93 Gallon Build: An introduction to patience...

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JBKReef

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Well I have not felt like updating in awhile, so I'll jump in. I lost 5 fish I had in QT to ich/velvet. I brought home 5 blue reef chromis and started to put them through my process. Two treatments of Prazi Pro then cupramine at therapudic levels for a couple weeks.

We had made it through the first treatment of Prazipro when we started to have some problems, I saw the mucus coat on the fish was looking odd was the best way I could describe it. Not milk, not stringy, just not as they were on day 1. This was on lunch on Wednesday. Thursday night I found one of the chromis dead, the other 4 remaining had white specs all over. This was either ich or velvet. I am leaning towards velvet because of how quickly they died, but also could have been ich if I did not see the signs quick enough. Following the advice from some select individuals on here I brought my cupramine levels up to therapeutic levels quickly, the goal was to raise the levels 6 hours apart by 25% to get there in 24 hours. I lost the remaining fish Friday afternoon.

These are the 3-7 fish I've lost in setting up my tank. A firefish to a spinal injury, a talbot damsel to disapearing, and then these 5 to illness. Along the way I've lost a frag of acans, 2 narisus snails, an emerald crab, three turbo snails, and an anemone that was eaten by my HOB filter in quarantine (Even after having a foam filter over the intake.) Its funny I can rattle off everything I have lost over the past year but if you were to ask me what is currently in the tank I would probably forget one or two pieces of livestock. I guess it just weighs heavy on me when I bring something home and it doesnt live the life it should. I still need to breakdown the tank which had the sickness outbreak. Its been running fallow for about 1o days now with the therapudic levels of copper running through the system. I am going to drain it, bleach it, and start clean with fresh media. I just have been putting it off due to frustrations with not catching onto the problem quicker.

As for the rest of the tank, my GSP and xenia are finally spreading like weeds. I'm glad I have them isloated on their own islands. My zoa colonies are continuing to grow. The utter chaos have grown to 5 polyps from 1 in January and the Armor of God are now up to 8 or 9 from 3 in January. My hammer has been status quo for about a month now, no visible growth or change in coloration. The torch is coloring up better and better every day but no growth. The two favias in the tank are probably my slowest growers, coloration is still good but almost no visible growth. My Mr Freeze lepto is doing quite well encrusting the whole plug thus far. Calcium has been consistent (450-460) however my Alk and PH have been dropping lately. Alk I just measured at 7.5-7.6 and PH was measured to be 7.4-7.6. I'm surprised by this. I'm preparing to do two 15 gallon water changes with Red Sea black bucket. One of the 15 gallon changes is my normal routine but I'll do a second one 48 hours later to try to slowly bring levels back up. Hoping this will cause the LPS to grow once the alk is back up.

My worm problems continue, hundreds of them come out at night all over the glass and free swimming. I think we're going to get an arrow crab to care for these guys. Other than that I think our LFS is going to replace our Blue Reef Chromis with good ole fashioned blue/green chromis whenever we want them. Establishing a good relationship with your LFS is key to success in this hobby.

Enough text here are a couple photos to make the post worth it.

First two photos are of the doomed Chromis after the white spots spread like wild fire
sick C1.png

Sick C2.JPG


Here are my armor of god zoa's; the heads keep growing however they've began to umbrella? or look a little phallic
Armor Zoa.JPG


and finally our first mushroom; its a dippin dot mushroom or so I've been told. It looks big and happy.
Shroom.JPG


Happy Reefing everyone!
 

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Well I have not felt like updating in awhile, so I'll jump in. I lost 5 fish I had in QT to ich/velvet. I brought home 5 blue reef chromis and started to put them through my process. Two treatments of Prazi Pro then cupramine at therapudic levels for a couple weeks.

We had made it through the first treatment of Prazipro when we started to have some problems, I saw the mucus coat on the fish was looking odd was the best way I could describe it. Not milk, not stringy, just not as they were on day 1. This was on lunch on Wednesday. Thursday night I found one of the chromis dead, the other 4 remaining had white specs all over. This was either ich or velvet. I am leaning towards velvet because of how quickly they died, but also could have been ich if I did not see the signs quick enough. Following the advice from some select individuals on here I brought my cupramine levels up to therapeutic levels quickly, the goal was to raise the levels 6 hours apart by 25% to get there in 24 hours. I lost the remaining fish Friday afternoon.

