Mixed Reef 167gal Peninsula

josephxsxn

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[LAST UPDATE - Mar 22th 2021]
This first post will function as an index and master status for this tank.

Latest Tank Photo [ Mar 22th 2021 ]

IMG_0971.jpg

IMG_0961.jpg

IMG_0966.jpg


Build Equipment
  • WaterBox 7225
    • Display Tank Volume 167gal
    • Sump Volume 42gal
    • Total Volume 209gal
  • Ecotech Vectra M2
  • 3x Ecotech Radion XR15 G4 PRO
  • Kessil A360X with Narrow 55 reflector
  • Maxspect Gyres XF250 (2 gyres) - using custom Hydros schedule (ask me about it if your interested)
    • Hydros Wave Engine controller
  • Eshopps Axium Protein Skimmer X-160 (Skimmer line ran Outside)
  • Innovate Marine Hydrofill ATO
  • 160lb of Oolite sand
  • Live Rock - 150# (Forgotten exact amount over the years)
  • Eshopps Doser (8 heads), A+B currently, + Lanthanum
  • Avast Marine SpyGlass Reactor (Medium)
    • Brightwell Kataylst Biopellets
  • Avast Marine Plank Autofeeder

Feeding
  • Two-Little Fishes Purple Seaweed (Porphyra umbilicalis) - x1-x2 Sheet Daily
  • Freeze Dried Brine via Autofeeder (2x a day currently)
  • Misc Frozen foods
  • Freeze Fried Brine soaked in Selcon or Vitamin-M
Dosing and Additives
  • Microbactor7 - 15ml Weekly (after water change, No skimmer for 4 hours)
  • Microbactor Clean 130ml Weekly (after water change, No skimmer for 4 hours)
  • Stopped during dinos
    • Phytochorm - 15ml per day (No skimmer for 4 hours)
    • Coral Amino - 5ml per day (No skimmer for 4 hours)
    • Vitamin-M - 20ml Weekly (after water change, No skimmer for 4 hours)

Maintenance Procedures

Live Stock
  • Fish
    • 1x Kole Yellow Eyed Tang
      • My oldest Fish ?2017/2018?
    • 6x Pajama Cardinalfish
    • 1x Scopas Tang
    • 1x Sailfin Tang
    • 2x Orange Line Chromis (breeding pair)
    • 1x Foxface
    • 1x Powder Brown Tang
    • 1x Naso Tang
  • Inverts
    • Snails
      • Trochus, Turbo, Astraea, Bumble, Cerith, and Narcissus
      • Cowries
      • Conchs
    • Crabs
      • Emerald
      • Strawberry (3+ years old)
    • Seastar
      • Serpent
  • Plants
    • Red Olo (this is slowly dying as I have turned off my refugium during my dino outbreak)
  • Corals
    • Soft
      • Purple Kenya (my gosh there are so many)
      • Cabbage Leather
      • Toadstool
      • Green Star Polyp
      • Xenia
      • Yellow Palythoa
      • Nuclear Green Palythoa
      • Red Caulastraea
      • Toxic Green Caulastraea
      • Blue Caulastraea
      • Light Green Caulastraea
      • Mint Green Caulastraea
      • Stripped Blue Discosoma
      • Hairy Rhodactis
      • Neon green Nepthea
    • LPS
      • Micromussa (x4) assorted colors (green, orange, red, Christmas Tree )
      • Meteor Shower Cyphastrea
      • Small Toxic Green Lithophyllon
      • Large Toxic Green Lithophyllon (second in the tank)
      • Red War Favia
      • Orange Chalice Coral
      • Red and blue core Blastomussa ? maybe Favia
      • Purple and Pink Lobophyllia
      • WWC Razzalebery? Cyphastrea
      • Pale Green Purple Favia
      • Pagoda Cup
    • SPS
      • Red Montipora
      • Toxic Green Montipora
      • Blue Stylophora
      • Watermelon Psammocora
      • Turquoise Stag
      • Green Slimmer
      • WWC Yellow Tip Aco
      • Idaho Grape Monti
      • Yellow Pocillopora
      • UC Ultra Chrome Monti
      • RR Topic Thunder Monti
      • WWC Grafted Sunburst Cap Monti
      • Frutie Pebbles Monti
      • German Blue Forest Fire Digi Monti



