IM SR80 build!

Davy Jones · Dec 13, 2018

No wordy post this time! Just a couple cool shots!

Brew12 · Dec 13, 2018

Dirtrider225 said:
No wordy post this time! Just a couple cool shots!

Yup, nice shots! I wish my clowns would move into my nem!

Davy Jones · Dec 13, 2018

Brew12 said:
Yup, nice shots! I wish my clowns would move into my nem!

They dont like rainbows for me, or even greens. But rose's and rose morphs they are all over in no time.

Brew12 · Dec 13, 2018

Dirtrider225 said:
They dont like rainbows for me, or even greens. But rose's and rose morphs they are all over in no time.

Never thought that would make a difference! Mine is a green, could be why they prefer the return pipes!

Davy Jones · Dec 13, 2018

Brew12 said:
Never thought that would make a difference! Mine is a green, could be why they prefer the return pipes!

Yeeup! The large clown in the first photo was in a tank with ~20 rainbows. Over the course of 3 years or so. I bought the Sherman rose, put it in the tank and she was hosted in it before it attached its foot.

as for the other 2 clowns, I put them in my (temporary) grow out tank full of black widows and same thing, straight into the nems.

NY_Caveman · Dec 14, 2018

Dirtrider225 said:
Yeeup! The large clown in the first photo was in a tank with ~20 rainbows. Over the course of 3 years or so. I bought the Sherman rose, put it in the tank and she was hosted in it before it attached its foot.

as for the other 2 clowns, I put them in my (temporary) grow out tank full of black widows and same thing, straight into the nems.

Very interesting. Never heard of that behavior. Beautiful images BTW.

Davy Jones · Dec 14, 2018

NY_Caveman said:
Very interesting. Never heard of that behavior. Beautiful images BTW.

I mean to be 100% fair, Bubble tips are not natural hosts for most species of clownfish

Davy Jones · Feb 1, 2019

Been a while since my last update!!

First off, the bad:
1. all sticks/sps frags in here have slowly but surely died off, with only 1 having flesh/polyps. Its odd, the flesh will get super thin on the sticks, and then just slowly necros. The polyps will be out the entire time until there is just nothing left. Have tested and alk is a stable 8-8.3 dkh, dosed multiple times a day with the dos using kalk.
2. Picked up 3 different yuma's over the last couple months, and all three turned ghost white, and melted within 2-3 days of eachother after looking great for weeks. rics and zoas doing just fine.
3. Driver on my mp40qd went out (my fault, my RO station had over filled, and the kitten had knocked the driver off the electronic board some time ago without me noticing.)
4. I am having some weird issue between my Modem, comcast and the Apex. I have to reset my modem every 3-4 days or the connection is no longer stable, and when it gets ****** it force resets my apex (powers everything down, and back up 3 seconds later)

Next, the good:
1. Most of my zoas are doing well and growing quickly. I got 2 polyps of petroglyph from LC in the beginning of december, and am up to 6.5 now, and they are quickly becoming my favorite zoas!
2. For the first time in my reefing life, I have been able to not only keep a chalice coral alive, but actual get it to heal/grow! Not one but 2 of them! So thats pretty cool to me!
3. Rhodactis mushrooms are growing alright, picked up a couple different ones and almost all of them have had a second one pop out in the last 2 months.
4. No losses on the LPS side, although some things have looked better in the past, I think the flow in this shallow tank is just too chaotic for them to really thrive
5. I am really bad about feeding my fish, often times being once a week if theyre lucky. I have been feeding 4-6 times a week now for the last month and it is definitely making a positive difference in the fish AND coral. I am hoping I can keep this up.
6. Colors in this tank are awesome. Almost everything is as colored up as I could hope!

Finally, the future:
1. I plan on switching to ATI Essentials Pro to give that a shot, and ordering my first ICP test to see if there is anything built up in my water that could be causing the issues with my sps.
2. I plan on picking up the new Hanna Salinity/temp tester to give a shot as I do not trust my Refractometer at this point. I would love to have 2 tests using different methods of testing to compare against.
3. After watching the most recent BRSTV video about coral health, I think I would like to add a few fish to this system, as well as try out feeding some aminos (the part about coral having thin tissue and losing a few here and there is basically my tank exactly they were talking about lol) so I am going to order the red sea reef energy a+b as I had good luck in the past with that, and im also going to order the brightwell stuff that WWC uses to nurse back damaged corals

I hope to take some photos here soon and post them up! Thanks for reading the wall of text haha

Brew12 · Feb 2, 2019

Dirtrider225 said:
Been a while since my last update!!

