My 50 gal SCA

[The_Skrimp]

@truepercs phyto is super easy. It doesn’t have to be as warm as the tank. The room I culture it in is a laundry area that stays around 67 or 68 degrees. I just use a simple grow light from Amazon and it does the trick. I alternate between nano and tetra cultures and it takes about ten days for the culture to be ready. I haven’t had a culture crash yet. I keep it in the fridge till I need more and as long as you give it a shake on occasion it should stay good.

@Idech im using the Bluetooth version but the app is really easy to use. I’m super happy with the pump. I’ve calibrated it twice since buying it calibrating once a month but it stays accurate. No problems connecting or anything so far. The app lets you dose manually or set it to a schedule. If I have one complaint about the pump, it’s that the clock runs a little fast. It ends up running about 4 minutes fast by the end of the week but there’s an option in the app to re-synch the internal clock to your app.

 

[The_Skrimp]

So we’re about 2 years in. Budget and just trying to keeping things simple has things moving pretty slow with this tank but I think I’m finally done buying frags. Things are getting pretty crowded. I might have room for one or two more corals here or there but for the most part my goal now is to just watch these guys grow and fill up the tank.

My ongoing algae issues are still a thing but it has gotten considerably better compared to the hair algae I had before. I think this most recent bloom happened because I turned my lights up but it’s starting to clear out again now.

speaking of lights I am currently running my XR15 gen5 at 68% and my reefbrite XHOs at 45%. This seems to be a sweet spot that’s not too harsh on my lps but still enough light to get proper colors and growth out of my sps. No idea on PAR yet as a par meter is way out of my budget so I’ve just been slowly increasing the light and letting my coral tell me if it’s too much or not.

And a final update for now - I’ve sold my first few frags on the local reef club forums over the last few months and am very grateful for that resource. The Atlanta Reef Club is great!

the lights aren’t on yet but I have this post all typed out so I’ll go ahead and update the build thread but I should update with a tank photo cause things are really growing in. I’ll upload one later today once the lights come on.

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Sunrise on the reef

I fragged the red monti cap back and glued a green monti cap on top as an experiment. I’m hoping they’ll grow into each other. We’ll see in a few months

 

[Lbrdsoxfan]

Nice, I have a older 50g from sca I'm bringing back to life. This is some inspiration

 

[Jmcdaniel0]

Man! I just bought the same tank, and I cant wait for it to get here. Your tank really took off. Those zoas have grown in nicely, and im not sure of the name, but that pink encrusting one has taken over the rocks in the middle there. Its a great looking tank.

I am planning on going with a single kessil 360x for my lighting.

How is your tank doing now?

 

[The_Skrimp]

I appreciate the comments!
The tank is growing in nicely.

@Jmcdaniel0 i think you’ll love the tank. Cube tanks are fun to fill up and SCA make some good ones for sure!

I joined the local reef club last year and since then, my tank has really packed out full of coral. I think…. Maybe…. Possibly…. I might just be out of space for more coral aside from zoas and encrusting type things. I’m really looking forward to what this tank is going to look like in a year or so once these frags have all grown in.

I’ve rearranged a few things. The massive birdsnest I had got too big for it’s own good and started to STN in the middle where it was blocking its own light. I fragged that guy up and restarted the colony on the right side of the tank.
I tried grafting a green monti to my red one in the center which didn’t quite work out so I fragged the red monti back and reglued the green one just above

 

[Jmcdaniel0]

Fantastic! I am going to try and put encrusting coral on the back as well... I really like the 50 cubes, they are easy to maintain, and have enough room to load up with stuff

 

[The_Skrimp]

@Jmcdaniel0, totally agree. That's what I love about cubes is you can make them look packed a lot quicker. Cyphastrea seems to be the best back wall coral for me so far. It's spreading quick and looks great. I'm crossing my fingers and trying it out and have an acro and some montis back there too that I hope will hold once they get bigger.

 

[truepercs]

The tank is coming along! Keep on it!

 

[The_Skrimp]

I was able to rent a PAR meter from a local Reef shop called Optimum Aquarium recently.

these readings are from a Radion XR15 gen 5 set to AB+ at 70% schedule intensity and my ReefBrite XHOs set to 50%.

Overall things are right about where I expect they should be. I definitely need to turn the lights up just a little bit more. I’m going to target 75-80% on the radions and maybe add another 10% on the XHOs.
I’m hoping that will get some of these acros to start growing quicker.


