First Reef Tank, 130g Custom LPS/Softie Tank

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MarsReefer

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Now that i'm regularly feeding the fish in the DT I noticed that my Durso drain started foaming almost exactly like a skimmer. I don't have a skimmer yet as it was a large purchase and I don't need one yet, but after looking at my overflow drain I thought, hey I can make that into a skimmer! So I did.

I bought a 6" PVC endcap, drilled a hole through it and cemented the air escape tube in my drain into it. It now collects skimmate just like a regular skimmer. It is before the filters so we'll see how it performs as my bio load increases, but for now it is a functional skimmer that only cost me $20 to build.

 
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My frag tank developed quite the bacterial bloom after I added my snails in there for QT. Bought a cheap UV filter on Amazon to clear it up. It’s always amazing how fast and effective UV is.

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Before UV

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24 hours later

also picked up two new frags! A galaxea and acan.

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they look pretty terrible under my QT light but they seem pretty healthy and happy. Did a bayer dip on them and now the 45 day wait to add them to the DT.

in other news I got a promotion at work which came with a hefty raise, so my sights have been set on a wider range and quantity of corals. New fish hopefully coming in a few weeks as well.
 
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Well its been a busy week. My frag tank is now loaded. Took advantage of RipTide Aquaculture Labor day sale and loaded up on some awesome coral. It just arrived today and is settling into the frag tank. Everything has started to open back up except the goni's so far. Here is a list of what I ended up getting:

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I also won two freebies in contests during the sale, one of which is another Galaxea i'm pretty sure, and the other is a Trumpet maybe? It isn't open yet and its a little hard to tell.

I also went ahead and placed an order from Dr reef's for two new Wrasses, quarintined so I don't have to worry about the wrasses and can just add them right in.

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The tank should be much more colorful and lively in about 45 days.
 
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Well I’m dealing with all sorts of issues right now. It seems I have dinos, so I’m blacking out my tank and dosing hydrogen peroxide in the evenings and microbacter7 in the mornings to try and beat it back.

I found an aptasia growing in the middle of my cloves and another growing in my frag tank. No idea where they came from but I moved the cloves back to QT and super glued the one I found in the frag tank. Have to coax the one on the clove out so I can snuff it out. For the best anyway since the clove would be in the dark in the DT anyway.

my frag tank is also struggling with Dino’s. I don’t think I can keep it dark long enough with all my corals in there so it’s just going to get siphoned out daily until QT is done, give everything a strong peroxide dip before going to the DT and then I’ll nuke the tank once it’s empty.
 
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Been very busy and haven’t had a chance to update this. In the best news my son finished his last heart surgery and is back home now.

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He’s quite the trooper.

also in good news the peroxide plus blackout plus bacteria crushed the dinos. They have come back in small patches after a few weeks so I’ve started maintenance doses of peroxide to keep it under control hopefully.

my corals have also finished QT and been added to the tank!!! They look awesome.

And finally I ordered two wrasses from Dr reefs and they arrived happy and healthy last week. They are really beautiful and love swimming through the rock work.

I’ll get hopefully a ton of pictures this week so I can show some stuff off.
 
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Ok picture time! still not sure how to get really awesome pictures like I see some people here have, but I was able to get some that are at least passable.

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Redbull Goni @RiptideAquaculture


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Alviopora

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Goni from a local raffle

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Green Galaxia

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Translucent frogspawn... Need to try again on this one. It has bright blue tips with a yellow interior, it's quite beautiful despite how bland it looks here.

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Peach Frogspawn. Tiny little guy but very pretty

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Exquisite Wrasse. Happy and healthy from Dr. Reef's

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Pintail Fairy Wrasse. One of the prettiest fish i've ever seen. Bonus swimming above my Acan garden.


I have more snails and some conch's on order to step up my clean up crew. I've been overfeeding to keep nutrients up, but my rocks are still soaking up phosphates. They bottomed out again when I missed a few days dosing. Dino's have reappeared. I upped my dosing to try and get my phosphates steady.

I haven't really seen much nutrient uptake yet. Haven't had to dose any kalk, my alk is steady from my daily 2g water changes.

One thing i've been struggling with is my salinity has been at 33-34 ppt for the last month. I mix up my water to 35 ppt and do daily 2g water changes. I even have switched my auto top off to salt water, but after a month i've only managed to raise my DT from 33 to 34 ppt. I'm not too worried about it as everything is happy and I have no reason to keep it at 35 exactly as far as I know, I just expected it to move faster, especially when I swapped my auto top off. My Hanna checker reads exactly 35 ppt in the calibration fluid, and 35-35.5 ppt in my freshly mixed salt water, so I don't think it is a faulty reading. I think having my tank in the basement just doesn't leave for a ton of evaporation so the replacement is slow.
 
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Things finally seem to be improving. Still have some Dino’s but I’m finally getting my phosphates stable. I’ve been dosing 0.2ppm daily for the past two weeks and every day it read 0 by the next day. Finally today it read 0.15 ppm instead of 0. I think my dry rock is finally saturated.

I’m starting peroxide dosing again and I’m seeing other varieties of algae finally taking hold.

I took advantage of the sale BRS had a few weeks back and got a very nice UV system as well. It’s running at ~500 gph for algae control which is basically all the water that goes down the overflow. Hoping that helps with the Dino’s as well even though mine don’t seem to go into the water at night.
 
