Peach02’s 33G Reef

[Peach02]

Time for a update;
Paramaters
Ammonia 0
Nitrite 0
Nitrate 5
Temp 25.6
Salinity 1.026
pH 8
Cal alk and magnesium I couldn't see the change in the water because my eyes are bad today.

The mandarin is released and I saw it wandering around this morning it seems to be gaining weight But I only saw briefly

Seneye reef is in the post
Saving for Hannah checkers so I can get a digital reading because my eyes

Foxface Has put on more weight but still not enough yet

Bird's nest has gotten worse

 

[Peach02]

My seneye finally arrived and boy was my lighting off.
before and after My adjustment par charts

Hopefully my corals start growing now
Did a 20L water change today and the water cleared up real fast
Plans to upgrade to a waterbox 190.5 in the future, just a whole lot of saving to do. Currently trying to find somewhere to buy Marco rock in Australia
majestic has the base and shelf and some branch that I can’t find online for 150-200 per 18kg box
I’m calling guppies aquarium products tommorow to see if they can get shelf base and regular and shipping prices
If I can’t find a source of the regular Marco rock I’m not sure if I’ll change rock types or try and adjust my idea for aquascape

FTS 19/1/20

 

[Peach02]

1/2/20
Did another 20L water change today, flipped around the lose rock one of my anemones is on so I can see it and it gets a little more light and moved the zoa rock back a little so I can clean the sand.
the clam is recovering after the wrasse got a little nippy which thankfully seems to have stopped.
leather coral isn’t looking great but it seems to be on the mend.
Tank is just over 1 year old now

 

[Peach02]

10/2/20
Tank is going well in some areas bad in others, I think what caused it this time is not enough flow and my anemone sticking to my anacropora frag
Nothing much I could of done for the anacropora and the flow is somtbing I plan to fix on a planned tank upgrade but I can’t carry over the pumps If I want to keep water in the tank, I think the problem has been fixed for now with moving the pump slightly. The leather coral fell in half because there wasn’t enough flow and it couldn’t shed it
Some original zoas arnt opening up as much as they used to, this may be due to the recent lighting change and they are still adjusting

whats gojng well
Zoanthids, gsp acan and clam are all showing signs of growth. Green ricordia is back on display but un attatched as bristle worms keep moving it overnight
Anenome is looking awsome

I noticed I havnt done a full equipment list in a while so here goes
Tank: aqua one minireef 120
Light: AI prime HD
Pumps: sicce voyager nano 2000 and sicce syncra silent 2.5 I think maybe 3.0
Skimmer: nyos quantum 160 (oversized)
Refugium light: cheap $10 bunnings led light, it is borderline useless for growing coral or chaeto
Heating: aqua one 200w heater I think Controlled by a inkbird

if I was to do it all over and not plan a upgrade I’d
get a stronger light,
2 gyre pumps or 2 Nero 5’s
Use dry rock instead of live
Quarentene fish and coral
Get a mini calcium reactor
Go with a higher end tank brand
Add a ai prime refugium
measure par earlier
Have a mesh lid (preference)
Have more gradual increase in height on aquascape, leave more clearance from back glass and overflow with aquascape

Change up stocking a little
2x snowflake clownfish instead of regulars
1x coral beauty or flame angel
1x yellow coris wrasse
2x coral goby
1x starry blenny or bicolour blenny
1x yellow watchman goby (maybe)
1x blood shrimp
5x nassarius snails
5x turbo snails

 

[Cali-Saltwater-1st-Timer]

Did you ever upgrade tanks? I know you had several threads about several different potential tank upgrades. Curious if it ever happened. You mentioned a couple different Waterbox and Red Sea systems.

 

[Peach02]

Did you ever upgrade tanks? I know you had several threads about several different potential tank upgrades. Curious if it ever happened. You mentioned a couple different Waterbox and Red Sea systems.

still planning it, just saving the money now but I also need to get a car so money is slow, but I've almost finished getting all the equipment I can transfer over from this tank to a larger one, just need a refugium light to arrive and then see if a Vectra M2 can be tuned low enough for this tank.
Then I need to get someone out to check if my floor can hold the weight of a planned tank, but COVID might slow that to a holt so I might skip to the rock and go off an estimate of the floor until I can get someone out.
Then get rock and start aquascaping and cycling in a drum / barrel. Currently looking at a Waterbox 220.6 if my floor can hold the weight or ill go down to a 130.4 if it can't.

