CV's 75g noobie tank and now upgrade to 240g

New&no clue · Feb 3, 2020

Hi I just read through your build, rather productive day for me at work on this fine Monday. First off I was unsure of your backdrop when I saw it in the first picture.. but once you added sand and lights, I really like it. I'm going to have to agree with the wife and kids on this one. I have a pretty similar set up as you 75 gallon, similar dimensions, I still have my current lights but I supplement with T5s. My questions was on your fish stock. I have 7 in mine and have thought about adding more, but I was worried about over crowding. I think we have the same 7 though(2 clowns, goby, blenny, tang, dwarf angel, firefish), and then I think you have a pj cardinal, chromis, and a fox face. First did is that the correct list, and how do they get along? I had wanted to add a foxface to mine as well but I heard a foxface and tang don't always get along. Anyway any insight is appreciated.

boacvh · Feb 3, 2020

New&no clue said:
Hi I just read through your build, rather productive day for me at work on this fine Monday. First off I was unsure of your backdrop when I saw it in the first picture.. but once you added sand and lights, I really like it. I'm going to have to agree with the wife and kids on this one. I have a pretty similar set up as you 75 gallon, similar dimensions, I still have my current lights but I supplement with T5s. My questions was on your fish stock. I have 7 in mine and have thought about adding more, but I was worried about over crowding. I think we have the same 7 though(2 clowns, goby, blenny, tang, dwarf angel, firefish), and then I think you have a pj cardinal, chromis, and a fox face. First did is that the correct list, and how do they get along? I had wanted to add a foxface to mine as well but I heard a foxface and tang don't always get along. Anyway any insight is appreciated.

Thanks @New&no clue. In total I have 15 now. Sounds a bit overcrowded but most of them are small fish. I haven't seen any aggression so far from any of my fish, other than the chromis killing themselves until there was only 1 left. I have added each additional one slowly to observe changes and my filter system seems to be keeping up on N and P as well. Plan was (and still is) that if I start to see any aggression or other signs of overcrowding I'll re-home some of the guys. Also watching situation as the fish grow, but at this point I think only the tang has a lot of potential growth, he is pretty small right now, the others are much closer to max size I think, which puts me at near the 1in per gallon rule of thumb, although I don't believe in it that much, I rather just observe their behavior and filter for signs of overcrowding.
My foxface and tang really fought the first day when I added the foxface, but the next day or 2 they were already best friends, they swim everywhere together. And the foxface is extremely mellow, one of the friendliest I have. Scares me cause I think he comes to my hand expecting to be pet (which I would gladly do if it didn't mean I would spend hours in pain!! haha). For now I think I want to add a Mandarin and then be done. Been working on my pod cultures so I can add him.

Here is my current list:

One Spot Foxface (the most unbelievable eyes, expression and personality. I love this fish)
Yellow Tang
Flame Angel
Blue Chromis
Green Chromis (interestingly, the blue and green ignore each other. But this green killed all he other greens, and the blue killed the other blues. They were the first fish in the tank)
Bangai Cardinal
Fire Fish
Royal Gramma
tail spot blenny
Possum Wrasse
clownfish 1
clownfish 2
Two Spot Goby
Yellow clown goby
Yellow Watchman Goby

boacvh · Feb 11, 2020

So my last additions. 2 mandarins. I think I have enough copepods and cultures to sustain them. The small one is eating frozen bloodworms and cyclops. The big one only live things. Hopefully he gets used to frozen too. Now will try building PaulB feeder for the third time. My previous 2 tries were complete failures.

NY_Caveman · Feb 12, 2020

boacvh said:

Beautiful! Good luck!

boacvh · Feb 12, 2020

NY_Caveman said:
Beautiful! Good luck!

Thanks! Pretty nervous about them, but love them and won't know unless I try

NY_Caveman · Feb 13, 2020

Let's hope third time is the charm.

boacvh · Feb 23, 2020

I have a feeling my tailspot might have died. He has been MIA for a few days now, he was always very active at feeding time.

