Indytraveler's 90 gallon Reef!

[Indytraveler83]

Next up comes an unnamed acan. This one was blue and green, but fell victim to the Sally Lightfoot crab in the old system. It is just starting to show some real recovery. Over the last week or so the flesh has grown enough to start to plump back up:

Another victim of the crab is this coral sold as an acan, but I'm suspecting is really a favia:

This group is basically my "recovery" corals as this green acan is trying to make a comeback as well. It had encrusted off the plug in the old system, but took the heater failure hard, and I almost threw it away. It was covered in algae with only a few spots of green left, but has surged back to life in the 90:

 

[Indytraveler83]

Next is a two for one!

The Duncan has 2 heads, but never extended in the old system. It's doing much better here under fairly intense flow, and higher light than I expected it to like.

This pretty Leptastria has always just been as it is. It never looks upset or stressed, but never expands either.

And then comes the chalice. This poor thing tries so hard to grow, but is constantly thrown off the rock and broken by snails. I've repeatedly failed to get it's slimy body glued to anything. Right now it's wedged firmly in the rockwork, and I'm hoping it'll finally stay and grow in place:

And we are on to the last new one (not reposting the zoa garden or Monti I just posted, and not gonna try to document the various mushroom littered around the system. Here comes the big leather toadstool I just picked up. Reported to be from the teardown of an elderly man's system, grown from a frag about 7 years ago:

And that's my coral! I still really want an elegence coral, and a few more zoa frags to fill out colors in my zoa garden. I'd also love to keep adding acans and make a large acan garden as well!

 

[Indytraveler83]

First refugium cleanout!

Sorta stunned at how fast the macro grows. I pulled this much from the fuge today:

Also added my marine betta a few days ago. He can be a bit of a finicky eater, but at least he loves frozen mysis, so that's mainly what he's sustaining himself on. He's tiny for a betta, a bit smaller than the wrasse... For now.

 

[Indytraveler83]

Figured I'd update the thread again...

Personal issues have frozen me up as of late. For a little while, I thought I'd have to move and sell the reef. At least for now those concerns have been abated.

To celebrate, I just put in a decent sized order with AquaSD. I've only ever ordered CuC from reefcleaners before, and have never ordered coral in the mail. However, my normal lfs havent gotten much except green coral in for quite some time, and AquaSD had a ton of pink/red/rainbow frags for under $20.

Most of my order was zoas, favia and Monti's, along with a red brittle starfish. But... I have till shipping day next Weds to add to the order, so I'll show off everything new when it comes in!

 

[Indytraveler83]

Okay,

The frags from AquaSD came in, and they are doing great. It literally took an entire day to place the frags. I don't think I can add anymore coral!

Now... The coral addition along with rapid Coraline growth is causing nitrate to drop. So... That means I need to add more fish right?

I placed an order with TSM aquatics for probably too many fish... But I normally don't get to place orders due to my work schedule, and the current state of the world has me working from home.

I've got a few wrasse and a group of Anthias coming in from TSM, as well as some CuC from reefcleaners. I'm adding a little fast for my taste, but hoping to use this time at home as a chance to get healthy livestock that I can't usually find.

The coral as it is now:

 

[Indytraveler83]

Well the big day is here:.

My order from TSM Aquatics came in today. In it was:
1 Melanarus wrasse
1 red headed salon wrasss
1 long nosed hawkfish
4 female lyretail anthias.

I'll do a complete vendor review after the fish have settled in, but a few quick notes:

Each fish arrived alive and appeared to be a good specimen. The hawkfish was slightly smaller than expected (about 2 inches, rather than 3) but that's not a bad thing at all for me.

Each fish was bagged seperatly in about a half gallon of water each. That box was heavy! I was also very pleased that they didn't spend long in it. The tracking number went active at around 5pm last night in NJ, and the box was here by 9am this morning.

After a proper acclimation I added directly to the DT, because TSM is supposed to QT for you, and the anthias and wrasse are all high stress fish that I've struggled with performing QT myself.

The two wrasse took about no time to adjust. The Melanarus was picking at rocks within minutes and not relenting to my Dottyback. The Solon wrasse was curiously swimming around quickly.

