Dodgersfan's 90 Gallon build thread

[Dodgersfan]

Also, the turbos are going back to the LFS tomorrow... I wouldn’t normally try to return a snail, but when they charge 5 bucks each for them... hopefully they’ll swap me for some more Nassys.

I’ve come home the past 3 days to frags knocked over, and this:

LFS better take them back, otherwise I can’t guarintee they won’t get loaded into a golfball launcher and fired off the back deck of the house into the woods... these things are like little drunk bulls in a china shop...

 

[Dodgersfan]

Youre speeding along! I find the plumbing & electrical stuff so intimidating. Its nice when people post bumps in the road, mistakes, etc. Reminds others problems can be addressed. Hurdles cleared just like everything else in life.

Thanks! Yeah, I’ve hit several points where I was feeling a bit discouraged... namely when I had to drain the tank to move it and tighten bulkheads. I had a moment of temptation to half-a** a fix but was quickly talked out of it by the good folks here and it turned out to not be nearly as time consuming as I thought it would be. Having this site and the community can help take a lot of the daunting-ness out of reefing.

 

[Dodgersfan]

Not sure if it is the fact that the turbo snails got the boot, or the reef roids I target fed them on Friday, but everything seems super happy, especially the poor blasto that the one turbo wouldn’t leave alone:

This one still hasn’t opened up fully, I had it on the sand bed to start, I’ve moved it mid way up, but it’s openness stayed the same:

Hammers are nice and open. I’m trying to figure out if that one I’ve got mounted horizontally there is a wall or branching:

Other happy corals:

Also, really exciting news: my galexea has sprouted a shirt ton of new heads... all around the base as far as I can see, it’s at least 6-8 heads but maybe more, I can’t see the back side:

You can see them better under the blues only:

Also, how long can sponges survive out of water? This one is sticking out of a piece of Fiji dry rock that did not have a ton of biological matter on it to begin with, I’m really surprised to see something lived...

In other news what looks like GHA has shown up (I saw a little on some of the frag plugs that I put in the tank, I wasn’t too worried about eliminating it since algae was bound to show up sometime - and I plan to have a lawnmower blenny- gotta have some food for him!).maybe I’ll luck out and skip the cyano phase all together.

I also seeded the tank with pods over the weekend and bought some phyto in a bottle to feed them (and the coral). Planning on dosing it twice a week.

The other half of my coral is coming on saturday, can’t wait!

 

[Dodgersfan]

Well the diatoms seem to be burning themselves out. All the corals seem to be doing really well, the big favia colony is starting to spread off of its plug and towards the rock, all the euphyllias have really good PE and the Galexea is growing like crazy, the new polyps are starting to look like mini versions of the big polyps. It’s got a couple 2” sweepers already, i’m Probably going to have to move it somewhere that isn’t so central.

One of the favias isn’t doing so hot, it’s gone white around the rim, I don’t think it’s getting enough light. I put it in the lowest light part of the tank, it’s got an overhang about 12” above, and only gets indirect light, looks like this spot might be a no go for corals, maybe I’ll try a softie there or something.

 

[Dodgersfan]

Got my shipment from yourreef yesterday! Everything looks great, I was short one zoa, but it wasn’t one of the top 3 I was most excited about so whatevs. I’m not sure which I’m missing, one of the zoas I got hasn’t opened yet, so the missing one is either a Keds Red or Wham-n-watermelon.


I got several micromussa:

2 rainbows:

An emerald rose:

A splinter rim colony:

And another really nice colony that I got as part of the 5 frag pack I won it looks like it could be another splinter rim, but this one has more purple and less teal:

Probably my favorites piece from this batch is this Favia Speciosa:

I also got what they called a Aussie berry favia, but I think these also go by the name joker favia:

And this Jason fox jack-o-lantern leptoseris which is another one of my favorites from this batch, it had encrusted onto the frag plug a little bit, so when I popped it off one little polyp broke off, it happened to be attached to a big chunk of glue, it would’ve been too small to handle otherwise, but I was able to glue it to a rock, we’ll see if it manages to grow.

A couple of neon candy canes:

And a meteor shower Cyphastrea:

I got 4 zoas, like I said only 3 have opened so far, the Rastas, radioactive dragon eyes, and devils armors, which are by far my favorites of the batch:

And the one guy who hasn’t opened yet... maybe not looking so hot:

I could use some help IDing some of the corals I got in the frag pack, they didn’t include what they were:

I’m pretty sure this one is a Hollywood stunner chalice:

And I think this one a turbinara/scroll coral, looks like the “LA Lakers” variety... I think they took note of my screen name and sent me an LA themed frag pack

No idea what this one is:

Don’t know about this one either but it might be the same type as the one above:

 

[leahfiish]

I think that last one is a leptastrea.

 

[Dodgersfan]

Could be... I don’t know, it looks a lot like some pictures I see of leptastrea but other pictures of it look a lot more fleshy and don’t look much like it. I haven’t seen anything else close in looking online though, so that might be what it is. The teal and purple one might be a leptoseris, it looks a bit like the jack-o-lantern....

 

[leahfiish]

Maybe a psammacora?

 

[Dodgersfan]

Ok... not gonna freak out.... unclench the butt cheeks... so nitrate has been dropping steadily for the last week, to the point it was at about 0.1 yesterday even though it was only 24 hours after a big feeding with reef roids... annnnnnnndddd.... we’ve got mother effin’ dino’s....

24 hours ago: just a little bit of stringy bubble tipped things...

This morning flipped the lights on just for a pic after a full night lights out: no bubbles on the stringy things

Today after a full 8 hour white cycle: Dino city.

Like I said.... not gonna freak out even though my cheeks are a little clenched after how many $$ of coral just went in the tank.


I’m focusing on staying positive and finding some encouragement in posts like these:

Youre speeding along! I find the plumbing & electrical stuff so intimidating. Its nice when people post bumps in the road, mistakes, etc. Reminds others problems can be addressed. Hurdles cleared just like everything else in life.

I’ve beat every hurdle so far and I’m gonna best this one too. Here’s the plan:

I’m upping the feedings from 1 reef roids per week to alternating target feeding reef roids and broadcasting LRS reef frenzy every other day. (So Monday: reef frenzy, weds: reef roids, fri: reef frenzy, etc) Whites are getting cut to 2 hours a day, blues will stay on their usual 12 hour rotation. If I don’t see enough of a slowing in their growth in the first few days I’m going to cut the whites completely for several days to a week. The blues and boost in feeding should be enough to keep the corals happy during this time, everything is LPS or zoa, so the silver lining is at least they’re big eaters. Lastly I’m dosing UCI vibrant, which is mostly bacteria and amino acids (presumably the type that likes to eat algae) and a little bit of vinegar.

I know people say to only change one thing at a time or else you won’t know what worked, but at this point my biggest concern is stopping it’s progress, it bloomed scary quick in just 24 hours today and some of it is on the stalk of one of my hammers and causing polyps on that side to retract a little. If they’re still expanding after a day or two I’m busting out the toothbrush and Turkey Baster. These little jerks are going down.

 

[Dodgersfan]

Also I was missing a few test kits and My LFS has 25% off all Red Sea test kits today, so I grabbed the Reef foundation pro kit and phosphate pro kit, phosphate was a little low at 0.16. Alk was also a little low at 7.7, cal looked good at 425 and mag looks good at 1280. I’ll retest in a week and after a small water change to see if they’re dropping appreciably and I need to start dosing or if the water changes are keeping up.

 

[Dodgersfan]

Day 2 of Dino war & it looks like we’ve stopped the enemy’s advance. Not sure which of the three changes it was, but these are what we call ‘first world problems’ I can deal with not knowing if it was the vibrant or the lights that brought the advance to a screaching half (probably not the boosted feedings, prolly too soon for that to have any effect).

Here’s this morning just flipped the lights on real quick for the picture, it’s about 10 hours after lights out.

And this afternoon right when the whites came on (changed it to 6pmon and 8pm off) There were some bubbles on the Dino’s in the upper half of the tank, which makes me think they were still able to photosynthesis some from the blues, or through the natural daylight... but we have laid waste to the Dino’s in the lower half of the tank, literally gone overnight. Hopefully we’ll see more progress in the coming days.

