Build thread - 85 gallon Cade PR 900 S2

[MmeAssoc]

General tank update: I found a very large vermetid snail under my duncan coral (identified thanks to the help of reef2reef - I hadn't realised vermetids could get so large).

I bought some coral cutters, and crushed/scraped it off. Here's a picture for reference, as I couldn't find any pictures of vermetids that looked like this one when searching:

It's about as big as the mouth areas on the duncans. Most pictures I could find of vermetids look more like these small ones I've seen on my trochus snails:

It was interesting watching the large vermetid feed - it would throw out a long string of web-like mucus, and reel in anything that got caught in it. The web seemed to be irritating both the duncan and a nearby leather toadstool, though, which is why I've tried to remove it.

I haven't tried removing the smaller ones from the trochus snails yet, but I think I will during my next water change - they aren't really an issue right now, but if they colonise the rock in large numbers, they could be a problem.

And a bonus picture, because the clowns always want to be a part of the photos:

The tank is largely doing well, with most corals showing growth and good colours. All of my mushrooms mysteriously deteriorated over night, though. I'm not sure what happened - parameters were within the recommended range and hadn't had any large swings, no other corals were affected, and the mushrooms were in various locations around the tank. The three rhodactis just vanished, and my two discosomas shrivelled up and turned white - they are still visible in the tank. They don't look alive, but I've left them in for now because I'm hoping that given they haven't completely melted to nothing, they might bounce back.

Fish stocking is still moving very slowly, since I haven't seen any of the fish on my list in my local stores. Hopefully I can add a shrimp goby sometime soon!

 

[MmeAssoc]

Stock update: over the weekend, I was finally able to find some of the fish from my fish list!

A beautiful mandarin:

I'm keeping an eye on him, because he's not eating frozen/pellets. I have seen him picking at the rocks for pods, and there are no other major pod eaters in the tank, so I'm hoping if I top up the pods regularly he'll be ok. I'm considering buying a pod hotel for the sump, and eventually installing a refugium.

I also picked up a royal gramma, who has kind of rudely booted the firefish out of his home and is now living in/around that hole in the rock:

And finally, a naoko's wrasse:

The royal gramma and wrasse seem a little picky about food, but they are eating frozen brine shrimp and mysis, so I'm hopeful that they will stay fat and happy. Haven't noticed the wrasse engaging in the naoko 'dive bombing' swimming style I've read about yet.

I have also picked up some new corals in the last few weeks - a blasto that is visible in the picture of the mandarin, and a hammer frag:

Most corals appear to be doing ok, although the zoas have not grown any new polyps in weeks, and I have a firework clove polyp that is growing on one side of the frag plug (onto the rock), but the other side is melting away. In contrast, the leathers and duncans seem extremely happy.

 

[JoeinLA]

Beautiful mandarin. I’ve set a pair of these as absolute for my Cade 900. I’ve dumped a pretty decent number of algae barn pod jars in my tank but I’m not sure if I have a large population. Would love to hear how you get along with your pods.

along those lines, I’ve also been struggling with both growing cheato as well as placing any type of refugium space for the cheato to grow in the sump - it is, as you know - a bit tight in there. Would also love to hear how you implement a refugium, if you do.

thanks for the update. I’ve been following your progress as we seem to be on relatively similar paths and your experiences are definitely helpful to me.

thanks again!

 

[MmeAssoc]

Beautiful mandarin. I’ve set a pair of these as absolute for my Cade 900. I’ve dumped a pretty decent number of algae barn pod jars in my tank but I’m not sure if I have a large population. Would love to hear how you get along with your pods.

along those lines, I’ve also been struggling with both growing cheato as well as placing any type of refugium space for the cheato to grow in the sump - it is, as you know - a bit tight in there. Would also love to hear how you implement a refugium, if you do.

thanks for the update. I’ve been following your progress as we seem to be on relatively similar paths and your experiences are definitely helpful to me.

thanks again!

I'll let you know how the fuge goes, if I do it - I've been holding off because my nutrients are on the low side (nitrate 5, phosphate 0.025). If I do one, I'll put it in the media basket section (there's a tunze fuge light that will fit perfectly over that section).

