My very first SW tank build!! 75 gallon beast.

[Rogued_Reefer]

So today after some encouragement from my peeps in 305reefclub i did a nerve wrecking thing! haha i decided to mount my frags to the rocks...

Now i know for sure that a lot of you will either laugh at this or it'll resonate with you. This was the first time i do this so it was tough to do, not because its hard but the fear of screwing up.

The first frag i glued to the rocks was my Red Montipora Cap from WWC. Small little thing that i had to cut the plug stem to plug it in.I mounted it on the side of one of my rocks at the top to see if it encrusts and grows nicely to the side.

The next thing i decided to mount was a Cobalt Blue Mushroom frag i also got from WWC onto my Mushroom rock like i like to call it. A friend gave me that rock with about 3 mushrooms and now has roughly 5 well 7 counting the frag i just plugged in lol.


Here is a few pictures of the frag and the rock itself:

Last but definitely not least! this frag was the most nerve wrecking one to mount. I got this frag from a local reefer and its by far not only my favorite one in the tank but my favorite kind in the hobby. My frogspawn!!! lol luckily on this one i found a nice hole in the rock i wanted in so i didnt have to cut the plug stem. pheeeew! haha

so here it is!

After i mounted it i realized it was getting too much flow so i adjusted the wave makers to not blow on it too hard and tomorrow i might have to re-adjust them once he gets used to the new spot.


Before i wrap this up i wanted to give everyone a friendly reminder. DONT BE LAZY! if you hear a sound in your tank that isnt normal check it as soon as you notice!
Last night i heard my water trickle down tomy wet/dry sounded off but said meh... ill check tomorrow. Today when i did i realized i had forgotten to change my filter floss when i did the water change... it was nasty and clogged to the point that water was struggling to drip down and was leaking from the top of the wet/dry tray...

Thank you for reading and sticking around.

Stay Salty and Happy Reefing.

 

[xiholdtruex]

So today after some encouragement from my peeps in 305reefclub i did a nerve wrecking thing! haha i decided to mount my frags to the rocks...

Now i know for sure that a lot of you will either laugh at this or it'll resonate with you. This was the first time i do this so it was tough to do, not because its hard but the fear of screwing up.

The first frag i glued to the rocks was my Red Montipora Cap from WWC. Small little thing that i had to cut the plug stem to plug it in.I mounted it on the side of one of my rocks at the top to see if it encrusts and grows nicely to the side.

The next thing i decided to mount was a Cobalt Blue Mushroom frag i also got from WWC onto my Mushroom rock like i like to call it. A friend gave me that rock with about 3 mushrooms and now has roughly 5 well 7 counting the frag i just plugged in lol.


Here is a few pictures of the frag and the rock itself:

Last but definitely not least! this frag was the most nerve wrecking one to mount. I got this frag from a local reefer and its by far not only my favorite one in the tank but my favorite kind in the hobby. My frogspawn!!! lol luckily on this one i found a nice hole in the rock i wanted in so i didnt have to cut the plug stem. pheeeew! haha

so here it is!

After i mounted it i realized it was getting too much flow so i adjusted the wave makers to not blow on it too hard and tomorrow i might have to re-adjust them once he gets used to the new spot.


Before i wrap this up i wanted to give everyone a friendly reminder. DONT BE LAZY! if you hear a sound in your tank that isnt normal check it as soon as you notice!
Last night i heard my water trickle down tomy wet/dry sounded off but said meh... ill check tomorrow. Today when i did i realized i had forgotten to change my filter floss when i did the water change... it was nasty and clogged to the point that water was struggling to drip down and was leaking from the top of the wet/dry tray...

Thank you for reading and sticking around.

Stay Salty and Happy Reefing.

That frog spawn looks great. My frog spawn loves flow so adjust per its likness. Mushrooms are great growers very nice. You can't go wrong with a monti I have a frag from wwc also a friend gave me and the polyps pop when you statt to feed it regularly with aminos. Very nice frags mounted

 

[Brad_the_gunner]

I would kill to have that frog spawn!

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

That frog spawn looks great. My frog spawn loves flow so adjust per its likness. Mushrooms are great growers very nice. You can't go wrong with a monti I have a frag from wwc also a friend gave me and the polyps pop when you statt to feed it regularly with aminos. Very nice frags mounted

I’ll be dosing some aminos next week per your recommendation

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

I would kill to have that frog spawn!

I love frogspawns! Well Euphyllia in general

 

[xiholdtruex]

I’ll be dosing some aminos next week per your recommendation

Your corals will love you <3

 

[Jon Fishman]

Looks good!

I have the same ROdI setup, and I am telling you from experience...... Get a Brute trashcan, with lid, and a dolly for it, and let that rodi run for 8 hours or whatever it takes, and just make sure you keep that on-hand at all times.

I have forgotten about countless 5g buckets and cleaned up my kitchen floor countless times....

 

[kwjones]

I used to put the 5 gallon buckets in a rubbermaid tub, so if it overflowed, it wasn't on the floor.

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

Looks good!

I have the same ROdI setup, and I am telling you from experience...... Get a Brute trashcan, with lid, and a dolly for it, and let that rodi run for 8 hours or whatever it takes, and just make sure you keep that on-hand at all times.

I have forgotten about countless 5g buckets and cleaned up my kitchen floor countless times....

I wish I had space! :/ if I had space I’d just build a designated RO/DI station... what I’ve been thinking is to to hook it up to the shower hahah that what it’s in the tub.

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

Geeez! It’s been a while...

I have been getting on this thread to write an update but always end up postponing due to other things. I have found the time this beautiful Sunday morning while I still lay in bed.

The tanks is doing better than ever! The diatoms are 90% gone, the algae in the sandbed is gone, coraline growth is exploding, the corals are super happy and some more good things but I think I have to go into more details about everything.

Well, the first thing that was bothering me in the tank was the algae... I know it’s part of the new system syndrome but I wanted gone. So after further inspecting the algae I figured it was some type of hair algae.

At this point the fellas at my reef club #305reefclubsquad started Helping me out. They recommended I fed less since I only have 3 little fish and a shrimp besides the CUC it’s very easy to over feed. So I lower my feeding and got to work on a chaeto reactor for nutrients export.

I wanted the algae gone but also wanted my system to be balanced enough to be able to feed as much as I wanted without consequences.

Here is a picture of the #chaetoreactor

Day 1:

Day 7:

As you can see the growth was impressive. This further proves that my algae was a nutrient hungry algae. Why? Because every water test was showing 0 nutrients yet the nuisance algae was thriving and now chaeto too so that was a win.


Few weeks later I got a killer deal on a skimmer (it nothing fancy) gets the job done.
That has improved the water quality as well and allows me to heavy feed even more

Ohhhh I almost forgot! I fragged the zoa colony!!! First time I’ve ever fragged anything and was a success. I got 4 plugs done of 3+ Polyps each. 3 were gifted to fellow reefers In the #305reefclub and one remains in the tank.

A fellow Reefer also gifted me some Xenia frags and Fire & Ice zoas that look AMAZING!

 

[flchamp89]

Boy a lot going on here lol. Tank looks great. I like the scape. Mushrooms are nice.

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

Boy a lot going on here lol. Tank looks great. I like the scape. Mushrooms are nice.

Hahaha thanks!!! I’m trying to post everything that goes on with the tank and my learning curve as well. If it even helps one person I’m happy

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

Aaaaaaalright! It’s updates time

Where to start lol the skimmer was working phenomenal until the pump gave up on me haha I need to order a new one.

A fellow member of the 305 Reef Club Decided he wanted to give me his old lights so I could have better lighting, he gave me two viparspectra 165W and boy did it make a difference.

Just a few shots with the VIPARSPECTRA lights.