-----------------
[[HISTORY]]

Hi everyone,

Recently I have been able to start setting up a new tank. Historically the wife and I had played with freshwater for years, in my old home before relocating I had 3 reef tanks and 2 marine fish only (total of 5) going for over 350 gallons or so. I had started playing with coral back in 2012 in a very small tank for about a year before stopping. In 2016 I dove back in for about 2 years before moving again at the end of 2018; this time though I took all the coral and fish with me but set them up in an 80gallon holding tray and small 40gallon cube were they have remained ever since. At long last a new home for them is getting setup.


The Tank [Day One]
Setup in a walk-out basement as a way to divide the space into what will be a small entertainment area and kitchen.
IMG_20200719_094257.jpg


The 80 gallon holding tray [History - Decommissioned]
When I had to move I broke down my 110 gallon tank, everything made a 3 or so hour trip in buckets, totes and brute cans to be received into the tray I had setup before hand at my new home. Overall I consider this move a good success with no loss of any Tang, and minimal coral loss. Light got setup shortly after they were placed into the tray. There have been no new fish or coral added in here for 2 years, saddly though I had aiptasia before hand and it lives on today.
IMG_20181005_170759.jpg
IMG_20181005_205647.jpg
IMG_20200905_173746.jpg IMG_20200905_173727.jpg IMG_20200905_173718.jpg PXL_20201025_213822999.jpg PXL_20201025_213803423.jpg PXL_20201025_213744845.jpg IMG_0901.jpg IMG_0907.jpg IMG_0905.jpg IMG_0927.jpg IMG_0925.jpg IMG_0926.jpg
 
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josephxsxn

josephxsxn

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Few updates from my last post.. The fishless cycle completed, I added in a few chunks of liverock from the holding-tray. After a week or so of that I went and bought the first resident of this tank from the local fish-store; a very tiny Foxface who is replacing one I lost over the last year in the tray. I also have placed in some hardy corals that I wouldn't be to upset if they had a bad time; Kenya tree, and Green Star Poly rock. Turned the skimmer back on and picked up some Red Ogo algae thats in the refugium now on an offset timer (so it runs at night.)

Started having a bunch of brown alage take over the sand and some hair algae emerge too.

IMG_20200817_132549.jpg
 
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josephxsxn

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Added quite a bit more rock from my holding tray and added a few additional corals; Cabbage leather, Devils Hand leather and a small frag of a red monti I had from the mother colony. Put in a few inverts as well; 2 emerald crabs (very tiny) and 3 trochus snails. The lone FoxFace is finally swiming around enjoying the entire tank to itself, its pretty cute honestly 167 gallons with a quater sized Foxface.

Still fighting off the algae with the young tank as you can see on the sand bed. Did another water change and will continue to use Macrobactor7 weekly at 4 caps per week.

Took this photo with white light so it was easier to see the additional rock that was added. Still have quite a bit in the holding tray with the rest of the fish and larger corals. As you can see purple kenya trees are all over, they grew like wildfire in the holding tray.

IMG_20200823_151559 (1).jpg
 
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josephxsxn

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Lots of changes in the last 24 hours!

The shutdown the 2 year old holding tray is complete!! Hazah! Outside of this I added some Ecopods from Alage Barn and their Phytoplankton. While not regular on use I gave the tank some Coral Amino and Vitamin-M from Brightwell. Not set on any of the aquascape yet, just where things are sitting for now.