The hawkfish got on a perch, and seems to be slowly exploring. 3 of the 4 anthias decided to school with my other 2, and some jostling resulted from settling out heirarchy. So far nothing serious.

I've just got 1 anthias that's hiding in a corner, taking the stress much harder than everyone else. Hopefully it starts getting out and swimming soon. Free swimming fish in my system are generally safe, but fish that are hiding (poorly) get more attention...

 

[Indytraveler83]

Alright, here's some cool pics of the new additions:

The Melanarus is moving around so much this is the best I can get, but the red headed solon wrasse is clear. There's also a good pic of one of the anthias as well as the hawkfish begging to be hand fed.

 

[Indytraveler83]

And then here's one of the cool rfa's that I got from reefcleaners (though they have moved and are trying to cuddle my corals) and finally a good one of the marine betta!!

 

[joe0813]

how are the anthias doing?

 

[Indytraveler83]

how are the anthias doing?

Surprisingly well actually. All of them seem healthy, and the jostling has calmed way down, with only the occasional nip now and then. I still have one that likes to hide and it's color is a bit faded, but it's slowly getting bolder.

They seem to be shoaling more, and it helps that the dottyback and Melanarus wrasse are the tank bosses, so they group together away from those two.

 

[Indytraveler83]

Okay guys time for a big update, I've neglected this thread for a while:

1) The six anthias pared themselves down to 4, and while that's remained steady, the smallest one is certainly an outcast. The largest one is turning male.

2) My Monti's and my few pieces of acro all died in a particularly bad nitrate crash. With softies and sps mopping up huge amounts of nitrate all the time, I've decided that sps really don't belong in the system.

To make up for it, I started a RFA garden that's going to be beautiful when they all grow up

A few of my favorite new additions: my massive green goblin of a zoa rock, and a captive bred yellow tang:

One of my favorites, the marine betta is slowly growing:

Next I'll post a full tank shot and the best accounting I have of the system as it is:

 

[Indytraveler83]

Here's the system on Feb 9, 2020, right after setup:

And today:

To the best of my knowledge, here's what we have:

Fish (order they were added):

2 black mollies
2 blue green chromis
2 frostbite percula clownfish
1 Carpenter flasher wrasse
2 bangaii Cardinals
2 zebra barred dartfish
1 diadem dottyback
1 marine betta
4 lyretail anthias
1 red head Solon wrasse
1 very small long nosed hawkfish
1 Melanarus wrasse
1 yellow tang

Inverts:
1 skunk cleaner shrimp
1-3 peppermint shrimp (also known as betta snacks)
4-6 porcelain crabs
2 pitho crabs
6-8 emerald crabs
1 Sally Lightfoot crab (became a sump monster when she started eating acans)
1 fighting conch
1 longspine urchin
1 red brittle sea star
1 short spined pink urchin
Around 30-40 hermits, mostly scarlet and blue legged
An untold number and variety of snails

Anemones:
3 maxi-minis
8 rfa's
1 green bubbletip
1 condi
2 curly Q's

Corals:
Lots of zoas and paly's
Huge leather
1 wall hammer
1 GSP colony
Hollywood stunner chalice
Frags:Acans, Favias, blasto, 1 green Monti that has survived, several mushrooms and probably several more frags I can't think of right now...

and that's my system as of now! I'm always on the hunt for frags and interesting inverts, but I really happy with the mix of fish in there right now.

As you've read, my system is very low tech. I use tap (gasp) water due to a pretty clean source that is very high in calcium and mag. I use most of my 30 gallon sump as a refugium, with an undersized CPR backpack skimmer hanging off the side of it, and about 100ish lbs of live rock for mostly natural filtration. Small sponges that started in my original reef have exploded in size in this system, including the sump, adding even more filtration that I couldn't be happier about.

Thoughts? Anything I've done really wrong or really right?

 

[Indytraveler83]

FINALLY!!!

I've been wanting decorator crabs since I started, but they've been impossible to find. Once I tried to order them from reefcleaners, but they ran out before I checked out. I tried to get them in at one of the local lfs's, but what he got in were 6 inch spider crabs that most certainly didn't appear reef or fish safe.

