Welcome to the Reef

[Wandering Albatross]

Good evening all!

Now that I'm getting into the swing of things, its time to start my own build thread. This is my very first saltwater tank, and my first tank in 10 years. I'm so stoked to have this dream realized! Even with the struggles, it's so fascinating to me. I'm in full geek-out mode.

As a few of you may know, I was on the fence on tank size, considered a 75g for space and cost purposes. That 75g came as the tank, stand, and sump. I spent over a year doing research, crunching numbers, and weighing my options, before deciding that the 150g, building the stand, and DIY the sump would be cheaper, more stable, and have more room for my vision of this tank. With the help of my father, as I'm not nearly as mechanically inclined, the stand was built using 2x6's, based on an improvised blueprint from a fellow reefer. It's overbuilt but I wanted it that way. It's double treated with a clear, water repellant seal. Eventually, there will be a shell with a nice dark stain on it and a couple doors, but for now it's functional.

Tank is 150g, 5x2x2 SC eurobraced, starfire glass 12mm thick, internal overflow. My in sump skimmer is rated for 120-160g (in Sump Protein Skimmer for Saltwater Aquariums with O3 Intake, DC Pump for 120-160 Gallons Fish Tank amazon). My return is the IM Mightyjet xl (we'll get to the plumbing issues in a later post). Sump was made with a 40g breeder and a fiji cube sump baffle kit. Plumbing consists of a main drain, emergency drain, and the return. x2 Nicrew gen 2 200 lights, running 100% blue and violet, 50% white, 40% red and green.

Tank is several months old now, so let's get into it...

 

[Wandering Albatross]

This was a very exciting day you guys. This thing came in on an oversized pallet, and the delivery guy was nice enough to roll it into the garage instead of leaving it out front. It was delivered in mid February. The stand wasn’t quite ready yet, so it had to stay packaged in the garage for a time.

The stand when ready cost just over $100 to make, with grit, spit, and a whole lotta screws.

This was used to double seal it, now any drips just bead on the surface. A foam mat was added to the top as an additional leveler.

It took my father, brother, our neighbor and his son to move it, but it was finally in after over a month of prep and trying to align everyone’s schedules.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

Setting up the sump was interesting, there were so many ways it could have been done. I opted for as simple as possible, with room to grow as my system did.

The right side where the main drain runs are 3 filter socks, which weren’t in place yet, and the second chamber containing the skimmer and 2 350watt IM heaters (forgot those in my starter post…oops)

The left half contained the third chamber for a fuge, space for some bags of filter media of blocks, and the return pump chamber.

Plumbing this was…fun. Because it’s a rather snug fit under the stand, I opted to use black rubber hose for my plumbing lines. Certain areas wouldn’t bend enough, and were replaced with double barbed 90s and clamps. While those hold fine for the main and emergency drains, they weren’t strong enough to take the force of the return.

After several attempts to fix the problem, and several geysers, it was agreed to hard plumb the return line. I have a union at the pump to remove it as needed. And all three lines have a valve, 2 of which have not yet been needed. Return and emergency are ball, main is a gate.

Please ignore the glue job, i don’t care about it. One place that took extra glue on purpose was the main drain valve. For whatever reason, that one bulkhead was not as tight of a fit.

Sump runs about 2/3 full, the pump moving about 1,200 gph. I have the running fill level marked to ensure I top off to the right level. Heaters are set to 78, the display hovers a little below 77 most days.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

I ordered 120lbs of BRS reefsaver dry rock for its pores, and I certainly wasn’t disappointed.

Lots of good sized pieces, easy to lock together. (One of my boxes was destroyed by the samsonite gorilla over at ups and I ended up with a box of rubble…). I also bought 3 40lb bags of Fiji pink dry sand, and 2 20lb bags of special grade live sand. Considered a little patch for Hawaiian black but never got around to it. I messed with these rocks a lot to get them set the way I wanted, and they are not glued. They were very carefully locked together by their shape.