  • Moved all remaining live rock (this rock is 4 years wet at this point)
  • Moved all Live Stock
    • Fish
      • 1x Kole Yellow Eyed Tang - My oldest Fish probably 4.5y old. Hopfully she makes it; she looks alittle beat up and looks like shes been in some fights
      • 6x Pajama Cardinalfish - These guys are huge over 3 years old now
      • 1x Scopas Tang
      • 1x Sailfin Tang
      • 1x Green Reef Chromis - I had a bunch of these guys 2 years ago, this is all that remains
    • Inverts
      • Snails; many types from Turbo, Astraea, Bumble, Cerith, and Narassuis from the holding tray.
        • Check out the photo of the Astraea with a kenya tree on it, I have 2 of these guys
      • Cowries - I believe 2 or 3 of these made it over
    • Moved all remaining equipment
      • 2x Maxspect Gyre XF250s
      • 2x Radion Gen4 Pro 15w

PS - Attached a photo of the 300watt finnex titanium heater that was in the tray for 2 years; its covered in green star poly.

IMG_20200829_134841.jpg IMG_20200829_103711.jpg IMG_20200829_152819.jpg IMG_20200829_152830.jpg
 
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josephxsxn

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Got 4 additional fish yesterday all went though a freshwater dip: Powder Brown Tang, Naso Tang, 2 Yellow Line Cleaner Gobies. Additionally some more inverts - 3x more Trocus snails, 2 Conchs and 2 Emerald Crabs. In other news we discovered the red Strawberry crab we got over 3 years ago is still alive and boy has it grown! we thought it had died over a year ago. Saddly just from visual inspection I suspect the Kole tang has flukes and needs trapping... Bad time to add fish it seems but here we are. Also added pods I bought from @hollback which I totally recommend and will buy from again!

In other holy crap scaryness my old habits of not testing PH appear to raised its ugly head. Testing is showing at night a PH down to 7.3 in some cases and during the day 7.5.. In my past tank this was solved by running the skimmer line outside which was done last night, waiting to recheck the results later as I had to adjust the airflow to the skimmer some this morning.

 

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Looking great!! Like the idea as the first post serving as the master!
 
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Another big week as I moved everything out of my 40 gal cube which was also setup and running along side the 80gal tray. This had alot of smaller frags and a few special large pieces and keeping them in this cube allowed for me to give them larger water changes. The wife and I reaquascaped quite a bit and while not settled I like how its looking.

Almost everything I moved from the 40 to this tank was h2o2 dipped.

The PH issues I was having stabilized upon running the skimmer airline outside pinning me around 7.9-8.1 I started dosing some Kalk while I wait on new 2 part to start dosing. The IV drip seems ok but its hard to prevent the solids from making it down the line if not completely dissolved; thinking of making some type of floss setup or just adding it into my topoff.

Now I am playing around with my PAR and lights; Some of my corals dont really pop under the more natural lighting and trying to find a balance between the two.

Maintenance -
  • Setup Milkwake PH Controller
  • Skimmer Airline ran outside
  • Water Change (what i am calling a post-it note change which is how much gets replaced when using a the top and bottom of a post-it note as a marker which in this tank is about 22 gallons. Cleaned up 1/3rd of the sand bed this time.
  • Cleaned filter socks - scrubbed by hand and then throw in some h2o2 overnight in a bucket to bubble them clean, scrub again and use.
  • Weekly doses of Macrobactor7 (20ml) and Vitamin-M (?ml)
  • Daily does of AlageBarn (60ml a day) and Coral Amino (5ml)
  • Started Dripping some saturated kalk solution (miss wages, ordered the brightwell version); 1 - 2 liters a day currently.
New Stock (from 40 cube)
  • Corals
    • Large Toxic Green Lithophyllon (second in the tank)
    • Watermelon Psammocora
    • Yellow Palythoa
    • Nuclear Green Palythoa
    • Mystery Zoas (these guys were dying off and hardly alive on the plugs from the old tank)
    • Red and blue core Blastomussa
    • Purple and Pink Lobophyllia
    • WWC Razzalebery? Cyphastrea
    • Red Caulastraea
    • Toxic Green Caulastraea
    • Stripped Blue Discosoma
    • Hairy Rhodactis
    • 3x Micromussa assorted colors (green, orange, red)
    • Pale Green Purple Favia
  • Inverts
    • Extra Snails and Cowries
    • *soon (still in 40) small Counch
    • *soon (still in 40) Serpent seastar.