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The holiday's got away from me and I realized I haven't updated this thread in quite a while. I'm still going through the ugly phases of my tank, but I can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I haven't seen any more dino's since I wiped them out and got my phosphate up. I did end up with a bit of a phosphate spike as I passed the point my rocks were absorbing phosphate and then overshot with feeding. This led to a horrible outbreak of hair algae and cyano which have been competing with each other ever since.

I bought a bunch more snails, along with 2 conch's which are amazing. They have basically scrubbed the bottom 3" of my tank of all algae.

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Can still see some cyano on the sand, but they are slowly churning up the sand bed and it already looks better than a week ago.

To cut down on the hair algae I turned on my refugium finally, cut an hour of whites out of my lighting schedule, and reduced my feeding slightly. I have a skimmer coming today which will hopefully allow me to up my feeding again without causing too much of a nutrient spike. After 3 weeks of manual removal the regrowth has slowed way down and I see more and more hair algae free areas, though it has been replaced by cyano.

I also added another half dozen fish, 5 zebra barr dartfish and one Royal Gramma. They add some great color and movement to the tank, and the dartfish pretty much all school together which is fun to watch.

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Dartfish with some hair algae and cyano.

Finally a full tank shot update along with a few of my goni's who are dong really well so far.

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Fish and corals are all pretty happy, just need to push through this algae and cyano and hopefully come out the other side with a nice tank.
 

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The holiday's got away from me and I realized I haven't updated this thread in quite a while. I'm still going through the ugly phases of my tank, but I can start to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I haven't seen any more dino's since I wiped them out and got my phosphate up. I did end up with a bit of a phosphate spike as I passed the point my rocks were absorbing phosphate and then overshot with feeding. This led to a horrible outbreak of hair algae and cyano which have been competing with each other ever since.

I bought a bunch more snails, along with 2 conch's which are amazing. They have basically scrubbed the bottom 3" of my tank of all algae.

IMG_8731.jpg


Can still see some cyano on the sand, but they are slowly churning up the sand bed and it already looks better than a week ago.

To cut down on the hair algae I turned on my refugium finally, cut an hour of whites out of my lighting schedule, and reduced my feeding slightly. I have a skimmer coming today which will hopefully allow me to up my feeding again without causing too much of a nutrient spike. After 3 weeks of manual removal the regrowth has slowed way down and I see more and more hair algae free areas, though it has been replaced by cyano.

I also added another half dozen fish, 5 zebra barr dartfish and one Royal Gramma. They add some great color and movement to the tank, and the dartfish pretty much all school together which is fun to watch.

IMG_8729.jpg


Dartfish with some hair algae and cyano.

Finally a full tank shot update along with a few of my goni's who are dong really well so far.

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Fish and corals are all pretty happy, just need to push through this algae and cyano and hopefully come out the other side with a nice tank.
Tank looks good though!!!
 
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Well about time for an update. I'm still endlessly fighting hair algae. I have managed to clear up the cyano best I can tell, but the algae persists. I am manually removing it once or twice a week. I even tried some Algaefix as a last ditch effort, but after 4 doses I saw no difference at all in the algae and I was worried about stressing my corals so I stopped.

I have a CBB and one spot foxface on order from Dr reef. I'm hoping the CBB will help with my aptasia problem and that the foxface will start to put a real dent in the algae problem. I may end up getting an urchin or two to help with the algae as well if the foxface can't out compete its growth.

The corals are all doing quite well except for my gonis which seem to be struggling. My frogspawn has probably grown by 40-50%, my GSP and firework cloves are spreading, and my acans all have multiple new heads. Overall i'm pretty pleased with the tank so far.

I just got a number of new corals from SBB which I think will be amazing, excited to get them in a few weeks. Even picked up a nice showpiece torch which i'm super pumped about.

Here are some pictures of my tank and corals

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Peach Frogspawn has nearly doubled in size since I got it.

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Picked up this very nice toadstool leather at my LFS

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Picked up my first torch during a black friday sale, its extended great and seems to be doing well.
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I think this is a lobo? I'm a sucker for the open brain corals, if he does well here i'll start branching out to more open brains that I can fill my sandbed with.
 
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Man I can't believe its been 7 months since I've updated this. Had a bunch of changes additions and losses since my last update.

My CBB died after only 2 days in the tank, but the foxface is doing great. In fact he is quite fat. He however HATES my camera, I guess he thinks its going to eat him because he darts away if I bring it even close to the tank. No good pictures of him in any case.

Between the urchins, larger corals, and fox face I finally have the algae mostly under control. My rocks still have a brown dusting on them where they are bare, but otherwise I have very little.

I got a bunch of new coral, most of which is doing very well. I had a beautiful new torch and hammer, but after about 3 months my urchin somehow dislodged the torch and knocked it face first into the hammer where it stayed all night until I found it the next day. They both died within 48 hours of that incident. My Galaxia and Leather both more than doubled in size, which unfortunately put the leather in stinging distance of the galaxia. It decimated it, so now I have a few very tiny leather frags that i'm trying to save. I think i'll probably trade in the galaxia soon since I can't keep anything within a foot of it now that it is so large.

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My other corals have exploded in size. Here are a few coral pics. I'll hopefully get a new FTS this week to update with as well.

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A worm with high fashion and practical utility: Have you ever kept feather dusters in your reef aquarium?

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