J&D’s Seatown Waterbox 135.4 Couples Therapy (a reefing marriage story)

[BighohoReef]

Minor build update:
We lost a clown this week our 5 year old female ocellaris clown. She jumped ship this past Thursday (7/9) the dogs found her on the floor, She was still wet so I was able to keep her alive by placing her back in the tank in isolation. She survived until Saturday morning where I found her lying in the substrate. We still have one clown left and our thought is to try having it host in our month old rainbow men... Any thoughts on teaching and old fish a new trick? Pretty bummed and still undecided about adding another.

In brighter tank news (pun intended) our Orphek OR3 90 Reef Day Light finally came in. I plan to install it this week sometime, I'll be a doing a 1hr a day acclimation, ramping up slowing over a few weeks till I get to 5-6hrs, though this depends on my par readings. The plan for this light is to hang it behind the facing towards the front of the tank.

More dry rock is cycling for a major re-aquascape I've been finding dead spots in the tank and we're trying to eliminate with more flow or moving structures. More to come as I research and make decisions.

We're combating a small crop up of turf algae... We added additional cleaning crew to hopefully help in the fight. If all else fails we'll probably address this with a fluconazole treatment.

New growth:
Branching Duncan has two more heads growing!
Branching hammer three new heads
Indo green torch two heads
Shortcake acro encrusting over plug.

Livestock in QT:
Splatter Pearl Bubble Coral - genus: Physogyra lichtensteini
Sunkist Bounce
Aussie acro colony

Next update:
Par readings from the Orphek
Aquascape update
Adding a Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse
Increased feeding or not to?!?

Stay tuned!

 

[LRT]

Very nice man. Sorry to here about the fish. We are on fish time out. Had 2 clowns jump and my blenny got stuck in tube with a snail. No more fish until we set up display tank I guess.
SK looks nice. And super fast, hardy growers. I got mine as a tiny frag and it's getting big and bouncing pretty nice now. The kid at my lfs says he got his a year ago and already has 12 or 13 of them lol I can see it now.

 

[BighohoReef]

Very nice man. Sorry to here about the fish. We are on fish time out. Had 2 clowns jump and my blenny got stuck in tube with a snail. No more fish until we set up display tank I guess.
SK looks nice. And super fast, hardy growers. I got mine as a tiny frag and it's getting big and bouncing pretty nice now. The kid at my lfs says he got his a year ago and already has 12 or 13 of them lol I can see it now.

5 years no issues, fed well and then plop... I know it's a risk of going lidless. With the cleaner wrasse on the way, a lid is definitely going on the DT, even if I think it's ugly. I want the fish... so fingers crossed.

I can only hope for 12-13?!?! The piece is the size of a nickel @LRT are you spot feeding your bounces? I can't remember... When I found the SK at the LFS it was literally buried behind some live rock, the kid at the LFS had to call the owner to get approval to sell it to me for the price I got it at.. it pays to be a regular customer . Hopefully, with the re-aquascaping and mushroom tub growing I'll get some good propagation going.

 

[LRT]

It's so 5 years no issues, fed well and then plop... I know it's a risk of going lidless. With the cleaner wrasse on the way, a lid is definitely going on the DT, even if I think it's ugly. I want the fish... so fingers crossed.

I can only hope for 12-13?!?! The piece is the size of a nickel @LRT are you spot feeding your bounces? I can't remember... When I found the SK at the LFS it was literally buried behind some live rock, the kid at the LFS had to call the owner to get approval to sell it to me for the price I got it at.. it pays to be a regular customer . Hopefully, with the re-aquascaping and mushroom tub growing I'll get some good propagation going.

Yes I am feeding reef roids once or twice a week. Turn down flow and spot feed they all love it especially the bounces.
I also feed them frozen mysis. SK loves it. In fact all the bounces eat mysis now except for the OG but I finally found her mouth so I'm going to try to get it to eat shrimp finally.
Also going to order some TDO pellets. The kid at lfs told me once he started feeding his bounces the pellets they all started splitting
And yes it does pay to have connections at lfs bro your killing it man I'm kinda jelly hahaha
Good stuff man

 

[fishguy242]

;Drool;Drool;Drool;Drool;Drooljust..;Drool;Drool;Drool;Drool;Droolsorry about clown,bubble

 

[BighohoReef]

Mini midweek update:
OR3 is unboxed going above the tank... Hopefully I don't burn our or diatom my tank.
Cover is made... gearing up for the Hawaiian Cleaner Wrasse
AFS being added for the day I have to go back to work

Last but not least... our big gold monster torch finally found its home (picture taken as it was waking up)

 

[Everything Aquatics]

very nice tank

 

[BighohoReef]

very nice tank

Thank you

 

[BighohoReef]

Orphek 90 DL bar installed!

