How not to start a reef tank, my first reef tank build

[Why-Me]

Must be something going on, my duncan has skipped a beat in my tank and I've done all sorts of things to it, like temp swings, salinity swings, drained the entire tank for 45 min and refilled, still looks happy as can be.

 

[living_tribunal]

Must be something going on, my duncan has skipped a beat in my tank and I've done all sorts of things to it, like temp swings, salinity swings, drained the entire tank for 45 min and refilled, still looks happy as can be.

Agreed. Everyone is doing great except him and he’s always been Hardy.

I think maybe a Dino strand is stuck in him. Leading up to the full closure, he always had like half of his head closed. It looked like it was pinched or something.

The toxicity is out of the water and my params are about the same as ever except for the higher nitrates and phosphates which wouldn’t close him up.

I’m going to first try moving him to a lower flow spot. If that doesn’t work then I’ll be taking him out and trying to turkey bast our whatever is inside of him.

 

[Why-Me]

Good idea.
Only time my zoas close is when there's something stuck in them, usually when feeding a piece of mysis will fall directly into them and they'll close up and try to eat it lol

 

[living_tribunal]

So I moved my Duncan, there was no movement.

So I tried hitting him with a turkey baster. Detritus came out of his mouth and there are brown spots on his deflated polyps

I’m worried that he didn’t make it and maybe has some kind of bacterial infection. He’s not moving at all.

I’m going to coral rx him right away.

 

[living_tribunal]

He didn’t even respond to being added to coral rx... I think he’s dead.

 

[living_tribunal]

Here’s another picture, I’m timid to put him back in the frag tank because of the brown dots. It doesn’t look like brown jelly disease but it doesn’t look good either.

 

[living_tribunal]

I chunked him :/ he had polyps coming off. I really doubt he was alive. He didn’t move an inch.

 

[Why-Me]

You learned a valuable lesson, cut off the hand to save the arm...
You're better off cutting your losses before they're all infected (if it's an infection) and you did the right thing. Sorry you had to do it though, it sucks.

 

[living_tribunal]

You learned a valuable lesson, cut off the hand to save the arm...
You're better off cutting your losses before they're all infected (if it's an infection) and you did the right thing. Sorry you had to do it though, it sucks.

It could have been a number of things given how much has gone on in the frag tank. This guy had to first deal with toxic Dino levels, then a freshwater dip, then 3 days lights out. That’s a lot on a frag.

Fresh water dips are very very hard on frags. My green lepto has barely survived by a thread from it.

The frag tank is now dealing with a cyano outbreak but that’s to be expected. My nitrates are at 7ppm and phosphates are at 1.

I’ll take cyano any day of the week over Dino’s.

I’m hoping that things start to stabilize in there. The frags aren’t in the best of shape.

Oddly enough, the hammer and sps are doing great.

My main concern is getting this crazy sticky algae off the glove polyps, getting the green lepto healed, and somehow getting the bubble algae off of my third chalice.

The algae on a few of these frags just refuses to come off.

Here is the current state of the frag tank:

And then my display:

 

[living_tribunal]

I have been purchasing a ton of frags in the last few days and am set to purchase more.

I also will be deciding on my next two fish soon.

I’m thinking of doing a mccosker fairy or melanarus wrasse and tail spot blenny.

 

[Why-Me]

Awesome, glad to hear it.
Feels good to start moving forward, congrats my fellow reefer.

 

[living_tribunal]

Awesome, glad to hear it.
Feels good to start moving forward, congrats my fellow reefer.

It’s a whole new world man! No more having to fish out hundreds and thousands of dollars just to get going. My setup is looking really fresh.

I have learned more than I ever thought possible these first few months seemingly battling the worst of the worst.

Eager to start filling this tank up and we’re just getting started.

I’m still hellbent on this biodiversity thing and I see fish as a key aspect of that. Having an algae eating herbivore and pest eating wrasse seem like great ways to provide homeostasis to the system.

For the new frags, I’m focusing on nice pieces now, not just sheer numbers.

So I’m getting some high end chalices, orange lobo, bright yellow fungia, firework cloves, Xenia (I’ll explain later), a pricy trachy, another Duncan, some shrooms, some acans, bowerbanki, and potentially another digi and Monti. Buying from local vendors, online, aquaculturists, all over the place right now.

 

[Why-Me]

Now you just start testing for stability and after a while you know what your tank needs from day to day by looking at it and the corals.
Not gonna lie I just tested salinity tonight for first time in 2 weeks. Same amount of manual top off every day, everything stays the same. I just test alk every other or every 3 days and water change 25% every Friday.
Seems to do the trick, for me at least

 

[living_tribunal]

Now you just start testing for stability and after a while you know what your tank needs from day to day by looking at it and the corals.
Not gonna lie I just tested salinity tonight for first time in 2 weeks. Same amount of manual top off every day, everything stays the same. I just test alk every other or every 3 days and water change 25% every Friday.
Seems to do the trick, for me at least

That’s the BIGGEST thing I learned from taking care of 30 frags in a 10g.

I test 2 times a week but if I had to rely on anything, it would be the tacit “feel” you develop just by staring at the coral all the time. You just kind of know what to do.

I will say, do yourself a favor and get an ato. They are cheap and make life so much easier, I love min already.

 

[living_tribunal]

First haul of the week coming in.

 

[Why-Me]

 

[living_tribunal]

This was a solid pickup, my nicest pickup by far.

 

[living_tribunal]

Here are the new frags, I got a red lobo, green trachy, blue disco, orange/yellow fungia plate, and new Duncan.

I want to give a big shoutout to Steve over at @DropoffCorals for hooking this order up. He has amazing frags at even better prices and takes good care of his livestock. I’ll be buying many more frags him in the future.

 

[living_tribunal]

I just added most all of the remaining frags from my first batch to the display.

The transfer did not go.... smooth.

I attempted to remove the cloves from the frag and cut off two heads in the process.

Mushrooms are way harder to glue to a plug than I could have ever imagined.

I accidentally dipped the frags in hydrogen peroxide.

I’m confident most will make it, I’m not too attached to them except for the lepto. The dang algae will NOT come off of him. Word of caution, keep leptos in moderate flow as everything loves their tissue.

I also cheated on my quarantine and added the beautiful monti cap frag that the lady gave me. It’s only been in qt for a month but had browned out from the higher nitrates.

I’m willing to take the risk to get it back in shape.

Excited to see how things go!

 

[living_tribunal]

@Why-Me i don’t deserve hearts on that pic haha!