I placed black egg crate down under where the rockwork would be, as I planned a large central structure with a band of sand around it. The rock was placed before any sand was added. Since I intended to try my hand at garden eels, and to provide habitat for my other sand sifters in general, I set up a deep sand bed. Most of the sand was 3-4 inches deep, with one area on the far end of the tank, away from extra foot traffic, left open and with sand roughly 6 inches deep, designed with the eels in mind.

I worked hard to ensure there were plenty of caves for territory. I also left a little standalone island in the bottom left corner, with the hope of putting something there that my clowns would like to live in.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

Because there was live sand involved, I did not rinse it. With that in mind, the first fill was a liiittle cloudy…

It took several days for my RODI to process all that water. I swear I felt like a racehorse at the gate.

The salt was mixed in the tank, and the rest of the special grade was added to the back corner. I wanted to see if my sand sifters preferred one over the other. That spot ended up being close to 7 inches deep, like a little sand dune. With everything mixed and running, I started my cycle. In addition to the live sand, I tried some Microbacter bottled bacteria, and just to cover all my bases, I added a chunk of table shrimp. In less than a week I had a small reading of nitrates, 0 nitrites, 0 ammonia. Thought it couldn’t be right, so I gave it an extra week to be safe. Never got an ammonia reading, only nitrate.

My flow consisted of an undersized IM power head and a hygger wave maker (might be ok in smaller tank, but not enough force to cross my tank completely), but it was just to get the water moving until the good equipment came in.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

With zeros where I needed, I took the leap and bought my first fish and test coral. Huge shoutout to Eric over at Tankstop! Fantastic customer service, and the only vendor I spoke to that was willing to help their customer out. I ordered 2 blue gudgeon dart fish, and asked Eric if he could attempt a male and a female. We know how hard it is to sex many fish we keep, and it was my first time ordering online, so I didn’t know what to expect.

The night before I had hatched some brine in the tank to try to convince them to eat when they got in. After roughly an hour of hiding in the same cave, they were out swimming together, picking brine from the water column. They’ve been inseparable since.

The toadstool has had his ups and downs. Took him a couple hours to get spiky, then he’d scrunch up all grumpy-like for no obvious reason. Read that was pretty standard with these guys.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

I know I could have started with clowns, cause of their hardiness, but in my mind I saw them trying to claim the whole tank. So I started with my second most timid fish. Once they were eating and better settled, I took the risk. I ordered 4 garden eels. The idea was to give them time to get comfortable in my tank, while also getting them used to other fish, that in this case were too timid to go near them, but they did dart back to their cave early on whenever I got too close. I knew the eels had a bad track record, and the 2 biggest hurdles in my mind were the shipping itself, and getting them to poke their heads out long enough to eat. I ordered 4 expecting to lose at least one, and resigned to the fact that I could lose them all. But without reefers trying new things, we can’t learn and advance their care. Vendors will keep selling them, and people will buy them. If it won’t stop, perhaps we can provide more information so fewer die. They all 4 came in in great shape. All active in the bags.

One jumped into the tank halfway through acclimation, swam a few laps, and burrowed right in the deep sand. The other three were released one by one.

The second chose the shallowest sand possible and tried to wedge himself up under a rock, which he couldn’t cause the rock was on the egg crate on the bottom. He ended up thrashing himself against the rock, and appeared to cause lacerations, though he didn’t bleed. He was a goner by the next morning. The third burrowed up front, the last paced laps for about an hour before burrowing in the back somewhere. The first was out and trying to eat by the end of the day. The second one took about 2 days to get comfortable, and by then the first was halfway out his burrow eating anything I gave him, but he seemed to really like frozen mysis. I wrote off the third as passed after awhile, as the other two were doing fine, but after over a week of not even knowing where he had initially burrowed, he showed up near the other two. The one up front had since moved into the deeper sand. After some snapping from the incumbent, and a barricade I put up to block line of sight for a short time, they now all 3 get along, save for the occasional posturing, and eat like total pigs. I can stand beside them and they’ll usually keep on eating.

