Paul’s Rubbermaid Reef

[Graffiti Spot]

Yea I am about done with the red dragon. I think this has been my 5th try. I have grown colonies of it just fine but it’s always the first to go when almost anything spikes. This is a coral I am always amazed to see very large colonies of especially when the base is alive. This time it was clustering very very tightly which was cool but your right, I can get a colony for 75 bucks if I wanna try again once nutrients are right.
Well I had nitrates around 1 but now it’s somewhere between 50 and 100. I think everything will be fine as long as I get nutrients down slow. Po4 on the ulr checker reads around 60 which is way high also (not sure what it converts to but it’s normally under 10. Been a while since I have seen these numbers. It’s hard to run this tank with no sump but I do like the simplicity. I am dosing 200 ml of vinegar a day so hopefully the numbers don’t keep rising.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

I did buy a clear filter sock holder to put on my skimmer exit pipe instead of the pipe I made into a bubble trap. Hopefully this helps clean the tank up a little more. I will run felt socks in it for a while I guess.

 

[Rick5]

60 ppb? I think that's .184 phosphate.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Oh ok that’s not as bad as I thought, still the highest it’s been in years. Lights just went off so I will have to get some pics tomorrow.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Just to show what’s been keeping my time I will share two pics. My wife’s doing really well with the kittens she has been breeding. They are so adorable I can’t help sharing these. I am pretty sure she just left the house to go pick up a Savannah kitten to add to the mix too... I should pay attention to what she is saying more often because apparently I told her it was ok to get one?

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Figured I would post a few pics and a short update. The nutrients seemed to have balanced out but is still really high. Everything kinda slowed down on me and turned green but the 14k ushio 400w bulbs really please me and the corals acclimated with no issues. I even got a pale branching acro colony and a samenoensis colony from a reefing friend for 40 bucks! The digitate acro I love and he grew it out from a frag so I have high hopes it will color and grow well.
Two pieces I lost, and a few died off in spots. The red planet is one you can see a little die off in one spot. But everythings on its way back to normal I think.
I installed a tunze wave box which I mounted to make wave action on the short side and not long. Flow is very random and strong. The cheato is barely starting to grow in the reactor after cleaning it out a few times. I am dosing 200 ml of vinegar everyday and 10 drops of sponge power.

Here are a few quick fun filter pics.

 

[Jacked Reefer]

Figured I would post a few pics and a short update. The nutrients seemed to have balanced out but is still really high. Everything kinda slowed down on me and turned green but the 14k ushio 400w bulbs really please me and the corals acclimated with no issues. I even got a pale branching acro colony and a samenoensis colony from a reefing friend for 40 bucks! The digitate acro I love and he grew it out from a frag so I have high hopes it will color and grow well.
Two pieces I lost, and a few died off in spots. The red planet is one you can see a little die off in one spot. But everythings on its way back to normal I think.
I installed a tunze wave box which I mounted to make wave action on the short side and not long. Flow is very random and strong. The cheato is barely starting to grow in the reactor after cleaning it out a few times. I am dosing 200 ml of vinegar everyday and 10 drops of sponge power.

Here are a few quick fun filter pics.

What’s the orange and red table in the bottom right of the second photo?
also amazing pics and coral!

 

[Graffiti Spot]

The pc rainbow is the green and red branching one and the straight red table is red planet. That’s the one that I saw some necrosis on. The red planet is right next to the green planet.

 

[2Sunny]

Nothin' like a tub full of coral to make one smile. Awesome corals!

 

[BranchingHammer]

Update? Awesome tub!!

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Well I decided to get some kp rock and replace a few pieces if they look bad or just add it if I can find the room. I have to scrape all the rocks because bubble algae is getting nasty. Main reason for getting the rock is nutrients aren’t being controlled like in the past and I used to replace some rock with real live rock every few years but it’s been about 5 years as of now since I have done this. I need to move pieces and make room anyways because some pieces are touching and I want things to be placed at different levels in some areas. The only thing I am not looking forward to is upsetting the sponge population but at least I can try and get some pictures of the sponges growing under the rocks when I get the new rock put in place.
I am going back to using vodka and vinegar since vinegar has kinda seemed to not do the job recently. I got a couple new acro colonies to replace the few that had necrosis from the nutrient issues. One secale had a oyster or clam looking thing in the branches that I thought was pretty cool. I might cut it out Incase it doesn’t make it so it doesn’t kill the coral.
The 400w ushio bulbs I am loving but a few corals are still getting acclimated to the light. I have the bulbs on for 5 hours now and am not using the hqi setting yet. I didn’t use anything to acclimate the corals I just swapped bulbs and went from 7 hours of radium to 4 hours of ushio. I will bring the time up to 6 or 7 hours depending on how things do. I am curious what the par is but I don’t think I will rent a meter or anything. I am also loving this tunze wavebox. I was suprised it didn’t stir up detritus when I started it but I may not have it set as high as it can go and I had great flow to start.
I got my tunze rodi water controller setup finally and am so happy I did. That was one of my main issues was forgetting to refill my ro water because the valve was in a cabinet under my kitchen sink where the filters are. Now this won’t happen again and it will automatically refill so no more random low water in the tank.
I am on vacation from work just to clean up the house this week so I will have some time to work on the tank if the rock comes in this week. I will take one of the tank how it is now and one after I get the rock put in and everything aquascaped and cleaned up. I have been trying to change water every week or two and stay on top of it as well. I went a long time without changing water and I think the tank will benefit from some good water changes weekly.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

I took a few shots with the pumps off. I will add some more cropped shots later this evening from the same batch of pics. Tanks dirty as can be and I haven’t been making sure the corals were upright. A number have fallen and I just left them. It’s packed and I plan on just letting things grow together while making a small attempt to keep things pruned the right way but I don’t get much time to actually work in the tank so I normally let things go.
You can see some of the pieces that browned from the nutrients but a few look ok even though the tip color isn’t where it was on a lot of them.

