90g Mixed Reef

[leahfiish]

Got some new torches in today and moved some of my other corals around. It's starting to get hot and my tank went up to 83 degrees today but nothing seems affected by it.

I'll take some pictures when I get home if the new ones have opened up. Otherwise I'll take some tomorrow.

 

[leahfiish]

Photo update. Just put the new torches on egg crate for now, will move them around once I figure out where I want them. Most likely on the right arch but not sure about the order yet.

 

[leahfiish]

Wanted to give a quick update.
For the most part the tank has been doing very well. It was pretty hot here for a week earlier in the month and the tank was reaching 86 degrees. Most of my livestock seemed unaffected, except my Toadstool and gorgonians closed up, and the blastos weren't opening as large as usual. Regardless, 86 degrees is just too far out of my comfort zone. So I bought a small window air conditioner, just big enough to cool down the room the tank is in, so it's back to a relatively stable 80-82. And everything opened back up and seems happy again.
I also ran out if frozen food to feed my fish, so I was feeding exclusively nls marine fish formula pellets for a few days, right around the time that I noticed an outbreak of hair algae. I manually removed as much as I could, and switched back to frozen food exclusively for now. Since the switch back I haven't noticed any new algae growth, just the patches that i missed or can't easily reach, but I feel that it's under control.

Livestock wise, currently in the tank I have:
Earmuff wrasse (Muffins)
Hooded fairy wrasse (Sherbert)
2x Cinnamon Clownfish
2x Pearly Jawfish

5 different Torch corals
2 blastos
1 neon green Toadstool
2 small zoa frags
3 acans
3 gorgonians
1 chalice
1 favia

1 skunk cleaner shrimp
2 sand tiger conchs
1 scarlet hermit crab
2 red emerald crabs
Unknown number of Turbo, nassarius, and trochus snails

I am quite happy with my fish, the tank is already feeling very active, fish wise, which is a little concerning because I want about 10 more fish [emoji28]
The jawfish are extremely active which I'm thrilled about. The entire time they were in qt they were always scared, hardly ever left their burrow, but as soon as I put them in the tank they seemed a lot more confident and confortable. They shared a burrow for the first few days but now they have separate spots. During feeding time they swim all over the tank, they have no fear of the wrasses or Clownfish at all. At other times they are hovering outside their burrows. Awesome fish, I would highly recommend them.

The clownfish are also very cool, the larger one (assumed female) has been at my lfs for over a year and I felt bad so I decided to give her a good home. Ordered a smaller cinnamon and put them together in a 40 and they got along pretty well, the larger one would occasionally chase the smaller one but the smaller one would also follow her around and for the most part they hung out together. So after a few weeks I moved them into the display and they are great. They also swim all around, which is great, I was worried they would just stay in a corner like a lot of Clownfish do.

I am still looking for some more wrasses, trying to narrow down my list a little bit. I think I want a bipartitus Leopard for sure, and a Solorensis (fairy). Also considering a Lubbocks, a few different flashers, a Radiant, exquisite, and a few others. But I'm going to kind of play it by ear because the tank is already starting to look a little busy. I also want to make sure my filtration can keep up with my fish load.

I have been out of salt for the last month so it's been a while since I've done a water change and my maintenance in general has been slacking, mostly due to lack of funds. I need to start dosing 2 part and I think I'm gonna start nopox as well, but still need to purchase it as well as test kits. :/ I'm thinking of going with the red Sea kits for nitrate and phosphate, Hanna checker for alk, not sure yet for calcium and magnesium. I like the red Sea ones bit don't want to purchase the whole pack if I'm not going to use the alk, although I guess it is good as a backup.

I also want to get a tds meter to check my RODI water as I have a feeling it's not working at 100%.

Anddd, I need to glue my corals down as they are constantly falling over. I ran out of Epoxy, so I need more. All of these little expenses really start to add up. And as much as I want to buy more corals, I know it's probably more important to take better care of the ones I already have first. And while everything mostly looks good now, I haven't been seeing a lot of growth and haven't properly tested my water in months, and I'm not exactly new to reefing so I know I can only keep this facade up for so long before things start to crash.

That being said, here are some pictures.
(also my Instagram is devoted to tank pictures and I usually post there more often so of anyone would like to follow my tank there, my name is @amobsessed)

 

[leahfiish]

I got some test kits and have been keeping up pretty well with my water for the last few days and everything is looking happier. I'm hoping to get a new fish in qt tomorrow, fingers crossed because it's a nice one.

I glued most of my corals down so they'll stop falling over. I am still not sure exactly where I want to put my acans, I've been moving them around a little bit. My yellow one has turned almost completely orange so I moved it into a shady spot to see if it'll get some yellow back. I want to take it off the plug it's on and glue it to a small piece of rock but I can't get it off.

I have been really loving this rainbow Acan, it is probably my favorite coral right now. It also seems really happy in my tank, no matter where I put it, and it's gotten even nicer since I got it. The centers are red with a green star patter and the rims are orange with green stripes and a touch of yellow. I wish I could get better pictures of it.

