Railer's Reef

[77railer]

Good evening, wanted to take a few moments to introduce myself and start sharing our journey as my wife and I enjoy our second trip into reefing. This time around we decided to buy all new equipment and take a different approach. With the help of our wonderful LFS we ended up deciding upon the following:
75g Marineland Drilled tank
Trigger Systems Crystal 30 sump.
Reef Octopus Classic 152s skimmer.
Rio 2100 return pump.
Jebao sw8 wavemaker pump.
Eheim Ebo Jaeger heater.
Odyssea 4 lamp t5 with ATI lamps.
True lumen Actinic Led Strip
Icecap ATO with Kalkwasser
60lbs of established live rock which has been in various systems between 8 months to 10 years.
2-2.5 inches of Crushed Coral Substrate

Tank, stand, and lights installed...waiting on a free moment to get water and live rock moved and setup.

First batch of established live rock installed and after a tank cycle we introduced the first of our clean up crew...turbo snails and blue legged hermit crabs.

Then we waited, tested water and tested water..and decided to add a second batch of established live rock, a few corals, and some Maine Mocha Clowns.

The smaller of the two clowns didn't make it and after the grief was over we ordered a Wyoming Snow Clown which is doing great and gets along fantastic with the other clown. Along the way we've also introduced a Red Dragon Blenny, Female Melanurus Wrasse, an arrow crab which we spend countless hours watching, 2 skunk cleaner shrimp, 3 peppermint shrimp for aptasia control, several Nassarius snails for our substrate and cuz their amazing to watch, and numerous corals. Here is the latest full tank shot.

Using a heater controller has allowed us to keep temp swings to within a degree. We are currently staying at 76 degrees. We have been doing weekly 10g water changes and everyone seems to be happy and coloring up nicely.

I hope you tag along and enjoy watching our tank grow....till the next update....

 

[Dub_G]

Looking nice. It helps when the wife is supportive of the hobby.

 

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Yes I agree, it makes it much easier with an active partner helping along the way. She can spot starfish and some changes in coral much better than I can and has been a voice of reason when I have a "let's just buy it all moment". But I started cheating to even the playing field by digitally cataloging all our coral and taking weekly growth pictures. This way i cant help but see changes...But even with me using a magnifying glass she still kicks my butt at spotting those pesky starfish.

 

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Spent the better part of my day upgrading my phone and love the new camera...cant wait to take some pics tomorrow.
Montipora Setosa taken without tripod.

 

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Wife and i went to the LFS today for water change supplies and picked up a few things while we were there...anyone else have a problem buying something everytime you walk in your LFS? LOL Excuse the bad pics...things won't hold still lol...
Palm sized....Hydnoflora Exesa

Tominiensus Tang who has been hanging out at the LFS for about 4 weeks and been eating great. He should fit just fine.

Water test shows everything great except Kh is a little low at 7.5...will bring it up slowly this week. Did our weekly 10g water change and everyone looks happy. Here is an updated tank shot.

 

[77railer]

About 2 weeks ago we noticed our Joe Knows Reefs Frozen Tundra missing from it's spot.

Possibly a turbo doing some glue checking for me or our Melanurus Wrasse decided she didn't like it there. In a frantic state I was ready to tear down the entire tank to save it. Luckily and unluckily we spotted it. It had fallen into a cravase of live rock that was too small for any attempt of retrieval from above. I frantically searched for an entrance from below and to my surprise was able to get two fingers into a small hole on the back of the rock and rescue one of our prized possessions.

After reattaching the coral we noticed I had broken off a piece of our Wet Thumbs Bubble Gum Digi...
Before...

After...

this frag was not to be found. Low and behold yesterday I spot a little orangish nub between two rocks on the sandbed. We arent sure if it will bounce back but have decided to let it figure that out for itself.

Other than that things have been pretty quiet around here...did another 10g water change today

 

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Odd happenings....Our Wet Thumb Digitata decided it didn't like Easter...and neither did the frag.

For the life of us we couldn't figure out what changed that caused this reaction. We did have the windows open the day before but everything else looked fine. Today everything looks bright as rain with not a worry in the world

...always something eh?