First off, the bad:
1. all sticks/sps frags in here have slowly but surely died off, with only 1 having flesh/polyps. Its odd, the flesh will get super thin on the sticks, and then just slowly necros. The polyps will be out the entire time until there is just nothing left. Have tested and alk is a stable 8-8.3 dkh, dosed multiple times a day with the dos using kalk.
2. Picked up 3 different yuma's over the last couple months, and all three turned ghost white, and melted within 2-3 days of eachother after looking great for weeks. rics and zoas doing just fine.
3. Driver on my mp40qd went out (my fault, my RO station had over filled, and the kitten had knocked the driver off the electronic board some time ago without me noticing.)
4. I am having some weird issue between my Modem, comcast and the Apex. I have to reset my modem every 3-4 days or the connection is no longer stable, and when it gets ****** it force resets my apex (powers everything down, and back up 3 seconds later)

Next, the good:
1. Most of my zoas are doing well and growing quickly. I got 2 polyps of petroglyph from LC in the beginning of december, and am up to 6.5 now, and they are quickly becoming my favorite zoas!
2. For the first time in my reefing life, I have been able to not only keep a chalice coral alive, but actual get it to heal/grow! Not one but 2 of them! So thats pretty cool to me!
3. Rhodactis mushrooms are growing alright, picked up a couple different ones and almost all of them have had a second one pop out in the last 2 months.
4. No losses on the LPS side, although some things have looked better in the past, I think the flow in this shallow tank is just too chaotic for them to really thrive
5. I am really bad about feeding my fish, often times being once a week if theyre lucky. I have been feeding 4-6 times a week now for the last month and it is definitely making a positive difference in the fish AND coral. I am hoping I can keep this up.
6. Colors in this tank are awesome. Almost everything is as colored up as I could hope!

Finally, the future:
1. I plan on switching to ATI Essentials Pro to give that a shot, and ordering my first ICP test to see if there is anything built up in my water that could be causing the issues with my sps.
2. I plan on picking up the new Hanna Salinity/temp tester to give a shot as I do not trust my Refractometer at this point. I would love to have 2 tests using different methods of testing to compare against.
3. After watching the most recent BRSTV video about coral health, I think I would like to add a few fish to this system, as well as try out feeding some aminos (the part about coral having thin tissue and losing a few here and there is basically my tank exactly they were talking about lol) so I am going to order the red sea reef energy a+b as I had good luck in the past with that, and im also going to order the brightwell stuff that WWC uses to nurse back damaged corals

I hope to take some photos here soon and post them up! Thanks for reading the wall of text haha

Sorry you are having issues. At least some of your corals are doing well. I do have a concern in general. You have only recently started feeding your fish more. That is a pretty big change in nutrient load. I would do that for at least another month before I moved on to the next step. To me, the next step would be the Energy a+b. Do that for a month or two before you look at adding more fish. To go from feeding fish once a week to regular feeding of more fish with amino supplements is a very large shift in nutrient inputs to do in a matter of one or two months. You will likely get changes, and quickly, but I doubt those changes will all be positive!

Davy Jones · Feb 2, 2019

Brew12 said:
Sorry you are having issues. At least some of your corals are doing well. I do have a concern in general. You have only recently started feeding your fish more. That is a pretty big change in nutrient load. I would do that for at least another month before I moved on to the next step. To me, the next step would be the Energy a+b. Do that for a month or two before you look at adding more fish. To go from feeding fish once a week to regular feeding of more fish with amino supplements is a very large shift in nutrient inputs to do in a matter of one or two months. You will likely get changes, and quickly, but I doubt those changes will all be positive!

You make a very good point!

Fish additions will definitely be a couple months out. I am travelling for 9-10 days here soon, and wont be back until close to the end of february. I also am not buying the aminos until The "Ice Vortex" is completely gone and over with as I do not want them to freeze in shipping. The only thing in the Immediate future (after I return home) Would be to transition from Kalk to dosing ATI Essentials Pro.

