Lion King's NPS Predator's Reef

lion king · Dec 5, 2018

New lighting scheme, I ditched the t5 bulb and added a few .5 leds, including 2 whites just for a couple of spot lights, I like it better. The sun corals are starting to show some life and one of the gorgs I was ready to ditch started to pop. I did a quick water change the other day and the system was awesome, less than 10 min with the quick change system.

Feeding system working great, I think I'm going to add a couple of powdered feeding with reef chili and fauna marin, the tank seems to be responding well when I feed it. I think I'll do a doser with an air pump to mix. Still frustrated about finding nps corals so in the end I think it will be alot of sun corals and gorgs.

I have to go back to my original themed Predator tank, the little reef fishes are just not going to do it for me. I rescaped for the arrival of the new predator, I'm keeping it secret for now, he's going to be fantastic.

lion king · Dec 9, 2018

It's ashamed when you have money burning a hole in your pocket, and you can't find anything to spend it on. I have lfs telling me there must be an issue with the collection of sun corals, they haven't seen them in a while. I'm close to ordering on eBay. The ones I got were all closed up tight as a drum, this is what they look now, so I might be doing right. But my dendros are sulking, the other dendros at the lfs I got them from were closed up tight also, so I'm thinking they were being starved, and needs to be tlc'd.

Found some ez artic pods and reef caviar in my freezer, don't remember why, the tank seems to be responding well to feeding this also. I would love to find a tunicate, still looking for a blueberry gorge. Figuring if I need a dietrus eater, there's no algae and I don't expect much enough to keep algae eaters fed, maybe I should get some for the refugium. The refugium continues to grow like weeds. Going to do a full reef testing today. I was thinking of some nasarrius snails, what about a tiger tail cucumber?, I have a hard working conch in my other reef, maybe one of those.

Devaji · Dec 9, 2018

fallowing I love this idea I am a big gorg fan.

lion king · Dec 9, 2018

Devaji said:
fallowing I love this idea I am a big gorg fan.

As soon as Gulf Coast gets restocked I'm ordering more of their little gorgs, I'm planning an entire orchard. Here's a pic of the tank in the morning natural light.

lion king · Dec 15, 2018

What a temperamental bunch, I'm really happy with the progress so far, everything seems to be progressing well. I know it's a really new tank, so the challenges are still there, while the sun corals that were near dead are coming to life, the spider sponge is now sulking after my last water change. The dendros are still sulking as well, I've moved them around to no avail, and whilke they seem to want pop, still closed up. I think I'm feeding plenty, and a well enough variety to keep everyone happy, my nitrates are not getting higher than 10, and the macros are growing like weeds.

lion king · Dec 16, 2018

I really am enjoying this tank, it's fun to see the activity of the corals that many find challenging each morning, as well as frustrating. I've got a blueberry gorg, blue lollipop tunicate, and yellow sun coral on my wish list.

danielsalt · Dec 30, 2018

I might have missed it but after the T connectors, where is that line with food going? To the tank or somehow the return as venturi?

Love the stocking so far, I cant get anything more exciting than tubastrea and dendros over here :/

Dr. Dendrostein · Dec 30, 2018

lion king said:
I really am enjoying this tank, it's fun to see the activity of the corals that many find challenging each morning, as well as frustrating. I've got a blueberry gorg, blue lollipop tunicate, and yellow sun coral on my wish list.

Haven't gotten alert from your thread, missed out . Really nice. I just got these 3 weeks?

lion king · Dec 30, 2018

danielsalt said:
I might have missed it but after the T connectors, where is that line with food going? To the tank or somehow the return as venturi?

Love the stocking so far, I cant get anything more exciting than tubastrea and dendros over here :/

The food line goes to a venturi valve, I have it independently plumbed into a sicce multi 1300 pump in the return section with the return dumping right in front of the main return pump.

Believe me it's frustrating getting anything here either, I've kind of thought to get alot of the little gorg saplings from Gulf Coast and make it a gorg dominant tank. Really can't find tubastrea, considering buying some on ebay, the ones I found has needed alot of tlc. Even dendros I'm seeing are overpriced and are in sad shape, so stocking has been frustrating.

Mortie31 · Jan 6, 2019

Loving this, very similar to what I’ve been thinking about, I’ll be pinching lots of your ideas... thankyou. I was considering having a mantis shrimp in mine... an ultimate predator and I think should be ok with NPS corals...

lion king · Jan 6, 2019

Ships said:
Do you feed them anything special for nutrients or can you just throw them in with the lionfish when you get home?

Mortie31 said:
Loving this, very similar to what I’ve been thinking about, I’ll be pinching lots of your ideas... thankyou. I was considering having a mantis shrimp in mine... an ultimate predator and I think should be ok with NPS corals...

Thought about a mantis as well, the problem is tbey can be desructive,, one day you may find they have decided to replant one of gorgs or use a frag as a doorstop. So careful coral placement would be advised.

Dr. Dendrostein · Jan 13, 2019

Any new pics

lion king · Jan 13, 2019

Still waiting for Gulf Coast to get the orange tree gorg in stock, then I'm going to order more gorgs and sponges. Still frustrated with finding stuff, I pulled a feather duster and couple pieces of sponge from my other reef.

I had a pretty drastic set back, I lost power in the middle of the night, and I already keep my house kind of cold. The reef must have gotten really cold, I woke up to very cloudy tank and the temp still below 70. I think the caulerpa went sexual, I cleaned up the dead macro and did a series of water changes, it took me almost 2 weeks to get back to normal. Some stuff may still be upset, so today I'm going to do some tlc on some of the corals and do some container feeding. Haven't had a total completely happy everything since the incident. I think this tank took it kind of hard because it was new, my other tanks seemed to not miss a beat.