 

[77railer]

My how time flies when your having fun and working 75-90hrs a week. Sorry for the non-existent updates. A lot has happened since our last update. While away in Washington something hit our tank and wiped out all of our fish except for our female melanurus wrasse. We went completely fallow for the better part of 3 months. Since we couldnt watch any fish swim around we kept grabbing corals here and there. Long story short...we quickly ran out of room and faced the decision of adding another tank or learning to be content with what we had.....

 

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Needless to say we chose the first option and thanks to the owner of Leon's Lagoon (our amazing LFS) we were soon taking home a shallow 80g rimless tank with starfire glass and all the bells and whistles.

 

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A phone call from our LFS owner stating he had rock waiting on us that just came in from a very well established tank had me running back in town. My eyes were bigger than my tank so to speak and I may have grabbed a little to much rock When I got home I quickly realized my mistake and nicknamed the new tank "Boulder Alley"

 

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I figured even with too much rock in the tank I would leave it in there till we cycled. Using established rock helped us keep this cycle to a minimum and we were good to go in no time. Well almost...I still had to deal with the rock issue....I decided that "Boulder Alley" needed a slim down and would be primarily used as a frag tank. After looking at the rock we had we decided to line the sides and back wall with rock so we could glue some grow out colonies and leave room in the middle for a frag rack. We moved the rock around, returned the unused rock, and added some zoanthids from our LFS.

Then we modified a sheet of black egg crate to fit into the open sand bed to hold our frags.

 

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Then we started adding some frags of this and that. We even went in on importing some Acros from Indonesia Our frag tank was coming along nicely.

 

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Here are a few shots of some of the corals that got imported. Overall we were very pleased.

 

[77railer]

Fast forward a little a things started filling up quickly. This is a shot of the tank the weekend before the CMAC show in Columbia SC. We took 50 frags, helped out our LFS Leon's Lagoon at the show and had a great time. Speaking of our LFS we cant say enough good things about them. Richard and his guys are a great people. He is always eager to help and full of knowledge. They've definitely kept us from making more than a few mistakes along the way.

We started gluing up some of the grow out colonies to the rock and it gave us some room which quickly was taken by fresh frags of zoanthids from our 75g. Its surprising how quickly these things grow in the right conditions.

 

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Here is a shot from the best seat in the house Well in my opinion anyway...

 

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The 80g has been a great frag tank so far. There simply isnt any room left for corals in it. Here is its latest shot from yesterday.

And not to be left out here is the latest pic of the 75g taken yesterday.

 

[77railer]

Since we quickly saw the 80g coming to a stand still for lack of space (which is an awesome problem) and wanted to keep the 75 as a mixed tank there was only one option. We needed another tank, hahaha. We are fortunate enough to be surrounded by some truly amazing people in this hobby and before we knew it there was a third tank sitting in our home. We apologize for the random shot but its all we have at the moment.

After a few discussions here is what we have decided to do moving forward. The 110 is going to be a "soft coral" tank with Gonis, Shrooms, Zoas, Palys and the randomn LPS. All the rock which is covered in SPS frags/colonies and all the loose SPS frags from the 80 will be moved to the 75 which will become our SPS tank. The 80 will then continue its course as the frag tank We are currently in the process of cleaning/setting up the 110 and getting it ready to take water/rock which we hope will happen by the end of this week. Hopefully we can do a better job taking yall along for the journey as things progress...till next time...

 

[77railer]

Life finnaly allowed time to add rock and water to the 110. Got everything cycled, lights running, and time to get the show on the road We added a cuc and are starting to decide which corals to transfer first.

All the smaller rocks on top will be grow out rocks for zoanthid and plays.

 

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Also had a little time to snap a couple pics of some of various creatures in the 75 and 80. Can't wait to get all this organized...its gonna be awesome.

 

[77railer]

Spent the better part of 5hrs working on all three tanks tonight. Moved most of the rock and some coral temporarily from the 75g to the 110g so I could catch the fish out of it and move them to the 110g. Then I moved the rock back into the 75g and began the laborious process of moving rock and acros from the 80g frag tank into the 75g. Got alot done but still have 46 different acros and several fish to move at this point. I may be able to finish if not put a huge dent in it tomorrow but for now I have reached my stopping point. Here are the latest pics of the 110g and the 75g.