MoparMike97's 125 Softie Tank

[kevgib67]

Wow, beautiful tank! Somehow you’ve managed lighting that meets the high par needs of your clams and the lower par needs of your softies.

 

[MoparMike97]

Wow, beautiful tank! Somehow you’ve managed lighting that meets the high par needs of your clams and the lower par needs of your softies.

Thank you!

From my experience, the whole "softies need low light" generalization isn't true in most cases. Sure, some might be sensitive to over-lighting but considering in nature, many leathers are found in shallow lagoon environments, they can definitely take lots of light. Obviously, many have great success with them at low par levels as well, guess it goes to show the adaptability of these corals!

 

[MoparMike97]

Quick update on the tank.

It's been about 2 weeks with the new lights, so far I'm still extremely happy with them! No regrets on replacing the Primes. The uptick in intensity was clearly evident as it triggered a massive bloom of dinos... Gotta love it haha. Both nitrate and phosphate were detectable, so I have to believe the change in intensity and spectrum are the culprit

The sandbed was quickly covered in nasty globs and it began to cover the rocks and corals shortly after. I had a old school turbo twist UV sterilizer in the basement, so I figured what the heck, and got it hooked up. Initially I tried plumbing it into the return line but it absolutely killed the flow, it was barely trickling into the display with the added restriction. So I ended up finding a 450gph pump and have it pulling water from the first chamber of the sump, going through the sterilizer and draining into the skimmer chamber which seems to be working great!

Dinos are almost completely gone and the skimmer has been pulling an insane amount of gunk. The only additional maintenance I've been doing is using a turkey baster to blow off the rocks once a day to get the dinos into the water column. I'm now starting to see green diatom film on the glass and sand again, so it seems the dinos have lost their foothold. I'll continue to blow off the rocks and sand daily until I don't see any trace of them, and probably keep the UV going for at least a few months.

Here's the tank today after it's weekly 10 gallon water-change. So nice to see white sand again!

And a few clam pics!


My big squamosa from PEA

ORA croceas

My new pink ningaloo/noae. I remember these being sold simply as ningaloo clams or Ningaloo reef maximas back in the day. These are clearly different than the normal teardrop clams, as they have a highly textured mantle with less defined teardrops but I think genetic testing proved these are indeed T. noae. Admittedly, I don't keep up with taxonomy stuff since it seems to change every couple years anyways, so I could be wrong haha. Whatever the scientists say it is, the reddish pink base color with gold and green teardrops was something I had never seen before and had to have it!

And finally another blue squamosa! This one being a "ultra blue", you can clearly see the color difference between the blue-green from PEA to the left and the new ultra blue on the right.

As you may be able to tell... The Tridacna addiction is real haha

 

[JohnTheReefer]

Good to hear the dinos didn't stick around too long!

 

[Sleeping Giant]

looks great

 

[MoparMike97]

Good to hear the dinos didn't stick around too long!

Same here haha, I've seen a bunch of threads on here where it's a months or years long battle. UV certainly seems to be highly effective against whatever type I have!

looks great

Thank you!

__________

A few random shots from this morning

 

[MoparMike97]

A quick update on the tank!

About 4 weeks in, and all the corals are growing like crazy under the Viparspectra's. The Sarcophyton in particular have never looked better, even the small frags I got from TSA are showing great growth.

AC Green Cap Fat Polyp

TSA Japanese Deepwater

TSA Green Long-Polyp

AC White Polyp

TSA Neon Polyp

AC Snowflake, which has developed some nice green coloration

I did end up removing the mertensii carpet anemone after it decided to start strolling around the glass. After watching my red haddoni do something similar and get 75% of its oral disc shredded, I figured the safest bet was to just put it in my nano with the recovering haddoni for now.

Have some more additions planned, but obviously the weather isn't great for shipping right now! Hope everyone stays warm and doesn't have any power outages!

 

[JohnTheReefer]

Everything is looking great! Toadstools are a favorite Good call on moving the nem. What are the next planned additions?

 

[MoparMike97]

Everything is looking great! Toadstools are a favorite Good call on moving the nem. What are the next planned additions?

Thank you!

I have a few new corals and clams on order but the thing I'm most excited about is a small (~2.5") redtail/sargassum trigger. A buddy was able to snag it for me and is currently holding it until the weather is better for shipping. I've been trying to find one for a while now, and since I've always preferred buying fish small and growing them out, I jumped on it!

