New 65 gallon tank Build

[McCarrick]

So, my 29 gallon got taken down while I was at Basic Training and a 65 gallon JBJ AIO tank got put up. I am now home and able to enjoy the tank!
Set up in June
Current habitants
Fish
Oscellaris clown
Carmel clown
Fire goby
Royal Gramma
Inverts
Tiger hermit
Blue leg hermit
Fighting conch
Corals
3 leather toadstools
1 galaxea (?)
1 Mushroom of sorts
Kenya tree
Xenia
Mystery paly
Cabbage coral (currently unhappy- now moved to lower light)

 

[Peace River]

Congratulations on the new tank and thank you for your service!

 

[McCarrick]

Congratulations on the new tank and thank you for your service!

Thank you! I'm excited for the new tank and the potential for it to be awesome!
I'm looking for more stocking suggestions as well so any input is greatly appreciated

 

[dantheartilleryman]

Congratulations! And like the other commenter, thank you for your service )

 

[McCarrick]

More coral!
Recent additions from murrmans in Denver.
Acans (x2)
Duncan
Blasto
Palys (not pictured)
Candy Cane coral
Frammer (Frogspawn/Hammer Hybrid)
Green Hairy Mushroom
Some sort of clove? Coral (not pictured)
Key lime chalace (Came with the urchins as a freebie!)
Galaxea, Hammer and torch came from petco- I know- for shame. I'm hoping the hammer will color back up soon.

My goby has disappeared- not really sure what happened there.
I have added two new red tuxedo urchins- courtesy of @dantheartilleryman- that are doing great.
I am currently dealing with high phosphates- suspected problem to be the bucket I was mixing the water in. I have a few more experiments to run before I draw any conclusions, as a result of trying to fix phosphates I had an outbreak of cyano that I'm getting back under control. I recently added GFO to the tank to try to help draw out the phosphates as well as weekly water changes.
Next equipment to update will be the lights- Currently running some random black box lights that only have whites. I'm looking into upgrading to a full spectrum light that will bring out the colors in the corals better. I hate only blues but anything that brings out more color would be great. Open to suggestions.

Recent parameters

pH- Averaging around 7.8 which I know is low- looking to add chaeto into the back of the tank to help not only with drawing out CO2 but also absorb the extra phosphate. Does anyone have thoughts on a CO2 scrubber in an AIO tank?​

KH- Averaging 10-11 dkh.
Ammonia- 0 ppm-.25 (Using an API test- looking into a new kit for ammonia)
Nitrate-0 ppm
Nitrite - 0 ppm
Phosphate- .2 (Using Nyos kit)
Calcium has been around 400-440 ppm.
Salinity- 1.026
Temperature- 78°F

 

[McCarrick]

Found an awesome stomatella Snail today.

 

[McCarrick]

Also found what might be baby margarita snails

 

[McCarrick]

Rhodactis mushroom? Still finding new things every day.

 

[McCarrick]

Baby snails I believe to be collonista snails. I've found maybe 16 of them so far. Today I added 2 Turbo Snails and an emerald crab.

 

[McCarrick]

I'm loving how happy my candy cane is. Pretty sure it's splitting again and it's just huge and puffy. Before and now

 

[McCarrick]

Tank update, I was gone for 4 weeks and the tank did pretty well all things considered. My galaxea did fall on my Duncan, killing it unfortunately. I need to glue my corals down but I wasn't set on where they were going to go permanently. One of my large leather toadstools decided to detach itself from its stalk for some reason so now I'm waiting for it to decide what it's going to do. It's doing just fine sitting on the sand currently. I scrubbed all the rocks down and removed 90% of the algae as well as a large water change. I got phosphates down to .08 for the first time as they've been hovering at .25 forever. I also added a uv sterilizer today. I bought it from Amazon and since it was not a self contained unit, I tested it in another tank with no inhabitants for a few days to ensure it wasn't going to do anything weird like explode or leak water. I did notice a decrease in algae in the tank (I had it in the display of the test tank- again, the tank didn't have anything in it) so I concluded it must work okay. It is an 11w so I'm hoping it'll be enough for the tank. I placed it in the 3rd chamber and it's running on the same cycle as my lights are. Currently I'm going to have it running during the day. I may eventually switch it to run at night. Other than that, algae growth is starting to slow with the reduction of phosphates. Everyone in the tank is doing very well. My corals are fat and happy and some are even growing. I have a new head forming on my candy cane and my frammer which is awesome!
Additionally, I added an ATO about a month and a half ago and it's worked great. Hasn't flooded my floors yet and it's super quiet. I have it in the same chamber as my return pumps.
For anyone curious, from right to left, my chambers contain: 1st- filter sock. 2nd- Skimmer and heater. 3rd- ceramic media, gfo and chemi pure. 4th (middle) is my return pump and ATO. 5th- uv sterilizer, 6th- chemipure, 7th- Additional filter sock. I'm changing the filter socks out once a week in an attempt to continue keep the phosphates down.

Recent additions (pictures to come) include some zoas, a new leather toadstool as well as a psychedelic mushroom which im super excited about. Also added is a conch, which I adore.

 

[McCarrick]

I noticed 4 new baby heads on my frammer. Happy corals!

