Red_Beard's 75 Tank Build

[Red_Beard]

Haha totally! I was going to take my time and quarantine everything but i got antsy seeing the big mess developing so i just plopped them in and crossed my fingers it'd work out. So far so good!

Your tank is looking awesome! Have you got anything on the list yet? That thing will be cycled before you know it!

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Haha totally! I was going to take my time and quarantine everything but i got antsy seeing the big mess developing so i just plopped them in and crossed my fingers it'd work out. So far so good!

Your tank is looking awesome! Have you got anything on the list yet? That thing will be cycled before you know it!

Pair of Mochavinci Clowns (coming Friday), yellow watchman and shrimp or a diamond goby, flame Hawkfish yellow eye kole or a white tail bristletooth tang, stary blenny, 3 wrasses - fairy, Flasher, and melanarus, firefish or a pair of cardinals...last but not least, a Mandarin, but that's going to be a while, need to establish a pod population.

Speaking of CUC I should probably get QT on those going.

 

[Red_Beard]

Pair of Mochavinci Clowns (coming Friday), yellow watchman and shrimp or a diamond goby, flame Hawkfish yellow eye kole or a white tail bristletooth tang, stary blenny, 3 wrasses - fairy, Flasher, and melanarus, firefish or a pair of cardinals...last but not least, a Mandarin, but that's going to be a while, need to establish a pod population.

Speaking of CUC I should probably get QT on those going.

Sweet! That is similar to what i was leaning towards with the exception of the tangs and cardinals. I feel like my fish wish list keeps growing...I think I'll need at least 300 more gallons.;Wacky If you get the mandarin before i do I'll have to grill you on how it went!

 

[Red_Beard]

Killed 2 birds with one stone today. Built some storage for my wife and got the frame up for my auto water change tanks.

Gotta say, i love the snap-top drums!

 

[Red_Beard]

About 2 weeks ago i saw 2 of my snails ...entangled, now i have little white dots on the glass, looking close they look like baby snails! I have been hesitant to clean the glass as it is their food source for now. It was hard to get a clean shot, the foxface wanted to be the star! Love that fish.

 

[Goodair]

That's awesome! Fox will keep an eye on them, lol.

 

[Red_Beard]

Im in a glass box of emotion!

So happy skimmer was delivered, so sad after trying to turn it on.

 

[Red_Beard]

Well, a call or two later and Ariel from Red Sea has everything straightened out. Should have a new impeller any day now. I do have to say, they have great customer service!

Meanwhile I put a light on my QT tank so I can observe some of my corals. Plan to start that maybe this weekend. My little 30 gallon tank is an aiptasia wasteland and I don't want to knowingly add it to the 75 when I move them over.

On a more awesome note, I placed an order from ReefCleaners for a snail only clean up crew (with emerald crabs and peppermint shrimp). Also had him throw in some pods and macro algae too. Another awesome customer service experience, John is great to work with! Should be here Wednesday or Thursday. :D

 

[Red_Beard]

ReefCleaners for the win! Ordered the rest of my CUC now that the is food in the display for them to eat.

Everybody is looking quite happy with only 1 casualty of transit. Poor pep shrimp's bag lost pressure and he got crushed.
Got some dwarf ceriths, banded trochus, astreas, marginellas, nerites, speckled ceriths(really pretty), a conch, emerald crabs, peppermint shrimp, some macros, and pods. :D

Next big question is how long to QT them. Do I go the full 2 and a half months or 2-3 weeks plus observation? Still trying to figure that out. I don't want them to starve and am not sure how to feed them properly. I threw in some nori and the shrimp and crabs went for it. There is some film in my QT tank but not enough to last that long.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Well, a call or two later and Ariel from Red Sea has everything straightened out. Should have a new impeller any day now. I do have to say, they have great customer service!

Meanwhile I put a light on my QT tank so I can observe some of my corals. Plan to start that maybe this weekend. My little 30 gallon tank is an aiptasia wasteland and I don't want to knowingly add it to the 75 when I move them over.

On a more awesome note, I placed an order from ReefCleaners for a snail only clean up crew (with emerald crabs and peppermint shrimp). Also had him throw in some pods and macro algae too. Another awesome customer service experience, John is great to work with! Should be here Wednesday or Thursday. :D

My reefcleaners emeral crab ate a bunch of my snails in QT tank... Guess I need to feed more, but he may be getting relegated to the fuge.

I'm QTing for 6 weeks which covers all but the one strain of ich.

 

[Red_Beard]

My reefcleaners emeral crab ate a bunch of my snails in QT tank... Guess I need to feed more, but he may be getting relegated to the fuge.

I'm QTing for 6 weeks which covers all but the one strain of ich.

That will be something I'll definitely need to watch out for, I would have thought they were largely vegetarian. Thanks for the tip! What were you doing for food if you don't mind me asking?

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

That will be something I'll definitely need to watch out for, I would have thought they were largely vegetarian. Thanks for the tip! What were you doing for food if you don't mind me asking?

That's the hard part, trying to feed but not over feed a 10g tank. I do mysis/Reef frenzy for the meat eaters (in a syringe) and then drop an algea wafers for everything else. I now also have a pretty wild diatom bloom.

Need to dial things in.

 

[Red_Beard]

That's the hard part, trying to feed but not over feed a 10g tank. I do mysis/Reef frenzy for the meat eaters (in a syringe) and then drop an algea wafers for everything else. I now also have a pretty wild diatom bloom.

Need to dial things in.

Yeah, ithink i am just about out of the woods with diatoms, stuff is clearing up noticeably. You were totally right, had an emerald get a dwarf cerith today. Put in some lrs reef frenzy and it calmed them down. Thanks again!

 

[Red_Beard]

:D :D :D

 

[Red_Beard]

Sunday update and FTS:

I think I'm through at least phase one of the uglies, the diatomes have slowed WAY down and stuff is staying pretty clean too. I did turn up the lighting intensity in preparation for the CUC which is doing well in quarantine so far. I've only had one fatality due to crab predation that I know of. I also fragged my armor of God zoa into 2 plugs with 2 heads each to see how it would go, being as I am new to fragging and all. I used a koralMD dip first then cut it, dipped the head in a providone iodine dip and then glued it down with seachem gel glue. So far looks like at least 2 of the 4 are going to make it. I cut the other 2 kinda high as the plug was overrun with GSP and I wanted to try and save what I could. That stuff is terrible. Really pretty but super crazy invasive. Needless to say it will NOT be getting transferred to the new tank. That's about it for this week. :D

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Looking good! I have a feeling my ugly phase is coming as my nitrates and phosphate are getting taken up by something. Not seeing much right now though. Stated to get some green yuck in the Skimmer but that's about it.

My emerald grab ate another one of my snails in QT before he started to munch on algea. Going to do another order with reef cleaners.

 

[Red_Beard]

Starting to get some algae with the lights turned up. The CUC will be so happy when moving day comes.

Along the CUC line of thought, I got a bag of pods from ReefCleaners and I was worried how they were going to do in my new tank...

Well, my fears were in vain, they are EVERYWHERE! Lol. If they participated in the census population density would be like 5-10 per in² in the 'rural' areas and 15-20 in the 'city':p. Now I am thinking I need a mandarin for population control!

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Haha, I feel your pain. My uglies are starting to come in strong. Need to get some pods here myself.

 

[AbjectMaelstroM]

Are you doing any manual clean up? Other than glass?

 

[Red_Beard]

Are you doing any manual clean up? Other than glass?

I stirred half of the sand a bit on the left side once a few weeks ago, but other than that no. I did start putting in filter socks before cleaning the glass and that helped quite a bit, but I'm not running them all the time. Other than that the foxface has been visibly keeping stuff better, he doesn't get everything but the spots he's hit are spotless pretty white. Im thinking about ordering a bottle of coraline from ARC to get that started and hopefully cover all the rock and out compete the algae(hopefully). I tried a bottle in my 30 and had tons of coraline in a few different shades and worked quite well.

How about you?