Lost a $450 Rhino in qt, I had the owner of an lfs hand pick him for me, he came in sick with internal parasites, needless to say I'm looking for another lfs to do my special orders. Also found some nudis on the spider sponge, I have been hand picking them off. So my fish line up is still in the air, I'm trying to find a pest eating wrasse locally and just don't want to add a sixline.

Dr. Dendrostein · Jan 13, 2019

lion king said:
Still waiting for Gulf Coast to get the orange tree gorg in stock, then I'm going to order more gorgs and sponges. Still frustrated with finding stuff, I pulled a feather duster and couple pieces of sponge from my other reef.

I had a pretty drastic set back, I lost power in the middle of the night, and I already keep my house kind of cold. The reef must have gotten really cold, I woke up to very cloudy tank and the temp still below 70. I think the caulerpa went sexual, I cleaned up the dead macro and did a series of water changes, it took me almost 2 weeks to get back to normal. Some stuff may still be upset, so today I'm going to do some tlc on some of the corals and do some container feeding. Haven't had a total completely happy everything since the incident. I think this tank took it kind of hard because it was new, my other tanks seemed to not miss a beat.

Lost a $450 Rhino in qt, I had the owner of an lfs hand pick him for me, he came in sick with internal parasites, needless to say I'm looking for another lfs to do my special orders. Also found some nudis on the spider sponge, I have been hand picking them off. So my fish line up is still in the air, I'm trying to find a pest eating wrasse locally and just don't want to add a sixline.

Nice, I have some NPS softies HOPEFULLY coming, their paid for so hopefully. Ill let you know if i get. Sorry about the power loss. All been there done that.

VR28man · Jan 27, 2019

This is pretty cool. At some point, I’m going to try to launch it ain’t like this.

One thing: there’s a lot of cool fish that come from these kinds of depths. Most fire fish, flasher wrasses, even the orchid dottybacks. And most dwarf angels.

lion king · Jan 27, 2019

VR28man said:
This is pretty cool. At some point, I’m going to try to launch it ain’t like this.

One thing: there’s a lot of cool fish that come from these kinds of depths. Most fire fish, flasher wrasses, even the orchid dottybacks. And most dwarf angels.

I enjoyed the little reef fishes for a while and like the cryptic wrasses and basslets; but it just doesn't do it for me anymore. I've got my eye on another rhino, even though a $450 burn stung alot, I'll likely go for another one.

Still not finding any interesting nps corals, so I took a chance and ordered a couple of yellow sun coral frags off of eBay. The spider sponge is taking a downward turn, not sure if it was because of the nudis or the power outage, it had been going off and on for the last couple of weeks. Doing more research, no one has had good luck with them. Sometimes you just have to rent them, like the blueberry gorg; I'm going to get one when I find one, but I've never heard of anyone having long term success with them.

lion king · Feb 10, 2019

Let's have some updates; good, bad?, and the fun and challenges of reefing, that's why we do it right?

The gorgs and seafan are doing fantastic, I'm checking Gulf Coast every day, I'll likely order 10 more of different varieties they carry.

The chili coral is going wild, seems to have sprouted more arms, it doesn't care for nitrates so it alerts me when I have to do more water changes.

The orange sun corals are producing babies like crazy, check out the base of this one.

I did break down and buy a yellow sun coral off ebay, it came in in extremely bad shape, looks like I'll save 4 heads of this piece.

Spider sponge, so sad, he's on the decline and there's nothing I know how to do to save it. After further research, I have not found any positive reports of long term success.

So here's the "hot new coral" as described by a lfs, funny how they had no idea how to take care of it, and although they did have identified correctly didn't know that it was in the gorgonian class. Another lfs had it identified as a fire coral, while a different employee at the same lfs identified it as a sponge. After my research this is a sinuous sea fan (Eunicella tricoronata); a filter feeder but the catch is they hail from waters if the high 50s to low 60s, so no way they will survive long in a tropical reef. These are going for a $100, another rent-a-coral.

Dr. Dendrostein · Feb 10, 2019

lion king said:
Let's have some updates; good, bad?, and the fun and challenges of reefing, that's why we do it right?

The gorgs and seafan are doing fantastic, I'm checking Gulf Coast every day, I'll likely order 10 more of different varieties they carry.

The chili coral is going wild, seems to have sprouted more arms, it doesn't care for nitrates so it alerts me when I have to do more water changes.

The orange sun corals are producing babies like crazy, check out the base of this one.

I did break down and buy a yellow sun coral off ebay, it came in in extremely bad shape, looks like I'll save 4 heads of this piece.

Spider sponge, so sad, he's on the decline and there's nothing I know how to do to save it. After further research, I have not found any positive reports of long term success.

So here's the "hot new coral" as described by a lfs, funny how they had no idea how to take care of it, and although they did have identified correctly didn't know that it was in the gorgonian class. Another lfs had it identified as a fire coral, while a different employee at the same lfs identified it as a sponge. After my research this is a sinuous sea fan (Eunicella tricoronata); a filter feeder but the catch is they hail from waters if the high 50s to low 60s, so no way they will survive long in a tropical reef. These are going for a $100, another rent-a-coral.

Thanks for updates, yellow sun coral that's 4, with time should recoup , love the babies. Very nice, comrade