 

[StealthTec]

Same here haha, I've seen a bunch of threads on here where it's a months or years long battle. UV certainly seems to be highly effective against whatever type I have!


Thank you!

__________

A few random shots from this morning

Love that pulsing sinularia in the first picture! any chance you remember where you got it? been trying to find them online

 

[MoparMike97]

Love that pulsing sinularia in the first picture! any chance you remember where you got it? been trying to find them online

Thank you, it's definitely one of my favorites! I got it from my LFS years ago, I believe it was a maricultured piece. Marine Farmers has them for sale from time to time, I can't say I've seen anyone else selling them
_________________________________________________

And a tank update,

It's been a bit of a rollercoaster for the past month. I ended up losing basically all of my tridacna clams to some fast acting disease (possibly Perkinsus or a virus). They'd go from healthy, growing specimens to dead over 3-5 days after showing symptoms and FW dips had no effect. The only two survivors are the two ORA crocea. I don't plan on adding any more clams to the tank going forward, which stinks since they're some of my favorite inverts but losing that many expensive animals that quickly is a pretty big turn off.

The other big change I made was to remove the sand. The whole time I've had this tank set up, the sandbed had consistently been the ugliest part of the tank. From dinos, to GHA, to cyano it just seemed like I could never go more than a month or two without having the uglies... so I decided to go with the nuclear option. I removed about 90% of the sand (only leaving the stuff under/behind the rockwork) over the course of 2 weeks and replaced it with 30lbs of Marco rubble rocks. I'm pleased with the final result, and should look even better once the pink coralline starts to cover it.

The longer I run them, the more I'm impressed with the Viparspectra lights. All the corals have are doing fantastic, and I've seen more growth over the past 2 months than I had in 6 months with the Primes

Green Polyp Sinularia

Tyree Green Toadstool

Pink Pulsing Sinularia

AC Flat Cap, TSA Green Polyp, and TSA Deepwater Toadstools (with a photo-bombing clown)

A guinea pig SPS, Milka Stylo growing like a weed

And while not in the 125, I'm very happy to see my red haddoni looking happy again after losing about 75% of its oral disc in a power head related incident...

 

[ajax969]

Awesome looking tank, you may have just sold me on Viparspectra lights!

 

[MoparMike97]

Awesome looking tank, you may have just sold me on Viparspectra lights!

Thanks you. They really are great lights, I don't think you'll be disappointed if you give them a go!

 

[MoparMike97]

A few updates on the 125!

First, I decided to move both the mertensii and red haddoni back into the display. Mostly because they took up basically the entire 13.5 gallon tank they were in. Plus, I ended up buying a new gigantea and didn't want to risk adding a newcomer in with two well established, healthy anemones. The mertens found a spot behind the quickly expanding patch of Cespitularia and for the haddoni, I created a wall of rubble rock and added one patch of sand which seems to have worked perfectly.

Coral wise, I guess I'm officially in mixed reef territory after today. I finally made the drive up to another LFS called Great Lakes Coral, which I had known about for a few months but never had the chance to visit... and ended up going on a bit of a shopping spree.

I can't say I've ever been to a nicer LFS, a huge selection of coral to choose from, huge "frags", amazing prices, beautiful displays and everything was super clean and well organized. Funnily enough, they also use Viparspectra lights on their tanks and flats. I'll definitely be making another trip up in a few weeks.

Since the trial Milka Stylo has been doing great and growing well, I picked up a few more "easy" SPS to add some variety to the tank. Here's the new additions!

A 6"x6" slab of red cap

Slimeball Anacropora

Forest Fire Digi (with my nisus hawkfish eyeing up his new perch in the background haha)

Rainbow Pocillopora

And the only non-SPS, Space Invader Pectinia

I'm absolutely blown away with the size and health of these "frags" (more like mini colonies) but the best part was the prices. Aside from the Pectinia, all of these were $25-30! I know they're not super rare varieties or anything but most vendors charge $35 for little fingernail sized chips nowadays, so I'm very happy.

And an updated FTS with the new additions!

 

[kdmkdm69]

your tank looks AWESOME!
i stumbled upon your thread looking up info on viparspectras.
i have 2 of the same lights over my 4' 90 gallon. Ive been having growth issues, come to find out i had the lights turned down too low LOL! Working them back up to normal levels slowly now!
Also i just saw a piece of that pulsing sinularia at my lfs this week and no i want to go back and get it!