. Oh well, hoping he is just hiding.

boacvh · Feb 25, 2020

Well, I couldn't build paulB's feeder with the acrylic tube. After a few tries, I couldn't figure out the bending part without breaking it. So, decided to adapt the design and just use some PVC and a 90 degree barb. Turned out to be pretty simple to put together actually. Works perfectly!!! It took my mandarins less than 5 minutes to find it. @Paul B you sir are a genius. Thanks! Next step, I will try the white worm culture and start feeding clams!

NY_Caveman · Feb 26, 2020

For bending the acrylic tube you need heat. A heat gun, or even very carefully near the flame of a gas stove.

boacvh · Feb 26, 2020

NY_Caveman said:
For bending the acrylic tube you need heat. A heat gun, or even very carefully near the flame of a gas stove.

Tried heating with a spring and hairdryer but I ended up cracking it. This was so much easier haha. Looks uglier but works perfectly!

boacvh · Mar 9, 2020

So today tried fragging my leather for the first time. It has grown so much that it was touching my torch and killing it. (First pic)
So I cutoff the four offending "fingers". The leather is attached to main rock so I had to do it in tank. It slimed quite a lot but the wife helped me with suctioning the water and slime with a python as I cut. Now to see if the new frags attach to the rocks. Did a large WC and running additional GAC just in case. So far a success, hopefully it heals and my torch recovers too.

boacvh · Mar 12, 2020

Some top down pics. I have been dosing the red Sea colors these last few days and I have to say I do notice a difference.

NY_Caveman · Mar 13, 2020

That is quite a bit of color!
Beautiful!

boacvh · Mar 14, 2020

NY_Caveman said:
That is quite a bit of color!
Beautiful!

Thanks! Around 80% from the 10 and 25 dollar bin at my LFS. They colored up nicely after a few months. Most of my wwc online sale purchases died unfortunately. I think I need more experience for those

boacvh · Mar 24, 2020

Playing around with the macro lense some more. I think I am getting better at this

NY_Caveman · Mar 25, 2020

Indeed! Awesome images!

boacvh · Mar 26, 2020

NY_Caveman said:
Indeed! Awesome images!

Thanks! Hope all is well over there!

boacvh · Apr 6, 2020

FTS. Haven't done one in a while. Video this time when everyone is out to eat

boacvh · May 5, 2020

So this week I made a terrible mistake. Scratch that, I can’t begin by accepting I am an absolute idiot right out of the door, so I will blame it on my Apex like many others here I have seen have done when something goes wrong. Bad apex! This had nothing to do with my own stupidity.

To summarize, I turned off my DOS for maintenance, forgot to turn it back on, went to the office, remembered it was off, so I turned it on from my phone. When I turned it back on, I inadvertently put in on the ON position, instead of AUTO… And yes, I dumped 743ml of 2 part into the tank, and didn’t notice until my high PH alarm went ballistic (dang you Apex, why couldn’t you have an alert that says “You are an absolute idiot, you just turned the DOS fully on”)

Anyway, here are some pics of what I created, had my poor fish swimming in milk!.

If you are wondering, the alk on water with that color is around 20!. And PH after alarm went off was 8.7. I couldn’t see the fish at all, so I can’t say if they were distressed or not.

Thanks to the prompt help from fantastic members of R2R, (on the tank emergency thread) I managed to do a couple emergency WC and at least bring it down to 9.5 within a couple hours. Emergency WC was 45 gallons!.

Lesson learned? Never, ever, change anything in your controller when you are not right infront of your tank!

In the end I had 3 casualties (so far). 2 birdsnest and 1 acro frag. On the other hand, I actually believe my montipora apparently loved this, I have never seen it with its polyps so radiant and so open.

And I could say in retrospect, maybe getting through this emergency was my true graduation from total noob to intermediate. I am actually glad to have pulled through it, could have been so much worse.

(Kidding aside, thank god for the PH alert on my Apex or everything would be dead now!)