IMG_20200905_203458.jpg IMG_20200905_173746.jpg IMG_20200905_173727.jpg IMG_20200905_173718.jpg
 
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josephxsxn

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Haven't been to happy with the flow at the end of the tank and changed the Gyres to 100% Random/Random. Overall it seems most corals are transitioning well to the transfer. Lights also got changed to using the Ecotech CoralLabs SPS PHX template, been thinking of adding more white to it as I am not a huge fan of the blue wash but want the corals to pop alittle more then they had been before.
 
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Things have been going pretty well. Seeing some amazing healing taking place on my Lithophyllon, wish I had taken photos at the start to show it's progress. Used some Marco E400 for the first time to try and attach some frags and was not very pleased with it as it dissolved into dust in my tank making it very cloudy. I think I need to give it more set time.

Performed an ICP test which told me my phosphates are at 2.0 ppm, checking with my Hanna shows 0.2ppm but my reagents expired last month so I ordered more. I decided to treat the tank with lanthanum chloride (phosphate-e from brightwell.) In the past I always used GFO on my other tanks but it always felt challanging to keep it right. Because of the massive diff in test results I decided to only dose enough to do .10 ppm.

Just a simple explanation of the setup in the photo.
  • IV drip
  • 2 magnets
  • Phosphate-e
  • 1 micron filter sock
I dosed about 3-4ml of phosphate-e in diluted in 700ml of RO/DI water. Drip rate started at about 1 drip ever second. Calculations where done using http://larryl.emailplus.org/fish/dosing-instructions-phosphate-removers.html

IMG_20200917_180245~2.jpg IMG_20200917_182021.jpg
 
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Maintenance continues as usual, today I cleaned out the sump knocking up lots of the settled detritus and other material, then siphoning them out. This is the first week I didn't clean my sand bed, I had been cleaning the entire bed every week and while it looks amazing my goals are more about trying to build an ecosystem; as such I decided to move to more of a monthly sand cleaning schedule and see if the delay causes any testable metrics to change like nitrates and phosphates. In a way I miss the nice perfect clean sand compared to how nasty it looks when it starts to break down materials.

For the last month I have been using Kalkwasser (limewater) for my Alk and Cal additions. The fact that it doesn't change the sodium/chloride ratio is rather appealing to me when thinking about trying to keep things naturalist (lol and here I am using Lanthanum Chloride haha natural.) Saddly I don't have a kalk reactor from my prior reefing days but have everything I need to automatically dose 2-part so for simplicity for now I am going to move over to mixing 2 part using the Brightwell Powder supplements.

Phosphates in the tank are down to 0.13 ppm or so. Using Lanthanum Chloride (Phosphate-E) works really well above the 0.15 ppm mark but boy oh boy does it eat your alkalinity under that mark; I lost about 0.6 DKH this week trying to drop phosphates lower. It seems what other reefers have seen with it becoming much less effective as your phosphates go down is true. Also my initial setup to drip into the sock didnt really have enough flow to be useful so I relocated it and made a simple PVC attachment so that it would drop center into the sock. You can see some flocculant in the sock in the attached photo. I plan to keep using Lanthanum as my experience with GFO always was a pain to manage this seem like long term will be simpler once I better understand the nuances of it.

I am thinking of modifying my Lanthanum Chloride (Phosphate-E) procedure to be like follows:
  1. Test for Phosphate Levels in Reef Tank
  2. if above 0.15ppm Calculate Phosphate-E dose to reduce to 0.03ppm
    1. http://larryl.emailplus.org/fish/dosing-instructions-phosphate-removers.html
  3. Dilute Phosphate-E : RO/DI at 1ml : 100ml
  4. Drip diluted solution over 5-6 days into 1ml filtersock with minor to moderate flow
    1. I had much better luck putting the filter sock into some flow and slowing the drip rate down to take days to empty the diluted solution compared to doing it in 24 hours.
  5. Repeat

4a3ee00e1f976a006b832cb132d89514.jpeg
 
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josephxsxn

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Bought some new corals the other day from my friend @Ben Pedersen some really great looking stuff cant wait for them to fully expand. This purchase included my first ever Acroporas! Thanks a ton Ben!