Added another 100 par 12" under the second light. Slow acclimation will be happening over the course of a few weeks. I also want to monitor the cyano under the white light...

We'll see how goldie does under the new lighting setup, quick pic under the new lights.

 

[BighohoReef]

7/20 Weekly Update:

Conch sighting! After weeks of thinking our puffer had consumed the conch, it's shell surfaced! The only way I'm ever going to see it though is at 2 am. This week we encountered our first real tank scare, we left the heaters running in the "On" position on the Apex overnight. Woke up to a 96 degree tank and everything closed up . Thanks to my wife and no thanks to my panicking we quickly went into dropping the temp and getting things to a stable state. So after a few ziplock bags of ice packs, we were able to get everything back to normal. We learned a few things from this: 1. always check the Apex to make sure everything is set back to normal. 2. Verify that your Apex alerts are setup correctly. 3. Double-check your work.

All in all, it could have been worse, thank goodness we were home and the tank is the first thing I check in the morning (sorry kids)

Tank work this week:

• Since I didn't get to it last week I'll be adding the rock that is coming off it's 5-6 week cycle
• Making space for the millies and tenuis
• Designing a new mushroom, zoa and softie garden

 

[revhtree]

Mmmm those torches look good! Nice job!

 

[BighohoReef]

7/27 Weekly Update:
Part one of our three part re-aquascape is done. The SPS rock finally is moving closer to the the par level we're looking for! Zoa garden smaller rocks added to allow for future growth.

On the right side the hammers and octospawn finally got their own rock. We're seeing good extention from them now that they are getting tad bit more light.

New Livestock:
We finally got the Hawaiian cleaner wrasse! - Have to thank my good reefing friend @ReeferBlaine for all his help, nudging (enabling) and success he's had in keeping his own "Lucky" HCW. Now going through the motions of monitoring, trying to supplement feeding and so on. I'm going to be a hover reefer for a few weeks.

@reefcleaners order coming in this week

• 5 Emerald crabs
• 20 Nerite snails
• 2 - conchs
• 1 - Fighting conch
• 10 - Blue hermits

Corals coming out of QT: JF TNT Anacopora

Coming for the next update:

• Part two of the aquascape update will include a new mushroom spire behind the SPS rock. Rock is coming out of the cure. We're debating adding a Tunze mag rock to the overflow... BRS order is in for it.
• Hawaiian cleaner wrasse update - Living, breathing and eating.
• @WWC 13th Anniversary Live Sale Unboxing! Excited to see what comes in the blue box! First ever unboxing video hope it doesn't go horrible Also big thanks to Frank and team @WWC , two days of updates and constant fun, I really enjoyed the sale!
• QT'd SPS (will they pass the health check?)

Happy reefing you all!

 

[KingTideCorals]

You got this! Got the right formula going to give that HCW the best possible home!

 

[BighohoReef]

8/3 update:
Day 8 of Hawaiian Cleaner watch! Density is doing well after 5 days of watching the hcw is finally eating the mixture of reef nutrition oyster feast, mysis, fish flakes (ground up), rodifers, shrimp ground up bits, spirulina powder and the occassional fish slime from Donut (kole), Hawk(fish) and Seachicken (puffer). BIG SHOUT OUT TO @ReeferBlaine for all his help getting Density acclimated and eating! Wouldn;'t have this success without him!

Round 2 of the reefcleaners order is in! Added hermit crabs and emeralds in this order. Sea Chicken went a little crazy when we added the emerald crabs, his hunting nature kicked in. It's been a few days now and I've only been after to find a claw that from his great hunt. All other crabs looked to have been spared.

We lost a tank mate this week. We found our lawnmower blenny laying on the sandbed, we think it got caught in one of the MP10s had a black bruise on it's side He's returned to the great reef in the sky. You'll be missed blen, blen!

Outside of that the tank is stable, everything is doing happy and healthy. We're seeing some color changes in our corals under the OR3s (which are fantastic). I'll do a deeper write up on the lighting in another post.