Today I stopped into a different lfs because they have the cheapest frozen foods in town, and low and behold they had decorator crabs! To make it even better, they got in one orange one and several red ones, which I've never seen before. I got one of each. Here's the red (he's almost pink) busy covering himself in sponges:

 

[Indytraveler83]

Been a while since I updated this. The system isn't doing the best at the moment...

Battling high phosphate, which has burned through quite a few corals badly. My zoas are wilting away and much of my lps is burnt out. Balance is an issue, because anything I've done so far to battle phosphate has bottomed out nitrate. Hydroids aren't helping these matters either...

I've also randomly lost some fish over the past few months, including a bangaii cardinal, 2 anthias and one of my platinum clowns (that one particularly stings). The anthias were obvious bully victims from the two largest ones (never ever getting lyretail anthias again). Quite a few of my crabs have also died or gone missing, and I wonder if it's predation or an iodine deficiency.

On the good side of things, my yellow tang is growing quickly and my damaged leather coral has come back with a vengeance, and the damaged chunks that came off have all turned into frags. So now my 8 inch or so leather has grown to be 12+ inches, and I have one large (3ish inch) frag and two smaller ones. The GSP is also drinking in all the extra phosphate and growing like a weed. Thankfully the GSP was put in a particularly ugly and difficult to use part of the live rock, so I'm happy to let it go wild.

Not feeling good enough about things to post a pic, but did buy some things to help:

1) Reefbreeders nano refugium light. The cheap LED strips I've used tend to fail or turn off randomly, which isn't helping the 'fuge do its work.
2) Aquamaxx FR-M media reactor and GFO. Time to seriously address the phosphate in isolation, instead of relying on water changes, carbon and other things that also drop nitrate (and haven't helped the phosphate issues)
3) Seachem Reef Iodide - Hopefully a bit of something to help the crab deaths and issues with zoas.


Despite the desire to replace lost livestock, I'm going to stick with system upgrades until I dial in on whatever is causing the issues in the reef.

 

[ScubaEthan]

So sorry to hear you've lost some fish and that things aren't going too well. Have you been able to get the reactor and other things you bought set up? Any improvement yet?

You have some of my favorite fish. Hope everything that's currently there makes a good comeback! Fingers crossed for you.

 

[Indytraveler83]

So sorry to hear you've lost some fish and that things aren't going too well. Have you been able to get the reactor and other things you bought set up? Any improvement yet?

You have some of my favorite fish. Hope everything that's currently there makes a good comeback! Fingers crossed for you.

It's been a bit of a mixed bag since that post. I will say the reef breeders light is a massive upgrade over cheap Amazon off brand 'fuge lights, and my macro is responding wonderfully to it.

The reactor is running and quickly pulled phosphate down to .25 from around 1.0, but seems to have stalled out there.

My zoas are still shrinking back, but I saw my yellow tang picking at them recently, so I can't help but wonder if he's eating algae or grown a taste for zoas. Most of the palys in my tank are fine and happy.

My lps has certainly responded to the lowered phosphate, and I'm finally seeing as regrowth from the long regressing acans.


I've got a fairly wrasse that I thought I was going to loose to an injury, but he's starting to come back. My elderly black molly is covered in tumors but is still pushing along.

I'm seriously debating a bit of a livestock reset. I've got too many random animals, and especially the remaining anthias and the dottyback are unnecessary bullies.

So.. not all bad, but still sort of trying to stabilize things, then develop a plan going forward.

 

[ScubaEthan]

I'm glad to hear there is some improvement! Let us know what your thoughts are on a plan once you get to that point.

 

[Indytraveler83]

I'm glad to hear there is some improvement! Let us know what your thoughts are on a plan once you get to that point.

Well my rough thought is to thin out the random and 1 off fish that I don't really enjoy. I'd rather have a decent sized group of one fish, then just a few individuals of something different (such as my tang, marine betta and hawkfish)

I'd like to replace them with possibly one or a few of the following:
1) more wrasse
2) A group of PJ cardinals
3) A group of the less aggressive Chrysiptera damsels- (yellow tails are easy to get around here)
4) I've always wanted a goby or blennies, but the dottyback is a terror to anything that gets in the rockwork. If he goes, I might try one again.

Any other suggestions, especially on a "group"?