Foothill Corals 185

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Foothill Corals

Foothill Corals

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Haven’t done an update in a while. The tank has been doing well but I did have my first rtn/stn event in the two years the tank has been running though. I’m not sure if it was the brackets that hold my ATI Sunpower...they corroded and got crusty white stuff (looked like you what see on a bad car battery) that was falling in the tank or all the fires we had in CA. About 5-6 weeks ago I took my bone cutters and dug out all the Vermetid snails from the bases of my acros. This seems to have started event. I removed a ton of them from all the acros. I removed a single one from my Maleficent and that single hole started to rot away never seen anything like it I lost the whole coral in a few days. Then I started to loose random branches of my pink lemonade colony, it went on for a month or so before I decided to just frag it i also lost a single branch of the O.Tort. It has since stopped but it sucked watching that burn though my corals not knowing if or when it would stop.

Oh, I also added more flow as I was paranoid when all that was happening. It’s now 4x6095 and 2xMp40 plus still running the Seasweeps. In addition after a few weeks of this I finally got smart and turned my skimmer off untill the smoke was consistently gone.

Like I said not sure if it was all that smoke for weeks or these brackets. I could actually see the white crusties falling in the tank. I replaced them with stainless ones.
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The tank is full though and and have been selling a lot of frags. Not while the tank was having issues but before and since. So the wife let me get... actually encouraged me to get another tank for frags. Ironically I’ve been selling mostly zoas which are not really my thing but they grow like mad in this tank. So I got a IM 50EXT on sale last month. I’m not sure if it will be mainly for frags or for back up or for that torch garden that I have always wanted, more than likely it will be a bit of all those things. So far i’m Impressed it’s a nice tank. I got a small cabinet from Wayfair for the electrical stuff.
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I filled it with water two weeks ago and threw in a few pieces of some Fiji rock I had left over. I started my last two tanks with dry rock also but I usually bleach and soak the rock for a while fist. This time I just put it in and turned the lights on. I figured the sooner the ugly phase started the sooner it would be over and it is growing some ugly stuff already. I’m getting the impression this may be a more chalanging start up this time as the rock seems pretty dirty...we’ll see.

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I need to break out the camera and take some pics of the big tank. Some of the corals are getting pretty big.
 
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zzl630

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Love to see some new pictures. Recently purchased two sea sweeps and two sea swirls. Sps love the new random flow it’s getting. Wish there is a option for 180 degrees rotation.
 

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Bummer about the RTN but it sounds like your tank is working through it.

Those IM 50 ext's look really nice, been eye balling one myself; looking forward to watching yours develop and grow into another great reef.
 
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Foothill Corals

Foothill Corals

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Quick update on the the ugly phase of the 50 lagoon. A few days after that last pic it started to get really ugly. It started to get dinos, slimy bubbly brown yuk. I dosed ammonium chloride (aprox 20% of a start up dose) and it all turned to long stringy green hair algae in just a couple of days And the bubbles went a way.
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then I added a few hermits and snails less than two weeks later it looked like this and still does.
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I still haven’t even turned the skimmer on yet. Keep in mind this is dry Fiji not Marco so it was some dirty rock and I think that is actually a benefit as it keeps the tank from being too clean at start up. Last time I bleached then soaked the rock for months before starting and kept the lights off for weeks and it was a miserable start up.

So much easier and faster than last time even though I am still using the same rock. I think the worst thing for a new tank is to be too clean.

Key differences I did this time
1) Hit it with full light from day 1 (intensity and duration)
2) did not clean rock first
3) did not start skimmer (still haven’t)
4) added ammonia (again) at brown yuk phase (get green algea growing soon as possible, don’t want to see anything brown growing)
5) add CUC at rite time.
 
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Foothill Corals

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In the 185 it looks like one of my torches spawned. I have been looking at this little guy for about four months now. It started out perfectly symmetrical so I wasn’t sure what it was at first. Now it’s pretty clear it is a baby torch. i Cant get a good pic of it though, it’s in the middle of the pic on the wall.
8E4585FB-B5D8-46D9-870E-DF88B7A65709.jpeg
 

Algae invading algae: Have you had unwanted algae in your good macroalgae?

  • I regularly have unwanted algae in my macroalgae.

    Votes: 44 35.2%
  • I occasionally have unwanted algae in my macroalgae.

    Votes: 27 21.6%
  • I rarely have unwanted algae in my macroalgae.

    Votes: 9 7.2%
  • I never have unwanted algae in my macroalgae.

    Votes: 10 8.0%
  • I don’t have macroalgae.

    Votes: 31 24.8%
  • Other.

    Votes: 4 3.2%
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