Also, what do you do when you’re worried about an outbreak of something taking out all the corals you just broke the bank on? By more coral of course! I found myself in a part of town I don’t normally get to today, and one of my favorite LFS’s happens to be in that area, and they specialize in LPS... they had some of the brightest Aussie gold torch frags I’ve ever seen, neon orange with neon blue tips... I almost pulled the trigger on one, but at $100 a pop I couldn’t quite do it. I did pick up a nice 4 headed teal hammer that was branches off really low and had 2 heads on each branch. That was promptly split into two 2 headed frags. Also got a yellow/green splatter hammer and 2 more torches... I did leave a spot for one of those gold torches maybe somewhere down the line...

And under blues

 

[Dodgersfan]

1 week in and the dino’s Are begging for mercy... moved the white light schedule back up to 4 hours a few days ago, did my second dose of vibrant on Sunday and the rocks are looking downright clean... the vibrant appears to be cleaning up the diatoms too...

One of the new torches died, it’s the one lower right in the pictures above, it had its tentacles pulled in at the store, so did another one that looked like it came from the same colony. It just never opened up, I target fed it a few times and it looked like it was eating but for whatever reason it just wasted away starting with the smaller head and then the large head a few days later. I just recently got a alk and cal test kit and found out that water changes haven’t been keeping up with tanks demand like I thought they were, in a week alk fell from 7.7 to 7.55 and cal fell from 425 to 405 despite about a 20% water change (which is more than I normally do). I also had a atk error over the weekend in which my ato dumped about 5 gallons of RODI into the system over the course of a few hours... the wife had her mother over and the two of them were sitting in the living room, nagging that the tank looked dirty. So I cleaned the glass to shut them up, (I don’t usually do all 3 sides at once) and the algae that was scraped off clogged the foam in the bubble trap and slowed it down enough that the atk sensor was constantly out of water. When I caught it I took 15 gallons out and put 10 gallons with a little extra salt in it back in. Not sure if that would’ve been enough to cause a coral that was barely hanging on to kick the bucket or not, the small head had died before that but the big head hasn’t fully retracted yet...

 

[Dodgersfan]

Alk and cal are trending up since I started dosing reef fusion, mag is falling, I’ll look into something to dose for that. Nitrates are still really low, but they are not zero (but 2 is pretty dang close). Phosphate is trending up, it’s at 0.1, it’s just frustrating that I can’t get the nitrates up.

Anyway, like I said above one of the torches I got from the LFS died, I took them some tank water and they tested it and didn’t Find anything wrong with it so they gave me store credit, I picked up a handful of cheap colorful corals.

Got a pink flowerpot that is neon hot pink under blues:

Full spectrum:

Blues only:

Also a really pretty chalice, can’t get a good picture of it but it’s purple and green base covered with very dense very fine bright orange dots:

And picked up 2 ricordea, got this one:

And this one, the LFS owner and I weren’t sure what to make of it, it might be bleached, or stressed from shipping (he had just got them in this week) but it does have pigment. It may darken up to look like the other one, but it would be really cool if it kept these colors though.

It looks somewhere in between these two pics in person. It’s not quite as vibrant as the first pic but not quite as washed out as the 2nd one in person.


It’s probably just not fully colored up yet, but I’m hoping it’s like an albino or something

 

[Dodgersfan]

Not much to update, but it’s been a while since I’ve done one. Nutrients seem to have stabilized at .1 for phosphates and 2 for nitrate. I wish that the nitrate was a little higher, but at least it’s not 0. I’m sure it’ll go up once I get fish in. The Dino’s (if that’s what they were) have subsided, now we’ve got GHA. I’m going to keep dosing the Vibrant until I get through the uglies, it really seems to be helping curb the outbreaks and keep things from getting too out of control.

