RFBF's 90 Gallon Déjà vu All Over Again

[Juano908]

Juan, thank you for your kind and generous offer. I think I've come up with a solution that will most likely be a bit bizarre, but work just fine. I'm going to put a partial shelf in one of the 55's and put base rock below...corals above...and fish all over. Need to pick up another sheet of eggcrate to act as the shelf. Everything should fit! I do have two 55 gallon tanks and these two 20's; and long and a tall. I'm going to make it enough.

I'm also going to start getting rid of some of these corals. Pretty much all the softies (with a very few exceptions) are going.

No problem Paul.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Fish Behavior

As I had mentioned, 2018 wasn't a good year in our house, for the family, and for the fish. My maintenance was hit and run, with very little time spent in the fish room. Yes, the tank suffered. Hair algae galore, an aiptasia garden of hundreds. Any feeding or maintenance was done within a quick couple of minutes in the fish room....do it, and done.

The one thing I noticed, with very little time spent in the fish room, was that the fish were very skittish. I'd enter the room, and they would disappear into the rocks. Even dumping food into the tank, they would dart out from the rocks and grab some food, just to disappear back into the rocks.

Mid December of 2018, life was returning to "normal," and I started to spend most daylight hours in the fishroom....yes, I have a television in the fish room to keep me company. Within a week or two, I started to notice the fish now spending more time swimming about with me in the room. Now, about a month later, pretty much all of the fish are back to swimming around the tank when I'm in the room. The only fish that is still skittish is my flameback angle. Still pretty much hides all day.

So I'm convinced that fish get use to your presence in the room and eventually become more comfortable with you being there. My little Yellow Clown Goby, the smallest fish I have, has the most chutzpah than any other big fish in the tank....size doesn't matter! This little guy is always out, and watching me work around the tank.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Well that didn't go well......I'm Mr. Destructo when it comes to coral removal! Similar story with removing one of my Candy Canes as with the hammer yesterday....but a whole bunch more pieces.

Tried pulling out the small colony of Candy Cane, and it just fell apart in my hands. Here's about 16 - 17 pieces in the 20 tall. I probably have another 6 or 7 pieces still in the DT that fell down into the rock/sand.

And here's the bad news...this one was half the size of the monster colony that's still in the DT.

 

[Juano908]

Well that didn't go well......I'm Mr. Destructo when it comes to coral removal! Similar story with removing one of my Candy Canes as with the hammer yesterday....but a whole bunch more pieces.

Tried pulling out the small colony of Candy Cane, and it just fell apart in my hands. Here's about 16 - 17 pieces in the 20 tall. I probably have another 6 or 7 pieces still in the DT that fell down into the rock/sand.

And here's the bad news...this one was half the size of the monster colony that's still in the DT.

Wow!!!!!!

 

[redfishbluefish]

Here's a picture of the big guy that still has to come out.

 

[Juano908]

Here's a picture of the big guy that still has to come out.

Paul, don’t remember last time I was at your house, corals are huge!!!!!

 

[redfishbluefish]

So I'm in the DT trying to retrieve broken frags of Candy Cane, and see that I also must have broken off a part of the Hydnophora yesterday that fell on a plate millipora. So I pull it out, and this surprised me, is that the ends in contact with the millipora appeared to have lost it's polyps, but was still light green. I was expecting to see white....dead! I don't know if you can see it in this photo, but the portion without polyps is slightly green.

I've got it in the 20 tall to see what happens.

Crip! Yet another frag from this transfer!!!!!

 

[Juano908]

So I'm in the DT trying to retrieve broken frags of Candy Cane, and see that I also must have broken off a part of the Hydnophora yesterday that fell on a plate millipora. So I pull it out, and this surprised me, is that the ends in contact with the millipora appeared to have lost it's polyps, but was still light green. I was expecting to see white....dead! I don't know if you can see it in this photo, but the portion without polyps is slightly green.

I've got it in the 20 tall to see what happens.

Crip! Yet another frag from this transfer!!!!!

Paul, is that the green fuzzy branching one?

 

[redfishbluefish]

LOL, Yes Juan, the green hairy monster.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Well this is a head scratcher for me! I'm running two Aqueon HOB filters on the two 20 gallon holding tanks. One has the standard filter in it, and not being able to find the box of additional filters, the other has blue/white filter pad material in it. The only thing in these two tanks are corals....no fish or other beasts are present....so no feeding. I walk into the fish room and noticed water on the floor next to the 20??? The filters in both tanks are clogged so that the water is cascading over the side portion of the filter. With the filter close to the front edge of the tank, and the water coming out at a slight angle, it's splashing out of the tank.

The splashing isn't the wonder....it's a filter clogging after one or two days with nothing but coral in the tank. And, FYI, all the water in both tanks is all new water. So what's causing this clog so quickly?

The only thing I could think of was that the corals (especially the hammer and the candy cane) were slimming pretty bad when they were being moved over, and this slim blocked up the filter.

 

[redfishbluefish]

This was a bit of a disappointment....finding my Wellso half gone.

