Born on the 4th of July

[dragon99]

With the exception of a couple frags, everything is looking good and encrusting nicely. The flameback angel has moved in, and seems much happier now that he has rocks to graze on constantly.

I might have finally stablized Alk. I haven't gotten a change in my daily test in a week! Phosphates still tend to drop to zero though.

#reef2reef, #worldwidecorals, #mywwccontest

 

[dragon99]

Dosing phosphates is dangerous m'kay. I wasn't careful with it and spiked my PO4 up over .14 and my space invader was not impressed. It's looking better now, but still needs some time to recover.

Everything is looking pretty good.

This blue stag continues to be my best grower.

 

[Preme]

Looking great!!!

 

[dragon99]

How quickly they grow up. My halichoeres chrysus, yellow wrasse
Aug 2016

And Feb 2017, 6 months later:

 

[Reefrookie220]

Nice build man! Like that you didn't got into every single build detail, a lot of these threads make me doze off!

Short enough to be interesting, long enough to cover everything.

 

[dragon99]

So I started Vibrant back in November. Was doing twice a week until mid Jan. Then once a week. And I haven't dosed now in 3 weeks (probably should do a maintenance dose).
I started with LOTS of hair algae and few bubbles of valonia. I've been clean for ~4 weeks. Never had a cyano problem (thankfully).
I've been doing Prodibio Biodigest to go along with my vinegar and just keep going with that too.

Christmas (~6 weeks in)

Last week

 

[vlangel]

Its looking nice!

 

[dragon99]

So finding out I had a bad batch of salt was a royal pain. I spent 3 nights making RO, mixing water, testing water, dumping water, and so on. I bought some HW reefer salt on BF from BRS and it's bad. Potassium @ 217ppm. Sooo, one large water change later, and another this weekend will hopefully get my tank back on the right track.

On the good news side, one of my bucket list fish is in QT:

And a purple firefish and bangaii for my wife

 

[dragon99]

Had to get a better pic of the borbonius

 

[dragon99]

The borbonius didn't make it. 24hrs after placing him in QT I found him dead. The bangaii and purple firefish are doing fine still and are about to graduate from QT.

I went to ReefCurrents 2017 (local show in Houston) and had a blast. I got to meet Steve Tyree and Jason Fox. Both great guys. This was apparently Jason's first type speaking and he did great. Hearing about Jason's systems and trips to Indo was awesome and very informative. I even brought home a couple of JF frags (bought from Steve, weird I know). The Jason Fox booth was crazy busy.

JF Burning Banana

and JF Grape Juice

 

[dragon99]

The T5's are out. I love the light spread, but can't stand the heat. GHL Mitras LX7206's are taking their place.

The last T5 sunset (OK not really, I don't have dimmable T5's), last night:

And a new dawn!

 

[dragon99]

Little better picture of new Mitras LX7206 lights. Still trying to figure out Lightroom settings that work best.

Lights are hanging directly from the ceiling. The hardest part was actually putting a hole in ceiling. Once I got past that freak out, they were a breeze to hang.

 

[dragon99]

The clarkii's and their BTA have moved to their own private honeymoon tank.

This was greatly appreciated by everyone else in the tank. My purple firefish comes out now, and everyone seems much more chill. My lubbocki wrasse even got excited the other night when I had the camera out and gave me his best colors

Checked my RO's numbers today. I recently installed the BRS Water Saver 150 upgrade.
398 TDS tap water @ 77F,
85-87 psi at RO membrane
6 TDS before DI, 98.5% rejection (!)
Using the 600ml fast flush valve.

 

[dragon99]

The 1yr anniversary update (yeah, it's late). I've managed not to kill everything. So I've got that going for me, which is nice.

I had a pintail and rhomboid wrasse in QT, and two days before moving them to the display the pintail decided to jump thru the egg crate and die. This is the second wrasse I've lost to jumping. They are serious about it.

I'm pretty bummed about losing the c. isosceles, but the c. rhomboidalis is beautiful, so that helps.

The corals are doing better, I've finally gotten nitrates and phosphates down where I want them and mitras ramped up to full power. Coloration is improving, and in the case of my TCK Pikachu, dramatically

April

Last week

And FTS to finish

 

[dragon99]

So I've been battling a green cyano/spirulina for months now. Now matter how many times I blew it off, vacuumed the gravel, or clean the filter socks it just came back. Nutrients have been normal (<5 NO3, <.01 PO4) for awhile now and it's still been growing out of control.

So I gave up this week and went all Chemiclean on it. Started with a 1g treatment which is slightly higher dosage than the package calls for (enough for 100g vs my 80g)
24hrs in and it had changed from a bright green to a nice brown dead color. So I did a water change 48hrs later and hit it again.

Last night I did another huge water change and today I've been trying to get the skimmer to behave (it hasn't) by letting it skim wet into a bucket. I've emptied 12g and it's still foaming like a champagne bottle after the world series. But the good news I don't see a speck of green in the tank right now (except my corals). Here's hoping!

 

[dragon99]

An update is overdue. Nothing much has changed. A tomini tang has joined the tank. Some corals look better, some don't...

 

[dragon99]

I wish I could say everything was growing like weeds, but not so much. My clam died out of the blue, nothing else seemed off. Only thing I can figure is the flameback angel occasionally nipping stressed it out too much.

 

[dragon99]

Let's focus on the good. This acropora hyacinthus has been pretty happy
October (shortly after purchase)

November (new frag plug, it didn't double in size)

December

 

[dragon99]

And I've gone back to T5's. I bought an ATI 6x54w sunpower over black friday. I need less control because I couldn't stop tweaking the LED's. Is 80% UV too much? Should I raise the whites? Lower reds? and on and on....
Also, the tanks I've seen that I want to emulate are running T5's.

And a tomini tang picture

 

[Flippers4pups]

Looking good.