New Coral Stock
  • Turquoise Stag
  • Green Slimmer
  • Boo Acro
  • WWC Yellow Tip Aco
  • Tri-Color Valida Acro
  • Forest Fire Digitalas Monti
  • Idaho Grape Monti
  • Pink Pocillopora
  • Neon green Nepthea
 
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josephxsxn

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In other news on Tuesday we added 2 Yellow Line Cleaner Gobies to the tank.. Saddly I think they may have Marine Velvet and they have been pretty impossible to catch. Like many folks I got started long before having a QT and when I moved things from my tray and other tanks I made the choice not to QT all the fish (mistake.) So we are going to ride it out and see how it goes, if I get a wipe ill never again dump and pray and proper QT will go up.. Right now in-spite of some possible snakeoilness we are giving PolyLabs Medic a try, the first dose just went in.

Also ordered a Hydros WaveEngine! looking forward to alot of extra control on my Gyres.
 
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josephxsxn

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Well so far all fish are doing well. The 2 Yellow Line Cleaner Gobies also appear ok which is surprising, saddly I think that means they have shed whatever they had into the water column.

Been playing alot with my new Hydros WaveEngine and it's letting me seriously improve my flow game like never before.

 
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I have been fussing alot over the new SPS acros I bought from Ben. Only the green slimer really seems happy. Definitely got some brown out on the booberry, the tricolor I have not seen come out, and the yellowtip seems ok all in all. The stag finally think I will have to move, while I am getting some polyps its not on the entire branch of the coral making me think its just in way to low of flow. Also not sure whats going on with the tips, if they are getting ate or losing color.
 
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Well alot has occurred since Thursday... Late Thursday I noticed my Sailfin and Scopas tangs both had white dots and kinda a shimmer on them. I had been worried that some gobies I added recently may have had velvet or ich. About right on time 10-13 days afterwards these symptoms began. I know a long time ago my tank had ich but for 2 years I never added a new stressor such as new fish, the Powder Brown likes to fight with both the Sailfin and Scopas. Friday the Powder Brown has some white dots on him and the Scopas looked a bit worse. The Orange Line Chromis show signs of rubbing.

Friday night I decided to correct my multi-year mistake of never having a QT or treating fish before putting them into my DT; Ill be letting the display go fallow and treating the fish. With the help of my wife and brother in law Saturday we removed all the live rock from the display with corals and caught every single fish putting them into a hospital tank (also did the same with my frag tank.) All fish got their first dose of medication on Saturday and one of the velvet Gobies has since died.

I have a specific thread going for this here.
https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/qt-and-fallow-period.765885/#post-8067046

Had to re-aquascape, will get a photo soon.
 
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Some new photos of my currently fishless display tank... Things have been doing well, my lobo is trying to split one of its heads along with some candycanes, lords and a chalice. Lots of growth on my plates. Phone camera was having light issues.

PXL_20201025_213822999.jpg

PXL_20201025_213803423.jpg

PXL_20201025_213744845.jpg
 
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Well Sunday I had what I feel was on On failure with my Inkbird 306A Wifi Dual Probe. I chock it up to the dual probe design, I had been getting alot of wild 5 degree swings due to it and error code E4. I hence stopped using it just in time tank was about 81F and went back to a single probe model all seems well now.

Going to stop feeding live phytoplankton and give Brightwell Phytochrom a try. Reading some scientific articles seems to point to brown algaes being important for growth vs just simple green nano. The Phytochrom has more types in it then any other product o can find on the market today.
 

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