Juston's 90 Gallon Reef Aquarium

[justonwo]

I'm very new to the hobby, and new to R2R, but I'm learning fast. I inherited this tank from my cousin over the summer and moved it to my office. Right now, I'm trying to get all my acros happy, particularly my established purple lokani which is having some problems.

Specs:

5-6 year old, established reef tank inherited from cousin, moved on 7/19/15 to my office
100 gallon tank with 15? gallon sump
Danner Model 7 sump pump
Coralife UV steralizer
Reef Dynamics SP2 Skimmer
Jager 250 Watt heater
2 Kessil A360WE LEDs with Kessil controller (7 AM to 6 PM with ramp up/down in the morning/evening)
3 power heads (not sure of the make/model)
Aragonite substrate
SpectraPure MaxCap 90-MF RODI System

Water Quality:

Seachem Reef salt (switching to Red Sea in next batch)
RODI water
Specific Gravity = 1.025-1.026
Alkalinity = 10 dKH
pH = 8.2
Ca = 480 ppm
Mg = 1540 ppm
NO3 = 8 ppm and falling
NH3 = 0
NO2 = 0
PO4 = 0.16 ppm and falling

Maintenance:

Just switched over to RODI water today from conditioned tap water
Daily dose of 10 mL NO3PO4-X
Weekly dose of 20 mL Acropower
10 gallon weekly water change
Every 3 days night feed scolymia with mysis
Every 2-3 weeks target feed acans and other corals with mysis and Reef Roids
Daily scrub of the glass for algae
Every 2-3 days nori for hippo tang
2-3 times daily stress out over every aspect of the tank and panic that I'm not doing something right

Livestock:
1 oscilleris clown
1 hippo tang
1 yellow tang (deceased, screwed with the tank too much)
1 sailfin tang (removed, too small of a tank for him)
1 chalk bass (deceased, jumped)
1 royal gramma
1 zebra goby (deceased)
1 anthia
2 Kaudern's cardinalfish
1 fire shrimp
1 cleaner shrimp
4 peppermint shrimp
2 scarlet hermits
several other hermits
several snails
1 hardworking conch snail
1 gigantic brittle star and several dozen juveniles
4 bubble tip anemones

Stylophora - several colonies of purple stylo
1 kelly green psammacora
2 large-ish acan lord colonies (orange/gray)
1 small "tie dye" acan lord colony
2 tiny acan lord colonies (black/green and orange/gray)
1 acropora lokani
1 bleeding apple scolymia
Candlelight acropora
Surf and turf acropora loisettae
"Ice Fire" Acropora echinata
"Strawberry Shortcake" Acropora microlados
"Efflo" Acropora effloescens
"Blue tenuis" Acropora tenuis
Millepora of some variety
"Hawkins" Acropora echinata
Unknown Stylophora
"Blue Tips Aussie" Acropora sp.
"Efflo" Acropora effloescens
"Dragon Queen" Acropora sp.
Blue Acropora lokani
"Starry Night" Acropora sp.
"Tort" Acropora tortuosa
"Cinderella Indo Shortcake" Acropora latistella
Too many mushrooms
All manner of amphipods, copepods, bristle worms, pineapple sponge, various other unidentified sponges, coralline, asterina starfish

 

[Virtualbasil]

Looks great !

 

[chaoha]

Nice tank. Welcome

 

[justonwo]

I added some new fish to my tank today. A green mandarin goby, a solar fairy wrasse, and another clownfish. Oh and 2 more cleaner shrimp and 5 nassarius snails.

The goby and wrasse were spooked and shy, not surprisingly. The clown immediately started to interact with the existing clown. Hopefully, they will get along.

And my 2 cardinalfish recently produced a 3rd, tiny cardinalfish, which is really cool.

 

[justonwo]

It's been a little while since I posted an update . . .

The blue tenuis frag I introduced a few months back has wonderful color and polyp extension and is starting to encrust. Right beside it, a frogspawn colony is beginning to grow. My cousin tells me this tank had frogspawn a few years ago. I thought I found a polyp of it and moved it to the current location. A few months later, a colony is growing!

Although part of the base of my purple lokani turned green and died inexplicably, after taking this colony for a goner and fragging it, it's starting to really take off. Flesh is beginning to grow over the spots that died. The base is encrusting very rapidly and new branches are sprouting up in multiple locations. New growth has covered up all the bare skeleton from multiple fraggings. This lokani seems very hardy. Unfortunately, the blue tip echinata to the right seems to be bleaching somewhat on the right branch. It had been a very deep color with great polyp extension, but it started to regress for some reason. I'm hoping it will recover.

The Hawkins on the right had briefly turned green for a while but is now brown again. It seems quite finicky. The "candlelight" acro has been pretty hardy since the beginning and is only now starting to encrust. It's always had great polyp extension. The green tipped smooth acro in the far back seems to be growing very slowly, but no encrusting yet. There are always vermetid snails forming around its base. The blue lokani is growing very slowly but remains healthy. No encrusting yet. The green guy in the front is quite well encrusted and is rapidly branching out. It took a long time to get this coral from brown to green, but I finally did it.

This "starry night" acro has been pretty well behaved since the beginning. It's really starting to encrust now, and there are branches extending out the front and back (hard to tell without a side profile).

The kelly green isn't growing very quickly, but it always has nice color. The efflo has been well behaved since the beginning as well. It's trying to encrust, but I had it up on a frag plug, so I recently created a little platform from epoxy putty for it to grow on. Hopefully, it will be well covered in no short order.

You can see two of the fragged purple lokanis to the left and right. Both are starting to encrust and are very healthy with a deep purple coloration. The frag in the middle was an unknown freebie. It's starting to encrust and really let its polyps show. It's a cool looking orange.

One of my two stylophora forests. No matter what happens in my tank, these things always seem to thrive and grow. I had 5 BTAs at one point, but I took 3 of them to the LFS because of overcrowding. They seem to have reproduced as I found a little green anemone hiding in the rock work.

Another of my stylo-forests. You can barely see my blue tips aussie frag at the bottom of the photo. It's always had nice coloration (light purple) and polyp extension. It shouldn't be too long before it encrusts.

A little acan garden. The big orange one on the left was transplanted from another part of the tank. The green/black one in the foreground was a freebie barely bigger than my thumbnail when I got it. The tie-dye acan in the background has lost some of its green color over time, but it's healthy and happy. All are growing new polyps.

Another transplanted acan that seems to be thriving, along with the scolymia that I managed to bring back from the dead. There's also a small monti on the far left which was a freebie. It's been slowly turning green over time and is just now starting to hint that it will encrust.

Two of my cleaner shrimp buddies. They like to clean my hands when I put them in the tank.

The Loch Ness brittle star always comes out at night.

My scoly during feeding time. Without the coke bottle, every creature in the tank tries to get a free meal. The scoly has really responded well to weekly feeding. I think that's mainly what helped bring it back from the brink.