Waterbox 130.4 SPS Dominant Build

[MAB Reef]

Hi everyone,

Few years lurking so far and finally starting a build thread. This is going to be a record of my journey and progress as I am building my Waterbox 130.5 SPS dominated tank.

I started this hobby as part of quarantine. It actually started with a 5 gallon freshwater tank that was a gift to my daughter but I helped research and build which got me into fish tanks. This was in June 2020.

Reefing has always been one of those hobbies that felt like it was out of reach for me due to how complicated it seemed. Starting this freshwater 5 gallon tank gave me the bug to start researching and led me to looking into saltwater. I ended up picking up a used 50 gallon hexagon tank excited to get into it not knowing much of what I needed or all the experiences I would run into. This was in September 2020.

By December 2020 I had a bunch of beginner coral like zoas and GSP in the tank running an HOB filter and all the equipment you would usually use for a freshwater tank. I found out that in my city there is a filtered ocean water source provided by Scripps Institute that is open to the public to use. This what I used for a good amount of the last few years until I started mixing my own salt.

Results were very mixed with a lot of failure and learning. Eventually I found out about better setups and bought a used Innovate Marine 50 Gallon Lagoon tank somewhere around May 2021. I made some modifications to the stand and sump. I started off with 2 AI primes on that tank later adding reefbrites for supplements. Dabbled in acropora with a very tiny bit of success. Stability and consistency was not something I focused on yet so I lost a lot of acropora. I know part of the issue was I wasn't testing very often and water changes were not very consistent.

I slowly started to lose confidence in keeping nice coral and my interest started to fade. I stopped browsing local forums and reef2reef. One day in November 2022, I randomly took a peek at our local forums and found a deal I could not pass up. It was one of those "getting out of the hobby" posts that included literally everything I could ever need to go with a Waterbox 130.5. The picture below is the tank when I first saw the tank and the condition it was in. It definitely needed some elbow grease but it got me excited again.

Will add more updates when I get more time.

 

[Peace River]

Thanks for sharing!!! We look forward to seeing more pictures of your journey!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Great looking tank!!

 

[MAB Reef]

Continuing from where I left off...

Trying to learn from my many mistakes and knowing nothing good comes quickly, I really took my time cleaning the tank, leak testing, equipment testing, planning where to install it, rockscaping, etc. Fortunately there was a lot of rock included with the tank so I did a lot of studying on this forum to figure out what style I wanted. Here are pics during the scaping process:

My thought here was to create 3 different islands with 2 paths. The path on the right was the main focal point that is also on the right side of the rule of thirds. I attempted to create depth by using the bigger rock structure on the left up front. I also tried to pay attention to the variation of height of each structure so that it wasn't equal across the whole scape. This same thought went in so that I didn't have straight equal lines looking from the sides as well. I tried to take into consideration where certain coral would be and how they would grow.

During this whole process leaving it setup in the garage, it had a pretty bad smell. I believe part of it was all the die off of organisms on the rocks. There were some huge vermitids that had grown on the rocks. I originally was just going to use the rocks as is thinking everything was probably already dead but after seeing all the vermitids and pulling some out, I didn't want to take the chance. Once I settled on the scape, I soaked the rocks in muriatic acid and bleach for a few days. Then I rinsed them, put them in a bin with saltwater and used some of my previous rock in the 50 gallon to seed these rocks for about 2 months or so.

During this time I had plenty of things on my list that I wanted to do. I tested all the equipment that came with the tank and even setup my mixing station that came with the tank. I never thought I would set a mixing station up but this got my really excited. One of the things I didn't enjoy were water changes. This mixing station was another step towards making reefing maintenance less time consuming.

Other things I did to fill the time while the rocks were cooking were slowly figuring out what coral I wanted to keep and what I wanted to get rid of, getting my coral acclimated to the new lights that came with the tank, and probably the biggest thing was deciding to buy an Neptune Apex and Trident. I wanted to make sure I was more consistent and Black Friday was a great time to find a good deal on equipment. That along with figuring out how to use the doser I got with this tank helped stabilize my parameters getting my tank from survival mode on it's way to thriving.

 

[MAB Reef]

By January 11, 2023 I was able to find a spot and made room for the new tank. At this point I had switched out my AI Primes for Kessil 360x's which you can see in the picture.

I figured I can let the rocks seed longer in the tank vs the bins since I now had a plan for where I wanted the tank. This would also give me the ability to slowly transfer coral over to the new tank little by little so I didn't have it all sitting in a bin for a day while I got the tank ready. I was really happy with the way the scape turned out and looked once I got sand in. I used fiji pink sand which may have been a mistake as I didn't realize how easy it would be to move around with flow when I bought it.

 

[MAB Reef]

Back in November 2022 I picked up 3 dispar anthias from liveaquaria.com to add to the 50 gallon knowing they would eventually go into the bigger tank.

Sadly, I lost one during QT and then another somehow jumped out of the smaller tank when I added. I was really worried about losing the last one because it was hiding in the back and I wasn't sure if it was eating. I decided to try to catch it and have it be the first fish in the Waterbox 130.5 so he can claim his home. After watching Inappropriate Reefer on YouTube, I tried the technique of catching the fish while they were sleeping. It worked like a charm. This was from January 17, 2023.

My idea for this tank was to keep mostly smaller fish to make the tank look larger. With that, I I did rehome my only tang which was a small squaretail. Here was the list of fish coming over from the old tank:

• One spot foxface (the only large fish because he has been such a good community fish)
• 2 ocellaris clowns
• one spot blenny
• Melanarus Wrasse
• Possum wrasse

January 22nd I setup the ATO section of the sump as a frag tank after seeing someone use it in a video. I added a zoa to test the tank and see how things were. I used the AI prime I had setup on my previous tank. To block light from hitting the rest of the sump I fashioned a piece of black plastic board I got off Amazon to block the sides and attach as a visor to the light.

 

[MAB Reef]

While I was slowly figuring out what I was going to bring over, I couldn't help but pick up some goodies.

Orange Creamsicle and Princess Peach Acropora from November 2022

Sadly, this was on a magnet on the glass and I had some tiny visitors (nephews/nieces) that decided to play with it and knock the rack over. It killed some of the orangesicle but I was able to cut a piece off and save it. Below is what was left.

Picked up this nice Cherry Bomb acro locally on January 25, 2023

February 4, 2023 I also got this pink/red dragon and SC Orange Passion

January 27, 2023 I also started quarantining the carpenter's flasher wrasse and 2 hector gobies.

 

[MAB Reef]

At beginning of February I started testing transferring some coral to see how they would do in the tank. I started off with a long polyp toadstool and my colony of candy cane coral. When I saw those did OK for a week I brought in my indo torch colony, acans, chalice and space invader pectinia.

I also had to build a temporary lid with scraps of material I had laying around since I already had the single dispar anthias in there. I met a local reefer that rushed getting his tank set up loaded with a bunch of wrasse and didn't have a lid. Since I was still seeding my rocks I let him borrow my lid.

The anthias was really shy and took a few days to come out. I do believe they are more comfortable in a group so I wanted to get more anthias in there with him.

 

[MAB Reef]

By February 19th I decided to transfer over the rest of my coral. From what I recall, I was just waiting to get my lid back because my temporary lid would have blocked too much light for my SPS. It felt so good to finally get everything over!

I have 2 Maxspect 330 Gyres on the side and transferred over one of my Nero 5's. I kept one in the other tank with the rest of the coral I was getting rid of. It finally felt like

I also had a few new fish in QT that I was added around the same time:

• 3 bar gobies
• 1 carpenter flasher wrasse
• 1 additional dispar anthias

Once those went to the new tank, I brought the fish from my 50 gallon over. Additionally, I started another QT cycle with the following fish:

• 3 cardinal fish
• 1 chalk bass
• 1 ruby red dragonet
• 1 rainford goby
• Sunburst anthias (impulse buy)
• 3 more anthias that I thought were dispar but are more pinkish. If they are dispar
• yellowtail tamarin wrasse
• leopard wrasse
• yellow candy hogfish (impulse buy)

From my experience so far with these fish, they have all been great community fish which was my plan. I mentioned I had a squaretail tang and for the most part he was good. This was not the case with new tang mates. Learning from that I decided I didn't want to lose anymore fish to aggression so I created my stocking list with that in mind.