 

[leahfiish]

New fish in qt. Not the greatest picture but I don't have a lot of light to work with.
Dusky fairy wrasse
Cirrhilabrus brunneus

 

[justingraham]

New fish in qt. Not the greatest picture but I don't have a lot of light to work with.
Dusky fairy wrasse
Cirrhilabrus brunneus

Let me know how he does was looking into wrasses for my tank

 

[leahfiish]

Let me know how he does was looking into wrasses for my tank

Wrasses are the best.

 

[leahfiish]

Just a quick update.

The tank has mostly been doing well. No new livestock additions since the last post. I've been keeping up with my dosing and testing and things seem pretty stable. One of my torches, the black with green tips, died off. For some reason it never seemed to thrive in my tank, despite having identical conditions to the other torches which are all good. They do have "off days" sometimes, but usually during midday around 4-6 they are all looking great. I'm experimenting with putting my right powerhead on an on/off cycle but it doesn't seem to make a difference. Acans and blastos are still looking great and I'm starting to see some new heads forming finally.

 

[leahfiish]

I ran out of frozen food so I fed the tank a few pellets this morning, but the jawfish weren't interested. So I felt bad and picked up some live blackworms and they loved them. Unfortunately Muffins was already asleep so he didn't get to join the feast. Even some of the corals got a few pieces.



Edit: Muffins woke up and enjoyed a late night snack.

 

[Srob]

Nice build

 

[leahfiish]

Did some maintenance tonight, took about an hour to do a 20g water change, dosing fuel and phytoplankton, and changing out the filter sock and carbon. I also dosed remediation to help with some lingering nuisance algae, although there's really not much, I really think my switch back to frozen food made a big difference.

2 of my torches still are not really doing that great so I dipped them, and it was clean so I've moved them. One to the sand bed for now, the other pretty close to where it was before. Reallynot sure what's going on with them since 2 other torches were near them (almost identical conditions) and are doing great. I'm really hoping that they bounce back.

My clownfish is also starting to get really aggressive (already!). Previously she has only been chasing the male, and no harm done as he's pretty slippery, but I've noticed that my wrasses are also getting pieces torn out of their fins and today theres a big scale missing on Sherbert's head, ouch. I've seen the clownfish chase him quite a bit, too, although hes pretty fast as well, there aren't as many hiding spots for him as there is for the little male clownfish. I'm hoping once I get more fish in there it'll calm down a little.

 

[leahfiish]

I think I'm going to redo the left side aquascape, I'm just not very happy with it at the moment, visually and functionally. I don't have enough spaces to place corals, there's a lot of shading, and I want to create hiding and spots for fish. I'm going to work on it tonight using rock in my sump but if I can't come up with anything I like, I might purchase more rock but a different kind.
Here's the most recent fts I have. The tall gorg at the top has encrusted onto that rock so I'm not sure what to do about that one, I'll try to leave it there although I might have to break the rock.


I really like the branch rock base that I made, and the placement for my blastos on the bottom left corner. I also like where the Toadstool is, but everything else is flexible. I might go for more islands instead of arches.

 

[leahfiish]

I think I'm going to redo the left side aquascape, I'm just not very happy with it at the moment, visually and functionally. I don't have enough spaces to place corals, there's a lot of shading, and I want to create hiding and spots for fish. I'm going to work on it tonight using rock in my sump but if I can't come up with anything I like, I might purchase more rock but a different kind.
Here's the most recent fts I have. The tall gorg at the top has encrusted onto that rock so I'm not sure what to do about that one, I'll try to leave it there although I might have to break the rock.


I really like the branch rock base that I made, and the placement for my blastos on the bottom left corner. I also like where the Toadstool is, but everything else is flexible. I might go for more islands instead of arches.

 

[leahfiish]

I think the rescape was a success, I created a more interesting scape with more swim throughs and overhangs, and freed up a nice big spot for an Acan garden.

Before:



After:


I like how I freed up some space on this piece of branch rock, it will be awesome once I've covered it with corals. There's also that awesome overhang that the clown seems to have already taken to, and enough space to the left of the "cliff" for the Toadstool to open up.

 

[justingraham]

If ur happy that is all that matters

Great job now sit back and watch the growth

 

[leahfiish]

If ur happy that is all that matters

Great job now sit back and watch the growth

Thanks
I will be happy if my fish and corals are happy.

 

[leahfiish]

Target fed some mysis shrimp tonight.

 

[leahfiish]

FTS from earlier today

New zoa

 

[leahfiish]

Took a few pictures today

All 6 fish in this above picture!

 

[leahfiish]

Man it's quiet in here.
Here's my blasto again, I think it's splitting? I didn't even know they did that.


I'm getting some corals from another reef2reef member later this week and I'm pretty excited, but not sure where I'm going to put them. I am also really tempted to buy a pintail fairy wrasse from zoa collector but I think I'm going to save some money for a bigger fish order instead of just 1 fish. I'm still really hoping for a Radiant wrasse, Sharknose gobies, and a blackfin McCoskers wrasse, I have some feelers out so hopefully should be able to get them soon. And maybe a few others that I've had my eye on.

I'm also trying to save some money for the fragginstein frag swap in Cleveland on October 28th. I've never been to anything like that but I'm sure it'll be awesome and I'm hoping that there will be a lot of people going, I'm telling everybody that I know. If anyone from the Pittsburgh area is going let me know! I'm looking forward to getting some nice corals.