Speaking of fish, I’ve settled on my QT plan: originally I was going to run a full 11 week fallow period in the DT to starve out anything that might’ve hitchhiked in with the corals, but I did have 2 zoas never open from the 2nd shipment I got, and the vendor doesn’t do refunds only store credit... luckily they’re having another live sale this weekend! So my arm has been twisted... I guess I HAVE to get some more corals... poor me... lol. Anyway what this has to do with my fallow period is this: we’re going out of town for a week in May, and I don’t want to have fish in QT while gone, so i’ll Either have to get them in before I go or wait till I get back to get them and start QT. Considering it will take a bit of time to find, order, and ship them, and the month they will be in QT, it’ll be practically July by the time I get the fish in the tank, and i just don’t want to wait that long. So I’ve done a bunch of reading and it looks like the 76 day ‘rule’ is just for one specific strain of ich that showed up in one test, but that test even noted that the majority of ich strains left the cyst stage between 10-14 days. Velvet, which I’m much more concerned with, only needs a 6 week fallow period. Same with brook. Black ich and flukes only need 4 weeks. I can do a 6 week fallow period - not to mention it’ll be 6 weeks fallow with only the corals from 1 vendor. I’ve only got coral from 3 vendors total, and 2 of them will have been in there for 9 and 10 weeks respectively when the fallow period is done. So i’ll Be protected from everything except one specific strain of ich, I could also be struck by lightning walking out the front door tomorrow. I can live with this level of risk.

I’ve also streamlined my QT plan a bit. Originally I was going to do full copper/cp treatment and 30’day quarantine for everything coming in, but the more I read the more I start to lean towards unnessecary meds and prolonged periods in a small barren tank might be more stressful and potentially detrimental to fish health and actually make them more susceptible to disease. Don’t get me wrong, I have prepared, I have two 20 longs and 2 10 gallons for qt/treatment. I bought nearly every med (including copper and CP) from this great thread. BY @Humblefish https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/medications-to-keep-on-hand.213574/ which is a fantastic resource. So I will be prepared to deal with anything that comes up, but I’m not going to prophylacticly treat for anything other than deworming. I’m going to run 3-5 fish through a roughly 2-3 week quarantine at a time (fish will all be 2-3” when added, no massive tangs going in this tank, it will be 75% wrasses) I’ll add them in 4-5 groups spaced out every 6-8 weeks. I’m going to TTM in the two 20’s and deworm during ttm and then observe for several days to a week and that’s it, if I see velvet or anything else pop up I’ll start treetment at that point. Everything I’ve read indicates that if it’s going to show up i’ll See it in the first 2-3 weeks. I’ve got 2 isolation tanks if I need to split anyone up for any reason.

Anyone have any critiques of that plan? I know it’s not zero risk, but nothing in life is, but I do feel like it’s low risk. But if anyone sees any potential gaping holes in the plan or tweaks that could be made to make it better I’d love some constructive criticism. I’d rather think about potential problems now than be having to scramble to deal with them after they happen.

 

[C-Reefer]

Just read this whole thread. Super cool build! Glad you got the dinos beat.

QT sounds good! I'm going through a deal right now where I've had to set up a QT for the first time ever... my 2 clowns got brook and died as I didn't have a QT then so now I have to pull the YWG and proactively treat with copper and metro and leave DT fallow for 2 and a half months. So I'll be trying it out with you. Couldn't stand losing my clowns, they were amazing fun little fish. It was horrible. Anyways, nothing wrong with what I could see and it sounds like you made the right decision for not proactively treating.

 

[Dodgersfan]

Just read this whole thread. Super cool build! Glad you got the dinos beat.

QT sounds good! I'm going through a deal right now where I've had to set up a QT for the first time ever... my 2 clowns got brook and died as I didn't have a QT then so now I have to pull the YWG and proactively treat with copper and metro and leave DT fallow for 2 and a half months. So I'll be trying it out with you. Couldn't stand losing my clowns, they were amazing fun little fish. It was horrible. Anyways, nothing wrong with what I could see and it sounds like you made the right decision for not proactively treating.

Thanks! I think the brook fallow period is shorter than the ich fallow period.... let me check... yep, 6 weeks.

This thread (and really everything stickied in that sub forum) are super helpful: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/fallow-periods-going-fishless.190324/

 

[Dodgersfan]

It’s been a while since I did an update, let’s start with a FTS for April:

Closeup of left side, or as I’m calling it euphyllia-land:

Right structure:

The view from the dining room:

The view from my favorite chair:

Some closeups:

Octospawns:

Hammer time:

Torches:

Everything is growing new heads, I couldn’t get a pic of the new heads coming in on my blasto, but there’s 5 and I’m super happy about it!