 

[MoparMike97]

your tank looks AWESOME!
i stumbled upon your thread looking up info on viparspectras.
i have 2 of the same lights over my 4' 90 gallon. Ive been having growth issues, come to find out i had the lights turned down too low LOL! Working them back up to normal levels slowly now!
Also i just saw a piece of that pulsing sinularia at my lfs this week and no i want to go back and get it!

Thank you very much!

Definitely take it slow raising the intensity. These fixtures put out a lot of light, even at 50% I stressed out a few corals at first. I'm at 60% now which seems perfect for my tank.

If your LFS still has the pulsing sinularia, grab it! It seems they're few and far between nowadays.

 

[kdmkdm69]

Thank you very much!

Definitely take it slow raising the intensity. These fixtures put out a lot of light, even at 50% I stressed out a few corals at first. I'm at 60% now which seems perfect for my tank.

If your LFS still has the pulsing sinularia, grab it! It seems they're few and far between nowadays.

I took your advice! I took some berghias I caught to my lfs and the store credit was equal to the price of the sinularia frag! Well it was actually a 6” rock with a bunch of zoas and a 4”ish sinularia. Have you had much luck fragging yours? I’ve never fragged a leather. But it does seem kind of rare?

 

[MoparMike97]

I took your advice! I took some berghias I caught to my lfs and the store credit was equal to the price of the sinularia frag! Well it was actually a 6” rock with a bunch of zoas and a 4”ish sinularia. Have you had much luck fragging yours? I’ve never fragged a leather. But it does seem kind of rare?

It's always nice when you can make a trade!

IME, they're super easy to frag. I just use a sharp pair of scissors and place the frags in a Tupperware with some rubble rock/crushed coral to attach to. I think they're uncommon because nobody's really propagating them, not because they're difficult to frag. Everyone is always chasing the next hot torch coral, mushroom or acro but leathers rarely get much attention unfortunately.

 

[MoparMike97]

Made a trip up to my LFS today and ended up taking 5 more corals home... Truly a dangerous place for my wallet haha.

Montipora setosa

German Blue digi, stuck it behind the Forest Fire digi hoping they'll intertwine eventually

A huge 6" chunk of Birds of Paradise Stylo

And since the SPS have been doing well, figured I'd give a few acros a try! They have a great selection of $30 acro frags and ended up with a unnamed teal staghorn and a Garf Bonsai

On the fish front, I had a small sargassum/redtail trigger a buddy was able to grab for me, which I was very excited to get. Unfortunately, the day before we had arranged to ship it out, the fish passed. It looked healthy and was eating well... No idea why it ended up belly up. So I ended up buying a male bluethroat trigger from Reef Beauties when I ordered the gigantea anemone a few weeks back. It came in super healthy and eating well but is still pretty skittish when anyone is around the tank.

And a few random pics from while I was doing maintenance today. Everything is growing well and looking awesome!

TSA Green Long Polyp Toadstool

Red haddoni

Milka Stylo

AC Green Fibre Light Toadstool

AC White Polyp Toadstool

And a FTS

 

[MoparMike97]

Quick tank update!

So a while ago I came across this thread:

Extreme Water Clarity and Cyano Eradication, Made Easy!

Edit 10/092023: Note that I have tweaked the formula a bit. You can find an updated video here: Coral Snow Link: Coral Snow Hello all! I have been reefing now for about 25 years, and over those many years I have picked up many tips, tricks, and best habits/practices. From a hobbyist and...

www.reef2reef.com

I always had slightly discolored water so I figured, what the heck let's give this a try. I've been doing exactly what Sunny outlines in his thread, once a week since the beginning of February and man, it's amazing to see the difference! I can't speak to the ability to fight cyano, but looking through the thread it certainly seems to work well for that purpose as well. I highly recommend anyone giving this a try, it's cheap, easy to do and effective.

The other change I made at about the same time was that I stopped doing weekly water changes. I had noticed my Nitrates and Phosphates were dropping, even with increased fish feeding and biweekly dosing of Phyto Feast. I think it's likely a combination of replacing the sandbed with rubble rock, which keeps the amount of waste/detritus to a minimum and increased uptake by corals after adding the new lights. It seems like everything has been holding steady since. Always nice when a solution to a problem means LESS maintenance haha

And a few coral pics!