The Whole Story...

[Nigel35]

Alright here it goes… I have waited much to long to post this, hang in for a wild ride and a long one at that:

Part 1: February 2020

So I moved my tank to a new location and it started off just perfectly. Corals growing well, fish having a field day and the like. But as all good things must come to an end one day, my dream tank started to disappear. I really just want to figure out what I did wrong. Here is a picture when it first was re-setup as of February 2020:

As you can see I have a beautiful colony of Duncan’s, a gorgeous toadstool, many bta’s, favia’s, GSP, Xenia, hammer, brown digitata, a great zoa garden etc… This was the absolute high point of my tank and everything was just coming together nicely.





Normal parameters would be as follows:

Nitrates: 10-20
Phosphates: .25
Calcium: 420
Alk: 8-9 (there was a time when my alk went quite low down to about 5 for about a few weeks but after that it went back to where it should be)
Ph: 7.8-8.2
Salinity: 1.025-1.027 (Sometimes will hang around 1.028 for a day if I don’t get the chance to top off)
Temperature: 78-80 degrees


Tank Specs:

Equipment:
Return pumps 2x:
Lighting: USA Current Marine LED 2x
Heater
Extra Powerhead

Filtration:
Chemi-Pure Media
Filter Floss
Other Media etc.

Dosing:
ESV Bionic Calcium and Alkalinity 15 ml EOD
Reef Iodide once a week
SeaChem PH buffer

Feeding:
Pellets (Floating and Sinking)
Green Seaweed EOD
Frozen Brine Shrimp
Reef Roids twice a week

Livestock:

Corals:
Hammerhead
Duncan
Green Leather Toadstool
Bob Marley's Zoa
Watermelon Zoa
Green Bay packer Zoa
Arctic Ice protopaly
Pulsing Xenia
Pagoda Cup Coral
Purple Stylophora
Brown
Green Star Polyp (Dark and light green)
Psammocora
Various mushrooms (Brown, purple, and Rhodactis)
Rainbow Bubble Tip Anenome
Rose Bubble Tip Anenome
An Acan not sure what sort
Spicy Lemon Favia


Fish/Inverts:
Hawaiian Yellow Tang
Niger Triggerfish
Occellaris Clownfish Pair
Skunk Cleaner Shrimp
Clean up Crew: Snails, Hermit Crabs etc.

More to come! Just the introduction,

Nigel

 

[Nigel35]

March 2020:

Biggest addition and probably the worst this month was a beautiful and flawless flame angel. This month was quite the dream… Perfect tank just the way I wanted it to be.


April 2020: Loss upon Loss:


First loss was the Purple Stylophora. This one was completely my fault. I placed it way to close to a RBT’A. And it stung it practically to death…

Next was a green slime acropora. This one was a bit of a mystery for a little bit until a knowledgeable guy told me that the reason was that my nitrates and phosphates reached inconsistent levels (nitrates 25 and phosphates bottomed out at 0) and necrosis wiped the poor guy out.

I also lost a Lemon Eye Favia to my Rainbow Bubble Tip Nem. It’s pretty large and extended from it’s cup and went down to the acan.

I also lost some Xenia to another bubble tip nem. Man can I ever get this right? lol.

Biggest issue this month was my toadstool shedding and never really recovering. More to come next post...


Overall the tank was doing fairly well: FTS April 2020