Do you have a build thread? I'd love to see how your Cade 900 is going! EDIT: found it! Following.

 

[JoeinLA]

re: the Tunze fuge light, I have it and love it, but I wonder if getting the full spectrum light might have been better just because it would have made seeing things in the sump alot easier. I have a hard time seeing anything under the purple lighting. its ability to be mounted easily, small form factor, and the fact that it's waterproof makes it amazingly easy to use. I'd definitely recommend it from that perspective (can't really speak to its actually effectiveness at growing Cheato since I'm really struggling there).

 

[JoeinLA]

Hey, i just 3D printed a "wall" for the media basket section that has a spray bar for tumbling my cheato.

see this thread. I just got it working, so no long term results yet, but hopefully it will help keep me keep my cheato alive...

How to design a funnel to push water pump output into a "sheet" of water?

OK, I'm clearly no engineer and I'm guessing this is a really easy thing to do if you actually knew what you're doing... What I'm hoping to do is to funnel the stream of water coming from a water pump into a 2mm x 90mm "sheet" of water. When I tried to just divert the flow of water from the...

www.reef2reef.com

 

[MmeAssoc]

Update:

The good news is that the mandarin continues to look fat and healthy. I haven't added any additional pods, so the population existing in the tank must be good enough for him. I see him pecking at the rocks and glass often.

Royal gramma has also settled in really well, often swimming around with the clowns.

Unfortunately, after about ten days in the tank, the Naoko wrasse died. I have no idea what happened - it was eating well, swimming around just fine and looked very healthy. The day after he died, I noticed my dragon soul favia's tissue was receding around the edges - I've dipped the coral twice since then, but the flesh continues to erode and its feeder tentacles no longer come out at night. I don't think it's going to pull through.

My zoas also look unhappy - a lot of the polyps are staying closed most of the time.

However, the blastos, leathers, duncan and GSP all look fantastic. I've started feeding reef roids directly to some of the corals, and I think it's had a big positive impact on the duncan in particular - this coral was a uniform beige a few weeks ago, but now its mouths are a lovely bright green and its tentacles are much more pink than beige - it's really beautiful to look at right now.

 

[MmeAssoc]

The tank is now six months old, and I have added a tiny bubble tip anemone. Unfortunately, it's currently living in a very hard to see/photograph crevice at the back of the tank, in the dark. Hopefully he'll move out into the light soon. This is the best picture I could get for now:

Little cutie!

I bought the nem from a local reefer who was kind enough to give me a couple of frags of Walt Disney acropora to try, since I don't have any SPS yet. I'm not particularly confident about my chances with these, since I've had trouble with two of my LPS (the dragon soul favia continues to get worse, and the hammer never really opened and lost all polyps within a couple of weeks of being in the tank). Here's one of them:

The fish are all doing well. I'm a bit concerned that I've seen a recent increase in a green, hairy algae throughout the tank, but my nitrate and phosphate levels are still measuring ok (5ppm and 0.09), so I'll maybe just increase the snail population and remove what I can during water changes.

And because I forgot to upload this photo earlier, here is my growing blasto garden:

The red/greens were added a couple of months ago, and the purple/blues about a month after that. Love watching their feeding response.

 

[MmeAssoc]

The clowns moved into the anemone last night! It took almost two months, but it's great to see they got there in the end. The nem is a little small, as far as homes go, but seems to be dealing with the clowns' aggressive love just fine at the moment.

The two little SPS frags added two months are also doing fine - slight but noticeable growth on one (it appears to be beige with blue polyps - I had thought both frags were the same, but now they're growing I can see they're clearly two different colours). Unclear whether the pink polyp one pictured in my previous post has grown at all, but it is definitely alive.

Unfortunately, something is wrong with my larger blasto - tissue is receding on a number of the heads in the centre of the coral, exposing the skeleton. The other blasto seems fine. I'm going to dip the sad blasto today, during my weekly water change.

Algae on the sandbed is getting pretty ugly, so I'll be looking for options to fix that next. I was thinking maybe some sort of sand-sifting goby, but I'm not sure if they will outcompete the mandarin goby for pods?