I’ve also decided to try my hand at SPS. I invested a whopping $15 bucks in 3 frags, a gamora Acro, no name milli, and a neon green birds nest, which I’m really hoping will grow:

We’ve got 3 new residents, 1 each of peppermint shrimp (which I only se when feeding). Coral banded shrimp which is als very reclusive, and this skunk cleaner shrimp who is super friendly and follows me around the tank and hops on my hand and starts cleaning it every time I’ve got it in the tank:

Coral banded hiding in his cave:

The hair algae battle has been slow going, I’ve been keeping up vibrant treatments, tried adding chaeto to the refugium, but it melted, I’ve heard vibrant can do that. Did 24 hours lights out followed by 1 week blues only, did a ton of manual removal and scrubbing with a toothbrush during that time and I’ve finally got it under control. I’m just now going back to 2 hours a day of whites. I don’t see any need to have them on any longer. There aren’t any fish yet and the corals pop under the blues. Anyone know of any possible detrimental effects I might be in for with this kind of light schedule (12 hours of blues and 2 hours of whites near the end of the blue cycle) basically it goes 8 hours blue, 2 hours full spectrum, 2 hours blue, off.

Right on cue cyano has started to show up as I’ve gotten the hair algae under control. Knock on wood so far it hasn’t had a massive bloom like GHA, Dinos, and diatoms did...

My parameters are holding pretty steady, ammonia is consistently 0, nitrate hovers around 2, at least its detectable now. Phosphates are a little high at 0.08, it’s likely what fueled the GHA bloom, they were above .1 for a while. I can’t figure out where they’re coming from. I may have been over feeding and I’ve cut that back a little. Nitrite has been stubbornly hovering at 0.05, which is really annoying me, it was at 0 for a long time, but I can’t get it back there. I’ve heard Dinos can kill off your beneficial bacteria, and I think that’s what might have happened, I’ve ordered some dr. Tims to help reseed the tank.

I’m also getting set to get the first batch of fish into QT next week or the week after, I’m planning to add the following:
- McCosker’s flasher wrasse
- Carpenter’s flasher wrasse
- linespot flasher wrasse
- blue flasher wrasse
- diamond watchman goby
- lawnmower blenny


The last two are for some help I desperately need keeping the tank clean, and I want to add all 4 flashers at once to limit aggression, I want them displaying at eachother, not ganging up on the new one. I’m worried that 6 fish at once may be a lot to start out with though, both in the 20 broader QT and in the possibly damaged biofulter in the DT being able to handle the large bioload all at once. I am doing TTM, so since they’ll go in new water every 3 days maybe I’m worried about nothing with the bioload in QT, were also going on vacation the week after they will be added, I’ve got a tank sitter but it’s a company, so if something goes wrong they can probably handle it, but it’s gonna cost me. I’m looking for some feedback here, would you do the 6 at once to start or just the 2 cleaners and get the wrasses after I get back from the trip?


Also I noticed these odd little spots on 2 of my hammers today (came from the same mother colony) I was worried they might be eggs from some sort of pest at first, but someone also said they thought it might be Gammetes, which would be pretty neat, winter if that would have something to do with the weird light cycle I’ve had the tank on...

 

[leahfiish]

I've never seen dots like that on a hammer. Really curious about what they are

 

[C-Reefer]

I love your euphyllia land! Euphyllia are my favorite corals ever. Won't it give you less lighting if you switch off whites entirely? Or will you do mixed?

 

[Dodgersfan]

I love your euphyllia land! Euphyllia are my favorite corals ever. Won't it give you less lighting if you switch off whites entirely? Or will you do mixed?

I'm not 100% sure on that. I'm using SB reef lights, this is their spectrum chart:

full explanation here: https://sbreeflights.com/sbox-reef-lights/1-sbox-basic.html


According to SB 450nm is where coral are most efficient, all of my 450nm diodes are still on, they also identify 420nm and 395nm as key wavelengths for maintaining coral colors, which are still on as well. the only "high range" wavelength that corals seem to use is 660, which is probably also the wavelength the GHA uses, which is off. the rest of the colors in the white spectrum really seem to be mainly for aesthetics. Although i am just interpreting data that others have gathered, i am by no means an expert. maybe i could entice @SB Reef Lights to stop by my humble build thread and comment on if there are any long term negative effects that might arise from running blues only for long periods of time?