Maac's 180ish gallon Dream Reef Savvy Tank

[Maacc]

My sponge is more encrusting than the blue plating and I didn't introduce it, it started growing spontaneously. I will try to get a pic tonight.
My melanarus is currently in fish jail for being a bully to the new moyeri leopard.

 

[Maacc]

Everything is growing pretty well, some July tank shots:

 

[Maacc]

Melanarus is still pouting.

 

[Maacc]

You know you're doing a bad job with your updates when it's hard to find your build thread lol

I will work to try and get things back current over the next few days.

 

[Maacc]

So the last part of the year was a bit rough, I lost the clam in September. I had random frags STN while some stuff looked pretty good. It turns out I had a heavy metal problem due to an IM Gourmet Nouri feeder ;Rage.
I finally found it in February of this year.

 

[Maacc]

Strange thing was I took numerous ICP tests and it took a good while for anything bad to really show up. I pulled out all my MarinePure blocks due to high aluminum and it has mostly stabilized. I kept some of the balls and added some maxspect balls as a replacement.
Here are the 3 ICP tests so if you see something like the 2nd one start looking hard.

 

[Maacc]

And now for rapid fire updates and pics.
September 2018:
This is when the clam started to go downhill for no apparent reason. Most stuff had PE and was happy. I checked pumps and such nothing I could see. But as you can see Birdsnest stripped and some based out frags were deteriorating.

 

[Maacc]

October 2018:
My first rate helper

I tried a couple of potters wrasses neither of them survived the week unfortunately

Some FTS and other close ups:

 

[Maacc]

November 2018:
Got a nice battlebox in from @Battlecorals , unfortunately this is when the toxicity started getting worse so I have lost most of these guys ;Blackeye

 

[Maacc]

December 2018:
Toxicity got worse, somethings are struggling but most are ok, pulling my hair out trying to find out why I'm not getting much growth but tests coming back pretty good.
My Clarisea filter roller came in during the holidays and I am a really big fan of it. The first motor died after about 3 weeks but once I got hooked up with Ecotech, they took care of me and got the replacement to me in a few days. I can't recommend it enough. I basically don't have to run carbon and the water stays clear with 20 micron paper.

 

[Maacc]

January 2019:
I couldn't figure out what was off, but the latest ICP showed some elevated metals so I had a 150 gallon water change done, but still couldn't find the source. As you can guess it didn't do much. ;Rage
The coral that was doing well kept doing well but I lost both clams and was having STN on some stuff while other corals did fine. None of the fish seemed affected at all. The bellus picked up a random bacterial infection but a week of antibiotic laced food for the tank and she was back in champion form .
I installed the clarisea temporarily but I wasn't happy with it so I reconfigured the plumbing.

I have had persistent low PH I thought maybe that was my cause for slow growth and unhappy corals even though I have a fresh air intake for my skimmer, so I added a secondary reactor to my calrx.

I also started redoing my electrical with the addition of the apex 2016 in hopes of a trident coming soon. It's still a work in progress.

I really started to get annoyed when toward the end of the month, I added a couple of test frags after the water change and I got hit with bryopsis.

Couple of fuge shots:
I grow a bunch of chaeto, grape caluerpa and red gracillara, all this algae plus the scrubber is probably what kept me from a full crash.

 

[Maacc]

February 2019:
I finally found the source of my heavy metal issue. I removed the feeder and dosed triton detox. It worked very very well. The week after I dosed fluconazole for 3 weeks to wipe out the bryopsis.

I also want to thank Bud at TurboAquatics, he sent me a replacement board for my scrubber and it was very easy to change.

Here are a few shots of my bellus struggling with a bacterial infection, but recovered very well in about a week with medicated food.

Toward the end of Feb I lost my copperband butterfly who I had for 5 weeks or so, but I couldn't get it to eat anything but live blackworms. I tried LRS, mahi roe, masstick, clams and bloodworms . I am hoping the qt'd eating one from Humblefish will have better luck.



After the Detox, everything looked much much better and I added a tuxedo urchin for further cuc diversity. I also added algagen phyto zooanthella and pods in case the detox or the metals had effected the population.

 

[Maacc]

March 2019:
Unfortunately while the tank as a whole is doing great, with universal PE and growth on most pieces, while feeding my pintail wrasse jumped through the open feeding hole about 2' into the air and onto the tile. I immediately picked him up and put him back into the tank. I haven't seen him in 3 weeks and it was hunkered up and went into the rocks and I suspect a spinal injury :mad:. I had him for about 8 months as a female and it had grown quite a bit and had just started to get male colors .

I finished replumbing the clarisea and am happy with how it turned out.


I received a battlebox from @Battlecorals Wednesday and they look amazing. PE within an hour of dipping them.

 

[Maacc]

Planted some of the battlebox today and took some more shots.

 

[Maacc]

Weekend update:
I am going to refill the CalRX this weekend it's been 5ish months and I'm down to the last 1/4 or so. I am waiting anxiously for the Kalk stirrer from Avast through BRS, but they indicated that it was due the first week of April.
The orange spot rabbitfish is eating like a pig gobbling nouri and getting a pot belly within 10 minutes of me dropping the sheets. I feed 1/3 of a full sheet of green and 1/3 of full sheet of purple daily and I drop some sprigs of gracillara from the fuge when I remember.
The urchin is mowing down coraline, but it seems to grow back very quickly. Unfortunately, I am resigned to the face that my isoceles is gone, it's been 3 weeks from his aerial high dive and no sign of him.

 

[Hemmdog]

Awesome build! Glad to see things are getting better again for you too!

 

[Maacc]

Tank Update:
Everything is growing well. My Pintail wrasse never showed back up, so I got a replacement from Marine Collectors along with a super healthy Quoyi parrot, which is still settling and skittish but a really cool fish.



I decided to go peristaltic with my calcium reactor as well as add a kalk stirrer to force out CO2 as I was getting 7.6 ph at night with an algae scrubber, fuge and exterior air intake from my skimmer. I bought a CO2 detector and have 1200-1400 ppm CO2 indoors and unfortunately being in South Florida windows being open are not a viable option. Here is the stand I made. I also rearranged my manifold and plumbing to make it more efficient, as well as pulling the BRS dual reactor and going with an in sump phosban 550 reactor for carbon as I never run GFO anyway.



I also got my stand skinned, maple stained cherry and this weekend I am working on changing it to magnetic attachment as independent panels.

 

[Maacc]

Here's a couple tank shots:

 

[justingraham]

That’s packed

 

[Maacc]

That’s packed

Fortunately, still minimal nutrients due to the scrubber and fuge.
Everyone is fat and happy, but I might have to re home the hippo in 2 or 3 years if she keeps growing like a weed.