Coral Beauty & the Clown Fish (Innovative EXT170)

[JM302]

An OCTOPUS! And I'm on the other flippin coast not there to help.....

I was >< close to calling you and asking if you wanted me to put it in your fuge. Have fun but hurry back - I'm in need of consult. LOL

The ammonia spike? Really? I would have bet it didn't spike. The PH of this tank --- UGHHH. LOL. Yeah the new one is sitting at 7.75. This is going to be a battle. I've got the 75 hanging between 8.0 and 8.2.

 

[JM302]

The tank is definitely going through a mini-cycle. I didn't expect it to be anything major and it seems like that's the case.

As of today, ammonia is testing 0. I'd be splitting hairs to call it more than that. For reference, I never saw ammonia measure more than 0.2. Nitrite is measurable - somewhere between .05 and .1 and Nitrate is showing around 3. Great progress. The cycle will work itself out by the weekend. I don't plan on adding fish until the 15th or so... but that's more of a when I can do it thing than a should I do it thing....

It's too early to judge, but I'm not loving the output of the G6 Pro as compared to my G5 Pros. I'll have to play with it. I can't even articulate what exactly it is I don't like. One thing for sure is the tank just seems extra shadowy and dark.

The AB+ on the G6 is way too much blue for me. AB+ on the G5 looks nice to me. If anyone has suggestions on G6 settings, I'd love to hear them.

I'm going to try the BRS suggestion and ramp down the Royal Blue and up the whites. Right now, I have the kelvin slider set to 16.5k - and it's still a little blue to me.

 

[JM302]

I'll take it! Just as I suspected, cycle looks like it's in good shape. All measurable ammonia is gone, nitrite is gone and nitrate is around 5.

What's fun.. I never rely on a heaters internal thermostat, but my Apex is managing my 75 right now and until I move the livestock over, I have to keep it there.

Well - this morning stuck my finger in the water and it felt SUPER warm to me. I robbed the PM1 from my 75 since I didn't need to monitor pH twice.... and I happened to have an extra temp sensor... Turns out the tank was over 83°. I threw two jager 150 watt heaters in it that I usually use to heat my water change water. BOTH of those suckers were still on at 83° while set to 77.

Literally have never had a heater failure like that (though I know it's common) and two of them did the same thing. Crazy. They're currently unplugged.

We're going to work on the rock-scape a bit tomorrow in preparation for the merger. I also have a Dr. Reef order! Bunch of Lyretail Anthias, a new white tail bristletooth tang ( I lost mine during the move due to my own stupidity. I'm still sad over it), a flame angel, a coral beauty, and a magnificent foxface.

I'm rolling the dice with this one! I'm sure the regret will be real with the Foxface... but here's to hoping!

 

[JM302]

Migration plans are on hold atm....

After 10 days of the rock sitting on the sand and watching for hitchhikers night
after night, I can say it looked clean. Time to plan the migration.

We took some time to try and organize the live rock to allow us to put the existing structures in the 170 and then we can finalize the scape.


(Disregard the light on the RMS rail resting on yoga blocks.. )

I'm happy with the way it is coming together. Another few days pass, we continue watching for hitchhikers... last night I find a gorilla crab hanging out on the rock. Followed by two more and one this morning!

Are you kidding me?!? It figures, right?

So I find it easiest to pull the rock with the crab and extract the crab.. so of course I am taking my rock-scape apart... I love the live rock and would do it again, but how long will it take me to be comfortable with adding my corals. I really don't want them to be gorilla crab food.

 

[JM302]

Welp.... two more crabs sent to the farm tonight.

Specimen #1


Specimen #2 (This dude was pretty big)



I have a red flashlight coming tomorrow. The only thing I can do is exercise patience. If I spot a crab, it's easy enough to stick the rock in the sump and eventually capture it.

 

[JM302]

Alright! Happy Monday Night. Here's the current situation.. The flash light is out and the rock-scape has been dismantled to make it easier to spot and extract a crab. One thing for sure... We've got crabs!



A few hours Saturday night and Sunday night with the red flashlight resulted in...... 7 crabs. 5 a little smaller than your typical adult emerald crab and 2 tiny tiny ones.

Tonight we watched for a good hour and I'm happy to say that we didn't see any. Chances are there are other small dudes in there, but maybe not.

I'll call it progress. We haven't seen a large one since Saturday. I'm mostly confident we got rid of them at least. Sunday was just a couple of smalls.

If I can go another night or maybe 2 nights without finding any more, I'll call it good enough.

One step close to actually getting my livestock in the new tank!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Alright! Happy Monday Night. Here's the current situation.. The flash light is out and the rock-scape has been dismantled to make it easier to spot and extract a crab. One thing for sure... We've got crabs!



A few hours Saturday night and Sunday night with the red flashlight resulted in...... 7 crabs. 5 a little smaller than your typical adult emerald crab and 2 tiny tiny ones.

Tonight we watched for a good hour and I'm happy to say that we didn't see any. Chances are there are other small dudes in there, but maybe not.

I'll call it progress. We haven't seen a large one since Saturday. I'm mostly confident we got rid of them at least. Sunday was just a couple of smalls.

If I can go another night or maybe 2 nights without finding any more, I'll call it good enough.

One step close to actually getting my livestock in the new tank!

Best of luck to finding the rest of them!

 

[JM302]

Tuesday night update:

2 more of these little suckers. I'm really getting to the point of thinking getting them all may be impossible. I'll continue to exercise patience but it's getting tough!

 

[takoarm8]

I went with the Australian live rock and didn’t get any hitchhikers.

 

[JM302]

I went with the Australian live rock and didn’t get any hitchhikers.

Freshly harvested live rock + hitchhikers is just a reality no matter what rock you get. Back in the day when I'd get Fiji or Pukani or even Marshall Island (my favorite) live rock, I would often get it w/o any pest hitchhikers because it was in 20 tanks before it reached mine.

With TBS and the like, the rock is harvested from the Gulf of Mexico, shipped in water and less than 24 hours before being placed in my new DT. There is little to no die-off and this increases the likelihood of critters by leaps and bounds, both good and bad. The crabs are less than ideal, but the good outweighs the bad IMO. I love all the other life I'm seeing.

Aussie live rock sounds awesome. Didn't know that was a thing these days - especially for folks in the continental US.

 

[Bleigh]

Came to check out the stand! I need to spend some time reading through the posts! Looks Gorgeous!

 

[LeeLoo Lola]

Came to check out the stand! I need to spend some time reading through the posts! Looks Gorgeous!

Thank you. We will need to update it soon!

 

[LeeLoo Lola]

I thought it was time for an update so I got a video of the tank the other night. JM302 also bought me some fun equipment for Christmas to get some new pictures of the coral. More to come soon…

 

[JM302]

I'm not the artsy photographer type.... @LeeLoo Lola is, however. She never ceases to amaze me with her ability to make everything look great. I'm so blown away by this photo she captured of our foxface.

 

[JM302]

A few more shots for the day. Love our Watanabei Angels.

 

[MatsReef]

Outstanding tank.

 

[michealprater]

Very beautiful setup!

 

[JM302]

Very beautiful setup!

Outstanding tank.

Thanks! Appreciate it. The tank is in full grow out mode right now - not a lot of tweaking going on. We look forward to putting some eye candy up quite often

 

[LeeLoo Lola]

Here are a few more of our babies! I still have quite a few to capture!

 

[Cthulukelele]

Beautiful fish and coral! Jealous of all the reefers over in Charlotte lol it's been a ghost town lately in Central NC. Reefsmart even merged with the Aquatic Expo over there in Charlotte so we don't even get an expo anymore!