Annihil8ted Deskmate Build

[annihil8ted]

Hello! Wanted to complete my joining of R2R by starting a build thread! This isn't my only tank but is my most recent tank, started 6/07/06!

This is mostly going to be a coral and CUC tank with the purpose of QT although later down the line I may add some small fish species to supplement my bioload

Stocked in the tank are as follows:

Corals
2 Torches
2 Gonis
2 Button Scoly
1 Spearmint Alveopora
1 WWC Golden Psammocora
1 War Coral Favites
1 Cave of Wonders Goniopora
1 Nuclear Fusion Montipora
1 Tidal Gardens Watermelon Psammocora
1 Jason Fox Sunset Stylocoeniella
1 Aquaman Montipora
1 Zoa Cluster
1 Leptastrea
1 Acro

CUC
4 Hermits
Pods
Microbrittle Stars
1 Bristleworm

Before everyone grabs their pitchforks and comes at me for how new the tank is and how much it's stocked with coral already, let me try and reassure those concerns

The sand it one of the carib seas live sand, pretty fine grade.
The water is entirely sourced from a 2 year old established tank during a water change so it should be seeded with some nutrients and waste.
The rock is dry but was soaked in plain salt water for 2 weeks (with one swap in the middle) to minimize any leaching
I'm running a coarse sponge, filter floss, and then ceramic balls in a filter cup
The ceramic balls are new however what is not seen is there's another equal sized ball of ceramic rings in the back chamber that has been seeding for half a year
The coarse sponge mentioned above came from the year established tank during a water change. It contained gunk, pods, and brittlestars.
There's a cluster of shells towards the bottom left that also came from the year established tank. They held algae, pods, and bristleworms
In the back, there's also a cup of crushed corals. The idea behind that is to create more areas for beneficial bacterial to grow and to also release calcium into the tank as needed to maintain calcium levels and also buffer the water
I'm running a Fluval Nano Marine 4.0 at about 30% all channels. I'm slowly ramping it up over time

I waited a day between starting the tank (06/07) and adding in the first batch of corals (06/08). In that time, I experience what felt like a small bacterial bloom but also hard to tell if it was just the sand settling. By the next morning it was all clear and it gave me the confidence to start introducing livestock

Things are a little crowded right now but I do plan after waiting the QT of 45-75 days or so to move them into my bigger tank


So far, I've been daily dosing seachem phyto to feed the corals and to also grow my pods and CUC. About every 3 days or twice a week, I'll add in RedSea AB+. Excited to see how this tank grows out!

 

[annihil8ted]

A few questions I hope the community here can help me with:

Can you help identify what type of torches, gonis (the big ones), zoas, acro, and lepastrea I have? I'll post closer photos in a bit

I had walked into a new shop close to my home and discovered they were on the verge of moving locations. Because of the impending move, they gave me a pretty good deal on the corals.

The torches and gonis were from a client of theirs that had a last minute teardown/donation. There were some massive heads! I'm talking about multiple volleyball sized hammers, torches, and gonis. The LFS was able to break down a few heads for me and if these heads do well, I may go back for some multiple head pieces.

The gonis are doing great. I bought them separate from each other as I waited to see if the first one did well before grabbing another. They seem to have great extension and by staggering the purchases, they helped me understand my lighting wasn't turned up enough initially. The one I brought home sooner was browner when compared to the other one which online research shows it's because of a lack in PAR.

I do have some concerns about the torches. I was a little suspect when they were able to tear off the single heads in the shop without any tools and when I came home, I found the skeletal base to be really brittle, to the point where I can easily crush them with my fingers. Some also had "puncture holes". I take it that this is far from the normal. There is also a breakage of the skeleton near the flesh which I want to see if it would natural reject that bit or if it held on, to glue it down. For now, I let it be and let it destress and acclimate to the tank. The flesh band wasn't the greatest either but it was enough for me to try and roll the dice on. I plan to keep a very close eye on them as I don't want them to die and bomb the entire tank

 

[annihil8ted]

 

[annihil8ted]

About a week later, I just did a 20% water change which is just 1 gallon. This was mostly to get rid of the scum from the sand bed that was floating at the top.

Wow after a few daily dosage of phyto and reef ab+ every 3-4 day, there's definitely stuff growing now.

I am seeing a healthy population of pods growing. Also a few micro brittle stars and at least 1 bristleworm. Glad to see that my seeding of the sponge from my other tank brought over some microfauna!

Tank walls are dirty but I'm going to let nature take care of it for now as I want to increase bioload gently. I threw in 1 more hermit and margarita snail too to increase my CUC, mostly so the snail can clean the walls.

Torches are looking a little bit better although it's hard to tell from photos. I did have to rotate them as their weaker side with the smaller fleshband was exposed to the flow. I was getting worried they might get lifted from their skeleton. After rotation, they seem to be much happier!

Speaking of happier, my gonis are definitely not happy with the water change. Been retracted all day since this morning. I'm attributing this potentially to the temperate shift and the slight salinity drift too but they are starting to come back out. Hopefully by night time they'll extend out more

The water change also gave me a chance to change out the pump which was still the original one from eshopps and was making grinding noises. I'm also suspecting that the pump was generating some decent heat too. The new pump is the BS600 from ZKSJ. It's essentially a AI Axis dupe and has about 600l/h flow (160gph). This is more than enough for my little tank and I love being able to adjust the flow and also have a feeding mode without having to unplug the pump or reach into the tank. It's super quiet too!

