind cost but finding someone to take them.

Video update as well


I would like to add something, I'm not sure what. There just won't be any opportunity to anytime soon. If you don't follow my builds I live in a remote area and shipping is problematic. The closest reef store is about 3 and a half or 4hrs away and it's okay but the good ones are 7+ away. My other tanks which also need updating actually have room for new additions, but this tank is where my main interest is.

 

[Katrina71]

@sfin52 LOOK! and you're worried you are running out of real estate...

 

[andrewkw]

@sfin52 LOOK! and you're worried you are running out of real estate...

When you run out of real estate you start coral overflow tanks. I hesitate to call this a frag tank but it is an very unorganized one. It also doubles for qt uses. Just quick and dirty pics.

This is just a standard 55 which is the worst possible size for a frag tank. Previously this was used for fish QT. I really wish my old 48x18x8 frag tank was still around but I threw it out before I moved (it was in rough shape).

There are even frag racks under the frag racks and even more under the 2nd frag racks lol.. In the spring I'll have to take these to a shop or something. I have more then 2 dozen neon toadstool frags for instance, and if you look at the first picture you can see some of my "frags" are actually splitting too. For whatever reason I can't get my toadstools to become giants they always split.

 

[Katrina71]

Do you happen to know the name of your green mushroom in the pic above? I'd like one.

 

[andrewkw]

Do you happen to know the name of your green mushroom in the pic above? I'd like one.

If you're talking about the frag tank picture above those are toadstools. Either way all my mushrooms are just discosomas to me and rhodactis, oh I have one florida ricordea too...

 

[Katrina71]

If you're talking about the frag tank picture above those are toadstools. Either way all my mushrooms are just discosomas to me and rhodactis, oh I have one florida ricordea too...

The green discoma with the splatter look

 

[andrewkw]

The green discoma with the splatter look

While it probably has a name, to me it was just some random mushroom I bought 4 or 5 years ago for $10 or so.