When I do finally add more fish, I am thinking a longnose hawkfish pair, and something that will be out in the water column more. Maybe a couple blue reef chromis or something. Currently in the 80 gallon system I have 6 fish: 1 Clownfish, 1 Orchid Dottyback, 1 purple tang (small at 2.5-3"), 1 starry blenny, 1 yellow Corris Wrasse and 1 Christmas wrasse. And not a speck of green algae in the display anywhere. Which to be honest I almost always grow coral better when Green algae is also growing and present.

Hope to take some photos today as well! Thanks for popping in Brew!

Orko · Feb 2, 2019

NICE loking good I like that tank as it has sump bulid in the back looks like?

Davy Jones · Feb 2, 2019

Orko said:
NICE loking good I like that tank as it has sump bulid in the back looks like?

Correct, it is an all in one system so the back 4.5" or so is all for filteration!

Davy Jones · Feb 5, 2019

Some good pictures and some not so good pictures but this is the state of the tank before traveling!

Davy Jones · Feb 28, 2019

Alright, so after the whole temp fiasco and getting things back on track, almost everything recovered!

Lost 2 zoa frags, and my zoa colony is looking off still but hopefully it will come through.

Next on the agenda, did a full round of tests on the display and it's looking alright!

Alk 6.2dkh red Sea test kit
Alk 7.1 dkh Hanna checker
Cal 400ppm
Mag 1360ppm
N03 4-8ppm
P04 .07ppm
Salinity 34.6 ppt via Hanna salinity tester (love this thing)
This is in preparation for sending in an ICP test to ATI LABS

Next I took my kalk dosing offline, and replaced it with ATI essentials Pro. I am going to try out a starting DOS of 15.8ml of each using the DOS. This should be about .75 dkh of consumption. I will test the next couple of nights to confirm dosage, and adjust as needed.

No photos at this time, but hopefully by this weekend I can get "before" pictures of the tank to compare the new dosing against kalk mostly for my own needs

Deiblerj · Feb 28, 2019

Dirtrider225 said:
Took some updated photos tonight. Placed a few corals.

So got a question for you....

I see your nem in the breeder box, I had to put one of mine in a breeder box until it healed up. How do you suggest getting it out? Can you just pick them up and place them on a rock? Or is there a better strategy?

Davy Jones · Feb 28, 2019

Deiblerj said:
So got a question for you....

I see your nem in the breeder box, I had to put one of mine in a breeder box until it healed up. How do you suggest getting it out? Can you just pick them up and place them on a rock? Or is there a better strategy?

In that photo, I had a couple in there to color up before a trade, but typically it is fairly simple to remove their foot from the bottom of the box (gently peel with your fingernail and be patient!! Tearing is bad news.)

As for getting them to attach, that's usually on them. Generally I place them foot down in an area I think they would like, turn all flow off for 30 minutes and monitor progress.

After the first 30 minutes it has usually attached in some manner so I turn my return on but leave the power heads off. Again, make sure to check on your anemone, it will likely move until it finds a happy place for its foot (this does not mean it will stay there, but it should firmly plant at this point)

I typically leave my power heads off for 2 days after a new addition. After the 2nd day I turn them on and watch closely. Generally it stays put and you're good to go.

Keep in mind, that's been my experience, so take it with a grain of salt

good luck!

Deiblerj · Feb 28, 2019

Dirtrider225 said:
In that photo, I had a couple in there to color up before a trade, but typically it is fairly simple to remove their foot from the bottom of the box (gently peel with your fingernail and be patient!! Tearing is bad news.)

As for getting them to attach, that's usually on them. Generally I place them foot down in an area I think they would like, turn all flow off for 30 minutes and monitor progress.

After the first 30 minutes it has usually attached in some manner so I turn my return on but leave the power heads off. Again, make sure to check on your anemone, it will likely move until it finds a happy place for its foot (this does not mean it will stay there, but it should firmly plant at this point)

I typically leave my power heads off for 2 days after a new addition. After the 2nd day I turn them on and watch closely. Generally it stays put and you're good to go.

Keep in mind, that's been my experience, so take it with a grain of salt good luck!

Thanks for the response! I’ll give that a try. The reason he’s is in the box is because he kept wondering towards my blowers and wouldn’t stay put to heal up. :mad: