Michael’s 140g kind of shallow sps build. Reefing in Sweden

[Janci]

Gorgeous cat.
Ours is called Helio. Not a main coone but some kind of forest cat, rescued from the street

He likes shoes and slippers

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Gorgeous cat.
Ours is called Helio. Not a main coone but some kind of forest cat, rescued from the street

He likes shoes and slippers

Haha, Helio seems to be living the good life after his rough start!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Traded in some stuff to my LFS and came home with some some acro frags (would love some help with ID’ing them) and what I think is a favites frag.
I also added two peppermint shrimp since I spotted some aptasia.

Sorry about the particles floating around, my twin spot goby is a tireless worker.

Full tank shot

New arrivals (would love an id on them)

I think this one will develop an orange base with blue tips

Some sort of millepora

A rescue that I picked up from a lfs some weeks back.
Went from this:

To today, starting to develop some pink tips as well

And just some random shots from around the tank

The only acro (I believe it’s a myagi tort) that survived the tank sitting at 30c+ for almost a week this summer. I had it dead to rights but it somehow bounced back

 

[Janci]

Great coral selection.
I wish I could help you with ID-ing, but all my sps is also called acro. Lol
That rescued piece is a nice surprise.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Great coral selection.
I wish I could help you with ID-ing, but all my sps is also called acro. Lol
That rescued piece is a nice surprise.

Thanks!

I’m looking forward to what it might develop in to. Got it for next to nothing and didn’t really expect it to make it, so nice surprise indeed.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Well, the peppermint shrimp did a number on the few aptasia I had, I’ll give them that, but I’ve noticed some white patches on a stylo. This coincided with the addition of the shrimp.

I was peaking at my tank just before going to work this morning and caught one of the little buggers in the act!

That earns them a one way ticket to the refugium!
I’ve never had to deal with misbehaving inverts before but I guess a plastic bottle trap is the way to go?

 

[Janci]

I did not hear before that peppermint shrimp attache sps, especially if there is other food available.

A bottle trap with some seaweed would do to catch him.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

I did not hear before that peppermint shrimp attache sps, especially if there is other food available.

A bottle trap with some seaweed would do to catch him.

I have heard that some of them can go rogue. I don’t think it’s the norm but can happen.
On closer inspection they also managed to
damage a forest fire monti and a monti cap.

The bottle trap worked well, final tally was five nasarius snails, one cleaner shrimp and two peppermint shrimp caught [emoji1]
The little buggers are now residing in the sump and contemplating their crimes.

 

[Janci]

Good catch and even better that you noticed the shrimps.
Before you know it you start making changes that were really unnecessary.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Some ups and downs.

The new acro frags are doing great, encrusting away and growing.
I had to use more kalkwasser in my ATI as a response since my alk was dropping a bit to low between weekly WCs.

My flame angel kicked the bucket a week ago, I’ve had it for about a year and it’s been fat and happy all along but lately it had been losing weight. My guess is that it was old age that got it, it fits the pattern that I’ve seen with old fish.
On the plus side I’m seeing some daytime PE on my sps for the first time since I got it.

I got the first clam for this tank and it’s tiny!
I ordered a 5-8cm gold maxima from TMC but what I got was a 3cm brow..ish little guy.
Oh well, it was a cheap (by Swedish standards a 110$ clam is cheap...) and I figured that I would use it as a pilot clam before I pull the trigger on some more high end specimens.
Crappy iPhone pic after it went in the tank:

 

[Viking_Reefing]

I was slightly worried yesterday when the clam didn’t really open up but today it looks fairly decent (sorry for the bad iPhone pic)

The wife who insists on naming everything and being her lovely unhinged self took one look at the clam and exclaimed “that looks like a ***** but a mini one, it’s name is virgin” [emoji28]

Compared a pic of my Pac-Man acro from when I got it to now and there’s some progress

The bleached out rescue-acro also seems to be doing well (can’t get the purple tips to really show up on the photos)

If anyone has an idea of what species this happens to be I would be really thankful

 

[Viking_Reefing]

I think the flow over the rockwork might be a bit to much for the clam so I’m thinking about moving it down to the sand bed.
The tank is 60cm deep and lighting is a razor 160w+2x24w ATI bulbs, do you guys think that it would be enough light for it to be happy?

 

[Viking_Reefing]

I think the flow over the rockwork might be a bit to much for the clam so I’m thinking about moving it down to the sand bed.
The tank is 60cm deep and lighting is a razor 160w+2x24w ATI bulbs, do you guys think that it would be enough light for it to be happy?

If anyone has any input on this I would really appreciate it. Never had any problems with clams in the past so I’m a bit unsure on how to proceed.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Well, I suspect that it was a case of pinched mantel so I gave it a 20min freshwater dip in RO.
I’ve never had to do this before with a clam so I’m hoping for the best!

 

[Janci]

I hope it turns around.

 

[saintsreturn]

Enjoyed reading your build! good luck with the recent changes and congrats on finding the shrimp as the culprit!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Enjoyed reading your build! good luck with the recent changes and congrats on finding the shrimp as the culprit!

Thanks buddy!

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Well, the clam didn’t make it. Not to happy with TMC for sending out a specimen In a compromised condition, but oh well.

I picked up some new acros today

Bright pink milli with bright blue tips. Here’s a better picture taken by the seller:

What I think is a desalwii. Crap color rendition on the picture but it’s dark blue.

Echinata ice fire

SSC

The rest of the older coral are doing well

Pac-Man is growing nicely

My rescue-acro is starting to get some color to it.

This stuff was the bomb for mounting coral

Worked like standard reef epoxy but hardened in about two minutes, can’t recommend it enough!

Next addition will be either a golden dwarf moray or a skeletor eel, depending on if I can find a dwarf here in Sweden that they don’t want 800$ for.

 

[Viking_Reefing]

I was away visiting family over Christmas and I dang near had a tank crash.

My wife called me and said that the tank was filled with bubbles. I immediately thought that I had miscalculated the evaporation and run out of water in my ATO.
Not the case.
After a lot of head scratching the wife saw this

The darn cat somehow got to the power cable to the ato and thought that the proper thing to do was to chew the crap out of it.

The result was that she had to manually top of the tank for five days -> no dosing of kalkwasser= a drop in KH to 5.4 when I tested it yesterday.

You would think that that’s enough failures but you would be wrong.
The skimmers airline somehow got clogged and I’m guessing that it wasn’t working for about a week.
Done? Nope! The refugium light also decided to pack it in so the cheato hasn’t absorbed any nutrients either.

End result: really low kh and high nutrients + low ph due to low aeration leading to really unhappy corals.
A lot of acros has turned brown..ish and several of them has started to STN, especially the smooth skin acros.

Did a 20% WC, cleaned all of the equipment, pulled out a lot of cheato and started running carbon. Now it’s just a waiting game [emoji58]

 

[Viking_Reefing]

Well, due to the problems I just had with the ato I decided to build something more sturdy and esthetically pleasing to keep the wife happy.
Bought a drawer from ikea (freaking ikea, makes me wanna move to the top of a mountain every single visit!) and did a couple of modifications.
This is what I came up with (the reservoir will be replaced by a larger one but had this thing laying around):

Fairly happy with how it came out and a added bonus is that I have somewhere to sit when I’m watching the tank [emoji1]