Should be an update this weekend on the tank just waiting for something to arrive

 

[Peach02]

Unfortunately due to the virus the AI prime fuge has not arrived and won’t untill shipping returns to normal
Both anemones are loving life and one seems to have doubled in size and zoanthids are also going well, I got three new ones however one isn’t going well as it keeps falling over, getting more coral glue today or Sunday
I used almost an entire bottle of Aptasia X and killed 95% of all in my tank however they are starting to come back again, I am impressed with the product however it doesn’t work well on ‘cliffs’ I have a peppermint shrimp ordered however it’s the same situation with the light
Looking around to see if anyone can still get a reef wave 45 or EcoTech versa in but it’s not looking good for EcoTech which i prefer to get first as it will have a greater benifit.

Planning for the tank upgrade is going well, only problem is shipping currently.

 

[Peach02]

Updated photo of zoanthid reglued

 

[Peach02]

Hey all, so I picked up a coralbox Dp4 dosing pump and quantum aragonite A,B,C and bioenhance last night, forgot and got the dosing lines holder and set it up today. I also picked up three new frags, a scrolling Or plating Monti, torch and bicolour hammer. All of them are looking very happy today. The dosing pump was a pain to setup as it set off an alarm every 10 minutes for 5 minutes which gave me a headache and I ran out of tubing but otherwise I’m impressed the build quality seems high and the app works
Parameters are aimed to work towards
8.2 alk, 1330 magnesium, 430 calcium
Currently at
7 alk, 1200 magnesium, 440 calcium

 

[Peach02]

Wow I didn’t realise it was so long since my last update sorry anyone who was interested.

Some good news some bad news some learning

Long story short Lost a few corals again, made my first frag set up a coral holding tank and got some new plans and equipment.

As far as I can tell the problems I’ve been having with corals are due to not enough water changes and not enough testing and previously not enough flow.

So I started doing more water changes again, and got a reef wave 45, when clean it’s far too much flow for the tank but algae grows quick and now it’s not clean but good for my needs so worse performance is better performance never thought I’d say that, overall it’s a good pump as far as I can tell, only complaints are that you can only adjust the flow in 10% increments and it grows algae quickly and was a pain to setup with wifi.

Initially because it was too much flow, many of my soft corals where unhappy and being that I plan on upgrading as soon as money allows (got to get a car and uni laptop first) I may aswell start cleaning out pests and a frag tank makes that easier. So I turned the old hospital tank into a frag tank using a sicce hob filter, old 50w heater and the light that came with the minireef.

The frag tanks going mostly well, it’s had two bacterial blooms (I think) but the coral seems to be going okay or recovering from being worse, they need a little more light though.

I also fragged the GSP since it was starting to branch over itself and look weird and I may aswell have a backup in each tank.

As for what’s next, I’ll try to move the last few corals over to the frag tank when it’s ready for more and then potentially reboot the minireef entirely this time without pests and with QT while I wait for more money to be available for the upgrade

Also one of the BTA’s has some lumps on its foot, anyone got ideas what they are?

And here’s a FTS, looking bare but most things are now in the frag tank, I also found some sponges and tube worms or somthing on the rock I moved over which was a pleasant surprise

 

[Peach02]

Update for the frag tank / Coral holding tank)

finally seem to of kicked the algae bloom/ bacterial bloom, I put some more Red Sea carbon in and added the old minireef skimmer (draining into a bucket + backup if it overflows) and did a ~45% water change and now it’s super clear apart from the outside glass.also added the old wave maker briefly to see if more flow would help clear it up but didn’t seem to help but I might turn it back on depending on how the corals are acting

the corals seem to be going well, a few zoanthids I thought where dead are opening back up again, the gsp is closed but it’s only been half a day since the algae bloom cleared and the torch coral has some dark spots on some tentacles but I’m hoping it clears up after a few days with clean water.

before and after algae bloom clearing up and some gunk the skimmer pulled out today

 

[Ralllyant]

Hows it all going now?

 

[Peach02]

Restart didn’t go as well as planned, still getting the occasional aptasia in the tank but 3 peppermint shrimp are mostly keeping it in control. i rescued a tiny purple tang that’s now recovering from HLLE but still not fully recovered and he is getting a little problematic chasing the cardinal around but no damage done so far . Skimmer is still having some problems but working most of the time. Corals are now going better with weekly water changes and I’m getting less algae, I had a pretty bad fill algae bloom on the sand for the first few weeks/months. One of my anemones split again and they are getting close to stinging some corals which is getting concerning. Gsp got stung by anemones and is slowly recovering but far from healthy. Also got a few more corals