I later on got my hands on an icecap gyre 1k and couple more rocks so I decided to do a few changes in one go.

this is how things look at the moment.

the most important thing is everything is nicely balanced and parameters have been stable.

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

Well I think it’s time for a little update here! I have been battling inos... lol

Luckily I didn’t get the worst kind so that’s a blessing in disguise.

I was told that this kind isn’t really considered a full blown pest but **** looks ugly. My battle plan at the moment consist of a UV light just in case even tho supposedly this kind doesn’t go on the water column but doesn’t hurt when a buddy @Ernie Crucet is kind enough to let you borrow it. I’m also syphoning the sand daily straight to the sump running through a polishing pad.
I will be adding pods and phyto this upcoming week and more nitrifying bacteria.

if in 2 weeks that didn’t solve the issue then I will try a more drastic approach that I will post later here.

Everything is looking nice in the tank except a German Blue Digitata that took a hit with the dinos and started bleaching so I took preventative measures and clipped 3 frags of it that I will be giving some buddies from the 305ReefClub to nurse and grow then in the worst case scenario I can get a frag from them.

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

So it’s update time!

It’s been over a month since my “battle” with dinos started. When it began I had all the energy to get rid of it lol so I started syphoning the substrate daily while filtering the water back into the sump to avoid water changes.

It was working but life and laziness got in the way so I started what we call LARA Lazy butt Reefer Approach lol. To do this I switched from floss to socks and picked a couple polishing filter socks (50 micron) so once a week I put those on and let them get clogged... that paired with adding phyto, pods and feeding heavy to increase nitrates and phosphates resulted in a GHA bloom which started helping with the dinos. About two weeks ago I realized my alk was low very low 5.6dkh so I dosed 2 part to increase it and then switched to kalkwasser. This increased my alk too much to 11.5 which resulted in a bloom and of coralline hahah but live and learn! Now im working on lowering it slowly to 8-9.

i can now say my dinos are getting better and the tank is looking pretty again!! Still got ways to go but it’s a huge improvement.

The corals are growing and I couldn’t be happier! Duncans I added a month ago are already sprouting some babies, hammer I’ve had for a few months is splitting, candy canes splitting, zoas growing and fish happy and fat!

Below I will add some morning shots of the tank waking up.

 

[jstephens24]

looking great

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

looking great

Thank you!! It definitely made my day seeing my tank looking pretty this morning.

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

 

[Rogued_Reefer]

Hello there!

This thread has been long overdue for an update. A lot has gone through so i will try to do my best to keep it organized unlike previous updates lol

Updates:

1. Full Tank Shot
2. New Youtube Channel
3. New Coral Additions
4. New Algae Battle
5. Par Readings
6. Food Change

1.

2. I decided i wanted to document my journey not only on IG but also on YouTube. I suck at writing so lets make videos hahaha 305_Reefer YouTube Channel

3.

I added a few new corals and will add some pictures but i thought a list would be better.

• Purple Torch
• Green Tip Hammer
• Ultra Bubble Tip Anemone
• Dendros
• Green Micromussa
• Fire and Ice Blastomussa
• Mardi Gras Bounce Mushroom
• Mahui Wowiie Mushroom
• Duncan Colony
• Red Bowerbankii

4.
Well after i beat Dinos it was all good and dandy until Green ****** Cyano came through.... Now this is something im truly not familiar with it so i asked around and did some research.

Turns out the same method i used to beat dinos could work on green cyano so thats what im doing. The dirty method hahah or LARM (Lazy A** Reefer Method). If this doesnt work i will try chemiclean or something similar.

5.
Par Readings were surprisingly GREAT!! remember i use Viparspectra lights. The even spread was the most surprising thing i got out of it. The picture below shows what my par looks like now.

6.

I started making my own food... i got tired of paying so much for frozen food and always fighting phosphates.
i will post the full recipe in a future update.


If you read until the end... THANK YOU!! i cant believe you put up with my rambling and my average a** reef build. Id appreciate a follow on IG and Youtube @305_reefer.