First reef tank - Fluval M-90

[GalaxyBenny]

Alrighty then. I joined the forum last week, got some great advice from you guys on which used tank to purchase for my first tank, and now here we go with my build thread. I've been watching a ton of Youtube (mostly BRSTV to be honest) and also some specific threads on the Fluval M-90 that I purchased. I'm really excited to get started, but feel like the right way to go about this is to be as patient as possible with the process to try to eliminate as many issues as possible. I'm going to do my best to post pictures of the build (over these first few weeks for sure) and then to give updates as time allows. As I mentioned in the title, this is my first reef tank (frankly my first fish tank), so I know I have a LOT to learn. But again, even silly stuff like putting water/citric acid in the tank was fun, so I'm sure "actual" fun stuff will be awesome.

My goals are a softy/LPS tank with a few fish. I don't currently have desires for expert fish/corals, I just want a cool looking tank that I and the family will enjoy. I guess from there we'll see if I catch the bug and want to make it more and more crazy.

So here is what I purchased, a Fluval M-90 with stand:

The stand very clearly wasn't made exactly for this tank, so I'm going to do a few modifications to raise the tank up (about 3" of the bottom of the tank is hidden). And I think I'm also going to end up painting it all black to make my better half happy.

To go along with the tank here is the equipment I've acquired to date:
Fluval marine LED light (came with the tank) - I know it's not ideal, but I've seen a lot of Youtube videos where folks have successfully grown softies and LPS. So I'll give it a go
Sicce Syncra 1.5 Return Pump
Nero 3 circulation pump (one for now, I'll add a second when the corals come in a few months)
Ehiem Jager 125W heater with Inkbird controller
14g Biocube - The guy threw this in, said to use it for my quarantine tank

For my aquascape I purchased some dry rock from a former reefer which is currently in bleach (more on that later) and a bag of CaribSea special grade reef sand.

I've also purchased a bunch of the start stuff for water prep/testing:
BRS RO/DI system
API test kit
Refractometer
Tropic Marin pro salt
Etc.

So after spending lots of money and not actually "doing" anything, I started doing prep work for the tank.

Rock - As I mentioned I purchased used rock (has been dry for a few years) but it had a decent bit of gunk on it. After doing some research I decided to try the bleach method. So I put the rock, 15 gallons of tap water, and 1 gallon of bleach in a Brute container and it's been sitting now for 4 days. I pulled out one piece today, just to have a look. It really seems like it's getting clean, so I'm super happy with that. I'm going to let that soak until Friday/Saturday. The current plan is to empty the bleach water, rinse everything well with DI water. Then I'll fill it with 15 gallons of DI and add a decholorinator and let it soak until my chlorine test strips show I'm good to go. Then I'll take the rock out, rinse it again, and hopefully be good to go.

Before I put it into the bleach my wife and I did mess around a little bit with a sample aquascape. It's not final, but this is what we were thinking when we set it up outside the tank:

I should have taken a little different angle, but hopefully you get the gist. I wanted to leave a few islands for some of the more aggressive spreading LPS. And otherwise just tried to make something that looked interesting. But thoughts are always welcome.

So back to the tank/stand. For those that don't know the Fluval M-90 is an AIO with a 4 chamber sump:

My current thought is that I'm going to use the first chamber for some filter floss and probably some extra rock/rubble (in a basket). The heater will go in the second chamber with the option for a future skimmer. The third chamber will be empty but ready for a possible refugium. And the final chamber is of course the return. I saw in one of the build videos where the guy put another egg crate basket in this chamber for carbon and/or GFO. So when it comes time for those that is probably what I'll try.

The tank didn't have a lot of calcium build-up, but it had some and was dirty, so I filled it with DI water and then added citric acid. I'm going to let that circulate to clean out the return pipe (if there was anything in there). As I mentioned above, just filling the tank and watching the water go around was a blast:

I haven't scrubbed the glass at all, I "assume" all the bubbles are just from dirty spots that allowed an air bubble to form. Either way, it is cool to see the tank with water in it.

