Lemonjelleaux's Waterbox Marine X 110.4

[lemonjelleaux]

Hello!

After being away from the hobby for years, I have finally begun a new reef. I'm starting this thread to document progress and get feedback from anyone and everyone who's interested.

Equipment:

Tank: Waterbox Marine X 110.4 (including sump and stand)
Lights: Maxspect Razor X 300w
Return Pump: Vectra S2
Powerheads: 2x VorTech MP40
Skimmer: Red Sea RSK 300
Heater: 2x BRS 300w Titanium Heaters with Inkbird Controller
Controller: A3 Apex Pro
Lid: ClearView Lid

I cycled the tank with MicroBacter Start XLM bacteria and bottled ammonia, which took just under 2 weeks. After that was finished I added a pair of clowns, and finally a yellow watchman goby and pistol shrimp 2 weeks later. I've added a small zoa frag as well, which introduced what looks like diatoms and some algae. Currently waiting on delivery of some pods and a few snails/hermits. That takes us to today.

Pics:

Delivery

After setup

The shrimp and goby made friends immediately

Thanks for looking! Excited to watch everything come together.

 

[blaxsun]

Pan to the right a bit... I want to see the car!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Hello!

After being away from the hobby for years, I have finally begun a new reef. I'm starting this thread to document progress and get feedback from anyone and everyone who's interested.

Equipment:

Tank: Waterbox Marine X 110.4 (including sump and stand)
Lights: Maxspect Razor X 300w
Return Pump: Vectra S2
Powerheads: 2x VorTech MP40
Skimmer: Red Sea RSK 300
Heater: 2x BRS 300w Titanium Heaters with Inkbird Controller
Controller: A3 Apex Pro
Lid: ClearView Lid

I cycled the tank with MicroBacter Start XLM bacteria and bottled ammonia, which took just under 2 weeks. After that was finished I added a pair of clowns, and finally a yellow watchman goby and pistol shrimp 2 weeks later. I've added a small zoa frag as well, which introduced what looks like diatoms and some algae. Currently waiting on delivery of some pods and a few snails/hermits. That takes us to today.

Pics:

Delivery

After setup

The shrimp and goby made friends immediately

Thanks for looking! Excited to watch everything come together.

Love the stand for your tank!

 

[lemonjelleaux]

Pan to the right a bit... I want to see the car!

Ha, I've spent enough money on the car, now I'm moving on to the tank.

Love the stand for your tank!

Thanks! A lot of the reason I chose the Marine X over the Reef from Waterbox was the wood-look stand.


But in the last month the tank has been moving along. I've had some diatoms, which I think the copepods and snails have been helping to keep under control. And the water clouded up for a few days, which looked to be a bacteria bloom that's now mostly settled down. I've slowly kept stocking, and the fish now include a purple firefish, banggai cardinal, and tomini tang. I think I may add another one or two fish at some point, but I'm happy for now.

Besides fish, though, I've added a first few coral frags. I've got a couple zoa plugs, a small hammer, micro lord, blue stylo, and monti digi. The only two that seem to be having any issue are the lord, which may be getting too much light where it is, and the monti, which came with a dead spot that seems to be slowly spreading.

 

[lemonjelleaux]

Some ups and downs in the last few months. Everything was going swimmingly until I left the tank for a couple weeks for a vacation. I had a friend watch the tank while I was away, and I appreciate the effort that took, but he isn't in the hobby and there were a couple issues that came up and didn't get addressed quickly enough. The starter sps didn't make it, and the lps was barely holding on. Upon getting back, the firefish was gasping at the bottom of the tank, and unfortunately hasn't been seen since.

But I finally feel that the tank has been brought back from those issues and turned the corner. I've just picked up some new corals, including some sticks, so we'll see.

Current stocking:

Fish:
Clowns x2
Yellow Watchman Goby
Banggai Cardinalfish
Tomini Tang
Royal Gramma
McCosker's Flasher Wrasse
Green Mandarin

Inverts:
Blood Red Fire Shrimp
Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
Pistol Shrimp
Tiger Conch
Handfull of hermits
Bunch o' snails

 

[lemonjelleaux]

Update: the tank continues to struggle a bit. I've lost a number of frags, and most pieces aside from softies don't look great. I tried to take a step back and make sure everything is stable and I'm not missing something large. Water parameters have since seemed pretty good to me, and I'm seeing coralline growth popping up. So, I plan on introducing more corals again in a week or two.

Here are results from ATI a couple of weeks ago:

Salinity is at 1.026 specific gravity, measured with the precision hydrometer from BRS and Waterbox refractometer.
Alk staying at 8.5 +-0.1 according to HANNA checker.

Any thoughts or suggestions welcome. I'm plugging along, hoping things are maturing, but it would be nice to start seeing some real success.