reef-rc IM Fusion 20v1

reef-rc · Jan 11, 2019

It's Fish & Invert Friday!

New inhabitants for the tank arrived today.

Tail Spot Blenny - small
- I had this one before but can't remember why it was lost from a year ago. This is likely the last fish for this tank. Besides being peaceful, I am hoping it also eat some algae although I am not dependent on it. For that I am relying on snails.

Banded Trochus Snail
- Will spread the number snails across my tank

Steven Garland · Jan 11, 2019

Whew lordy this is amazing !!! TSB's are awesome,you will love it.

reef-rc · Jan 11, 2019

Steven Garland said:
Whew lordy this is amazing !!! TSB's are awesome,you will love it.

I hop so too. Hopefully it will stay in the tank and will not try to surf on the floor

. I think my last one tried that and it did not fair well.

I have another smaller green clown goby in the tank...hopefully they will get another. I just noticed it had already found a spot to hang out so acclimating so far so good.

Daniel91 · Jan 11, 2019

Those blennies are so great!

However, do keep an eye on him once he gets comfortable. Mine would nip and completely destroy some sps and favias.

reef-rc · Jan 11, 2019

Daniel91 said:
Those blennies are so great!

However, do keep an eye on him once he gets comfortable. Mine would nip and completely destroy some sps and favias.

Thanks for the heads up. Had not heard they would nip at corals. Mine looks like it already found it's castle and started clearing out the sand directly on top of the cyphastrea I had placed outside it's entrance

. For now I had to move the coral away.

reef-rc · Feb 1, 2019

So earlier I got two branching montipora from the LFS: bubble gum monti and appleberry monti. The color on them looks great. I am looking to grow them out along with a few other montipora frags I got a few weeks back. The intent here is to house them and grow them out until the other tank is ready.

Bubble Gum Montipora

Appleberry Montipora

Monti Rack

Chili Pepper monti

Slow Burn monti

Sunburst Monti

Sunkiss Monti

Orange Monti Palawanensis

While I was at it, I also managed to get a few shot of a couple of blasto on the other rack.

Daniel91 · Feb 1, 2019

elisa h · Feb 1, 2019

Wow really awesome tank! Where do you get the rock flowers from?

reef-rc · Feb 1, 2019

Daniel91 said:
Wow!

It's pretty colorful right. I hope to be able to keep the color and growth popping. I have a few encrusting monti which has since took off so i am hoping this will do the same.

elisa h said:
Wow really awesome tank! Where do you get the rock2 flowers from?

Thank you.

rock flowers - most came from "saltcritters" = salt + critters. number of them from LFS. I personally like them a lot. I think there is anywhere between 50-60ish+ in this tank. I gave up counting them a while back.

idk why but the forum seems to filter my post automatically and replaced what I just typed in with "*". company name isn't bad. idk. i just broke the name into two piece which seems to do it

Reef Recked · Feb 8, 2019

just read through! wow this tank looks amazing! im hoping mine looks half as good in time!

reef-rc · Feb 8, 2019

Reef Recked said:
just read through! wow this tank looks amazing! im hoping mine looks half as good in time!

Thank you sir. It has it's ups and downs for sure. Right now it's on the up side

. Hopefully I can just sit and enjoy the grow out as there is not much room for anything else

.

reef-rc · Feb 14, 2019

Below is a vid I just did of one of the aggressive coral in the tank. I believe it's a favia. I have had this coral since the beginning and it's a tough one. I have managed to found a spot for it with adequate flow and lighting but as you can see it's defending it's territory starting right before the lights go out till morning. The bowerbanki downstream from has some receding tissues from the all the stings as you can see in the vid. This coral during day behaves totally different and very well manner.

NY_Caveman · Feb 14, 2019

Great video! Even the Trochus snail seems afraid of him, LOL.

Zakery Murray · Feb 14, 2019

Dang I wouldve suggested going with an ai prime couldve saved you some cash

reef-rc · Feb 14, 2019

NY_Caveman said:
Great video! Even the Trochus snail seems afraid of him, LOL.