Regarding the stand, it seems to be really well built, my wife just doesn't think the light oak will fit with our home, hence my comment about painting it. I will also probably build a removeable shelf for the sump area (since I'm not currently using it as a sump). It's a really huge space, but has a lot of wasted vertical space without a shelf. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to keep a 5 gallon bucket of DI under the for topping off, along with a lot of my other gear (test kits, fish food, tank cleaning stuff, etc. etc.)

Hopefully that at least gets the ball rolling here. In terms of "path forward", my goal is to get things initially setup on Christmas Eve (it's a present for me, and we're still keeping up Santa for the kiddos). So as soon as the rocks are done bleaching and rinsed I'm going to start the cycle in the brute trashcan (with Dr. Tim's and ammonium chloride). I know the cycle won't be finished in a week, but at least that way it gets a start. On Christmas Eve I'll get the tank setup in the house, add in the rock/sand, and utilize the water from the Brute as well. Once the cycle is finished enough for a fish I'll let the kids pick out the first fish (probably a clown or pair of clowns) and then we'll take it extremely slow from there. I'm planning to teach the kids (and myself) patience with a nice long cycle (lights off) to try to let all the good bacteria get established. Once things are looking really stable, then we'll look at turning the lights on and adding our first corals.

Anyway, I will keep posting updates as I get time. Thanks in advance for all the help and advice that I'm sure I'll get on the forum. No advice is too dumb for me . I'm looking forward to being a part of the reefing community.

Cheers!
David

 

[Idech]

Congrats on your first tank ! Prepare yourself mentally for the challenges to come.

The current plan is to empty the bleach water, rinse everything well with DI water. Then I'll fill it with 15 gallons of DI and add a decholorinator and let it soak until my chlorine test strips show I'm good to go. Then I'll take the rock out, rinse it again, and hopefully be good to go.

You don’t have to waste DI or rodi water. Just use plain tap water and let it sit for a few days. Then let it dry in the sun if you can.

 

[GalaxyBenny]

I wish. Sadly the high here in the next 7 days is 20 degF and there is an unfriendly cloud each day. I'm guessing it's not going to dry very quickly. I could put it on my garage floor and blow one of those floor fans over it, but I guess I just wanted to be double sure that the bleach is all gone. It takes about 15 gallons to cover all the rock, which is annoying, but I guess not the end of the world if it makes sure no bleach gets in my tank.

At the end of the day, do you agree that as long as I test my saltwater just prior to the cycle start and there is no chlorine, that I should be good to go to add the bacteria? That's really all the sun/drying is doing right? Making sure all the free chlorine is gone?

 

[Idech]

At the end of the day, do you agree that as long as I test my saltwater just prior to the cycle start and there is no chlorine, that I should be good to go to add the bacteria?

Absolutely ! Oh, and also test the water the rock sits in.

 

[GalaxyBenny]

Right. So I was going to empty the container (with all the nasty water and bleach) then rinse the rocks and manually remove anything remaining on them (hopefully nothing with a week of bleach. I looked at one of the top rocks today and it was looking really good.)

Then I was going to put another 15 gallons of fresh RO/DI this time and use the dechlorinator and soak it for a day, making sure at the end the test strip reads 0.

Then I was going to dump that water (seems a waste but…) and replace with freshly made salt water. Add rocks, check for chlorine, if 0, dose the bacteria and start the cycle.

I guess the only question is whether it is indeed an unnecessary waste to dump that 1 day old RO/DI. The alternative would be to just pull out the rock, mix in the salt, then put the rock back in. Thought?

Finally, reflecting on your first sentence. Should I be expecting challenges because I’m suggesting doing something stupid? Or just because I’m a newbie reefer and challenges are the name of the game? Either way, should be interesting.

Cheers!

 

[GalaxyBenny]

Quick update, I got the stand all painted. I’m really happy with how it turned out.

Before:


After priming:


3 coats and of finished color:


It’s pretty cold here, hence the heater setup in my garage so that the paint would actually cure. I can’t wait to see it with the tank on it. Tomorrow is the day.

I also started the cycle of my rocks in the Brute trash can. I mixed up my new salt water, added the rocks, Dr. Tim’s one and only, and the ammonium chloride. I think we’re 5 days in following the dosing instructions from Dr. Tim. Honestly…nothing has happened so far. My ammonia reads the exact same and the nitrite hasn’t come up at all. I know Dr. Tim said without sand the cycle will be slower, so I hope that’s all that’s going on. Either way I guess it’s getting added to the tank tomorrow, with sand since it will be the real setup. If it doesn’t take off at that point then perhaps I’ll add more Dr. Tim’s.

I’ll post some pictures again this weekend with the tank fully setup.

 

[GalaxyBenny]

Oh, actually something I forgot to ask earlier. A question about how full I should keep the back sump in my AIO tank. I realize that the only chamber where the water level changes is the return pump chamber, but my question is, how full should I keep that chamber? Here is what I mean:

Return pump chamber essentially full:


Return chamber ~50% full:


I like the chamber when it’s mostly full because it’s quieter. But I could see that having it a little less full leads to some splashing which is probably good for aeration.

Thoughts? I guess I was thinking that prior to getting an ATO if I keep it full then I’ll know to fill it when it gets noisy. But if the aeration is important for O2, then I’ll leave it less full. Any advice is much appreciated.

Cheers!
David

 

[GalaxyBenny]

Hey all -

Whelp, Christmas has come, so Santa officially delivered the tank to it's final home in our house. And the family is EXCITED! My dad helped me move everything in on Christmas Eve after the kids went to bed. I have to admit, it was quite the little project to get the tank all setup and leveled, transfer the cycling rock from the the Brute trash can to the tank, sand, salt water, etc. But we had a great time and we got it all setup.



Unfortunately the cycle is still going really slowly. I was following the Dr. Tim's instructions, but it was a "bare bottom" in the Brute, so maybe that really slowed things down? Regardless the ammonia was up at the 4ppm level so I stopped adding drops per the instructions, but it seemed to basically be stalled there. When I was at the LFS they recommended doing a 20% water change to get the ammonia back in the 2ppm level and to dose some Microbacter Start to help things along. It's only been one day since I did that, so we'll see what happens.

While we were at the LFS we also picked up our first two baby clown fish to hang out in our QT tank. I think they're doing well, but I'm also a total newbie. They've made it 1 day at least, fingers crossed we don't kill them.

We're still having a blast and watching them grow. Can't wait to see them in the display tank.

 

[GalaxyBenny]

Hey all -

So I have a good news/bad news update today. Good news first. The main DT looks to be nearly cycled!! I've been checking the ammonia and nitrite daily. Ammonia started a downward turn maybe 5 days ago (from ~2ppm) and isn't totally yellow with the API test kit yet, but it is 100% less than 0.25. It has looked basically the same color for the last 2 days, so perhaps that is what 0 looks like. Anyway, nitrite had been really climbing in that time (makes sense) and had gotten up to between 2-5ppm. I was actually contemplating a water change just to not let it get too high, but yesterday it was solidly 2.0 so I thought maybe it was headed the right direction. Well today it registered effectively 0-0.25ppm. Big jump, so clearly I'm going to monitor it for a few more days, but it's looking good. Exciting times.

The second good news is that I actually found 2x AI Prime 16HDs with rigid mounts on Facebook marketplace for a good price. Since I know there was a lot of concern over the Fluval light, I figured I should strike while the iron is hot. So now I need to get those mounted up, but I'm excited to know that I will 100% have the right lights now to keep things healthy.


Now, the bad news. It looks like one of our clownfish might have an internal parasite. I noticed just a little bit of white stringy poop on Saturday so then I watched him extra closely on Sunday. I saw it a second time on Sunday, a string maybe 1/4" long of white poop. I'm not a fish expert at all, so I'll take your advice here, but everything I've read said that it seems likely he has a parasite. So I ordered some medications from BRS. I just started their first dose yesterday (I mixed API General Cure and Focus per the recipe HumbleFish gives). They ate it right up so hopefully that will clear up anything if it is parasites. I will admit, as I read more whilst waiting for the medications to arrive it seems like there are 50 different opinions on whether treatment was even required (E.g. clowns just do that sometimes or if your clown was under some stress they do that sometimes). Either way, the risk seems pretty low to treat them with the medicated food, so why not.

Clearly we're a little worried about the little guys, but hopefully we can get them all healed up.

That being said, question. IF the DT finishes it's cycle here, do I need to keep ghost feeding and/or ammonium chloride every few days just to keep the bacteria going (since there won't be any livestock in there to do so)? Or how should I go about that? I think Dr. Tim says it will be fine without a food source for weeks/months? Perhaps it would be smart to just dose 2ppm ammonium chloride a day before I actually plan to add them and see if the nitrifiers can still bring it to 0ppm in 24 hrs. If so, good to go?

Alas, we really were excited to get them in the DT. I guess a bit more patience for us all .

 

[Sean Clark]

Alrighty then. I joined the forum last week, got some great advice from you guys on which used tank to purchase for my first tank, and now here we go with my build thread. I've been watching a ton of Youtube (mostly BRSTV to be honest) and also some specific threads on the Fluval M-90 that I purchased. I'm really excited to get started, but feel like the right way to go about this is to be as patient as possible with the process to try to eliminate as many issues as possible. I'm going to do my best to post pictures of the build (over these first few weeks for sure) and then to give updates as time allows. As I mentioned in the title, this is my first reef tank (frankly my first fish tank), so I know I have a LOT to learn. But again, even silly stuff like putting water/citric acid in the tank was fun, so I'm sure "actual" fun stuff will be awesome.

My goals are a softy/LPS tank with a few fish. I don't currently have desires for expert fish/corals, I just want a cool looking tank that I and the family will enjoy. I guess from there we'll see if I catch the bug and want to make it more and more crazy.

So here is what I purchased, a Fluval M-90 with stand:

The stand very clearly wasn't made exactly for this tank, so I'm going to do a few modifications to raise the tank up (about 3" of the bottom of the tank is hidden). And I think I'm also going to end up painting it all black to make my better half happy.

To go along with the tank here is the equipment I've acquired to date:
Fluval marine LED light (came with the tank) - I know it's not ideal, but I've seen a lot of Youtube videos where folks have successfully grown softies and LPS. So I'll give it a go
Sicce Syncra 1.5 Return Pump
Nero 3 circulation pump (one for now, I'll add a second when the corals come in a few months)
Ehiem Jager 125W heater with Inkbird controller
14g Biocube - The guy threw this in, said to use it for my quarantine tank

For my aquascape I purchased some dry rock from a former reefer which is currently in bleach (more on that later) and a bag of CaribSea special grade reef sand.

I've also purchased a bunch of the start stuff for water prep/testing:
BRS RO/DI system
API test kit
Refractometer
Tropic Marin pro salt
Etc.

So after spending lots of money and not actually "doing" anything, I started doing prep work for the tank.

Rock - As I mentioned I purchased used rock (has been dry for a few years) but it had a decent bit of gunk on it. After doing some research I decided to try the bleach method. So I put the rock, 15 gallons of tap water, and 1 gallon of bleach in a Brute container and it's been sitting now for 4 days. I pulled out one piece today, just to have a look. It really seems like it's getting clean, so I'm super happy with that. I'm going to let that soak until Friday/Saturday. The current plan is to empty the bleach water, rinse everything well with DI water. Then I'll fill it with 15 gallons of DI and add a decholorinator and let it soak until my chlorine test strips show I'm good to go. Then I'll take the rock out, rinse it again, and hopefully be good to go.

Before I put it into the bleach my wife and I did mess around a little bit with a sample aquascape. It's not final, but this is what we were thinking when we set it up outside the tank:

I should have taken a little different angle, but hopefully you get the gist. I wanted to leave a few islands for some of the more aggressive spreading LPS. And otherwise just tried to make something that looked interesting. But thoughts are always welcome.

So back to the tank/stand. For those that don't know the Fluval M-90 is an AIO with a 4 chamber sump:

My current thought is that I'm going to use the first chamber for some filter floss and probably some extra rock/rubble (in a basket). The heater will go in the second chamber with the option for a future skimmer. The third chamber will be empty but ready for a possible refugium. And the final chamber is of course the return. I saw in one of the build videos where the guy put another egg crate basket in this chamber for carbon and/or GFO. So when it comes time for those that is probably what I'll try.

The tank didn't have a lot of calcium build-up, but it had some and was dirty, so I filled it with DI water and then added citric acid. I'm going to let that circulate to clean out the return pipe (if there was anything in there). As I mentioned above, just filling the tank and watching the water go around was a blast:

I haven't scrubbed the glass at all, I "assume" all the bubbles are just from dirty spots that allowed an air bubble to form. Either way, it is cool to see the tank with water in it.

Regarding the stand, it seems to be really well built, my wife just doesn't think the light oak will fit with our home, hence my comment about painting it. I will also probably build a removeable shelf for the sump area (since I'm not currently using it as a sump). It's a really huge space, but has a lot of wasted vertical space without a shelf. I'm hopeful that I'll be able to keep a 5 gallon bucket of DI under the for topping off, along with a lot of my other gear (test kits, fish food, tank cleaning stuff, etc. etc.)

Hopefully that at least gets the ball rolling here. In terms of "path forward", my goal is to get things initially setup on Christmas Eve (it's a present for me, and we're still keeping up Santa for the kiddos). So as soon as the rocks are done bleaching and rinsed I'm going to start the cycle in the brute trashcan (with Dr. Tim's and ammonium chloride). I know the cycle won't be finished in a week, but at least that way it gets a start. On Christmas Eve I'll get the tank setup in the house, add in the rock/sand, and utilize the water from the Brute as well. Once the cycle is finished enough for a fish I'll let the kids pick out the first fish (probably a clown or pair of clowns) and then we'll take it extremely slow from there. I'm planning to teach the kids (and myself) patience with a nice long cycle (lights off) to try to let all the good bacteria get established. Once things are looking really stable, then we'll look at turning the lights on and adding our first corals.

Anyway, I will keep posting updates as I get time. Thanks in advance for all the help and advice that I'm sure I'll get on the forum. No advice is too dumb for me . I'm looking forward to being a part of the reefing community.

Cheers!
David

I had the same tank way back, I liked it and still have it somewhere in the basement. Maybe your build will inspire me to dig it out and use it for something. Good luck!

 

[GalaxyBenny]

A couple more updates. The clownfish are still in the QT being medicated (looking promising, so that's good). While I am waiting on all that I decided to test out the lighting on the tank. A friend had a PAR meter that he brought over so we could measure the various areas on my aquascape. I figured that way I can start planning for corals based on where they might like the light. Anyway, this is what we came up with:


First off the Fluval Marine 3.0 that I originally purchased with the tank (baseline). As you'll see, it was actually a lot better than I expected based on all the "negative" feedback I had heard. I think I could have grown some pretty decent softy/LPS corals in that tank with the light as is. I think BRS talks about 75-150 for LPS, which a lot of this tank was well within. BUT, I've got the new lights, so on we go.

Next I mounted the two AI Prime 16HDs on the tank. I essentially followed the advice from BRSTV Investigates with regard to mounting. I mounted them 9 3/4" in from each edge (BRS recommended 10", but that was on a full 36" tank and this is just slightly less than 36"). And then I went with 8" height above the water for two reasons.

1) It happens to be the exact height if I mount them to the top of my lid (which I plan to do)
2) 8" was the recommended height for a 12" cube. Since my tank's display area is only 12" deep (versus the 18" they tested on the 40 breeder), I decided to go with this to prevent too much light spill to the front and back. And I figured my scape has a bit of a hole in the middle anyway, so if there was a little less light there, so be it.

I also used the BRS blend to get their target spectrum and for the first test we set the lights to 100% output.

As you'll see, there was a pretty big jump in the PAR (I guess expected with the better lights). Based on the BRS targets perhaps I couldn't grow SPS in the ENTIRE tank, but there are definitely a lot of areas that meet their expected range of 200-300 for SPS.

Finally I decided to turn the lights down to to a point that the tops of the scape were seeing ~250 PAR instead of 300 PAR (just to avoid TOO much light as the corals grow taller and get closer to the water's surface. I will admit, this is the one area where I'm annoyed with myself. I used the "two finger" method in the AI app which I was told would scale all the light colors equally as you reduced them. So I used the method until the PAR on the top of the rocks was in the 250 range. I then took all the measurements and packed stuff up. It was only THEN that I noticed that AI did not actually scale everything the same. I don't know if it was because of the "overdrive" settings and the fact that UV/violet were at 167% versus 100% or what, but after scaling the actual numbers in the app were:

So yea. My bad for not checking them. But I really have no idea what the alleged "two finger" method is doing, since none of them match. Oh well, live and learn. Either I need to refine my phone skills or just do the numbers manually. Either way, this is the PAR I got across the tank at these settings. I was more happy with this setting and I think this is probably roughly where I will start once the lights come on. From everything I've read it's easier to kill a coral with too much light than not enough. So I think we'll start here and if they don't seem happy/colorful/growing/etc. then I can always bump up the lights in 6-9 months or whatever.

So yes, now I have that established. Just need to wait another few months for things to stabilize and then start the coral journey. Baby steps

 

[GalaxyBenny]

Oh, I also finally spent some time in the bottom of my stand doing wire organization, initial lighting, etc. This was all kicked off by purchasing a ReefKeeper Lite from a friend to run my ATO. I started playing with it and now just have a couple features setup (like using Standby to shut off my return pump and heaters for water changes). I am 100% the type of person that would love to play with all the fun settings that an Apex would offer, but it's a little out of the budget for now. That being said, I'll probably be on the hunt for my ReefKeeper components (I know the company went out of business, so I've started to search Ebay and otherwise to see if I can get any more modules, power strips etc.). If you guys know of other good places to find used reef equipment (outside of Facebook Marketplace, Ebay, this forum, etc.) please let me know.

It's still a work in progress, but here is a shot with some shelves I built along with some temporary LED lighting to see how I want to manage that. Please ignore the small RO/DI water bucket, clearly the plan is for a bigger one, I was just using that to do some testing to confirm the actual pump output rate given my tubing/head loss to the sump chamber in my tank. And ignore the Inkbird 80degF setting. I am running the tank extra warm per Dr. Tim as part of the cycle. There are no fish in there at this point, so before I add them I'll cool that back down. Dr. Tim just said elevated temp would help with bacteria replication, which I figured was a good thing on a new tank/new rock.

I'm having so much fun and I don't even have silly fish in the tank . I can't wait for that.

 

[Zarabyte]

Man if we had YouTube and internet wonders when I was 20 . Looking very nice there looks like you have everything under control keep going

 

[dmsc2fs]

the color you picked for the stand/canopy looks fantastic! I am a bit confused; however, on you sump. You asked about water level in the first chamber in a post above but it looks like you aren't using one in your stand? Did you place it somewhere else or decide to abandon it?

