Crimper's 57G SPS Dominated Reef

[crimper]

My 18 month old reef.



Hardware:

Tank: 57G Starphire Rimless Tank
Lighting: LED + T5 Hybrid Combo (Radion XR15 G4 x2 + AI Prime + ATI Blue+ 39W x 2)
Skimmer: Buble Magus C6 insump
Sump: 20G Breeder DIY sump
Bio Filter: 50lb Real Reef Rock
Return Pump: Jebao DCT 4000
Flow: Glamorca GP03 Gyre; 4 Jebao wavemakers
Controller: Apex Jr.
Heater: Eheim 250W x 2

Water Chemistry & Photo Period

Salt: Redsea Sea Salt (Blue Bucket)
Dosing: 2 part
WC: 10% Every Week
Photo Period: Custom Coral Lab AB+ (12hrs)

Fish & Inverts

Blue Tang, Sailfin Tang, Copperband Butterfly, Flame Hawkfish, Lemon Wrasse, Yellow Wrasse,
Onyx Picasso Clownfish
Several Snails

 

[crimper]

Looking Back..

January 2019. Tank has been cycled. A few test corals have been placed.




August 2019. After 7 months, a few LPS corals and a test SPS coral have been added into the tank.




October 2019. It was late September when I started adding Acroporas into the tank.




November 2019. All corals are settled, acroporas are starting to encrust

January 2020. Corals have shown significant growth spurt.

February 2020. Corals are colouring up nicely.

March 2020. Corals have exploded and growth is exponential.

 

[crimper]

The Tang Police will go after me. :lol:

New Fish On The Block, passed quarantine.

 

[crimper]

Quick update:

The Bad: I lost my Lemon Meringue Wrasse as he jumped off the tank and got badly scratched when he hit the netting cover.

The Good: I got new frags, a few from my quarantine/grow out tank. And the most exciting frag is the one I got from a local reefer, a show piece Marvin The Martian.

Photos credit to the owner (Jess)

 

[Chefwheredyougo]

the tank looks good!

 

[crimper]

the tank looks good!

Thank you Chefwheredyougo.

 

[crimper]

The most popular fish in my tank... Rob

 

[Cstar_BC]

Beautiful tank - did anything change between February and March ?

 

[Tahoe61]

Great progression images. Really sharp looking tank.

 

[crimper]

Beautiful tank - did anything change between February and March ?

Thanks for the kind comments Cstar_BC.

Here's the April FTS

No significant changes since then except the corals are growing exponentially and dosing needs to be adjusted as it dropped another dkh in a month. Also noticable is the Coraline algae at the bare bottom of the tank, that's also one of the reason for the high demand in Alk.

I will be posting an FTS for May 2020, to keep track of the tank progression.

Cheers from Beautiful BC!

 

[crimper]

Great progression images. Really sharp looking tank.

Thanks for the thumbs up Tahoe61. Happy Reefing!

 

[Cstar_BC]

Thanks for the kind comments Cstar_BC.

Here's the April FTS

No significant changes since then except the corals are growing exponentially and dosing needs to be adjusted as it dropped another dkh in a month. Also noticable is the Coraline algae at the bare bottom of the tank, that's also one of the reason for the high demand in Alk.

I will be posting an FTS for May 2020, to keep track of the tank progression.

Cheers from Beautiful BC!

You’re in BC ? Me too !
Which store are you using to source your corals ?

Was just wondering if you had changed something to see the explosion in growth but maybe stability is the key !

Did you dose right from the beginning or do you wait for the corals to reach a certain size since most salt mixes have calc and mag levels ?

 

[crimper]

You’re in BC ? Me too !
Which store are you using to source your corals ?

Was just wondering if you had changed something to see the explosion in growth but maybe stability is the key !

Did you dose right from the beginning or do you wait for the corals to reach a certain size since most salt mixes have calc and mag levels ?

Yup from Beautiful Burnaby, BC. ;)

I seldom changed things in this reef as they say "Stability is Key." I think one contributing factor is opening of my windows when it's warm. Since the pandemic started I was working from home and was able to open my windows when it is warm enough. I noticed 0.15 increase of my Ph since March.

Another factor that can be attributed to it is that I am feeding more, as every so often I feed my fish. I am supposed to add more fish like Anthias but I phoned most of the LFS and told me that no shipment coming because of the pandemic. Yes my sailfin and blue tang is getting bigger, the bigger tank is in the works. :cool:

By the way, I feed heavy around 6-8 times daily now, as my Nitrate always bottoms down to 0. I am not dosing any carbon source, no GFO since day 1. As I started this tank using Zeovit, but after the cycle I noticed that my NO3 does not go up more than 5ppm, and the LFS that cary Zeo stuff stopped for quite a while then I stopped Zeo. That thing is so expensive.