This poor guy was sitting next to the growing hammer. I never took notice that while the hammer was growing like crazy, it was covering up the Wellsophyllia.

This guy is one of my oldest corals....around ten years old....and in it's glory, three heads. I'm optimistic that it will come back with a little TLC.

And here's the other odd thing that I discovered while continuing to excavate the tank....finding two, maybe three RBTA's. The last time I had an RBTA was about five years ago. These guys were found behind rocks, very small, and a bit washed out. I've pulled out two of them....but think there's a third back there.

EDIT TO ADD: Yep, just pulled out a third small RBTA. What a surprise.

 

[Juano908]

This was a bit of a disappointment....finding my Wellso half gone.

This poor guy was sitting next to the growing hammer. I never took notice that while the hammer was growing like crazy, it was covering up the Wellsophyllia.

This guy is one of my oldest corals....around ten years old....and in it's glory, three heads. I'm optimistic that it will come back with a little TLC.

And here's the other odd thing that I discovered while continuing to excavate the tank....finding two, maybe three RBTA's. The last time I had an RBTA was about five years ago. These guys were found behind rocks, very small, and a bit washed out. I've pulled out two of them....but think there's a third back there.

EDIT TO ADD: Yep, just pulled out a third small RBTA. What a surprise.

Nice, I remember the Nem was behind the rocks last time I came.

 

[redfishbluefish]

With my lousy record of accidentally breaking up colonies while being removed, I've filled up the two 20 gallon tanks with frags. Today I also had to move an acan into a corner by itself because it was stinging other corals close by. Lost a polyp on a hammer (not a big deal because I have a ton of that coral) and totally whited out another two polyp acan. Hoping that the whited out acan comes back, but it's wait and see.

Anyway, with no more egg crate space available, and still a number of corals to be removed from the DT (and with my coral-colony breaking hands), here's my solution. I made two "legs" from a four inch piece of PVC and used 3/4 inch pipe as the tee brace on the top.

Two of these will be positioned in the 55 gallon holding tank and a two foot long piece of egg crate on the top.

These legs are 11 inches tall and will allow me to put base rock below, and frags above....and still have two feet to the other side of the tank for more rock and whatever. I'll repeat this for the other 55 holding tank. I'm sure I'll now have more than enough room for busted up colonies.

 

[reef lover]

Wow!! You lfs is gonna love you!
Glad to see your making headway!

 

[redfishbluefish]

Thanks @reef lover . You're more than welcome to pick over whatever I have, but believe you're north of Albany...over five hours away.

Not much done today....with the wife at home. The only thing done was to repeat the frag rack for the other 55. Here are the two 55 gallon tanks, back to back (side by side), with both now having this frag rack in them. No way could I fill both of these with frags!

Continuing to make water, and hopefully tomorrow I'll start getting one of these guys wet. Getting close.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Sitting here in the fish room tonight watching the tube and look to my right and here's what I see....all the wiring mess going to the two 20's.

Ended up adding another MP10 to the 20 long. Think I'll be doing a little wire management tomorrow.

 

[redfishbluefish]

WIRE ORGANIZATION

Well it's not the prettiest, but certainly better than the mess I had on the end of the couch. Using a piece of scrap egg-crate, all electrical stuff was either rubber banded or zip tied to that egg crate. This egg crate was below the 20 tall, and sits on top of a milk crate. It works!

And the couch is now free of all electronics and ready for my wife to sit next to me....LOL

 

[reef lover]

Progress!!

 

[redfishbluefish]

Wrasse Bed

So I'm trying to think of the little things that could derail a quick transfer of coral, rock and fish, and take care of it now so that I'm not still working on this transfer at 2 AM in the morning. I remember the first transfer I did, and it was torture. So one of the potential derailers is a bed for my Melanurus Wrasse, since the 55 gallon tank I'm going to use will be barebottom. I asked in a separate thread on suggestions of size and depth of this sand container here:

How Much Sand for a Melanurus Wrasse


Within a couple hours I had excellent suggestions and advice, and decided to go with a glass loaf pan measuring 10 by 5 by 3 inches deep, and holding about 2 inches of sand. One more thing checked off the list! Getting close.

 

[redfishbluefish]

Here We Go Again!

It looks like one of my Fathom Hydra fixtures ate another UV bead. This thing is hungry for UV beads.

I really like these fixtures....top notch (but now out of business). I have this rack of three Fathom fixtures as a backup to my current lights. (I'm a backup fanatic.) However, I'm using them over two of the holding tanks while I do my tank transfer. I catch a flicker out of the corner of my eye and bam....the blues/UV beads are out on one side of one of the fixtures, with only the four whites on.

Now I acquired these by fixing maybe ten or eleven of these fixtures for a friend....all needed new UV beads. This friend was very kind to give me these three. Again, up until a week or so, these were backups for my regular fixtures.

So I know how to fix these, as I documented the first go-around HERE.

I'm hoping it's simply the UV bead....I've got a supply and ready to do the change once the lights go out. With all other repairs, it's been the first bead....the one without the lens....crossing my fingers.