 

[McCarrick]

Okay. So a LOT has happened. I moved and had my fish shipped to me. They just got here and have been in a 16 gallon. One fish got stuck in a rock this morning and unfortunately didn't make it. Also had an Ammonia spike despite having the 16 gallon up and running for a month before the fish got here. Killed my sea urchin (I put the water into the tank that the fish shipped in.... pretty sure that was my big mistake). The 65 is finally full of water and I've added NEW LIVE SAND since I wasn't a big fan of the sand I had before. I've also had my rocks brewing in a bin this whole time and added quick start and Ammonia is 0. Not my favorite way to start up a tank but I'm wanting to get my corals out of the 16 asap. Hopefully it finishes clearing up in a few hours

 

[McCarrick]

Tank update:
I've decided that everything that goes into my tank gets quarantined. The coral is all going into the 16 gallon biocube for 76 days to allow the ick to die off. All fish get fully quarantined (with the exception of dipping against brook or velvet but I have the formalin on hand just in case)

Coral haul
2 green/blue tipped frogspawn
Gold tipped hammer
Purple mushroom with some zoas that aren't opened up yet.
Candy canes
Dragon soul favia (?)
Some sort of leather coral
Purple tipped Frogspawn colony with 8 heads (too good of a deal to pass up)

Recently did a full qt for my fish. Freshwater dip and tank transfer with copper power and fluanzocole.

Fish
Carmel Ocellaris
Da vinci Ocellaris
Royal gramma
Blue green chromis

Cuc (still in quarantine)
2 fighting coaches
Zebra hermit
Unknown medium sized hermit
Red legged hermit
Emerald crab
Turbo snail

 

[McCarrick]

More pictures

 

[McCarrick]

Update/catch up on what I'm doing so far.
I decided that I'm going to do everything pretty much by the book. And what I mean by that is quarantine EVERYTHING. Sand, CUC, fish, corals. I moved everything into a 29 gallon for a little while and then started thr quarantine on my fish. I, for lack of space, used two 5 gallon tanks that I had. Since my fish were small I wasn't worried about crowding for a short period of time.
I started with a short freshwater dip to check for flukes, which I did not see any. I made 25 gallons of salt water and put copper into the batch so that it would be the same salinity, and same copper level (tested with hanna checker) and put a heater into the bin to keep it all up to the same temperature. Then I proceeded to do the tank transfer method, with rinsing the empty tank and leaving it in the sun to completely dry and boiling all equipment prior to putting it all back into the new tank. I also added nitrofurazone to tanks. I decided not to do a formalin dip since I was pretty confident that there wasn't brook or velvet in my tank and didn't really want to dip the fish if I didn't absolutely have to. I do now have it on hand just in case. When the fish were done with qt I rinsed them in some clean water before adding them to the display, which currently doesn't have enough sand in it for my liking but the rest of the sand I had was in the 29 gallon so that had to be quarantined by 76 days fallow.

For the coral, I moved it all to my 16 gallon biocube since I know the lights can grow anything that I have so far. I did notice a few aiptasia but I've been killing them off with Joe's juice and so far it's working out. They will be in quarantine for 76 days also. I do have to stop buying coral for a little while though because I'm out of space in my biocube at the moment.

Back to the display tank.

I HATE the lights I had on it previously. Black box lights with no blues and more of a warm white. Just awful. I have a torch I found at petco and it definitely did quite a bit of damage to it (it was damaged to begin with though) it's still alive though so I can probably bring it back. After doing some research and deciding that I don't currently feel the need to spend $400+ on lights that I'm going to get the smatfarm lights that I've seen quite a few people on here use. I was torn between the nicrew hyper reef and these but for my goals I liked the spectrum of the smatfarm more because it wasn't such a sharp peak and included more wavelengths. I'm worried it might look too blue but I figured I can return them. My tank is 3ft so I will be getting two of them. I threw on a fluval 24/7 planted light on my display just to light it up and probably should have turned it down or didn't turn it on for so long right away because we got diatoms! I added some tiger pods to help eat the diatoms. They did help me identify a dead spot in the tank so I've added another power head and will likely add one more to make sure the water is moving along the back wall of the tank. I'll eventually replace my pumps with some variable flow ones that do something interesting so it's not blowing my coral in one direction all the time but I have more shopping around to do. I'll be purchasing the lights next week and acclimating the tank to the new light. My CUC will also be going into the display on the 27th so that will help clean the tank up a little bit.

 

[TheScientificReefer]

Lookin solid!

 

[McCarrick]

Lookin solid!

Thanks for stopping by and taking the time to read my post!

 

[McCarrick]

Corals in the qt tank. Stock biocube lights (daylight, no filter).
Pictures in order- Zebra hermit, purple mushroom and zoa, dragon soil favia, mini maxi carpet anemone, acan, conch, Emerald crab, gold tip hammer, purple tipped frog spawn, green tipped frog spawn, more purple tipped frogspawn, candy canes, unknown hermit crab and a small leather coral.

 

[McCarrick]

Update- I did not purchase the lights I thought I was going to. I found some nice radion xr30w gen 1s from a reefer on r2r and he shipped them super quickly! I'm just trying to figure out how to get them set up now! The plan is to ramp them up by 10% each week so the lights to cause too much algae.