Keenan's IM170 EXT

[Wrangy]

The angels are super adorable!!

 

[Keenan]

Part 1

Long overdue update. I have a feeling this will turn into a long one. I’ll probably split it up into sections to make it a bit easier. Let’s start with a FTS


Fish: 18
2x Watanabei Angelfish
4x Flame Wrasse
2x Leopard Wrasse
Lunate Wrasse
Linespot Wrasse
Borbonius Anthias
3x Bartlett’s Anthias
Black Tang
Tomini Tang
2x Black Ice (?) Clownfish

In Quarantine: 3
Copperband Butterfly
Green Mandarin
Tiny Convict Tang (For 40G tank that was turned into an anemone tank)

The Bioload of 18 fish is definitely doing the trick at raising and stabilizing nitrates/phosphate. For the most part everyone gets along and are healthy as can be. The two leopard wrasses just came out of qt, and have shown me an equally important reason to quarantine fish other than for disease treatment and prevention.

When I first got them, they wouldn’t eat anything I tried and hid in the pvc pipes a majority of the days. Around day 3, they finally took to some cyclopods. A week and a half into qt they started to eat mysis/LRS, and 3 weeks in they were eating flake food the moment it hit the water and would come up to the front of the glass anytime I was near the tank. I strongly believe that, potential diseases aside, if I would’ve just dropped them into my display where they had to fight 12 other established fish for food, which they didn’t know was food in the first place, their chances of survival would’ve been extremely low (Keep in mind each of them are no more than 2 inches long). In qt they were able to grow accustomed to myself, and the foods offered at their own, uncontested pace. I feel this increases their success in captivity tenfold.

Too much text, here’s some pics













This guy will constantly flash throughout the day, and has the best personality in the tank


One of the three females looking not so female anymore… could spell trouble



The leopards are hard to accurately capture/represent, but I’ll keep working on it. The black tang is impossible to get a good pic of so I gave up on him. Also he tries to stab me with his caudal spines anytime I put my hand in the tank so we’re not friends at the moment.

 

[Keenan]

Part 2

Equipment wise, no new additions that I can think of but everything is running well and I’m happy with what I chose for this build. I did add a shower loofa to the sump as a pod hotel, and ordered a few jars of pods from AlgaeBarn.

Onto the corals. Things were going smooth in the beginning until around October. Around that time is when a lot of things seemed to be going wrong. For starters, I couldn’t keep Alk stable, not even with the GHL KHD. This caused some alk spikes which led to burnt tips and unhappy sps.

My solution: I was using the 4th dosing line on my GHL doser to dose TM All-For-Reef, which was influenced via the Adaptive mode on my KHD depending on my nominal KH value was and what the most recent test read. Along with this, I had kalkwasser in the ATO container like I’ve had for most my years in this hobby. The only issue is that the KHD cannot influence the dosage of kalk, which was dosing more than my corals were consuming at the time. It took me longer than I’d like to admit to realize this, but once I stopped supplementing the ATO water with kalk and let the All-For-Reef be the sole alk/ca additive, the KHD was able to dial in my nominal dKH and keep it there. I’ll add kalk back into the routine once my daily consumption increases some more, but for now it’ll remain offline.

Another thing that probably didn’t help was me removing all of my 3+ year old live rock from the tank and back into the 40 gallon. It was taking away from the aesthetics of the scape and I figured the good bacteria on this rock would’ve colonized on the new rock by now. Instead, this lead to even more unhappy sps.

My solution: This one was simple. I added most of it back in, and this time I tucked it behind one of the rock structures so that it was out of sight.

Lastly, I was still fighting to keep detectable NO3 and PO4 levels, which led to manual dosing and constant rising and falling of these parameters. I also tried a carbon dosing method that I was told was specifically tailored to ULNS systems called TM Plus N/P. It was supposed to work by dosing bacteria along with food (no3 and po4) in trace amounts for the bacteria to consume, and then the corals would consume the bacteria as it’s easier for them to consume that then straight po4 through the water column. For me all it did was strip my phosphates down to the point that my rocks were no longer buffered with any po4. And you guessed it, very unhappy sps.

My solution: I first took the carbon dosing offline. Then I added PO4 (Brightwell’s NeoPhos) to the system daily, while keeping an eye on NO3 and raising when needed. For close to a week I was dosing 2.0 (not .02 or .20) daily before I saw detectable PO4. That was insane to me. However once they were detectable was right around the time some fish were ready to go into the display from qt, and this helped stabilize things.

Huge shoutout to Darksky for babysitting the angriest of my corals while I tackled all of these issues. Thanks Jeremy!

Over Black Friday I purchased my first Battlebox and was pretty impressed with the pieces. I gave him a rough outline of what I was looking for (Pinks, Tenuis, Tables) and Adam delivered. The two that didn’t make it (BC Hawaii and Miss Scarlett) through shipping he said he’d resend in the next box which I’m more than ok with. The rest are still doing well and I’m excited to watch them grow. Now I’ll shut up for good and post pictures.


BC Bliss


BC Aquatic-Man


BC Rose Vine


BC Rainbow Brite


BC Backdraft


BC Bonfire


TGC Inner Core


BC No Name Table


BC Pink On Pink (Very excited for this one)


BC Pink Cigarette

 

[Keenan]

Part 3 is just a photo dump

Now I'm all caught up for the most part.

 

[Wrangy]

I am already 1000% in love with the tank and how it's coming along man!! It's looking gorgeous!

 

[Keenan]

I am already 1000% in love with the tank and how it's coming along man!! It's looking gorgeous!

lol thanks Dom! I'm pretty happy with it, especially as of late. I see yours is coming along nicely as well

 

[Keenan]

Some photos I took tonight after taking one for the local forums growout contest. Things are coloring up and growing well. Only real issue is aptasia taking over, however I may have a plan for it.

Rose Milli



BC Rainbow Brite


BC Backdraft


BC Pink on Pink


WWC Heartbreaker

 

[Keenan]

Figured since I was recording some videos for the local forum, I'd post them here as well. I thought photo editing was tough but video editing is a whole other animal.



Also, I know I said I was tearing down the 40 gallon, however now it's somehow a nem tank... Not sure how that happened. Not sure if I'm going to revive the old thread or just periodically post in here, however I wanted to post a recent acquisition I received from a local member. I've always wanted one and the 40 gallon will not house any sps, so it's perfect

 

[Wrangy]

The tank looks so clean and everything looks so fantastically healthy mate!!

Looovveee the orange spot though!!

 

[Keenan]

Quick update

Things have been cruising along as of late, even with me sort of neglecting the tank a bit. Aptasia is still bad but I ordered some berghias to hopefully take care of them. I also added an aptasia eating filefish but I think he's a bit too small still. We'll see.

Corals are all doing well and growing. I haven't been able to login to my KH Director for a few weeks now and haven't taken the time to troubleshoot why (It's still doing it's job I just can't see the results), so I'm somewhat in the dark as far as alk is concerned. I check with my hanna once every couple of days just to be sure all is well.

Since I already had the camera out to take my monthly growout photo, I thought I'd take a couple others

 

[Wrangy]

Looking great man!! how are all the fish going?? How are those gorgeous orange spots going??

 

[Keenan]

Looking great man!! how are all the fish going?? How are those gorgeous orange spots going??

Fish have been a sore spot lately... unfortunately the Orange spit passed away along with my favorite flame wrasse that I had moved to the 40 due to another of the females turning male. I had made some big changes to the 40 and am thinking something shocked the system and caused their deaths eventually I will try another orange spot in there. I also recently acquired a red tail flasher wrasse from a buddy and a week into having him he jumped through a hole in my lid that is no more than a couple millimeters wide and turned into fish jerky... oh and on top of all that my lunatus supermale that I’ve had for close to two years must have gotten spooked one night and ran into something cuz I found it the next morning with a broken back and had to put him down.

fish suck, idk why I keep trying with them ;Shifty

 

[MW319]

Figured since I was recording some videos for the local forum, I'd post them here as well. I thought photo editing was tough but video editing is a whole other animal.



Also, I know I said I was tearing down the 40 gallon, however now it's somehow a nem tank... Not sure how that happened. Not sure if I'm going to revive the old thread or just periodically post in here, however I wanted to post a recent acquisition I received from a local member. I've always wanted one and the 40 gallon will not house any sps, so it's perfect

nice Video And I like the flow in your tank. What settings do you have your mp40’s set to?

 

[Keenan]

nice Video And I like the flow in your tank. What settings do you have your mp40’s set to?

I tried to post the settings file from ecosmart but it wouldn't let me so here's a screenshot instead. I also have an Octo Pulse 4 at 75% on constant mode 24/7 which kicks out a ton of flow all by itself.

 

[MW319]

I tried to post the settings file from ecosmart but it wouldn't let me so here's a screenshot instead. I also have an Octo Pulse 4 at 75% on constant mode 24/7 which kicks out a ton of flow all by itself.

Thanks for posting. I think this motivated me enough to mess around with my settings.

 

[Wrangy]

Fish have been a sore spot lately... unfortunately the Orange spit passed away along with my favorite flame wrasse that I had moved to the 40 due to another of the females turning male. I had made some big changes to the 40 and am thinking something shocked the system and caused their deaths eventually I will try another orange spot in there. I also recently acquired a red tail flasher wrasse from a buddy and a week into having him he jumped through a hole in my lid that is no more than a couple millimeters wide and turned into fish jerky... oh and on top of all that my lunatus supermale that I’ve had for close to two years must have gotten spooked one night and ran into something cuz I found it the next morning with a broken back and had to put him down.

fish suck, idk why I keep trying with them ;Shifty

Oh dang man That sucks to hear! I feel you about trying to keep fish sometimes, it can be heartbreaking! Still we soldier on though and they are so worth it in the end Especially when you have fish with you for a long time, nothing beats that!

 

[ramona]

Beautiful tank!
Post pictures/updates of your anemone tank here too; would be easier to follow both reefs, I guess,

 

[Keenan]

Beautiful tank!
Post pictures/updates of your anemone tank here too; would be easier to follow both reefs, I guess,

Thank you. Yes that’s probably what I’ll end up doing, thanks for the advice!

 

[Keenan]

Aptasia slowly getting removed by either the nudis or filefish, not sure which. I do know the filefish also likes my duncans and I hate aptasia more than I love duncans so they'll probably have to go soon

Starting to get a bit of bubble algae but other than that things are good and growing.


Decided to start a second RRC OP colony as a backup


Unknown brown frag I got while in Chicago starting to get some color



WD Frag with and without PE



My other WD colony. Have this one higher up to see if it changes anything with color


BC Bonfire


BC Pink Cigarette getting some cool yellows in it

 

[Wrangy]

Dang things are looking super happy man!! Gorgeous colours too!!