Coming for the next build update:

• The tank is DIRTY! Major cleaning is in order, with the amount of feeding we've been doing to get the hcw to eat it's caused a minor spike in algae/gha. Cleaning tools are coming out this weekend!
• Thinking about two new fish. I'm open to suggestions though:
  • Midas Blenny
  • Pearlscale Butterfly
  • I really want a Hawaiian Tinker, I just can't justify the cost
• Building a mushroom spire!
• T5? Should I go back?!?

Coming out of QT:
Rainbow hammer
PC Rainbow
Zoa

In QT:

 

[LRT]

Ok need updates enough teasing

 

[BighohoReef]

Ok need updates enough teasing

I know I know I need to update this thing

 

[BighohoReef]

9/7 Update:

Parameters this week:
Nitrates: 5
Phosphate: .5
Alk: 7.3
Mag: 1280
Calcium: 400
Salty: 1.025

What's new?!?

We lost two fish in the past weeks and it's been little bit of a heartbreak. First our Hawaiian cleaner (Density for you Back to the Future folks), our Midas Blenny (Frank)... both wouldn't eat regularly and which lead to their eventual starvation. We tried everything, even isolation . We partially think it was due to us going away for two weekends... makes trying to find a good tank sitter for our next longer vaca.

So the good news the tank has been looking pretty good considering our parameters dropping or spiking in certain areas.

We finally got some SPS on the left rock!!!

Euphyllia:

The euphyllia garden is taking off, whatever we're feeding (RS Reef Energy, benepets) is really working. We've had to move everyone else out (except for the leathers, soon to happen though)

Mushrooms:

Mushroom garden is bouncing around! The new OG gets it's own little glass apartment because it's special. The electus produced it's first baby... I don't know how long it had been hiding under the rock, it's about the size of a nickel.
The New Stuff:
With every new vacation though there is always a stop at the local fish stores here are some of the new additions either coming out of QT, in QT or resting in the tank:

Interstellar mushroom and the "I refuse to anchor myself" Jawbreaker. If anyone has advice on getting mushrooms to stay put I'm all ears I've tried everything except glue. All my normal methods haven't worked.

Our meaty Mr. Wellsophyllia who has to stay caged due to our pecking Valentini puffer "Seachicken"

Loved this mushroom the moment I saw it... not sure of the name but the colors had me at hello. If you have an ID please comment below.

Our fake invader pectinia posing menacingly from it's perch. I've been spot feeding it daily and it's getting bigger... OH MY!

What's hanging out in QT?:

Derasa clam getting ready to suck some of the Nitrates our of the DT.

Deal of the week!

The final one is a mushroom rock we found at a LFS for 50% off for $60. I couldn't believe someone hadn't snagged it and then I realized that it was in a tank with red flatworms and vermited snails. Decided that wasn't a deal breaker... got it home, flatworm exited and coralRX'd the crap out of the rock, it's been a few weeks now and it's fully recovered. We have about 30 fuzzy mushrooms on there, this rock will probably never make it to the DT so I'm looking at fragging the the mushrooms onto other rocks. @LRT and @ReeferBlaine ones going to each of you, when I know I got all the pests and if you have the space.

Last but not least l finally got a fighting conch!!! Then I realized I probably need to glue everything down in the tank

Upcoming:
My first frags with the new Grphyon bandsaw!
Fish decisions.. .what replaces the Hawaiian cleaner and the midas blenny?
Did the clam really lower nitrates?

Thanks for reading and following along! Till the next update

PS future mushroom rock... should I break it?

 

[LRT]

Ahhhh I knew you been holding out bro
Is that the rainbow electus dropping babies for you?
Everything looking good man. Need some torches in my life soon as we decide on what kind of tank to go with!
Nice update!

 

[BighohoReef]

@fishguy242 you are also added to the mushroom receiving list

 

[BighohoReef]

Ahhhh I knew you been holding out bro
Is that the rainbow electus dropping babies for you?
Everything looking good man. Need some torches in my life soon as we decide on what kind of tank to go with!
Nice update!

Hahaha, It's been a crazy month of corals, school and work... just needed that little extra push!!! Also what's the update on the mushroom grow out? Was telling @ReeferBlaine about your setup and how I have all of the similar parts collecting dust in my garage lol. It is the rainbow electus dropping babies, I need to get it on a better rock though,,,

Thinking about breaking this rock up and creating a tiered structure... thoughts?