Cycled123 Nano to 180g

[1WildBill]

Gorgeous corals.

 

[cycled123]

Gorgeous corals.

Thanks! Now if I can just get rid of the hair algae... but I know patience is key. I forgot to add on my post that I got CUC this weekend too

 

[cycled123]

One nice thing about working nights is that I get to see these guys feed on my days off

 

[Ento-Reefer]

I don't know how I missed your update with all of the photos?? I love that trigger!!!

The lobo is really nice. You guys got some great corals at the swap.

The first 6 months of a tanks life are usually the ugly stages for sure. The whole back of my tank has this short fuzzy brown algae growing. It doesn't show up well because of the black back so I am just leaving it for my tangs to chow down on. It is just too much work to try and reach the back for cleaning. I can live with it.

 

[cycled123]

Had a little scare yesterday... My cleaner shrimp shed but it was such an intact exoskeleton I thought he was dead when I first saw it.

My husband finally was able to start organizing our dry cabinet. In the process had to unplug the apex which caused it to loose connection with our router and had to start over. We decided to get a new router to be able to set up a static ip address so if we loose power it can connect back to the router without having to reconnect the apex to fusion and reprogramming. (Our original router was 7 years old) In doing this process we lost everything and had to reboot. Now only one of the EB8 power bars is showing up in fusion. I'm at a loss. I can't figure out why only one is connecting. Both have green lights. Any ideas?

 

[cycled123]

Set up dosing today. I had one mishap in which I dumped alk in. I was playing around in apex fusion and slid the slider to on to see if it worked and then knocked the mouse on the floor turning to see. Needless to say I dosed a bit more alk then intended. My husband had just did a water change so not sure how much I dumped in or how much the 10% water change effected but alk is now 10 (I'm aiming for 9). I turned off the dosing pump for now and will let alk come down a bit naturally. I will have to test before and after the water change too. I know we have higher alk in our water change water (our reef crystals salt usually runs about 11-12) My husband bent this pet safe 1/4in plastic sheeting over the top of the sump to hold the doser. There is also plastic bolts holding it level away from the glass. He also used this stuff as a shield to keep our deep sand bed in the refugium where we want it.



We got some scallops with no preservatives at the grocery store today and fed everything with a mouth. The plate really enjoyed its meal!


The refugium is growing nicely. Harvested several big hand fulls of the different algae today. This is post harvest. I forgot to take a picture before hand. The powder blue and yellow tang living in QT enjoyed a nice treat.


By far my favorite member of my clean up crew is this fighting conch. He keeps the sand bed stirred up and white. Still have a few diatoms but there is just a few places on the rocks that still have hair algae. The emerald and hermit crabs did a good job on that.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

Nice plate coral

 

[cycled123]

Nice plate coral

My husband keeps saying don't you have enough plates? I have 3 short tentacle and one long. But no, no I don't lol.

 

[1WildBill]

4 piece serving set. Lol

 

[Ento-Reefer]

I just noticed you have a powder blue in QT!! How is it doing?

A friend of mine is taking down her tank and offered me a powder blue tang, convict tang, and three lyretail anthias. I am going to pick them up on tomorrow. I am super excited and nervous at the same time. They went through qt when she got them back in November, and they have been in her 210g reef since January. I am praying my two resident tangs don't give then too much of a hard time.

 

[cycled123]

I just noticed you have a powder blue in QT!! How is it doing?

A friend of mine is taking down her tank and offered me a powder blue tang, convict tang, and three lyretail anthias. I am going to pick them up on tomorrow. I am super excited and nervous at the same time. They went through qt when she got them back in November, and they have been in her 210g reef since January. I am praying my two resident tangs don't give then too much of a hard time.

The powder blue and yellow tang in QT are from someone leaving the hobby and taking down their tank. They had the PBT for over a year and the yellow for 6 mo. They are doing well but are shy. We also have a copperband butterfly in separate QT that has another 1-2 weeks to go. We want to get the copperband established in DT first so unfortunately these guys might be in QT a little longer than 30 days. The copperband is not shy so we are hoping he establishes himself in DT quickly. We also still have the zebra dartfish in yet another QT. Occasionally they were flashing so did 2 rounds of prazipro thinking maybe flukes. These were the fish in with the mag foxface who died of velvet. They have been treated with a full 30 days of copper after the death of the foxface (42 days total) so I do not think they have velvet. I am currently treating with lifeguard and crossing fingers hopefully they will be ready for DT soon! They are eating like piggies and growing. I'm hoping at some point to get down to 1 QT again, lol! My son also wants his tank back (We commandeered it to QT the tangs. Its a 29 long and didn't currently have fish in it. He was trying decide what he wanted to put in next when we stole it.)

