Hello, I wanted to engage in this forum and post my fishtank. I bought a 75 gallon tank that was set up by someone in the greater New Orleans area. The tank was struggling from a GHA issue. I purchased the tank on 9/13/25, it was made by someone in Slidell, LA, but I bought it from the second owner in Metairie, LA.
(you can see the GHA)
It was a struggle moving it from Metairie to New Orleans and I was very anxious about the health of the reef/inhabitants. The reef had a few coral frags and livestock. The livestock consisted of a coral beauty, sailfin tang, banggai cardinal, red scooter dragonet, 2 clownfish, royal gramma and a cleaner wrasse. The coral consisted of a Duncan, GSP, some zoa an unknown Monti. There were also anemone, snails and a cleaner shrimp. I only lost the royal gramma following the move.
Moving and setting up the tank was a task but I was very happy with the finished result. My goals moving forward were to update the tech, work towards automation and to overall make the tank a healthy and eye appealing tank. One issue I initially found, a fish was eating the unknown montipora. Also, the coral beauty was rarely seen and the sailfin tang was a bully to most of the tank inhabitants. I decided to get rid of the sailfin tang and coral beauty. In the same time I upgraded the tanks cleanup crew. I made a large purchase from Reef Cleaners (reefcleaners.org) and followed the recommendations from Reef Rookies at this video: .
At this same time I started to upgrade the tank. First I added a refugium. Since the tank has an open sump I wanted to make the refugium cool looking so I bought some cheato, atomic broccoli and blue ochtodes/hypnea. I also got a Kessil A360X to light the refugium. I then wanted to work towards automation so I went the Neptune System route and got an Apex/Trident ACM/Trident NP. I worked towards controlling NP to subsequently control the GHA.
From a livestock standpoint, I knew I wanted to get rid of the Coral Beauty and Sailfin Tang but I wasn't sure what I wanted to replace them with. In the meantime, I really wanted to try to care for sponges. So I thought I'd give them a try. Overall, they aren't going the best but it's interesting learning about them. I purchased 4 sponges from RUSALTY (https://www.aquaculturenurseryfarms.com/brands/RUSALTY.html) while I continued to work on the GHA. At this point the tank looked like:
Overall, I was making some slow and steady progress on the GHA. Hand removal, NP balance, refugium, all seemed to slowly help. Additionally, I started using Microbacter Clean on a daily basis. IMO it seemed to help but how much it helped was unclear. Overall, the GHA was slowly going away.
In terms of fish, I gave the Sailfin and Coral Beauty away to a LFS and got Lyretail Anthias which I find a lot of fun. I also added a helfrichi filefish and a melanurus wrasse. They seem to be doing well, but I am waiting to see what will happen with my anthias because one female is transitioning because she's bigger than the male. I suspect that the male will be killed but hopefully the female/new male won't die in the process.
I then continued to update tech and changed the lights to Radion XR-15 G6. With the GHA continuing to decrease I wanted to add more coral frags so I purchased a fair variety from a number of sources. I'm happy to report that growth is slowly occurring and the GHA continues to decrease.
Overall, I'm having a great time and plan to continue to maximize this tank! Here is a picture from today:
(you can see the GHA)
It was a struggle moving it from Metairie to New Orleans and I was very anxious about the health of the reef/inhabitants. The reef had a few coral frags and livestock. The livestock consisted of a coral beauty, sailfin tang, banggai cardinal, red scooter dragonet, 2 clownfish, royal gramma and a cleaner wrasse. The coral consisted of a Duncan, GSP, some zoa an unknown Monti. There were also anemone, snails and a cleaner shrimp. I only lost the royal gramma following the move.
Moving and setting up the tank was a task but I was very happy with the finished result. My goals moving forward were to update the tech, work towards automation and to overall make the tank a healthy and eye appealing tank. One issue I initially found, a fish was eating the unknown montipora. Also, the coral beauty was rarely seen and the sailfin tang was a bully to most of the tank inhabitants. I decided to get rid of the sailfin tang and coral beauty. In the same time I upgraded the tanks cleanup crew. I made a large purchase from Reef Cleaners (reefcleaners.org) and followed the recommendations from Reef Rookies at this video: .
At this same time I started to upgrade the tank. First I added a refugium. Since the tank has an open sump I wanted to make the refugium cool looking so I bought some cheato, atomic broccoli and blue ochtodes/hypnea. I also got a Kessil A360X to light the refugium. I then wanted to work towards automation so I went the Neptune System route and got an Apex/Trident ACM/Trident NP. I worked towards controlling NP to subsequently control the GHA.
From a livestock standpoint, I knew I wanted to get rid of the Coral Beauty and Sailfin Tang but I wasn't sure what I wanted to replace them with. In the meantime, I really wanted to try to care for sponges. So I thought I'd give them a try. Overall, they aren't going the best but it's interesting learning about them. I purchased 4 sponges from RUSALTY (https://www.aquaculturenurseryfarms.com/brands/RUSALTY.html) while I continued to work on the GHA. At this point the tank looked like:
Overall, I was making some slow and steady progress on the GHA. Hand removal, NP balance, refugium, all seemed to slowly help. Additionally, I started using Microbacter Clean on a daily basis. IMO it seemed to help but how much it helped was unclear. Overall, the GHA was slowly going away.
In terms of fish, I gave the Sailfin and Coral Beauty away to a LFS and got Lyretail Anthias which I find a lot of fun. I also added a helfrichi filefish and a melanurus wrasse. They seem to be doing well, but I am waiting to see what will happen with my anthias because one female is transitioning because she's bigger than the male. I suspect that the male will be killed but hopefully the female/new male won't die in the process.
I then continued to update tech and changed the lights to Radion XR-15 G6. With the GHA continuing to decrease I wanted to add more coral frags so I purchased a fair variety from a number of sources. I'm happy to report that growth is slowly occurring and the GHA continues to decrease.
Overall, I'm having a great time and plan to continue to maximize this tank! Here is a picture from today:
