My 120 gallon SPS progression.

[ikolbaba06]

I am new to R2R but have been around other popular forums for a long time and have been with marine tanks for about 15 years or so off and on. I currently have had my tank running again for little over a year now. It was in storage for a few years as I went to vet school but as soon as we moved into our house I had to set it up.

It is currently residing in the basement "fish room/man cave". I have posted in other threads about my fun time with nutrients. I, like others on this site and others, was bitten by the nutrient bug and really screwed up my tank. Things I have learned about this game is that carbon dosing can really drop nutrients, corals really do need nitrates/phosphates and I do not need the fancy additives/snake oils/whatever you want to call them magical cures for a SPS tank.

I had this tank set up with dominant SPS reef and I can remember never testing for nitrate or phosphate. I can admit I did not have the awesome colors but I was pleased with the tank when I looked at it and had great growth. Looking back at the pics, I had some pretty brown corals haha. Oops. Don't mind the blurry pics!

Pics of old tank around 2010-2011: A few non-sps pics too for fun.

This tank was lit on 2-250w DE 10k or 14k Ushios depending on time frame with t5 actinics. I was using a large skimmer- Octopus 250 extreme is the closest model that I can figure, which I still use on the 120 still. I had a heavy bioload of fish, like 14-15 fish or something and I loved life. I got accepted into vet school for fall 2011 and had to break my tank down/sell everything in little over a month. It was a very sad but exciting time. I attended a school out of the country in Grand Cayman, so I will have to post pics of diving/snorkeling as it was probably the best place for me to get my coral/fish fix. I was literally in the water almost every weekend, which I miss tremendously. Let me know if you want me to start a new thread with those pics.

Anyways, back to 2016-17 and I am back into the reefing scene. Next post will be a little more about my current tank.

 

[ikolbaba06]

I started my 120 around winter 2017. I had a 34 gallon Red Sea tank in my apartment but it wasn't really much to look at. I moved into my house and did not waste too much time setting my 120 back up.

I started the tank with pretty much the same equipment I had originally: 2-250w DE 14k Phoenix bulbs on electronic ballasts, same skimmer (Octo 250 extreme), 2-mp40w's and a sicce return pump (3.5 or 4.0 I think) as my old mag pump did not survive the long term storage.

I had to re-silicone the tank as storage in a garage and from scraping algae in my tank previously had really made the silicone pretty haggard. I will say that re-siliconing a tank isn't too bad but it was not super fun. I was so paranoid it would leak that I let it sit for 2 weeks to cure and then again with water for about that much before I trusted it! I still check for leaks and its almost a year later. I thought I took some pics of what it looked like during the re-siliconing but I have not been able to find them.

I started the tank with Red Sea Pro salt, Caribsea "live" fiji pink sand and about 100 lbs dry BRS Pukani live rock. I did not read up on the curing of the rock and so went ahead and threw it into the tank and had a fun cure process in tank which I will never do again or ever recommend for anyone.

Sump view now, I recently took out the filter socks and may keep them off.....

Needless to say I battled hair algae for about 5-6 months before my dosing of NoPox dropped the nutrients in the tank to 0 and starved all algae out. I did not even have to scrape the glass for weeks, thats how low the nutrients hit. Again, never do what I did! I also had some corals that I added into the tank and even purchased some maricultured corals at the tale end of the algae bloom. In hindsight, I wish I had waited with the maricultured pieces until the tank had gotten past the bloom but I was stupid and rushed it.

This is pre-nutrient crash with the the maricultured corals in. The death of some of these acros really hurts and not just financially. I hate when things go down hill in a tank. I went from one thing to another and tried too many cures and not enough patience and lost a few corals totally and almost lost a few more but I have small frags of the rest that are starting to grow a tiny bit.

A few more top downs of what the corals were like. This was under my 14k Phoenix bulbs.

As you can see this was ULNS to the point of starving the corals and soon after this pic the low nutrients were too much and then the disaster happened. I lost corals to starvation and others to Alk burn when my Alk went up to above 8.0 or so. I am so mad at myself as I look at these pictures.

