My 75 Gallon Mixed Reef - a long distance project

[Fishfreak2009]

This little guy is finally starting to come out a lot more. Got a little nipped by the smithi damsels apparently, but seems none the worse for wear, and is eating well. Everyone seems to be ignoring him now.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

This guy decided he's now completely comfortable and is gobbling mysis directly from the turkey baster

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Lots of pics from today. Only a little bit of dinoflagellates left on the bottom left of the tank. Less flow currently due to the breeder boxes (holding the wyoming white clown pair and a bunch of maxi mini nems for my fluval evo) being in the way.

One of the breeder boxes fell about a week ago, and one of the maxi mini nems ended up in the display, and settled under a rock at the bottom. It stretches out somewhat during the day. The curlique pistol shrimp (Alpheus armatus) decided to move from his hole in the rock next to the bubbletip anemones, and is now living in a burrow next to the maxi mini anemone.

The rock flower anemone also decided to try moving up the rock it was on and was stung by a Ricordea. It ended up letting go of the rock. We removed it, and it seems to be none the worse for wear, and will be putting it in our 47 gallon with the rest of the rock flower anemones we have coming from AquaSD on Saturday.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Couple pictures from today. Also included some pics of my wife's midnight lightning ocellaris pair and the abberant red firefish (who decided to hide when she went to take the picture) waiting for their tank to finish it's fallow period, and a couple of the red stoplight cardinalfish waiting for the 65 gallon to be set up.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Bubbletip is coming back out of the cave. Corals are all opening up well and look great! And the gorgonians even came with some neon orange micro brittlestars!

So interesting update:

I met with 2 of the DVMs on campus today at RUSVM to discuss working as a research assistant studying coral diseases here in St Kitts and while we were discussing various things, I mentioned these little guys. Turns out, they are actually an invasive species throughout the Atlantic, and are naturally found on gorgonians in the Indo-Pacific. One of the DVMs actually wrote up a paper documenting the first discovery of them in St Kitts just a short while ago.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

So exciting! I'm like a kid in a candy store! 2 boxes from AquaSD today!

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Some quick pics from acclimation

 

[Fishfreak2009]

A few more pics

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Forgot to mention earlier that we added the red stoplight cardinalfish to the 75 gallon today.

A few more pictures...

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Tank is looking nice tonight! And the Hippopus clam seems to have settled in nicely! All the corals, clams, and anemones from @AquaSD are looking great!

 

[Fishfreak2009]

These 2 know exactly how to spend the evening. Laying on the couch all cuddled up while watching the aquariums.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

A couple pictures from the tank tonight.

And sad news, we lost one of the acro frags that has been doing really well. This morning one of the branches of the gorgonian behind it was stuck on the acro and was corrected as soon as it was noticed. By this evening, the entire frag experienced RTN. Apparently, in a battle of gorgonian vs Acropora, the gorgonian wins

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Some pics from today. SPS are looking amazing, and the bubbletip looks like it wants to split again. Apparently the super high phosphates aren't bothering anything.

We did end up removing the gorgonian above the rockwork, as today it was stuck on the grape coral and both seemed quite upset. Into the maxi mini anemone tank it went.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Just tested water parameters:
Nitrate: 25ppm
Phosphate: 1ppm
Alkalinity: 10.0 dkh
Calcium: 460
Magnesium: 1360

Working on getting nitrate and phosphate down, both spiked after skipping the weekly water change (nitrates were non-existant). Did a water change last night, will do another on Tuesday. Going to do a loading dose of PNS ProBio and start daily dosing of MicroBacter7 again for the next week, and will shut off the UV sterilizer this week while doing so. We are also going to start dosing Magnesium, as this is the first time we've seen it drop, but just added all the extra corals and the clams. We already dose alk every couple days.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

The corals look amazing with the Kraken Reef UV glasses! Snapped pics by holding them up to the phone.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Some pics from today. You can see the micro lords are doing really well. The frag in the picture is one we purchased in July of 2021. It managed to survive being in 43 degree water for 3 days during a winter power outage back in November that wiped out all the SPS in the Fluval Evo. We got a generator and upgraded the tank the 75 gallon at Christmas, and have been nursing it back to health with regular feedings of mysis, capelin roe, phyto, reefroids, and coral amino.
July 2021:

Today (March 2022)

And here are few more pics from this morning:

 

[Fishfreak2009]

A couple pics from tonight. The fourmanoiri tilefish is so inquisitive and is a complete camera hog. And finally got a decent picture of the orange line chromis trio.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Snapped a few more pictures before lights out. The coonies wanted their picture included as well. They've been feeling left out.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

The ultra Euphyllia coral pack I won from AquaSD arrived today. They sent 1 head of flashlight torch and 1 head of toxic torch.

Both torches arrived with flatworms crawling on the skeletons, and the toxic torch came half rotten with advanced brown jelly disease. Completely different from my normal experience with corals from them, hoping it's just a one time fluke.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Tonight's picture dump