Surskit's First Reef!

[Surskit]

Big update today! I got my first corals! I met with a local reefer on KSL (sorta like Craigslist for the Utah area) and- while I initially just planned on getting a nepthia, he offered me a mushroom and a leather frag for 5 dollars each so I figured I'd risk it. He also gave me some macroalgae for free, which was really nice! I wasn't sure if my tailspot would eat it though, so at the moment I have it in a little breeder box from a freshwater tank I have. Overall though I'm pretty excited! They aren't crazy pretty looking yet (pics were taken only 10 minutes or so after I added them to the tank so the polyps aren't opened but I'm excited! I put them all pretty high up, so according to the things I read on my light they should be getting between 50-75 PAR, which is low but not too low for these if I did my research lol. I also finally switched my lights to run bluer, as they really make the mushroom pop more vividly.

 

[AnotherReefHobbyist]

Big update today! I got my first corals! I met with a local reefer on KSL (sorta like Craigslist for the Utah area) and- while I initially just planned on getting a nepthia, he offered me a mushroom and a leather frag for 5 dollars each so I figured I'd risk it. He also gave me some macroalgae for free, which was really nice! I wasn't sure if my tailspot would eat it though, so at the moment I have it in a little breeder box from a freshwater tank I have. Overall though I'm pretty excited! They aren't crazy pretty looking yet (pics were taken only 10 minutes or so after I added them to the tank so the polyps aren't opened but I'm excited! I put them all pretty high up, so according to the things I read on my light they should be getting between 50-75 PAR, which is low but not too low for these if I did my research lol. I also finally switched my lights to run bluer, as they really make the mushroom pop more vividly.

looks great! 50-75 par should be fine for lower light corals like that.

 

[Surskit]

Another update! This comes with a lot of good news and a little bad news. The bad news being that about two days after I got the coral, the toadstool fell over and died overnight. But there's a lot of good! Firstly, the nepthia is doing great! I was having a harder time with the mushroom at first, because it kept dropping itself to spots with too low a light, so at the moment it's in an isolated tupperware and i hope to get it to attach to some sand in there so i can glue it down, but there will also be way less of a problem with lower light areas since I just won a brand new more powerful light in the noopsyche giveaway! I'm really excited to get that set up! Final thing- my birthday was this last Saturday, and I went out and got one animal I wanted for me tank since the beginning but didn't wanna shell out the cash for until now- a skunk cleaner shrimp! It looks really cool! I named it Starburns after the Community character, since I've been very fixated on that show as of late lol. I think I might go ahead and get some more coral once the new light shows up, since it really opens up the possibilities! As for the old light, I'm not sure what I'll do. I might just sell it to someone, or I might keep it and try and set up some kind of big hang-on-back refugium sorta deal with it! I'll have to think first, but I'm pretty dang excited!

 

[AnotherReefHobbyist]

Another update! This comes with a lot of good news and a little bad news. The bad news being that about two days after I got the coral, the toadstool fell over and died overnight. But there's a lot of good! Firstly, the nepthia is doing great! I was having a harder time with the mushroom at first, because it kept dropping itself to spots with too low a light, so at the moment it's in an isolated tupperware and i hope to get it to attach to some sand in there so i can glue it down, but there will also be way less of a problem with lower light areas since I just won a brand new more powerful light in the noopsyche giveaway! I'm really excited to get that set up! Final thing- my birthday was this last Saturday, and I went out and got one animal I wanted for me tank since the beginning but didn't wanna shell out the cash for until now- a skunk cleaner shrimp! It looks really cool! I named it Starburns after the Community character, since I've been very fixated on that show as of late lol. I think I might go ahead and get some more coral once the new light shows up, since it really opens up the possibilities! As for the old light, I'm not sure what I'll do. I might just sell it to someone, or I might keep it and try and set up some kind of big hang-on-back refugium sorta deal with it! I'll have to think first, but I'm pretty dang excited!

Great! The tank is really starting to come to life.

 

[Sean Clark]

Following along

 

[Surskit]

Not gonna add any new images, since things haven't changed much, but things have been going pretty good! The mushroom is still having a problem attaching to the rocks, so I'm probably gonna get some reef safe superglue and glue it down to rocks using the sand I have gotten it attached to using a separate container, but the Nepthia is doing great! Plus, the shrimp did it's first molt last night and it seemed to go pretty well, and the macroalgae has started to outgrow the little breeder box I have it in and grow out the side, so I'll probably take about half and stick it on the rocks once the new light gets here to see how it does unprotected!

 

[Surskit]

Apologies for no images, I've gotten really sick and can't really get out of bed, but I got my new light in from Noopsyche, as well as a beautiful Daisy Cutter Zoa from a West Coast Corals giveaway! The coral seemed to have a hard time at first, but the polyps are opening up now. I'll add pictures once I feel better!

 

[AnotherReefHobbyist]

Apologies for no images, I've gotten really sick and can't really get out of bed, but I got my new light in from Noopsyche, as well as a beautiful Daisy Cutter Zoa from a West Coast Corals giveaway! The coral seemed to have a hard time at first, but the polyps are opening up now. I'll add pictures once I feel better!

feel better soon!

 

[Surskit]

Heyo! I've been gone for a while, but I thought I'd make another post now! The tank is looking great, and doing great. The cyano is fully gone and i've started to grow some coraline algae! Today is a pretty big day though, as tomorrow I'm gonna be moving the tank. The landlord didn't like the spot it was at, they were worried it was gonna drip and damage the floors, so I'm gonna be moving it. It'll just be across the room, but it's a pretty huge process. I spent all day preparing the room itself, and tomorrow I'll drain everything, put everything in buckets, move the tank to the new table I got, and then put everything right back in. That's about it for the update really, but I believe this will be the first picture I post of my beautiful Daisy Cutter Zoa Frag I won from West Coast Corals! Plus a few other close ups of some of my other corals!

 

[Surskit]

Very tired after the big tank move, but I think everything turned out okay! I haven't seen anything dead at least. Tomorrow I'll try to remember to post pictures of the tank in its new spot as well as some of the pictures I took of the move in progress.

 

[Surskit]

No pictures on this update, but I figured I'd post one since it's been about two months and today was a particularly busy day as far as my aquarium goes. Things have been mostly really stable, which is great! The move turned out mostly alright. About a month ago the suction cups on my powerhead pooped out, and when it fell my nepthea ended up getting sucked into it. I'd say about three-fourths of it ended up dying but a month later at it's back to about half of its size before the pump fell. I have obviously replaced the pump, this one is held in place by both suction cups and super strong magnets, plus I can actually adjust the angle of it which is pretty neat. This morning was pretty unpleasant though, as I checked my tank and saw an aiptasia anemone in a section of my tank. It has been a few hours since and I have seen 3 more now. I have moved corals from their immediate area, but since I don't have a car and need to rely on other people for transport I won't be able to go out and get something for it until tomorrow. The needles normally used to inject stuff to kill aiptasia give me panic attacks very very bad due to a strange personal incident, so I'm likely going for natural predators. I think I will end up going for either peppermint shrimp or a filefish, though I acknowledge neither would be perfect for my scenario. Peppermints would likely be the better option, but I'm really limited in price (although I am hopefully getting a job soon! Fingers crossed on that one!), and so if it's cheaper I will go with a filefish. I know my tank is not exactly optimal for a filefish as far as size goes, but I am planning on upgrading semi-soon (assuming I get a job and it goes well), so if I get a small one it will hopefully be good until then and I can obviously return it to a store if it ends up getting too big before I can get the upgrade. Nudibranchs are also an option I considered, but I've heard mixed things about them and their ability to actually get all of the aiptasia before starving off, so I will likely add them in addition to something else in the event it's neccesary. If anyone has any other suggestions for how to kill off the aiptasia I wouldn't mind hearing it! I'll try and get tank pictures tomorrow, but it's 2:20 AM as I write this and I don't wanna turn on my tank lights and disturb everything.

 

[Surskit]

Another update, things aren't looking very good tbh. My AC has broken and the room my tank is in has been getting up to around 90 degrees fahrenheit during the day. The fish seem to be holding on pretty alright, though they are visibly stressed. The corals are really not doing well though. They're all shrunk up and are barely opening at all and it's really sad to watch. I think that the nepthea is dead, I can't confirm but it was already in rough shape and now it's gone fully limp and looks almost a little deflated, I'm holding out hope for a recovery but I'm not really expecting it. Of course the heat has done nothing to stop the aiptasia. Hopefully my next update will be a bit more positive.

 

[Surskit]

Hey, the next update really did end up being positive! I now have the tank in somewhere colder. When I had moved the thing I put it on happened to have wheels. Someone else I live recently got a window unit AC, and let me wheel the tank into there and have it stay there until my AC is fixed, which itself shouldn't be too long. Plus- I got a job! So I should be able to buy more aquarium stuff now! Or save up to upgrade the size, which is something I'd been wanting to do for a while.

 

[Surskit]

Very sad update now. At some point when I moved the tank it sprung a leak. I didn't notice for a few hours and so it really drained quite a bit. THe life inside is all fine for the time being but I do worry for their safety all crammed in a little bucket. Unfortunately my family is thinking of making me get rid of the tank, or at least get a smaller one and sell off some of my stuff. So this may be the end of Surskit's First Reef. Hopefully not. We caught it sorta quick, so the damage to everything seems minimal, especially since a nearby blanket soaked up most of the water. But it could've been a lot worse. I do wish I took more pictures of my tank though. The last pictures in this thread are the most recent ones of the tank and it was months ago. If the tank is really going after tonight I wish I could've gotten a final picture of what I had managed in my year of reefing. Signing out on this thread for what is hopefully not the last time, wish me luck

 

[Surskit]

Final update- I had to get rid of the tank and all of my creatures. I'm horribly and deeply upset. I found a LFS I trusted and took them over this morning. I loved all of my fishy (and invertibrate) friends, and it's devastating to lose them all. I'm still a reefer at heart, but I cannot have a reef at the moment and I feel like being on here will only harm me mentally. So- this ends my first build thread. Goodbye fellow reefers, I'm sure I'll be back here eventually, swim on.