Seven Year Nap's Fluval 13.5 "Mixed Reef"

Seven Year Nap

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Hello all,
I joined this forum after starting my tank, but thought it would be fun to document everything that happened so far as well as moving forward.

My tank is a Fluval 13.5, currently lighting and filtration are all stock with no modifications.

Other equipment is below:
-Fluval CP1 powerhead
-Tunze Nano 3152 ATO

I'll have to invest in some camera filters to get better pictures. I love looking at other peoples tanks so while I don't have much to show right now I still wanted to try and contribute.

The tank was started in October of 2023.
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I started with a candy cane, duncan, and an acan as my first corals, shortly after adding 2 clownfish. After diatoms started to form I added some clean up crew.
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A couple weeks later I added a golden sea plume gorgonian, a blasto merletti and blasto wellsi. A week after that I added my first scoly which was exciting but I was also nervous about it not doing well. Below is the tank at the end of November 2023. I was most likely rushing things a bit too quickly.

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After this point I tried adding a cheap birdsnest to see if my tank could handle SPS, and quickly found out it could not! No SPS for a while longer.

With some Boxing day deals, throughout December I added another scoly, a nice pink blasto which fluoresces pink under blue lighting, another acan, and a red monti cap to test SPS again. The red monti promptly died from too much flow I believe. Where I put it was in front of the powerhead but on the other side of the tank. The flesh started to peel off. Could have been flow or my tank but I replaced it with a starburst monti after changing the powerhead position. I really wanted to try and figure out why they weren't doing well!

I added a new fish, a tailspot blenny. Loved the little guy.
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Around the end of January my warpaint scoly started to do terribly. Absolutely terrible. I check parameters so many times but couldn't figure out what was going on. Then I saw my lovely tailspot blenny attack it! I covered it with a plastic basket and hoped the tailspot blenny would chill out after a week or two. I think the little guy loved to eat the color red, since only the red stripe on my other scoly was eaten down, and also my starburst monti was losing flesh on tops of the ridges and edges.

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I unfortunately had to give up the tailspot blenny. He was extremely difficult to catch and it took me several days of trying to finally get him out.

In February I've replaced by starburst monti again.... Hopefully for the last time. I also added a few SPS, and a teal candy cane.
Below is the tank now.

Both scolymia recovered very well without the blenny in the tank. I didn't move them or change the light schedule.

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Reefing threads: Do you wear gear from reef brands?

  • I wear reef gear everywhere.

    Votes: 20 13.7%
  • I wear reef gear primarily at fish events and my LFS.

    Votes: 10 6.8%
  • I wear reef gear primarily for water changes and tank maintenance.

    Votes: 1 0.7%
  • I wear reef gear primarily to relax where I live.

    Votes: 22 15.1%
  • I don’t wear gear from reef brands.

    Votes: 83 56.8%
  • Other.

    Votes: 10 6.8%
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