On a negative note, I lost my purple hammer coral in the front center of the image above. I don’t know if I messed with it too much or if something decided to pick at it but it developed an infection and I started to see brown jelly and decaying skin on most of its polyps. I figured I’d take the loss instead of leaving it in there potentially infecting my other coral. I rarely ever lose coral but when I do, it’s a huge bummer for me.

that said I did pick up a speckled Krak zoa from a local reefer for $9. I couldn’t pass up that deal and it’s a really awesome almost nuclear orange zoa. It’s just one tiny head as of right now but hopefully I can get this guy to spread.

 

[The_Skrimp]

Short video of the tank I took last night while the blues were on.

 

[The_Skrimp]

Tank move successful!

We started off planning for our move by arranging with a local reef store / maintenance company to move our tank for us, but just before moving day they decided to double the quote they gave us. At that point my wife and I decided to move the tank ourselves. We moved the tank 3 hours across GA to our new home in Augusta. It was a rough ride and I'm sore all over but we managed to get it here and set up in one piece.

Using 4 big totes from Home Depot we filled them each about half way with all of the tank water plus some new clean salt water, all of the rocks, and all of our livestock. We didn't use any sort of heater but we honestly couldn't have picked a better day to move the tank. It was 77 degrees out and I keep the tank at 78. Aside from that we just used two battery powered air pumps with four airstones to keep some kind of oxygenation going. Probably not the best practicebut we also decided to save the substrate and moved it in tank with just a little bit of water to keep it wet. We rented a Penske cargo van, loaded up, and hit the road.

Everything is kind of angry at me right now but so far no losses aside from a bit of coral that was encrusted to the back wall. Even some of those look like they’ll make a recovery and i kept frags of the coral just in case. I draped a wet towel over the back of the tank to try to keep them from drying out which probably saved the ones that made the trip. I'm honestly surprised at how well most of the coral did with the move.

There was a slight alk and calcium swing. (about .5 alk and 10 calcium) but nothing too bad.

The tank looks a bit different now with the rocks stacked up this way but I'm pretty happy with it. I managed to free up a bit more rock for coral and everything is stacked a bit higher up now.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Tank is looking superb, glad the move went well for you!!

 

[Lbrdsoxfan]

Well done on the move! Its a few years away for me, but In dreading the hell out of it...

 

[The_Skrimp]

Seven weeks after moving into the new apartment and everything has been running smooth so far. I’m still not quite back to the alk and calcium consumption I was at before the move but I’ve also been messing around with my lights which could totally affect those things. I am currently dosing 28 ml of All For Reef a day with the occasional added soda ash to keep up with alk consumption.

I’m now running my reefbrites at 100% and my radion xr15 is running the AB+ spectrum at 95% intensity. I might just be impatient but I don’t feel like my milliporas are growing fast enough and I’m betting it’s a lack of light. Everything else is doing fine with the change so i guess time will tell.

According the last time I measured par, that should get me to just under 300 par along the top of the rock scape.

Aside from that I’m doing 10% water changes every other week, running carbon and gfo in the BRS dual reactor, and still using all the same equipment as before.

anyhow... I was able to sell off my first round of coral living here so I’m supper happy about that.

I’ve recently upped the clean up crew and added a cleaner shrimp and a couple of emeralds (crossing fingers I don’t have a negative experience) and best of all, my little Tomini Tang to replace the Fox Face i recently sold.

I named her Wanda. Hopefully I can have her for a while before she outgrows the tank.

if you’ve read this far: I owe you a puppy tax. Meet Buffy the newest member of the Sanchez family.

 

[shadyraro]

Tanks looking great, puppys pretty cute too!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Tank seems to be doing well!!! Also, nice puppy!

 

[Lebowski_]

Really beautiful!

 

[3sxp]

Just popping over from my zoa placement thread to say wow, I love your tank! The zoa rock is gorgeous. Also really heartened to hear that you moved it and it went well. I will probably be moving mine in a year and I'm already dreading it.

Honestly though I think this is one of my favorite tanks!

 

[The_Skrimp]

Thanks so much @3sxp!
Let me know if you need any advice on the move. It honestly was a lot easier than I expected.

 

[The_Skrimp]

Did some trimming yesterday. My little micro-lord garden was starting to be taken over by pandoras. It looked great for a while till they started spreading like crazy. I took the rock out during my water change and with some gloves on I pulled as many as I could using tweezers and a razor blade. I did it under water in the water change bucket to reduce any palytoxin risk from fragging.

It looks so much cleaner now and the micros seem a lot happier not being crowded and shaded by the palys.

I saved a big ol’ frag of the pandoras though so I guess my next move will be figuring out where to put them so they don’t take over or if I should just sell them.