Another change I made was directing my nozzle directly upwards to create more surface agitation. I suspect part of the scum I took out during the water change was partially due to lack of surface motion. I've got a nice shimmer and wave action going on now.

Lastly, I'm experimenting with raising my PAR levels. I'm currently at 40% of all channels on my light and I am raising roughly 5% every other day. I suspect I'm still not running enough light as my corals are progressively getting browner

Hoping in another week or so to add some more tank inhabitants! I'd love to get a pompom crab although I don't think I'm generating enough waste just yet. Also looking at some smaller gobys (under 2 inch full gown). Open to suggestions too!

 

[fishface NJ]

Are you using the light that came with the kit?

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[annihil8ted]

Are you using the light that came with the kit?

I am not as I had picked up this tank second hand with only the tank and pump.

For lighting, I am using a Fluval Marine Nano 4.0. It was a spare I was planning to use on a different tank but it's what I had on hand when I set this tank up.

It may look a little weird because I have it sitting almost directly on the lid of the tank but I wanted to reduce light spill and also provide enough par at the top of the tank for possibly some harder SPS like the acro. I also wanted to avoid having to run it at 100% for heat and wear and tear. It's claiming 1200 PAR at 3 inches and at 115 at 12inches. Not sure if those levels are measured where the light is touching the waterline or sitting a predefined distance above the water

 

[annihil8ted]

Update time! A decent amount has changed and I'm definitely not going by the book on a few things but things are panning out really well overall!

I was concerned about flow, specifically usable flow. I was using the default nozzle with the new pump and even on the lowest setting, it felt too much directed flow. Removing the nozzle helped but I wasn't able to direct the flow anymore and I wasn't satisfied either. I then 3D printed a 'Y' connector and increased DT side to 1/2in instead of the quarter inch and slapped on a RFG pointed at the far end of the tank. This not only vastly improved flow in terms of spread of turbulence but I was also able to greatly increase my pump without power washing the corals. So now my flow quality is greatly improved and my turnover rate is as well.

It turns out I was wrong about lighting. I was actually going too much instead of too little I was going off of my button scoly that came in brown and was coincidentally slowly coloring up as I upped the brightness. Turns out I think it was just an acclimation period and the rest of my corals were actually fading away and shrinking.

The nail in the coffin that caused me to dim my lights was when my gonis started to stay retracted. After a quick consult with chatgpt (which has been surprisingly extremely helpful with the tank and tank management), I was suggested to set light levels to a much dimmer setting. Works for me too because my eyes felt strained in a completely dark room when I was watching the tank. That also should have been indicative I had too much light as I never experience this in store but I failed to put 2 and 2 together. Almost immediately the next couple of days, everyone started to return to regular extension although coloration on some of the corals higher up still hasn't return yet. I know that's going to be a longer battle and is related to some other issues too I'll discuss below.

One of the things that may immediately jump out is how packed it is and that coral count has actually increased since the beginning. Long story short, too many good opportunities to pick up coral I couldn't pass up and not yet willing to move some coral into my other tanks due to QT practices I'm trying to stick with.

One of the newcomers is an extremely recessed goni on the top right. I had rescued it from a friend's tank and with the new found confidence of perking up the other corals after the lighting change, I was hoping to be able to save this goni. Unfortunately it's almost mostly skeleton with a few polyps showing every now and then. I know this is a moonshot but I'd still like to try!

Also a moonshot are the two plate coral (skeleton) I picked up from my LFS for free. It's a shame, I remember when they first came into the store, they were large and plump but just due to the nature of business, they seemed to have faded away. There is very little flesh and while I don't expect a recovery, I have heard of plate coral going from dead to popping up babies. I'm hoping for one of those scenarios: 1) they some how recover or 2) babies start spawning

Let's talk about nutrition and nutrients now. This tank had a very abrupt start and while it's viable to keep corals and cuc, it wasn't exactly thriving. Up until last night, I had dosed phyto and AB+ daily trying to get my nitrates and phosphates up. Unfortunately phyto doesn't really seem to be consumed by my corals (doing wonders for pod population) and AB+ is getting consume entirely but still not enough nutrients for all the corals as over a month's period, some of them seem a little bit skinner. Last night, I mixed up an appropriate dosage of benereef hydrated with AB+ and fed the tank. The response was immediate and a lot of the LPS showed good feeding response. I think going forward, I will alternate this BeneReefAB+ mixture with just AB+ and phyto until nitrate and phos levels are good. Will be moving slowly as I don't want any nuisance algae. So far, I'm getting brown film algae on glass and rock which is being kept very manageable by my snail and copepods. Hopefully this doesn't change as I introduce more substantial feeding and try to up my nutrients.

I'm going to do my best now and not touch the tank to let things stabilize and heal. I think everything is in a good position to heal and grow. There's only 2 more things that I would consider changing in this tank. 1) there's an orange plate coral fading too that I may ask the LFS to give/sell me for free. It'll be interesting trying to find space as I'm pretty full. 2) I've noticed some ghost worms and may introduce a small sixline wrasse to take care of it. It will absolutely not be forever, I know this is much too small of a tank. It'd just be for ghost worm management and hopeful eradication and then afterwards I'll move it into one of my bigger tanks. For now though, doing to let it set and grow. Hope to have another good update soon!