Moseley Water Zoo Build Thread

KevyKevTPA

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We just restarted our 55g mixed reef (to be) water zoo. Haven't done too much other than the initial setup, cycle, live sand, one aquacultured piece of live rock, and all of our old dead rock, which sat in those orange Home Depot buckets for about 5 years.

First addition was 2 clowns, then we added a small school of 4 pajama cardinals (though they're still trying to figure out their pecking order), and a sixline wrasse. A very kind member of this thread has offered us some incredibly colored zoa frags to start with our corals, hopefully they'll be in their new home in a couple of weeks. Our water parms right now are pert near perfect, even for SPS, but then again, we have nothing in there that's eating calcium or magnesium yet.

The photo attached is our clowns under actinic lighting, I think it came out rather well, and I'll work on getting a full tank pic to add to this thread soon. I'm disabled and pretty much stuck in a hospital bed, so climbing in my chair to take pics is a once in a while thing for me. I do at least have good gear to do so, so that helps.

The tank itself is an old-school 55g (that has wood framing on the top, making finding an ATO difficult!), and we have an over the back mechanical, biological, and chemical filter which does a fantastic job, though at some point I might want to switch to a sump. The tech on those has changed so much, I don't even know what the heck I need. Seems bio-balls are no longer even a thing. Also thinking about an over the back fuge to keep nuisance algae out of the tank.

We're running a couple of Viparspectra LED lights, and they are so very bright, I doubt we'll ever see anywhere near 100% output, even with some light hungry SPS critters in there. They seem like an outstanding value and product for the money, I only wish they had moon lights.

Anyway, that's where we stand for now, but as it starts to build, mature, and get new livestock, I'll keep this thread updated.

If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, or simply want to chat about how the Tampa Bay Buccaneers are going to be back-to-back Super Bowl champs, I'm glad to hear from you...

My other hobby is flight simulation. I'm not sure which one is more expensive!

Kev

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KevyKevTPA

KevyKevTPA

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He's in, he's acclimated, and he's HUNGRY!!! Been cleaning sand like he hasn't eaten in weeks. Which he probably hasn't!


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Sadly, this one didn't survive the night. He was so full of energy, and swimming throughout the tank like he owned it, and was going to town sifting rock and eating whatever bad stuff was in there, but when we woke up the next day, he was deceased. Tested, everything is fine (slight spike in ammonia, 0.25, probably because of him, but didn't seem to bug anyone else and it's now come back down.), so I am at a loss. I'd like to try another, but now I'm second guessing and wondering if there's some bad juju in the sand itself...
 

Fish Think Pink

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Sadly, this one didn't survive the night. He was so full of energy, and swimming throughout the tank like he owned it, and was going to town sifting rock and eating whatever bad stuff was in there, but when we woke up the next day, he was deceased. Tested, everything is fine (slight spike in ammonia, 0.25, probably because of him, but didn't seem to bug anyone else and it's now come back down.), so I am at a loss. I'd like to try another, but now I'm second guessing and wondering if there's some bad juju in the sand itself...
Sorry for your loss. Did you test the salinity in bag when fish arrived? My first guess is salinity between LFS tank and your tank was more difference than fish could handle. More than .02 change in a day kills most.

FYI when we mix water for water change, we don't assume we know where our tank is (still) at since last test, because maybe auto-top off or evaporation went wonky, so we test tank AND we test mixed water to make sure aligned, then we do water change
 
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KevyKevTPA

KevyKevTPA

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Did you test the salinity in bag when fish arrived? My first guess is salinity between LFS tank and your tank was more difference than fish could handle. More than .02 change in a day kills most.

That's about the only thing I didn't even think of. Recently, our tank had been running at 1.20-21 (I'm finding the refractometer we have is a little hard to read), and because I've got some frags coming, and I wanted to increase it to 1.024 +/-. We did a 5 gal water change with 1.030 water, with my thinking being that since that was only 10% of the water it would in fact raise it, but it went up all the way to 1.025, making it a .04-05 increase. Good number for my corals, but I had never heard that more than a .02 difference was typically lethal.

Beyond the fact that the increase it caused was way more than I was expecting with 90% 1.020 and 10% 1.030, I'm very happy to report that everybody survived that with no apparent distress. (This was before the goby arrived.)

But back to the goby, let's say it was more than a .02 difference, what in the heck should I have done, a 24 hour plus acclimation? I don't have a QT tank and am not planning to get one (wouldn't have any place to put it even if someone gave me one for free, except maybe the garage), so that makes me officially nervous about future add-ons if they are that low. Any advice?

However, Mr. Goby seemed perfectly happy for at least 8-10 hours before we went to bed, maybe longer, didn't exactly write down the time he went in...
 
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KevyKevTPA

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So, it seems this thread got a bit "lost" for reasons unknown, and we've gone through some.... well, interesting times.

We got the frags I referred to above into the tank, and at first, everything was looking good. But then, almost as if we flipped a switch, almost all of them died. After considering all things possible, and a good deal of things that are impossible, we settled on the lights being too high as a probable cause. And it may be at least a contributing factor, but...

It turns out that, probably due to age, our heater AND thermometer were both broken, and telling us all was as it should be when all along, our tank was running with 92° water. Knowing that fact now, I'm very surprised anything, save some algae, survived in those conditions.

However, we have now changed our light fixture out completely, from a black box to a Reefbreeders Photon V2 Pro, and we've fixed the temperature problem, so we're giving it a go with something of a reboot. Below you can see a couple of new corals that we added today, and so far, so good.

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Frammer Zoom Small.jpg

 
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