IM 75 SPS Barebottom 3rd times the charm!

[Tyler White]

We have corals in the tank!

Shout out to @Cultivated Reef for my frag pack!

Tested par and we are anywhere from 250-400ish in the vast majority of the tank.

The only bad thing is my PH... with all the attention placed on getting it up to 8.3 and my co2 issues in the home... I have a kalk reactor installed now but still not enough... that means only one thing! Skimmer airline to the outside!

Being in a rental brings up some issues with that though since i can't start drilling holes in the wall... lowes to the rescue!

Pvc plank weather stripping and a couple pvc fittings and silicone tubing on the way from Amazon and we should have a decent ph outside of 7.8 to 7.9.

Now time to settle in... cross my fingers.. and hope these frags do alright!

 

[Tyler White]

Monthly update time....

Nothing great to say really. Dealing with the barebottom problems everyone reports. No coral deaths or anything thankfully but definitely have some tissue loss that waxes and wanes with the cyano bloom I'm currently fighting.
Tried chemiclean and immediately stepped right back into it when I dosed some ab+ coral food to help the coral come back which they did BUT so did the cyano.

No way around it I'm probably going to have to re dose chemiclean and keep my heavy handed approach to feeding everything to a minimum here.

Sent out an icp test for good measure when the corals started to look bad and everything came back in really acceptable levels. Nothing was off more than 5 percent from where it should be and no red flags on their end so I knew I was good there.

I am sad to report some coral from a vendor I purchased coral from that I won't name (wasn't the guys at cultivated reef) had some acro eating flatworms come in on a ora red planet. They only are on that one coral and I basted the adults off and sucked them up and got them out of the tank.

I'm about to move my sixline wrasse over to make sure I got them all as I really dont want to have to dose any more medicines and probably won't until I see any more bitemarks on my acros.

Other than that I have some more CuC coming as I need some help with the cyano and various other things coating the rocks.

Hopefully I'll get the tank out of this rutt and we'll see some growth soon... it's gotta be going somewhere cause my kalk reactor is running and something is using up alk and cal.

 

[Tyler White]

Big news! After dealing with what I have determined to be spirulina

and dinos and everything else that comes with barebottoms and dry rock I have decided ik going to try to plumb my lagoon 25 ext into my existing system and use ocean direct sand and live rock.

I came to this conclusion after BRS came out and did their investigation into micro biomes and the like and I think that hold a lot of water no pun intended.

My only concern with live rock always was pests but I feel at this point in the game the community and industry and good ol mother nature have came together to the point most if not all problems can be solved with a easy solution.
Got flatworms? Flatworm stop and a sixline.
Aptasia? Peppermint shrimp and (insert nudibranch name here I cant remember how to spell)
So on and so forth. We know how to beat those things now and it's just a matter of applying that knowledge.

Anyway with all that out of the way. The tank is actually doing a little better. I have noticed some growth on my sps finally now that a lot of the spirulina has been cut down to size.

It is going to take a little while to get my tank situated and cleaned out but once I get everything up and running I'll be sure to post and we can see what kind of critters I wind up with in my live rock good and bad and the journey dealing with those too!