I seldom buy corals from LFS as most of them are Maricultured. I only buy corals on a couple of trusted and proven hobbyist, should I say, as I always look on their tanks before buying stuffs. I always buy acros from Jess in North Vancouver, they are expensive but high end stuffs. There are also a couple of hobbyist buddies to mention, Rich and Hung. Super nice guys, they know what they are doing and they won't charge you an arm and a leg. :D

 

[Cstar_BC]

Yup from Beautiful Burnaby, BC. ;)

I seldom changed things in this reef as they say "Stability is Key." I think one contributing factor is opening of my windows when it's warm. Since the pandemic started I was working from home and was able to open my windows when it is warm enough. I noticed 0.15 increase of my Ph since March.

Another factor that can be attributed to it is that I am feeding more, as every so often I feed my fish. I am supposed to add more fish like Anthias but I phoned most of the LFS and told me that no shipment coming because of the pandemic. Yes my sailfin and blue tang is getting bigger, the bigger tank is in the works. :cool:

By the way, I feed heavy around 6-8 times daily now, as my Nitrate always bottoms down to 0. I am not dosing any carbon source, no GFO since day 1. As I started this tank using Zeovit, but after the cycle I noticed that my NO3 does not go up more than 5ppm, and the LFS that cary Zeo stuff stopped for quite a while then I stopped Zeo. That thing is so expensive.

I seldom buy corals from LFS as most of them are Maricultured. I only buy corals on a couple of trusted and proven hobbyist, should I say, as I always look on their tanks before buying stuffs. I always buy acros from Jess in North Vancouver, they are expensive but high end stuffs. There are also a couple of hobbyist buddies to mention, Rich and Hung. Super nice guys, they know what they are doing and they won't charge you an arm and a leg. :D

Definitely update us when you are no longer working from home and let us know whether you notice any change .

Please let me know if you ever have any frags or need to make some room !

 

[crimper]

This Reef is now 17 months Old.

The month of May is quite challenging. A bit of a set back with a spike in Salinity 3 weeks ago and hit almost 40ppt that turned my Sunburst Monti pale. All polyps retracted as a result. My Gold Hammer also retracted for 2 weeks and most of my Millis polyp retracted.

After gradually adjusting the salinity back to 35ppt, I noticed right away that corals started to extend their polyps again.

Coral growth is noticeable since the last FTS. The Green Toadstool exploded, it's getting too big for my liking. I need to frag this before it touches the neighboring coral colony.

Another first world problem, Euphillias are getting aggressive and started outcompeting each other. The torch coral stung the Nuclear Green Frogspawn and lost a head. On the other hand the Nuclear Green Frogspawn turned its own aggression and burned the Green Slimer and the Blueberry Wine Acro ;Blackeye

FTS May2020

 

[crimper]

Bored today, took some pictures of some acros that are turning into beauties.

 

[crimper]

Some more...

 

[crimper]

June 2020 Full Tank Shot (on Orange Filters)

Tank updates:

It's been a busy month for my reef. As mentioned the Tyree Toadstool is getting bigger and taking all the space at the bottom right of the tank. So I fragged it and ended up with lots of frags. ;)

My Zoas/Paly colonies also exploded after raising my nitrate to almost 2ppm (gradually), and yeah know what happened. I ended up with so many zoa/pally frags. I was busy selling frags for almost 3 weekends. And there is this reefer who bought some of my zoas and offered me a trade that I can't resist. He traded his Radion XR15 to several heads of my Torch and several heads of my frogspawn.

And summer starts tomorrow, I'm planning to shutdown my frag tank, do a tank reset, cleanup the equipment, do some rewiring, painting, tidy up my fish room.

That's all folks. Happy Reefing and Happy Canada Day to all Canuck Reefers and Tree-Huggers out there! :cool:

 

[CoralDanimal]

Love your tank and your photos. Any update?

 

[crimper]

Love your tank and your photos. Any update?

Thanks for the compliments demeyer2. It's quite a busy summer for me with all my wifey's home improvement projects and got not lot of time paying attention to my reef.

I have also torn down my frag tank so my display tank now looks like a frag tank. :D

But here it is, I took a quick Top Down Video as the acros are finally taking over the tank and I think it's worth a shot to take some top downs.