My First Softy Tank... which has turned into a mixed reef

[Magellan]

My original thought was to put it back where my Goniopora was. I will have good light and flow. It's on the back of a rock so there isn't anything around it.

It’s extremely hardy, I added a frag shortly after my tank cycled and it’s done great

 

[New&no clue]

I rented a PAR meter from Pod Your Reef to test what levels I was getting at my office tank. I brought it home to test on this tank as well and I was kind of surprised how high my PAR was. I was thinking at the top I would be around 180-200. I did not think I was going to be over 250 in areas.

 

[Magellan]

I rented a PAR meter from Pod Your Reef to test what levels I was getting at my office tank. I brought it home to test on this tank as well and I was kind of surprised how high my PAR was. I was thinking at the top I would be around 180-200. I did not think I was going to be over 250 in areas.

195 on the zoa garden wow

 

[New&no clue]

195 on the zoa garden wow

I know it seems high over the whole tank.

 

[Magellan]

I know it seems high over the whole tank.

Everything looks happy I wouldn’t worry too much lol

 

[Nanorock1970]

Strange....I am following but didn't get any updated notice of posts from page 11 or 12....Mmmm .

 

[New&no clue]

I am following but didn't get any updated

that happens to me a lot on build threads. I hate to speak ill of R2R, but I don’t think the notifications always work. Glad you caught back up

 

[Schnizzle]

You know, I recently had it happen and thought it was just me.

 

[New&no clue]

You know, I recently had it happen and thought it was just me.

I’ve heard other people mention it as well. I assuming the site just glitches sometimes and doesn’t send out notifications

 

[New&no clue]

Month End Tank Update-March 2020:

I had to read back through my last couple pages of post to remember what has happened this month, it's been crazy... I'm sure for everyone. To start with testing has been troubling me for the past couple months. I did get a new bucket of salt and everything is now testing normally again. My Alk is the only thing that is off now, down are 6.4 which is low for this tank. It had dropped down to 7 which I wasn't too happy about, but it didn't seem to make anything mad so I was begrudgingly okay with it. Now that it is down to 6.4 I have started to dose that to see if I can get it up a little higher.

The battle against bubble algae still rages on. I'm still using manual removal. I also bit on getting an emerald crab, but right when I had decide I would do it, the LFS in my area shut down. There is still one open, but they don't have any so I will just wait until the world goes back to normal and then maybe I will get one. The bubble algae seems to be concentrated in three areas. The first is on one zoa colony, the second is at the base of my pulsing Sinularia, and the third is in the middle of my Mandarin Orange Cloves. I had tried twice to remove all the bubbles from the zoa colony, but they just kept growing back so I removed the whole thing to hopefully stop it from spreading. At the base of my Sincularia I pulled all of them and then put epoxy all along it and I haven't seen anything come back. The cloves keep coming back as well. These are one of my favorite corals so I don't want to toss them. Instead I've pull pulling the whole plug out of the tank and removing the bubble algae. At least this way if the bubbles pop they aren't getting spread around the tank.

I did some rearranging to make room for the couple new corals I got. First off I put my Hydnophora where the goniopora was. It seems to be doing well in its location

I put the torch where the old torch was. So far so good with it

The last one is the Micromussa. I moved my toadstool to the back and put this where the toadstool was. The toadstool has been closed for the past two months. I'm not sure why it wont open, it seems to stretch and shrink each day, but the polyps don't extend. I decided to move it to the back because if it ever does decide to open up and grow again, eventually it will need to be at the back of the tank anyways. Might as well move it now.

I've also noticed that most of the stuff I buy is purple, which is a little disappointing as it blends in with the rocks. I wish I had planned better and had some more variety of colors in my corals. Maybe if I get any more I will try to gets some other colors.

Lastly I added two more power heads to the back of the tank. These are the power heads I had in my original 55. I thought that the toadstool might like some additional flow back there and well as the hydnophora. When I turned them on I notice nothing seems to really be moving back there any more than it already had. Last week when feeding I notice that they are sucking in water instead of blowing it out. I don't think they were doing that before so I'm not sure if there is a switch that makes them go from out to in, or if they always did this and I just didn't notice. Either way they are not much help in creating more flow at the back of the tank.

 

[New&no clue]

Posted too soon. More pictures, because who doesn't love some pictures, here is the tank at moonlight time

 

[New&no clue]

OMG Sorry, last thing. Video of the tank

 

[Nanorock1970]

Good Stuff....YESSSSS I got the notification this time. Your tank looks awesome and everything is growing. Just watched a video on growing Zoa's. the takeaways I got from it are to dose Iodine and to feed them something like reef roids. Even though they are primarily photosynthetic, they like to eat also for best growth. You have not mentioned if you are feeding all your coral or not.

 

[New&no clue]

You have not mentioned if you are feeding all your coral or not.

Yes, I feed Reed Roids with a cube of brine shrimp and a cube of Mysis shrimp. I swirl it all together in a bottle and then suck it up and do a combo of target feed/broadcast feed. I was doing this 2x a week. But when my phosphates go out of hand I switched to just once a week.

I recently bought Julian's Thing on BRS for feeding. I've only tried it once and I wasn't overly impressed by it. I don't feel like it sucks up that much food. I was hoping for something I could fill with a bunch so I didn't have to keep taking it in and out of the tank. Also it is a pain to clean out.

https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/julian-s-thing-multi-use-tool-two-little-fishies.html

I have been using just a cheap coral feeder from amazon, and currently I like this better still and will probabaly continue to use this.

 

[Nanorock1970]

Yes, I feed Reed Roids with a cube of brine shrimp and a cube of Mysis shrimp. I swirl it all together in a bottle and then suck it up and do a combo of target feed/broadcast feed. I was doing this 2x a week. But when my phosphates go out of hand I switched to just once a week.

I recently bought Julian's Thing on BRS for feeding. I've only tried it once and I wasn't overly impressed by it. I don't feel like it sucks up that much food. I was hoping for something I could fill with a bunch so I didn't have to keep taking it in and out of the tank. Also it is a pain to clean out.

https://www.bulkreefsupply.com/julian-s-thing-multi-use-tool-two-little-fishies.html

I have been using just a cheap coral feeder from amazon, and currently I like this better still and will probabaly continue to use this.

I have this one Fine tip I bought from my LFS. Works pretty good...Yeah I paid more for it but I am supporting my LFS.

 

[New&no clue]

I have this one Fine tip I bought from my LFS. Works pretty good...Yeah I paid more for it but I am supporting my LFS.

How much does it hold, it says it measures 1/10ml so I would assume 1ml overall?

 

[Nanorock1970]

How much does it hold, it says it measures 1/10ml so I would assume 1ml overall?

Just measured it. Full to the bulb is 15 ml it is 10 ml from the tip to the zero inch mark.
So I make about 30 ml of reef roids with about 1/8 teaspoon of powder to.
I direst “spray” over each shroom about 10 ml and same with my crappy brown Zoa colony.

 

[New&no clue]

Oh no I’ve got an anemone on the loose

 

[Dj City]

Hey...
Tank is looking GOOD!

I wanted to check in.
I've been busy with my build (Finally) and have not been around much.
Well...

Keep up the good work and please stay safe.

 

[New&no clue]

Doing my routine maintenance for the week last night, 25% WC and clean the power heads. I put my power heads in a container of water with some citric acid and let them soak while I change the water. Than I scrub them with a toothbrush, rinse them off, and then have them soak in a container of RODI water while I fill up the tank again.

While doing the water change I notice something growing out of one of my zoas.

I had seen this before about a month ago and had pulled it. Now there were roughly 9 sticking out. I thought it was some type of pest anemone, but it didn't really look like aiptasia so I thought maybe a majano. I posted a picture up here for help and several people said it looked more like clove polyps to them. This made sense because the zoas weren't closing with these guys around (I know in the picture they are closed, but that's because of a crab). There were several thoughts on what to do. I decided to try and pull them out.The problem was that by the time I had gotten kids to bed and done some other things around the house not only had the zoas closed but so had the cloves. When they retract they disappear so I was worried about how I was going to remove them when I could barely see them. I had initially thought about trying to get just that frag plug off the rock and work with that but I couldn't get it loose. So I pulled the whole rock out of the water and started looking for any sign of them. Finally I saw one polyp just starting to open in the light. My plan was to try and pull it out with tweezers and then if that didn't work cut it off. When I grabbed it and pulled, it was almost like they were attached by a string because right down the line, ding ding ding, all of them were coming out. There was one last one that wasn't attached to the other and I wasn't sure I got it all the way so I put a little super glue on the spot to hopefully stop the polyp from opening or spreading.

Here they are this morning opening back up. Hopefully I was able to get them all.