Your Clowns in QT. That is exactly what QT is for, get them healthy before they move into your DT. It is easier to dose, treat, medicate a small QT vice trying to find out what meds will kill your livestock in your QT. Great work!

Is your rockscape stacked on each other or did you use superglue or epoxy to connect the pieces? The tallest vertical piece and your platform piece both look like they will make for an unhappy event should you have some diggers like goby, pistol shrimp, etc that decide to change up the landscape for you. Something to consider.

 

[GalaxyBenny]

Hey dmsc2fs -

Sorry for the confusion. Since it's an AIO I more meant "sump chamber," as in the back chamber in the AIO that houses all the heaters, return pump, etc. Since it's an AIO I'm not concerned about water level with regard to overflowing the tank (I hear that is an issue, or can be, with a sump if you set the levels wrong). I more just didn't know if it mattered from an aeration standpoint to leave that return chamber "empty" enough that water flowing from chamber 3 to chamber 4 would splash down into the water, versus more or less passing into the same level water if it was "full". Does that make more sense?

With regard to the rockscape, I used both epoxy and gel superglue. For the tall vertical piece on the left I actually made a foot with epoxy to help stablize it. Then I glued that to the other larger rock that it's resting on to give even more support. Everything is then set on the bottom glass and filled with sand around it (I heard that was better than resting it on the sand for the exact reason you mentioned, diggers undermining the sand and causing a topple). That being said, this is still obviously my first tank, so I don't really know how stable is "stable". If I push hard on the top of that rock clearly I could push it over. But a nudge or bump won't move it. If that makes sense? Thoughts?

 

[GalaxyBenny]

Just a quick one, the fish seem to be healthy after their General Cure food dosage, so it was time to drop them in the tank:



They seem happy and are eating. Onward and upward.

 

[GalaxyBenny]

It's been awhile, but in a lot of respects there hasn't been too much going on. But, time for an update.

We finally got some of the fish that I had purchased from the LFS and had them QT because of a business trip I was taking. We brought home a Benggai cardinal, yellow watchman goby, and an orchid dottyback.



The YWG found a home (for now at least), it has been super fun to watch him.



Because we're getting another Benggai and a Starry blenny (they didn't make it through QT), I decided to put the orchid dottyback into my clean QT tank, just to make sure she was the last addition to hopefully avoid any aggression issues. I had a few worries at first because all the new fish didn't seem to be eating (I had only been feeding my clowns TDO pellets), but as I picked up some LRS Reef Frenzy Nano I tried that and all the new fish devoured it. I've heard they might eventually take to the pellets, but for now I've been feeding the frozen food in really small batches 2-3 times per day. They seem happy, so that's great.

Many of you probably saw my thread in the "fish" forum about the case of the missing dottyback, so I won't repeat it here. Needless to say, she stressed me out (darn fish), but is back now and still seems happy.

While I was at the LFS I also picked up a very small CUC and a tester coral, all of which got dropped into my coral/invert QT tank.



The CUC I purchased was just 2x Trochus snails and 1x Babylonia snail. I also got a tiger pistol shrimp which will hopefully pair with my YWG. And finally, a Kenya tree coral to start. I dipped the Kenya tree in Coral RX Pro and of course acclimated the inverts. They all seem happy at this point. Then on Sunday I went over to a local reefers place and he gave me some free frags. They are some sort of plating monti. They were definitely mad about the peroxide and Coral RX dips, but are happier now, a couple days later. We'll see if I can keep a few corals alive.

Because of the SPS coral I also started testing calcium/alk in the tank. Since I'm using the Tropic Marin Pro salt my alk was decently low, 6.7 dkh, so I used some of the RPM 2part to get it up to the ~9 dkh range over the course of a couple days. Now I'll keep an eye on it and try to keep the levels consistent.

Anyway, I think that's the update for now. Still having a blast Thanks for everyone's advice and support.