 

[Ento-Reefer]

The powder blue and yellow tang in QT are from someone leaving the hobby and taking down their tank.

Sounds similar to how I ended up with my PBT and convict. I hope my trust was well placed in foregoing qt for them.

It sounds like you have a lot going on..lol.. Your tank is going to look nice with all those fish

 

[cycled123]

New corals! Sorry so blue but I took some quick pictures with the cellphone.
Aquablue Bushy Acropora


Blue Actinodiscus Mushrooms


Purple Gorgonian


Green Hydnophora


Tank shot


I updated the firmware on the powerbar and restarted both the apex and fusion and was able to get my outlets working. Alk is holding steady at 9.4 with dosing. Testing at the same time in evening it has been exactly 9.4 for 4 days. I'm not going to mess with it, lol. Corals are all happy and I am seeing some growth. I'm not going to post them all but I took pictures of each coral and I will try to take monthly so I can track growth. Sometime this week we will most likely move the copperband and possibly the zebra dartfish out of QT into the big tank Not sure what our next fish will be. Probably whatever on our list that our LFS has in stock, lol.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

The tank is looking good!!

What is the orange and green coral in the front right? Is that a lobo? I love the colors on it.

 

[cycled123]

The tank is looking good!!

What is the orange and green coral in the front right? Is that a lobo? I love the colors on it.

Yep its a lobo One of my favorites too

 

[cycled123]

Tragedy has struck QT again and this time it's our fault. My husband topped off the 29g tang QT with ro water but had not topped off for a few days. Apparently this was too drastic of a salinity change. My son came down about an hour after and said the powder blue is sucked up against the filter. Both tangs were breathing extremely hard and fast. The blue after shutting off pump was just laying on the bottom and the yellow was swimming erratically. I immediately grabbed a bucket and tried to mix some salt into the water to make higher salinity but the powder blue was dead by the time I got it slightly higher. Before I added salt the water was testing 1.030! I have no idea how high it was before adding the half gallon of ro to the QT. The yellow tang is still alive but still breathing fast. The QT tank is now at 1.028. We will slowly bring this down over the next few days. I'm praying by some miracle this fish pulls through. Besides evaporation I think salinity must have been off on the last water change we did a week ago. The other QT tank that used the same bucket of saltwater for water change is also testing high. We have now recalibrated both of our refractometers and from now on are going to test with both and sterilize between uses (One refractometer we were using for dt and one for qt). I am so heartbroken

 

[Ento-Reefer]

So sorry to hear about this. I hope the yellow tang pulls through. I wonder if something else might have been bothering them? Usually fish can handle a drop in salinity much better and faster then an increase. Were they both eating well? Were you treating them for anything?

 

[cycled123]

Both have been eating great and no meds on board (or any sign of illness) Ammonia and nitrite 0 nitrate 100 but never have had an issue at that level. Water movement via powerhead and hang on back filter. All I know is fish ate, half gallon RO added, and then an hour later fish in major distress, salinity 1.030, pbt dead 5 min later. Yellow tang not normal yet but looks better then last night. Yellow even ate some nori.

 

[Ento-Reefer]

Both have been eating great and no meds on board (or any sign of illness) Ammonia and nitrite 0 nitrate 100 but never have had an issue at that level. Water movement via powerhead and hang on back filter. All I know is fish ate, half gallon RO added, and then an hour later fish in major distress, salinity 1.030, pbt dead 5 min later. Yellow tang not normal yet but looks better then last night. Yellow even ate some nori.

That sounds almost like poisoning. I would be sure and run fresh carbon in your filter. Really strange.

 

[cycled123]

Moved the Copperband and Dartfish to the DT on Friday evening. So far they are doing great. The Copperband loves having rocks to pick at again and the dartfish are mostly out at the top of the tank. No issues with aggression from anybody. Here is a short video


Also got a purple tip condy anemone for the 37g tank.


And lastly got a Sailfin Tang and a Powder Blue Tang for QT. So again have 3 qt's running. The yellow tang is acting normal again albeit a bit shyer that he is alone. We debated putting the other tangs together but as they are from different places we are keeping them separate. If all goes well we will add them to the DT at the same time.