 

[X-37B]

Awesome! Love it. Im about to switch to MH.
More than one way to run a reef!

 

[Graffiti Spot]

What MH setup are you looking at getting?

Oh and when I add the live rock and rescape with it I plan on taking all my fragments that are small and still growing out and hanging them on some string along the back side wall to grow out that way. I am hoping to crest a little more space that way and the frags should grow out very well this way. Just not sure what I can use to keep the frags from blowing all over the place since flow is pretty chaotic. I thought about using some plastic tubing my wife makes her cat wand toys with and running the string through it for weight and sturdiness while still allowing the frag to spin around 360 degrees.

 

[Graffiti Spot]

This “tort” is my favorite, purple with just a crazy neon blue in the branches and tips, looking forward to it coloring and growing more. The fox flame is starting to come back around and regain its color and the green stag is growing really well. I love the blue and light green in the

The piece near the bottom with purple base and red polyps is a favorite that I got from figi years ago. It’s growth is wierd in that it always branches horizontally and the new growth is a really crazy bright blue. Not sure the species of this one is but it’s really unique to me.

I never keep Montipora and will regret this one at some point but I couldn’t resist the orange in this bubblegum digi. It was a frag a few months ago. On the left is the Ora austera that’s supposed to have purple polyps in the tips but it’s sitting under a wave maker and not getting prime light. Hopefully it shows the other color because I don’t care for a green austera again without the colored tips. You can obviously see the bubble algae taking to certain rocks in this pic. One reason why I am getting a few new rocks for the tank but it’s always something I have to keep in check in my tanks.

In this pic you can see the yellow sponge that’s climbing into the light from underneath the rocks. Also a few pieces I have showed before in normal light this time. The joe the coral, Red Robin, purple slimer, neon green samenoensis, a light burned vihn, the Bali blob piece I have been nursing back to health for years and the yellow acro is probably my favorite of this bunch. Frags near the bottom include a ssc, my unique red staghorn and a wwc snowdrop or whatever they call their pink microlados.

 

[X-37B]

What MH setup are you looking at getting?

Oh and when I add the live rock and rescape with it I plan on taking all my fragments that are small and still growing out and hanging them on some string along the back side wall to grow out that way. I am hoping to crest a little more space that way and the frags should grow out very well this way. Just not sure what I can use to keep the frags from blowing all over the place since flow is pretty chaotic. I thought about using some plastic tubing my wife makes her cat wand toys with and running the string through it for weight and sturdiness while still allowing the frag to spin around 360 degrees.

I have 2 lumenbright minis 250 watt de 2 hamilton hqi ballasts and 2 phoenix 14k bulbs.
I have had them since startup 1 year ago but have been running 8 T5-s with good sucess.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Do you have fish in there Paul?

 

[Graffiti Spot]

Yea a lot actually but when I go near the tank they all hide except for the chalk basslets and the blue damsels. I have a few small tangs and one big rabbit fish that I might try and pull out tomorrow when the rock gets here and a number of wrasses and a few fish that I am not sure are still in there that came from my old tank but I see them randomly every now and then. I probably have 15-20 fish.

 

[Charlie’s Frags]

Do you think there’s a layer of detritus at the bottom causing your higher nutrients?

 

[Graffiti Spot]

No not a layer on the bottom, the nutrients were defiantly from adding a buddies fish when I knew it couldn’t handle them. There is a bit of detritus in the tank though it’s generall one spot that needs upkeep. I baste the rocks weekly or more to keep them clean. I need to baste more often for a while and keep up on the water changes (I am also using filter socks now on the skimmer and reactor exits but they gotta be changed daily which is annoying). There is a huge brittle star that lives in the bottom and it generally keeps the bottom clean. I can stick a baster down any hole and baste the bottom and nothing comes up, but I guess we will see what’s really down there if I can move enough rock today. I am hoping bringing down the carbon dose and adding the vodka to it will help the cheato grow better but not sure that’s going to work. The cheato gets bacteria on it kinda quick and just sticks to the top of the reactor, I knew I should have went with an algae scrubber rather than the cheato reactor. I won’t keep running it if it doesn’t grow well in the next month after these changes. Honestly I don’t like the extra piece of equipment.
The rock will be here this mourning and I am going to just put it straight in the tank if it doesn’t smell bad. Well after I put it in some high salinity saltwater to try and get any bad crabs out of the rocks. I need to test po4 since it’s been a while.
Nitrates have been holding steady around 50 for the past month or two so that’s not as bad as it was. It was 100 for a while. Generally I like to keep them at .02 but this time I have been struggling with getting it down using just the vinegar. I used to always have a separate tank full of just live rock and just passive flow from the return where I would dose carbon and allow bacteria to grow. This allowed for a spot for the snotty bacteria to form up but this tanks all in one which is proving to be the only hard part of keeping this simple setup. I am very lucky I haven’t had issues with bacteria snot mats in this tank honestly at this high of a dose.