Minireef 120

[melfish]

13 March 2018

Tank moved to new house. Dinos mostly gone. Hair algae outbreak beginning in its place. To be fair, the tank was reasonably neglected for quite a while.



Starfish doing a thing. Any ideas what? Pls tell me. I assume it's not good?

 

[melfish]

4 July 2018

Book light stand going strong. Probably the best use ever found for Twilight books.

 

[melfish]

5 July 2018

Coral update.

This acan in previous post- the xmas party freebie:

This one was from the party as well, but I don't think I had a photo of it:


SPS all died a month or so after the party. Anemone was happy for a while, then moved somewhere and was never able to locate it again.

This duncan is the hardiest coral I have ever owned




Some zoanthids just hate my tank. No idea why


Starfish being a weirdo


10 July 2018

Current parameters

Alkalinity 7.0 dKH
Phosphate 0ppm
Nitrate 0ppm
Calcium 385ppm
Magnesium 1440ppm

 

[melfish]

16 July 2018

My little helper


Added palythoas. The shop image & them in my tank:


Also new blastos:


You can see those xmas party acans here. They have their proper colouration back- orange in the middle, green around the outside. Up the top is an SPS frag I tried. Still a nope.


Hi my name is Chester and welcome to my crib

17 July 2018

Tank params:
Alkalinity 6.3dKH
Calcium 400ppm
Magnesium 1400ppm

Dappled in dosing for the first time. Dosed bicarb soda for alkalinity and calcium chloride for calcium. I figured out the amounts using an online calculator. The calculator advised to add slowly. I took this to mean over an hour or two.... I am now assuming it probably meant over a few days?

18g bicarb soda took the alkalinity from 5.3 to 10.9
33g calcium chloride took the calcium from 400ppm to 450ppm
Alkalinity remained at 12dKH

 

[melfish]

30 July 2018

Coral update

Frogspawn got brown jelly. All others doing well

 

[melfish]

12 August 2018

Got a hermit called hermie


Also got an NPS gorgonian. One of my favourite things ever. So beautiful! Here is a general coral & tank-wide update:


Also got another Heraldi, aka B2.
He wasn't too healthy when I got him. I didn't think much of it, but he was kind of hovering in one spot in the stock tank, instead of swimming around the rock. In the bag on the way home & at home he kept resting on his side. I thought it might just have been stress. I know tangs can sometimes 'lie down'. But he kept doing it in the acclimation bucket. I added a heater and air pump and he perked up a bit. When I put him in the tank he hid all night and was dead by morning. RIP B2 :'(


Also got a scooter blenny, aka scoot, scooter, scooty. Here he is blending into the sand.

 

[melfish]

20 August 2018

Chester looking shocked ;Wideyed (and the giant mysis he was just trying to swallow for 10 minutes. Finally gave up and spat it out. Ha!)



Some night shots



Some hermie for good measure

 

[melfish]

12 November 2018

Starfish being a weirdo


Chester being Chester


Tank update. Gorgonian did well until I couldn't keep the algae off it

 

[melfish]

4-22 December 2018

Hermie did his first shell change


Chester doing his favourite thing: stealing food from the duncan


Acan update


Chester update

 

[Peach02]

Any updates?

 

[melfish]

Any updates?

Oops. It has been a while :)

 

[melfish]

January & February 2019

Home made food. Bits and pieces of raw seafood, mysis shrimp, seaweed, garlic, and a bit of water in the blender (they have their own mini blender/electric chopper). Silicone tray from eBay- makes the perfect sized cubes.

Hate this light. Wiped off the dust with a damp cloth and it's permanently stained. Porous plastic.

Fromia starfish was cool but fell to pieces in the first 24 hrs :(

Chester got a friend

But chester's new friend liked to eat acans

So the acans had to be retained for their own safety

Witness protection program grows

Chester's new friend was tireless in his efforts

Snackin' on some GSP

Another day. Another lap of WITSEC

Maybe if I check where the corals used to be....

No? Ok GSP it is then

Some head shots ;Snaphappy ;Happy

 

[melfish]

First week of March 2019

Happy as Larry in the isolation chamber. Loving the iPhone X camera.

Of all the possible places & things to host, Chester has chosen.... This piece of hair algae. Seriously. He nuzzles into it and everything. I didn't have the heart to clean it off.

Chester lookin cute

Chester & his new friend were getting along ~swimmingly~. They liked to hang out together.

They also liked photobombing the GSP together.

One tiny little head of blastos remaining. Why do you hate my tank so much, it's not that bad is it? You're so tiny Chester's new friend doesn't even want to eat you.

This... needs no explanation

Chester came to see what all the fuss was about. Still my all time favourite photo of my lil guy

Chester's friend came to see if Chester had found a way in (sorry if this bores you, I did warn you it was ~photo heavy~)

This lace coral died a loooong time ago, but I still like the look of it. It's now being enveloped by coraline algae.

Everything was going well, they were the best of friends, newcomer was eating well (despite also enjoying my corals), the corals he liked to eat were ready to go back to the store to exchange for others he didn't want to eat...

And then suddenly, overnight, for literally no apparent reason....
*Trigger warning- sad things, dead fish friend

Nitrate & phosphate tested 0 (although I'm fairly sure I have a faulty Red Sea nitrate kit, but I wasn't behind on water changes or anything)

So, I was very sad. So was Chester.

No more WITSEC. Corals returned to their homes. :'(

Light dancing on the ceiling. I have always loved open top tanks, largely for this reason.

 

[melfish]

Ok, only one year to go :D Has R2R gotten rid of the insert thumbnail option? Maybe I should resize a little smaller

 

[Peach02]

Sorry to hear about the loss of chesters friend it seemed like you really loved him.
as for the r2r question, I havnt noticed it missing but I’ll check my build thread and edit this post if it’s gone for me too

edit: I think it was just renamed to cover instead of thumbnail

 

[melfish]

I think mine is broken? ;Cyclops

And thank you, we all loved him! He was so beautiful. I always feel deeply guilty when a fish dies, especially if they were wild caught ;Sorry

 

[Peach02]

I think mine is broken? ;Cyclops

And thank you, we all loved him! He was so beautiful. I always feel deeply guilty when a fish dies, especially if they were wild caught ;Sorry

For me it only is visable on the first page at the top
And I get the same thing, I think it shows we care

 

[muzikalmatt]

Wow, that was quite a ride! Your tank has obviously been through a lot with a couple of moves, battling dinos and losing fish and corals. I appreciate you sharing the good and the bad as some people tend to avoid sharing the negative aspects of owning a reef tank and it's great to see you sticking with it through all of those challenges.

Despite the issues you had with your AI Prime I really love the colors it brings out of the corals with the blue lighting. My Kessil A360 just doesn't seem to quite get that much "pop".

Looking forward to seeing more!

 

[yanni]

This is such an amazing thread! I wish there were more updates, bc it's fantastic. This has inspired me even more to get my tank up and running asap!

 

[Andynz2000]

Did you test ammonia when your fish died??