With that said, one of my impulse buy's, the yellow candy hogfish, I found was very territorial for a smaller fish and picked on the rainford goby and possibly the wrasse in QT. I separated him and was able to later rehome him.

Here's a pic of my old tank with everyone out. I can happily say goodbye to all the pulsing xenia. NEVER AGAIN!

 

[MAB Reef]

February 26, 2023 I finally got the 50 gallon Innovative Marine emptied out and moved it out of the room for sale. It left all my mess of equipment on the ground while I figured out what to do.

After some searching I found someone selling a second hand little cabinet that I could try and convert into a controller cabinet. It was slightly small but I'm happy with how it turned out.

About a little over a month in turning on the lights on March 6, 2023 I noticed I was starting to get coralline algae. To be honest, I was actually trying to avoid it because I didn't like having to clean the corners of it. It was very difficult not to bring it over since a lot of my trochus snails already had some on their shells. In any case, I must be doing something right because it took me a lot longer to get coralline algae to grow in my other tank.

 

[MAB Reef]

March 9, 2023 - I noticed that one of my trochus snails had a clam growing on it. I guess this isn't too uncommon. I saw a few people on reef2reef post pics of these. I don't have a lot of hope this will survive but really interesting to see.

March 11, 2023 - I found my ruby red dragonet jumped out of the tiniest hole. on my lid. This gap is probably meant for cables for powerheads and is smaller than my finger nail. Crazy that these fish can find the smallest hole and perfectly jump that exact direction.

Some shots of coral so that I can start tracking progress:

March 15, 2023

one of my two bigger acro colonies that I brought over. This is a cornbred Valhalla. It grew a lot different from the person I bought it from and I'm sure it had something to do with my husbandry on my previous tank. I'm curious to see how this will change in a better environment.

WWC Grafted Monticap

Left to right:

1. Princess Peach - lost some of it's pink and I hope it just needs to time settle in
2. Cherry Bomb Acro - chunky frag seems to be doing well. Seem to be getting decent polyp extension
3. Branching Cyphastrea - doesn't seem to be doing much. I guess these are slow growers

Gold Hammer colony - has been doing really really well in the new tank.

Walt Disney Tenuis - colors are light but present

Psammocora - very hardy acro and a decent grower. No problems

Pink/Red dragon - Haven't seen this grow or do much. Color is consistent and seems hardy

Frogspawn - Kept this colony and it has been very happy in the new tank. I'm not sure I have room for this to keep growing and the polyps are so extended and fluffy that it's taking a lot more room. I don't want to get rid of this because my clowns are hosting it but I may need to start fragging it.

SC Orange Passion - no growth so far but PE is still decent. I may have lost some yellows but I'm not quite sure. This is one of the pieces I'm excited to see grow.

Goniopora - so far this has been doing good as well. It looks like it's more extended in the new tank

 

[MAB Reef]

April 11, 2023 - started setting up and tuning a calcium reactor that I picked up 2nd hand.
As of April 27, 2023 I'm still trying to get a handle on tuning this thing.

April 16, 2023 - Picked up some acros from the coral farmer's market

Wild Orchid - I chose this one because I don't have any pastel color acros and this one stood out to me
Joleen tabling acro - I chose this one for the orange polyps with light blue body. The orange polyps seemed unique and reminded me of a bubblegum digitata color which I haven't seen in acros.

Matt V's Time Machine

April 26, 2023 -

Since cleaning my powerheads I can't seem to get the flow right without causing barespots with this fiji pink sand. I'm thinking I may pick up some special grade sand to fill in the front of the tank so I can turn up the flow and not have to worry about this

For about a week I noticed one of these cardinal fish has an overgrown belly. It looks like it is carrying eggs and following it's mate around. This is pretty new for me so we're watching to see what happens. I've read that Banggai Cardinal fish are mouth brooders so I'm curious to see if this will be the case for these two.

Here's a progress shot of my coralline algae

I'm unsure of the name of this millepora but I picked it up a couple months ago in a tank breakdown. My history with acros hasn't been great but milleporas have been the worst for me. We'll see how this goes. So far it hasn't shown any sign of die off so that's a plus. It's not as fuzzy as I have seen in some others but I'm also still dialing things in with my tank.

Got this the same time as the millepora in a tank breakdown. This was sold to me as a JF Rising Son Stag. I really love how fuzzy it is. So far no complaints. The tips were white from growth when I first got it so it's covered those tips with polyps now.

Unsure of this guy but I got this from the tank breakdown also. We'll see what it turns out to be when it grows out a bit more.

Here's a progress shot of the orange creamsicle acro that I'm trying to save. It's started to base out.

These two I got a while back from a local store but I'm still deciding if I want to keep them or not. With the limited space I'm leaning towards not since I've seen some really nice pieces I'd like to pick up. Plus, I have more than enough green in the tank already.

I originally thought this SCOP was not growing but I noticed as I took a picture from the side that a branch from the back has actually grown probably within the last 3 weeks or so. Pretty exciting!

This seems to be the story of my tank but I believe this is a red robin acro that died off and has come back and encrusted it's own body. So far it is doing OK but waiting to see some real growth.

This was hard to get a good photo since it was so bright but this Walt Disney has lost it's color. It may be due to my phosphates being too high. I just started using GFO for the first time the beginning of this week so we'll see if I can recover the color on this guy.

This one is called defugium's morning star that I got a year ago, died off and I was able to save a tiny nub. So far it's slowly growing back and doing OK.

Another one that I've had for a long time is this JF Fox Flame. It hasn't done anything and lost the color on it's tips for a looooooong time. I finally decided to try snipping the tips and although you can't see it in the pics one of the tips actually quickly grew back with the yellow. Seemed to work. I'm hoping it starts creating more branches with color.

Here are side shots of the tank for record progress:

I just resolved an issue with my trident where one of the tubes came off in side. My alk may have dropped during the time I was trying to figure this out but I was steady at around 8.6-9 dKH. Once I fixed the trident my alkalinity was at 7.45. I'm slowly trying to get it back to 8.5. I was previously dosing BRS 2 part and since switching over to the calcium reactor I have stopped. I'm still dialing in the calcium reactor so I have the 2 part doser attached in case I need to make adjustments.

As of today here are my readings:
Alkalinity: 7.91
Calcium: 450
Magnesium: 1429
ph: ranges from 8.0-8.29
Temp: 76-78
Phospates: .23
Nitrates: .25
Salinity: 1.024

I dose acropower once a week at 17ml currently. I was feeding the fish flakes and pellets 3-4x a day but have switched back to frozen mostly because of my phosphates.

Not sure if I mentioned but for lighting I'm running 3 Kessil A360x's. I am waiting to possibly add supplement lights from Quantareef in the future if/when they have lights back in stock.

I'm also waffling back and forth about getting a different skimmer. I'm currently running a Reef octo classic 150sss and I don't care for the noise level it makes. It's a white noise but whenever I have the skimmer off I can tell. Also, I feel like this skimmer might not be able to keep up with my bioload. I am looking at the Reef octo Regal 150s if I do switch.

 

[MAB Reef]

Now that I've caught up with my updates of the tank I'm aiming for a monthly update.

I've mentioned I started GFO, specifically rowaphos to bring my phosphates down as they were consistently hitting .23 testing on a weekly basis. Over the past 2 weeks the rowaphos has been amazing. My numbers a week in dropped to .11 on the Hanna checker. Today, one additional week into using it rowaphos and my phosphates are now at .08. I think this might be a perfect spot! I'm unsure if I should stop running it now that I've hit those numbers. I'll test again next week and see.

My nitrates are a different story. I've mentioned that I'm feeding more and have also started changing my filter floss out less but my numbers are still consistent .2 PPM. I've decided to start dosing nitrates. I had a bottle of sodium nitrate mixed in a 16oz water bottle that I tried to use previously in my 50 gallon. My plan is to dose what I'm calculating to be 2ppm of Nitrates daily testing every other day to see if it's rising. I'll adjust up or down as needed until I hit 10. I'm basing this start off a comment here from Randy Farley https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/how-to-rise-the-nitrates.961780/page-2. I am losing color in some of my acropora so I'm hoping this helps. I'm very tempted to do other things but I'm trying to be patient and change one thing at a time slowly. I hesitate to add any more acros to the tank until I can get this in line.

For the calcium reactor, I can't seem to get this thing tuned the way I want. My alkalinity keeps slowly rising and I started at 8.44 and got up all the way to almost 9 before I decided to put it on a timer to stop overnight. The main reason was for some reason there seemed to be a accumulation of CO2 that made this thing constantly noisy. Putting the CaRX on a timer will help me fill up the reactor and get rid of the bubbles to reduce the noise while slowing down the rise in Alkalinity.

The other issue I'm having with the calcium reactor is my calcium and magnesium keep dropping even though my alkalinity is rising. I don't really get how that works. I was under the impression that calcium would be taken care of along with alkalinity. I also have a bag of zeomag that I got from the LFS and maybe it doesn't melt at the same rate as my two little fishing reborn media.

I ordered 2 light bars from quantareef.com. They are very affordable and if the spectrum claims are correct, these should be better than reefbrites. I ordered one OG Pop (Luca's answer for Reefbrite XHO's but better) and one Meso Blue (an LED replication to the ATI Blue Plus bulb). I'm pretty excited about these. If I can get my nitrates at a good level, I'm hoping this new spectrum can bring out colors that other lights aren't able to get. I plan to hang them from the ceiling with these with the Kessil A360x's in the middle.

Current Parameters:

• Alk - 8.75
• Calcium - 420
• Magnesium - 1400
• Salinity - 32
• Phosphates - .08
• Nitrates - .2

Auto water changes 1.5 gallon/day
Dosing

• Acropower 17ml every Friday
• 5ml Nitrates from Sodium Nitrates

Fish updates:

This cardinal fish still has her eggs and the bulge only seems to keep getting bigger. Really weird to see it honestly. She seems to be trying to stick close to or convince one of the other cardinals to take care of it but neither of the other 2 seem to be all that interested. lol!

I forgot to tell the story of this anthias. When I first got this one as part of a trio I thought it wasn't going to make it passed a few days while in QT. I thought maybe it was blind or disabled because it just hides and didn't come out to eat. I would have to feed it directly and didn't know if it was taking anything. Well here we are months later and it still alive and kicking. Monitoring it today, it does eat and can swim and goes after food but rarely comes out. You can see it just stays in it's little area there. Must be a mental issue because I don't see what else could be wrong.

This is one of my favorite fish in the tank. I have 2 of these hector gobies and they're so tiny. They really do make the tank look a lot bigger.

Coral Progression shots:

SC Orange Passion - I guess this one wants to grow before it bases out. It is still slowly growing the tips.

Red robin I believe that still isn't doing too much. I wonder if I should clip it to instigate some growth.

WWC graft montipora - this one is showing some decent growth

Defugium's morningstar

Matt V's Time Machine

Orange Creamsicle

Wild Orchid

Joleen Tabling acro

Cherry bomb

Walt Disney - hoping if I can get my nitrates up to a good level I can get the color back. At the moment it's all yellow

Princess peach - nothing happening here unfortunately. Maybe these will take off with more nitrates.

CC Voodoo Majick - Slowly still getting the color back on this. The coralites are slowly gaining purple colors. Hard to see in the white light here though. If there is growth, it's very minimal.

JF Fox Flame - after snipping it a few weeks ago, it seems completely healed and the little tips have a bright yellow. After that nothing has really happened. I was hoping for some growth with the snipping but I'll give it some time.

Rising Sun Stag

Unknown Mille

Unknown Cyphastrea

I think this is a mille and not sure of it's name

Pink/red dragon

Garf Bonsai - I had to cut the top off to try and save it because it was STNing. It seemed to have worked and is slowly growing at the spot I cut. It's also growing around the rest of the base.

My sump frag tank was doing OK except the material I was using to block light from going all over is constantly growing some type of algae. I took out all the frags and put them in the main tank while I starve out the sump algae for light.

 

[MAB Reef]

Noting a few updates from the weekend.

The cardinal fish that was holding babies seems to have lost it's eggs. She disappeared one day and came back the next without her bulge. Now she seems depressed if that's possible. She's staying in the corner of the tank. It doesn't seem like the other 2 cardinal fish wanted to help, I'm not sure.

I picked up a pretty nice piece that I'm happy about from a local reefer. This stratosphere zoa looks even better in person. The gold circle in the middle really likes like gold.

During my weekend cleaning of my power heads, my Walt Disney frag was knocked off from it's spot due to the power of the pump. You can really tell the difference after cleaning this power heads. Anyway, I got to see the piece closer it seems to be bleaching in the body. I decided to put it back on a frag plug and keep it in lower light to recover. It may have been getting too much flow or too much light, in combination with not enough nitrates. It hasn't losing tissue yet so I'm hoping while I bring my nitrates up it can recover.

Speaking of nitrates, I thought it would take some time for my nitrate dosing to saturate the tank but 2 days in I tested 2.5ppm from .2ppm. I'm very happy that I was able to bring it up a little. I'll keep dosing and monitoring.

Another thing that I adjusted that's surprised me is that I increased my kalkwasser reactor dosing. I was previously dosing 15 seconds at the beginning of every hour. I increased it to 15 seconds every 30 minutes. I honestly wasn't sure my reactor was doing much but with this change and my calcium reactor, my alkalinity starting rising faster. I ended up stopping calcium reactor to see if my kalkwasser reactor could keep up with my uptake and so far it has. I'm pretty amazed. Additionally, my ph range has gone up and is now 8.2 - 3.6. I'm using the two little fishies kalk reactor.

Here's a progress shot of my coralline algae. It's really starting to take off!

Current parameters:

• Alk - 8.96
• Calcium - 408 (I'm bringing this up with 2 part now to get to 440)
• Magnesium - 1386 (Dosing this to bring it up too. My magnesium is starting to drop even faster right now. )
• Phosphates - .08
• Nitrates - 2.5
• ph range - 8.2 to 8.36
• Salinity - 31.7 ppt (I'm hesitating to try and bring this up because I'd rather have stability. I may make the next salt mix slightly higher in salinity to cover this in the auto water changes)

 

[MAB Reef]

Current Parameters:

• Alk - 8.4
• Calcium - 446
• Magnesium - 1444
• Phosphates - 1.1
• Nitrates - 12.9
• ph range - 8.2 to 8.36
• Salinity - 32.8 ppt

Nutrients: I picked up the Hanna Nitrate checker and it's nice to be able to get a more accurate reading since I'm starting to aim for a little higher level. I'm still trying to get a handle on phosphates. It seems that rowaphos lasted me about 3 weeks before my phosphates started rising again so I've changed that out. I haven't seen too much difference in the corals yet color wise but it's probably too soon to tell. For sure, my Walt Disney hasn't done anything.

Calcium reactor: I've been constantly tinkering with the timing and settings of this thing. At one point I thought I had a good schedule. I would schedule the reactor to turn off during dinner and lunch times when we were around the tank since this thing is so noisy. I had a steady level on the alkalinity for about a 2 weeks before it recently started dropping. I'm unsure if raising the nitrates has brought the alkalinity uptake up but I guess this is a good problem. Something must be growing. There are some really good spots of coralline algae so that could be causing the higher uptake of alkalinity.

Lighting: I've been wanting to get supplement lights to go with my Kessil 360x's and quantareef.com finally restocked the 4' lights. After chatting with the owner, Luca, I went with one Meso blue and one OG Pop (his answer to the Reefbrite XHOs). These things pump out a ton of light. I know people have said that about many lights but I have these hanging over the tank very high right now to acclimate the tank. They are soooo strong. My plan is to lower them little by little every week and then attach the Kessils to the hanging fixture.

Fish: Being on this forum can be dangerous. I started reading the wrasse lover's thread and I'm starting to really want wrasse now. I decided to rehome the cardinal fish and barred gobies. I caught them and put them in a separate tank and found an LFS that had a very healthy female blue star leopard and radiant wrasse. The LFS had them for 3 weeks and had been medicating them. I have a better feeling about these two. I decided to forgo the QT process with these two since they had been around for weeks and they were already stressed from being caught and traveling home with me. I have them in an acclimation box with sand and will observe. The radiant wrasse was only out for a bit before he hid in the sand.

I signed up to get notified when the store gets a yellow tamarin in. If these last 2 fish really work out, I don't know that I will go anywhere else for fish. Their customer service seems great and their fish care is better than any other LFS I've seen in this area.

Current Fish List:

• Hector's Goby (x2)
• Oscellaris Clown Fish (x2)
• One Spot Foxface
• Tailspot Blenny
• Dispar Anthias (x5)
• Sunburst Anthias
• Chalk Bass
• halichoeres iridis
• Paracheilinus carpenteri
• Halichoeres melanurus
• Wetmorella nigropinnata
• Macropharyngodon bipartitus

Probably the only other change I've made is adding special grade Caribsea sand to the corners where my pumps keep moving sand. It has kind of worked but I think it's still going to be an issue. I'll have figure out something to keep the flow from hitting those spots so hard.

 

[MAB Reef]

2nd day in the acclimation box and both wrasses are doing well. Eating brine, mysis and reef caviar. I'm starting to try and add garlic to flakes and pellets to see if they'll partake. So far they prefer the frozen food and ignore the dry food. I'll keep trying.

Nutrient report. I finally hit the levels I've been aiming for. I'm really liking the new nitrate checker by Hanna. It's just as easy as the Phosphate checker.

Nitrates: 15.9
Phosphates: .06

I just found out that my Melanarus, "Loopy", may be transitioning to a male which is why he's always looking at itself in the glass.

 

[MAB Reef]

The leopard wrasse was eating real well so I gave it a chance to get out of the acclimation box at the end of the day while the radiant wrasse was asleep in the sand. She made it out after maybe 20-30 minutes of watching her.



The reason I decided to let her free was because the radiant wrasse hasn't been eating well. Since she was asleep early I had a chance to separate them and feed the radiant by itself without competition.

The leopard wrasse shortly started eating a ton of pods or bugs off the rocks. It was great to see how hapy she was. Unfortunately, the thing I was afraid of and didn't plan for was my melanarus wrasse seemed to slowly get upset and chased the leopard wrasse. Now I'm in the process of trying to catch Loopy, the melanarus. I didn't get her today and it only seemed to set her off even more to the point of chasing some other fish around. This was really weird behavior. I'll try again tomorrow to get her out with my fish trap. For now, the lights went out and they all went to sleep.

On the positive side, I was already contemplating moving her out in favor of finding a more rare halichoeres.

 

[parclife]

Hey, awesome set up!!

 

[MAB Reef]

Hey, awesome set up!!

Thanks!

 

[MAB Reef]

The macropharyngodon bipartitus is doing great. I was able to trap the melanarus and have her in a separate QT tank until I figure out what to do with her. She definitely needed to go. She was not happy that the bipartitus was eating off the rocks and kept chasing her away.

The radiant wrasse is a different story. This one is very timid and skittish. I was afraid she wouldn't do well because she wasn't eating much so I called the LFS. They suggested I let her out of the acclimation box to give her the best chance to survive. I opened the lid but she quickly dug herself back in the sand. She came out the next day with the lid open but didn't venture out of the box. I tried feeding and I believe she grabbed a couple mysis. She quickly dug herself back in after about 2 hours out. I must have startled her when I got too close to inspect my coral. My acropora had a weird reaction to me feeding the tank. I noticed a few of them let out mesenterial filaments that got me worried. All parameters seemed in check so it may have been a feeding response. They've gotten back to normal since.

This is a video from a Wyze camera I setup in front of the tank so I can watch to see if the radiant comes out while I'm at my desk working.



I really hope she comes out soon. I'm using my magnet cleaner as a holder for the acclimation box so I haven't been able to clean some of the glass well.