These are the 3-7 fish I've lost in setting up my tank. A firefish to a spinal injury, a talbot damsel to disapearing, and then these 5 to illness. Along the way I've lost a frag of acans, 2 narisus snails, an emerald crab, three turbo snails, and an anemone that was eaten by my HOB filter in quarantine (Even after having a foam filter over the intake.) Its funny I can rattle off everything I have lost over the past year but if you were to ask me what is currently in the tank I would probably forget one or two pieces of livestock. I guess it just weighs heavy on me when I bring something home and it doesnt live the life it should. I still need to breakdown the tank which had the sickness outbreak. Its been running fallow for about 1o days now with the therapudic levels of copper running through the system. I am going to drain it, bleach it, and start clean with fresh media. I just have been putting it off due to frustrations with not catching onto the problem quicker.

As for the rest of the tank, my GSP and xenia are finally spreading like weeds. I'm glad I have them isloated on their own islands. My zoa colonies are continuing to grow. The utter chaos have grown to 5 polyps from 1 in January and the Armor of God are now up to 8 or 9 from 3 in January. My hammer has been status quo for about a month now, no visible growth or change in coloration. The torch is coloring up better and better every day but no growth. The two favias in the tank are probably my slowest growers, coloration is still good but almost no visible growth. My Mr Freeze lepto is doing quite well encrusting the whole plug thus far. Calcium has been consistent (450-460) however my Alk and PH have been dropping lately. Alk I just measured at 7.5-7.6 and PH was measured to be 7.4-7.6. I'm surprised by this. I'm preparing to do two 15 gallon water changes with Red Sea black bucket. One of the 15 gallon changes is my normal routine but I'll do a second one 48 hours later to try to slowly bring levels back up. Hoping this will cause the LPS to grow once the alk is back up.

My worm problems continue, hundreds of them come out at night all over the glass and free swimming. I think we're going to get an arrow crab to care for these guys. Other than that I think our LFS is going to replace our Blue Reef Chromis with good ole fashioned blue/green chromis whenever we want them. Establishing a good relationship with your LFS is key to success in this hobby.

Enough text here are a couple photos to make the post worth it.

First two photos are of the doomed Chromis after the white spots spread like wild fire
sick C1.png

Sick C2.JPG


Here are my armor of god zoa's; the heads keep growing however they've began to umbrella? or look a little phallic
Armor Zoa.JPG


and finally our first mushroom; its a dippin dot mushroom or so I've been told. It looks big and happy.
Shroom.JPG


Happy Reefing everyone!

Sorry to hear about the Chromis. Sounds like there is little you could have done otherwise.
 
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I'm going to call today the 6 month update for the tank, I know it got wet sometime in December, and even though the first fish didnt go in until 1/15 I had it up and running sometime just before Christmas so I'm going to just call today it.

I did a 15% water change last night, and doing another here in a day or so... I'm struggling to keep nutrients up while maintaining proper Alk. I guess I need to look into dosing options because water change after water change is stripping my nitrates, but the bits of coraline algae and LPS must be stripping my alk. Chasing numbers is dangerous but I think dosing my alk up to 9 or so is not going to do any damage.

Here is a before and after from around the first couple days till now.

Happy Reefing!

40.JPG

Full tank 1.JPG
 
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Havent updated in about a month... Tank has been progressing well. We picked up another zoa frag I believe they are lazerlemons, a rainbow monti, some blue/green mushroom, and an arrow crab. We're serious about getting rid of this bristleworm infestation.

RainbowMonti.jpg

LazerLemon.jpg

The colors really pop from my Kessils as they're ramping down for the night obviously with the higher blue content. That being said I just picked up the "aquarium camera" app and hope its $3 well spent to avoid this overly blue saturated photos.

Another success stories so far will be my Hammer, I purchased it as frogspawn with two large heads and one small head that was just developing. Durring dipping and transportation the third small head fell off.... That his how it stood for about 4 months. While cleaning last week I noticed a baby third head starting to form on my Hammer. Its small but its growing. Base of the right stalk, almost in the middle of the two heads.

Hammerhead.jpg

My phallic Armor of God zoa have been up and down the last couple weeks. They went from "umbrella" looking to completely closed up for about 10 days.... just the past 48 hours or so after a water change, carbon change, and intense cleaning have they started to open back up again. The origional three heads are struggling, and the small new heads that were forming are not growing as fast as they were 6 weeks ago however the "colony" as a whole is starting to perk back up.

ArmorofGod.jpg

Now for the biggest and happiest news I have for the update. My acid rain anemone which has been through the ringer has finally seemed to setting in the light and after 2 months of looking to be on deaths doorstep actually looks happy. It's inflated, actively feeding, and starting to color back up. Again sorry for the blue saturation but when I get home from work the tank is already ramping down.

anemone 6-25.jpg

Last pick is my pride and joy, my favorite coral in the tank are my utter chaos zoas... This started as a single polyp from a frag swap in January, the first coral I actually purchased. We're looking at about 6 developed polyps and another 3-4 that are starting to pop out. Happy Reefing everyone!

UtterChaos.jpg
 
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Just a handful of updates. The tank has been looking very good the last couple weeks. Seeing noticable growth on many of the LPS, the polyps on my monti and birds nest are extended, and we've added a handful of new frags.

I dont have photos of everything just yet but my favorite new addition is some Rasta zoas. We've also added two mushrooms. An electric watermelon which my fiance has been wanting since day one, its her favorite coral. Additionally a pretty cool metallic green mushroom. Last new addition, its been a piece I've watched from a pin head grow to about the size of a penny is what I believe to be a pinwheel fungia. It was finally let go by the LFS, it showed up on a frag plug for something else but looked very cool and kept growing. If its what I think it is, I got a steal on it.

Rasta.jpg

As far as hardware goes, I saw a MAP sale finally on Hanna and quick picked up some of the tools I've been eyeing from the start. I got the Phosphate and DKH checker as well as the copper checker. These will make my decision to begin dosing my main tank easier as well as helping me keep an eye on my QT copper ranges.

Hanna.jpg

Something that is confusing me, and not just concerning me but just looks odd. One of my trochus snails has a growth of some kind. Its on his shell and has been around for months but I never really got a good look at it till the other night. I cant tell if its something attached to him or just an injury to his shell causing a weird growth pattern. I hate to do this because anyone asking for an ID seemingly has a terrible photo but this is the best I could get. Any ideas whats going on here?

what the heck.jpg

Last but not least my fighting conch decided to play king of the hill yesterday with my zoa rock. He's such a cool little guy. Photogenic as can be. Happy Reefing everyone!

King.jpg
 

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Love the conch pic, there is a type of snail / barnacle thing that I can't remember the name of that will attach to a "host" and drill through the shell and feed off the host.
There are others, devils toe nail I think they are called that hitch hike and do no harm, hopefully others can help more.
 
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Anyone following along an Apex/Fusion expert? I have two MP40's which are sync'd up right now on same program doing the same thing.

I would like to switch this to alternating, one MP40 on for 2 hours, swith to alternate MP40 on for 2 hours, both on for 30 mins... rinse and repeat.

Anyone have resources or some guideline I can follow?

2 MP40's on this cube is just overkill and I would like the alternating and random flow created by switching them up.
 
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Quick update on the 93. I've been playing around with the heaters on the tank, I was having temperature swings from 76-79 2-3 times a day. For stability this just is not acceptable. I had slow growth on zoas, and nonexistent growth on my LPS. I introduced two small pieces of sps, a birdsnest and a monti. These did not fair well and I decided one factor was the heater swings.

These swings were brought on by how I had the heaters layered through my Apex and an inkbird controller. I was letting the inkbird be my primary heater controller and the apex as a back up. This was also an issue because I was using a finnex titanium heating element which did not have an internal thermostat. I wrote up a post about the layer a couple months back but gave up on fixing it. Well to narrow down issues with the growth I got rid of the titanium element and added a second Eheim Jager. I now have two on the tank, one 200 Watt and one 250 Watt These bad boys are now keeping me within .5 degrees. I should have done this from the start. You can see in the photo below I'm floating between 77.8 and 78.2 great consistency. You can also see the history from the previous heating scheme at the bottom. I cant believe I let it go as long as I did.
Apex1.jpg

Something else to discuss thats not happy is a group of Blue Green Chromis I introduced into the tank. I had started with 6 chromis and I'm down to one now. 3 of the Chromis did not make it out of QT. They either got bullied or did not make it through the Cupramine treatment. I introduced three into the 93 after 30 days at a proper copper concentration, and 2 rounds of prazipro. We one died within 48 hours of being introduced it was picked on the female clown, the starry blenny, and the other chromis. The two remaining chromis seemed to be doing fine then one stopped eating. We left for a weekend trip to visit the inlaws ( and build my stand for my 25 gallon build) and upon return we only had one chromis left. I was shocked, absolutely blown away by the ability of our cleanup crew to chew through a dead fish. We saw the fish at 7 PM on friday, by 10 PM on Sunday this is all that was left.

chromis.jpg
I'm really hoping if this is a sickness it does not spread to my blenny's and clowns. I would be heart broken if those fish get sick from me not catching something in QT.

A bit of good news I guess is our Dippin Dot mushroom has shot of a baby. One of the few corals in the tank with noticable growth at all in the past 2 months other than the GSP and Xenia. o_O

shroombaby.jpg
Happy reefing everyone!
 

HairyGary

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Sucks about the fish! Hopefully you can get to the bottom of it. Chromis are known to knock each other out so there is a lone fish standing so my bet is some bullying involved that led to their demise.

Where do you position your heaters. I have two in my overflow. They would not fit in my sump. I dont run an apex so cant talk about that but location of the tank may be cause some fluctuation as well. I keep mine in the basement great room we have so the temp is pretty consistent. Glad you got it all figured out though.
 
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Sucks about the fish! Hopefully you can get to the bottom of it. Chromis are known to knock each other out so there is a lone fish standing so my bet is some bullying involved that led to their demise.

Where do you position your heaters. I have two in my overflow. They would not fit in my sump. I dont run an apex so cant talk about that but location of the tank may be cause some fluctuation as well. I keep mine in the basement great room we have so the temp is pretty consistent. Glad you got it all figured out though.

Luckily mine fit into the sump. in the unused "refugium" section.
 

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Anyone following along an Apex/Fusion expert? I have two MP40's which are sync'd up right now on same program doing the same thing.

I would like to switch this to alternating, one MP40 on for 2 hours, swith to alternate MP40 on for 2 hours, both on for 30 mins... rinse and repeat.

Anyone have resources or some guideline I can follow?

2 MP40's on this cube is just overkill and I would like the alternating and random flow created by switching them up.
did you ever get an answer on this? do you have a wxm module?
 
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JBKReef

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did you ever get an answer on this? do you have a wxm module?

I do have the WXM, however I did not get any help so I bit the bullet and just manually coded it. I signed in on my compuer to make it easier but good god it was a lot of clicking and adjusting... as you can see below.
ApexWP402.jpg
After that, I just clicked the antisync for my second WP40 and let it run in opposite. Its not exactly what I wanted but the gradual shifts from one MP40 to the other with times of either one being off has reduced the flow and made the pattern more random. It's been working pretty well I believe.

ApexWP40.jpg

Thanks for asking! I would not suggest this method to anyone else and I also believe there is a way 100% easier to do than what I did.
 

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great, i do not think there is a easier way other than adding each new point like you did except the tidal program does a bit of the same thing but not as drastic
 
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An update on the 93:

Things are rolling right along. I was battling low Alk for a long time in the tank for a long time. I had been using IO Reef Crystals so I upgrade to Red Sea Coral Pro and the corals have loved it. I do not do any dosing so having the salt mix include elevated levels has been beneficial with doing 15% water changes ever 7-10 days. We're floating around 10 right now.
dkh.jpg
With the good comes the still good but annoying. My wife LOVES pulsing Xenia. That being said I'm doing all I can to control it. The small frag we had with one sprig of Xenia has dominated the rock I put it on. So much so that not only has it covered Xenia Alcatraz but its starting to shoot off some escaped prisoners. You can see an inch or two to the west of the island in the sand bed. Its the first one, I plucked it up quickly but I'm going to have to be more diligent with its isolation.
xenia8-31.jpg
Some happier news I have a fungia plate coral that is quickly becoming my favorite coral. I'm not even sure what this guy is, but I think I have described it earlier. This coral showed up randomly on a frag plug at my LFS. IT started out seemingly no bigger than a cm or two in diameter. I talked the LFS into selling it to me and its taken off since going into my tank. The guy has almost completely covered the 2 inch plug its on. Only problem right now is the best lighting and flow for this coral is behind my main rock structure that I can not get to see it all that much.
plate.jpg
And finally a hopeful note. I have a trio of fish in my QT 2 Banggaii's and a Yellow Corris Wrasse. My wife loves the looks of the Banggaii's (I preferred pajama cardinals but lost the fight) and I wanted to introduce a wrasse to hopefully assist in breaking down a vermited snail infestation that is starting to take over. The jerks got in on a snail shell but have started to take off as I have finally started to get measurable nitrates on my tank. When I purchased the wrasse it started to flash on the PVC within a day so I did a quick PraziPro treatment, water change 24 hours later, and started Copper Power. The first dose of Copper Power went in on Sunday and I believe it will reach therapeutic levels today. I was dosing morning, noon, and night so raising the levels gradually over about 15-20 doses. All three fish have their appetite and eating well.
QT.jpg
Happy Reefing everyone!
 

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