Yep. Initially there were a number of flower anemones around it but over a period of a few months, those too have moved away.

Having taken the video, I plan today to just move it to a frag disk, move it to the new Fusion20v2 tank and let it grow out there on it's own island before it spread to the arch that it's currently on. It also seems to lost some of it's green color and that may be related to a little too much light i am thinking.

reef-rc · Feb 18, 2019

Dosing Change

Today I just started using Tropic Marin All-For-Reef dosing solution.

I have been monitoring Alk and Calcium regularly as there are now more SPS corals than previously. I have been dosing more Alk and on occasion Calcium to maintain a relatively measure of 8.6dkh and 460ppm calcium. I have not been monitoring mag and would assumed it's slight low as the salt mix is about 1350 ppm.

The salt mix has a relative measure of Alkalinity - 8 dKH, Calcium - 440 ppm, Magnesium - 1350 ppm. So I am going to assumed my mag is around that since I do weekly water change and sometimes 2 water change per week based on nitrate readings since i feed heavy.

Today I started with 5ml and will look to check alk, cal and mag tomorrow and adjust dosing accordingly based on Alk according to the instructions.

According to the dosing instructions. Since I started a little high, will see where it goes.

First observation I had noticed is that dosing this does not increase PH. If I were only using Alk, PH would increase and is a benefit since the tank has a relatively low PH in general.

The goal here is to determine if this will simplified dosing to just one thing.

reef-rc · Feb 25, 2019

Prior to the weekend I had received a few monti frags that I am looking forward to growing out for the other tank. One of those frag is called "CR’s Superman VS Kryptonite" monti. From the look of it, very hard to tell the difference this and a bubblegum monti as all have the same color: The base color is blue, the polyps are red, and the growth tips are flourescent green. Here's a sample shot of both

CR’s Superman VS Kryptonite - vendor website

My (not so good one) shot in the tank of "CR’s Superman VS Kryptonite"

Bubblegum monti in the tank

Not sure if it's pure marketing at work here. I like the new piece. This may be the case of "a rose by any other name is a rose". Regardless I look forward to growing both out

On the sad side of thing.

The one chalice I had on the bottom of the tank was pushed right next to one of my acans, probably by a snail sometime earlier today. Needless to say the acan lost in the encounter and as a result lost 1/4 of it's flesh as it was literally melted away. Luckily I saw it and separated the two. Then I had to suck it's melted googy flesh from the tank ;Dead;Inpain.

I also placed a "barrier" between the two just in-case. Don't know if it'll work before I move the acan to safer spot.

reef-rc · Jun 9, 2019

Brief update. It has been 3 months since last tank update.

The BAD stuff:

Tank has a little hair algae issue. Minor but annoying.
- I started Reef Flux treatment and it's currently at the end of the first week of treatment. 2 more weeks to go.

I have lost a number of blasto heads. Not sure of the issue. This has been a slow pain in the *&# issue which I have yet to figure out the root cause. It could be related to emerald crabs or shrimp or neither. I have recently got rid of the two emerald crabs I had. Will continue to monitor and see. Wish i can remove the cleaner shrimp to be sure.
I do have not have this blasto issue within the other two tanks which house similar kind of blasto.

I think the flower anemones need more feeding. It seems a few may be getting smaller even though there seems to be a few baby anemones surviving.
Nitrate has been hovering 10ppm for a while now. A little concern but corals look to be doing relatively good otherwise.
Increase lighting to accomodate SPS frags may be causing a few blasto to not expand as much due to intensity i think.

The GOOD Stuff:

Tank seems relatively healthy.
SPS frags are growing. Growing faster than LPS or anemones from what I can tell.
A few Pavona corals may eventually become a pain to deal with soon based on their pace of growth.
Scroll coral has really shown increase growth last 3-4 months. I have had this thing for close to 2 years and it's growth rate is like molasses.
Frags on the frag racks has really shown visual sign of growth. Once I remove the coral and there are remaining coral left on the frag; i have been able to grow the remaining pieces. Hopefully it'll be big one day

A few pics of the tank: