An update on what's new along with a current FTS. I had some plastic fake corals that I decided to toss in the tank to make my fish feel more at home before I start adding coral. Right now I've just been getting my fish stocked and building the microfauna up in the tank.
Current stock is a purple firefish, two fancy ocellaris clowns, the gold midas blenny, a springeri damsel, three barnacle blennies, two yasha gobies with a randalli pistol shrimp, a skunk cleaner shrimp, and the serpent starfish. I added 250 amphipods along with the reef soup I put in before. My pod population is through the roof and my pod hotel skimmer and roller filter stands are crawling with them.
I had to move one of the Gulf live rocks to the sump as it was too alive. It was so porous that it had a ton of crabs, worms and a pink floyd pistol shrimp that I didn't feel comfortable leaving in the display.
The other two rocks are very much alive with a big bivalve, oculina coral, cup coral and some blue sponge and red tunicates. Adding the real live rock has proven to be pretty beneficial though. I have a solid population of good worms, mini brittle stars, baby cerith snails, bristle worms and even a decorator crab. I have had no algae other than film algae and a tiny patch of a very pretty red algae. I am going to leave it for now and see what happens. Coraline algae is beginning to spread and my rocks are turning dark grey every day.
Nutrients continue to drop despite adding more livestock and feeding more heavily. Last I checked phosphates were at .06 and nitrates were at 2. I added just a small amount of bio pellets to the reactor. Mostly to try and drive down the nitrates back to zero, but also to provide a food source for the micro fauna.
I currently have an ornate leopard wrasse and a small flame angel in qt. The final fish I plan on adding are a single ignitus anthia and a black axle chromis. The only other inverts will be an urchin when coraline algae takes over, a sea star that I will collect diving, probably a blood shrimp and I'm toying with the idea of trying to get a small population of ghost shrimp breeding in the tank.
I put together a frag pack of 10 acros from my LFSs prized display. I'm working on an encrusting frag pack and will eventually add the bubble tip anemone. I will also collect a photosynthetic gorgonian. That will probably round out the reef build and then it will be a matter of letting everything grow. I plan on using natural sea water and rotating some select rocks from the Gulf every now and then. Basically I want to keep the biodiversity up and also ensure my fish are maintaining their immunity for the future.
One final note. I switched to Fitz high alkalinity reef salt. I did this anticipating the first year I will be having higher than normal nutrients and so perhaps later on I'll go with the lower alk salt if I find my nutrients are too low. The salt mixes very clean, much cleaner than instant ocean. Couple with a decent price I am happy so far.
That's about all I can think of. This system continues to be very easy to maintain with all of the automation. I would totally feel comfortable going on vacation for two weeks and letting it run itself.
Not the best photo, but there's not much to go out of the way to show at the moment.
Current stock is a purple firefish, two fancy ocellaris clowns, the gold midas blenny, a springeri damsel, three barnacle blennies, two yasha gobies with a randalli pistol shrimp, a skunk cleaner shrimp, and the serpent starfish. I added 250 amphipods along with the reef soup I put in before. My pod population is through the roof and my pod hotel skimmer and roller filter stands are crawling with them.
I had to move one of the Gulf live rocks to the sump as it was too alive. It was so porous that it had a ton of crabs, worms and a pink floyd pistol shrimp that I didn't feel comfortable leaving in the display.
The other two rocks are very much alive with a big bivalve, oculina coral, cup coral and some blue sponge and red tunicates. Adding the real live rock has proven to be pretty beneficial though. I have a solid population of good worms, mini brittle stars, baby cerith snails, bristle worms and even a decorator crab. I have had no algae other than film algae and a tiny patch of a very pretty red algae. I am going to leave it for now and see what happens. Coraline algae is beginning to spread and my rocks are turning dark grey every day.
Nutrients continue to drop despite adding more livestock and feeding more heavily. Last I checked phosphates were at .06 and nitrates were at 2. I added just a small amount of bio pellets to the reactor. Mostly to try and drive down the nitrates back to zero, but also to provide a food source for the micro fauna.
I currently have an ornate leopard wrasse and a small flame angel in qt. The final fish I plan on adding are a single ignitus anthia and a black axle chromis. The only other inverts will be an urchin when coraline algae takes over, a sea star that I will collect diving, probably a blood shrimp and I'm toying with the idea of trying to get a small population of ghost shrimp breeding in the tank.
I put together a frag pack of 10 acros from my LFSs prized display. I'm working on an encrusting frag pack and will eventually add the bubble tip anemone. I will also collect a photosynthetic gorgonian. That will probably round out the reef build and then it will be a matter of letting everything grow. I plan on using natural sea water and rotating some select rocks from the Gulf every now and then. Basically I want to keep the biodiversity up and also ensure my fish are maintaining their immunity for the future.
One final note. I switched to Fitz high alkalinity reef salt. I did this anticipating the first year I will be having higher than normal nutrients and so perhaps later on I'll go with the lower alk salt if I find my nutrients are too low. The salt mixes very clean, much cleaner than instant ocean. Couple with a decent price I am happy so far.
That's about all I can think of. This system continues to be very easy to maintain with all of the automation. I would totally feel comfortable going on vacation for two weeks and letting it run itself.
Not the best photo, but there's not much to go out of the way to show at the moment.
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