I have since changed lighting to Kessil AP700. I have 2- units situated parallel with the tank about 8 inches or so from water.

I took down the MH and t5 fixtures and only use LED. I love these lights so far. I have had heck of a time with the tank due to nutrient issues but as of right now things are starting to come around. I purchased more fish, feed them more, stopped dosing NoPox for a bit, dosed food grade KNO3 (I was dosing Spectracide but possible contaminate and sps death right after dosing made me stop) and dropped the intensity of the lighting from 45% to 38%.

I will have to take updated pics of the SPS but I am just now starting to see color changes in almost every coral. Greenish hue to the corals and hints of other colors starting to show up. I am really excited to finally see growth again and this change in coloration. I was really feeling like I was doomed. I'll update some more pics soon. I hope you all enjoy this and can learn from my experiences, they have been terrible so far.

 

[Donovan Joannes]

I saw this tank before hehehe. Welcome to R2R. Nice corals in there.

 

[Tahoe61]

Following.

Boy I love the Phoenix MH bulb, curious to see how you like the Kessil long term.

 

[nautical_nathaniel]

Welcome to R2R!

 

[SlvrZ]

following along for the journey

 

[ikolbaba06]

I saw this tank before hehehe. Welcome to R2R. Nice corals in there.

On the forums or in person?

 

[ikolbaba06]

Thanks for the replies guys. I will be doing a wc tomorrow and I will hopefully get some updated pictures

 

[Donovan Joannes]

On the forums or in person?

On another forum

 

[najer]

Looking very good, nice introduction by the way.

 

[ikolbaba06]

Ok pics incoming on a recent purchase from Rocky Mountain Frags. Jared is a cool guy and has some nice acros! I was able to pick them up as he is a local for me.

 

[ikolbaba06]

And thanks for the views and comments. Hopefully I can get my camera lens fixed for better pics. For now iPhone it is!

 

[ikolbaba06]

RMF red devil nasuta

Skyparade

One of my favs from jareds tank. RR yellow matrix. This thing glows!

A gigantic frag of JF beach bum!! I absolutely love this thing. And colors of the pic are horrible to what you actually see.

I think this is from RMF but could be from somewhere else. Bubble gum monti. The mother colony was glowing.

Orange passion!!!

Extreme shortcake. A really cool growth pattern and coloration.

Walt Disney!!!! Why I went to rmf in the first place haha. You can barely see the pink in one corallite already. I can't wait for this thing to grow.

A terrible pic of pinky the bear. This is a bottom colony frag so not super colorful but I'm hoping to get colors on it soon.

I'll post up some updated pics of my acros in a min. They are all doing great now. Amazing what happens when you stop chasing nutrient numbers.

 

[ikolbaba06]

Sorry it's rmf flavor parade not sky parade.

 

[tj w]

Looking good, also what type of vet are you now? Have you prescribed CP for anyone that qt's fish?

 

[ikolbaba06]

I am a small animal vet but I am starting to work with koi as well. I have not prescribed chloroquine before. If you were local I would gladly work with you for your fish med needs. I live in Utah.

 

[ikolbaba06]

And thanks for the comments.

 

[ikolbaba06]

Here is a quick update. I was noticing some warping and mold growth in my hood so I took it off for now. I also raised up my ap700s to about 11 inches off the water.

 

[ikolbaba06]

Nice shot of the left side. You can see the efflo that is basically growing a massive base. Can't wait till this guy takes off.

I think this one is a bonsai. It's a mariculture piece and starting to look really nice.

Finally starting to show some colors. Was very pale due to me being stupid. I'm really looking forward to this one. It came in a deep red with blue tips. Possibly a millepora or prostrata can't tell totally yet.

More pics to come once I get back to wifi.

 

[ikolbaba06]

The brightest yellow coral I have ever seen. Not totally sure what it is yet. It rtnd a bit and is now growing back and I just love the highlighter yellow!

Pinky the bear starting to color back up. I got it pretty pale.

Orange passion just starting to darken up. Also one that was pale when I got it. Any of you guys have placement advice? It's getting good flow and midway under right puck of my ap700.

Sorry about the iPhone pics. I increased white for the pics on my leds.