The blues aren’t afraid of them, and the eels typically only duck when the blues are eating and they get a little overexcited and dart close to the sand trying to catch something, completely oblivious to almost knocking the eel in the head. I was worried about getting sand snails and them laying over an eel burrow and smothering him or something, but it hasn’t happened. I’m considering getting a replacement eel, since I know it’s not a tank issue.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

The eels came in on 6/20, this next order came in 7/2.
X2 tailspot blennies
X2 yellow watchman
rainbow Rommels acro
German blue monti (digitata)
Mother of all galaxea

The watchman’s chose a hidey hole together after some frantic pacing (they came in super small so it might be juvenile behavior). After a couple days, I haven’t seen the second, though it’s entirely possible he’s just that good at hiding.

The tailspots were a different story. For the first day they seemed fine, little chase with no contact. The smaller one the next morning was relentless. There was plenty of tank for them both, and the larger one never fought back. He was just minding his own business. After an hour+ long fight, I managed to sump the aggressor. He stayed in there for almost a week, pulled him a little early because he was looking so thin. The larger one was now more settled and healthier, I decided to let them work it out. In he went, and after a brief posturing, they split the tank down the middle and eat proceeded to mow their patch of lawn on the back glass. Both were doing great, nice full bellies, until over the course of an hour, one passed. He was fine that morning, then out of nowhere he’s swimming weakly upside down, belly distended. With input from some of our fish medics, I’m guessing it was either an internal blockage of swim bladder related. There was no torn fins, no outward signs of parasites or illness. The other blenny is doing great , picks all day at the rocks. In person, it’s very obvious where he works.

The galaxea coral opened while still in acclimation and has been fluffy since. He’s on the little island rock currently.

Don’t mind the green, algae and I are having a difference of opinion. The blue monti came in looking good, the acro was a test acro. The monti is looking a little rough now, and I’ve been trying to pinpoint the source. I’ve moved it up, down, sideways, spot fed, and dosed all in one to bring cal and mag up. But he still looks brown. None of my corals are glued yet, the are all lodged in the near perfectly sized pores of the rock.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

Around the same time, I had another small order coming in from saltwater fish.com. I only ordered from them because I wanted penderson cleaner shrimp, and Eric didn’t have those at the time. To offset shipping costs, I added a small clam and a couple porcelain crabs. The only thing I really wanted were the shrimp. When the order came in, it had all the bags intact and nicely labeled, but one of the shrimp bags was empty. Water, label, sealed, no shrimp. When I reached out to the vendor to get a replacement, since it wasn’t DOA or shipper negligence, they said they’d refund and give me a $15 credit to a $30 some odd dollar shrimp for my next purchase. I only ordered for those specific shrimp, and when I asked if they could just send a replacement, they said the refund was already in progress. Everything else in the order was fine to my knowledge, but I just wanted my shrimp.

When I was asking Eric at tankstop about if he could obtain some new ones for me, he said he didn’t think they sold them, then was back in maybe a day later to let me know he could get them. Super customer service really can’t recommend him enough, well packaged livestock and in great health. Every livestock purchase going forward has been through him and will continue to be (hopefully some of the fish I still need will be in stock soon).

On another earlier order I got
X2 nassarius snails
X2 ceriths
Feather duster
WYSIWYG acro frag
Favia

I had almost no extra algae at the time and didn’t want anyone starving. I’ve since built up my crew, as you can see from some of the more recent pictures I have the means to feed them now. The feather duster took about a week to open, I thought he wouldn’t make it. He’s out often now, picking floaty things from the water.

The one acro was pale reddish for a time, but eventually browned out. I had the lights lower trying to slow the algae until my snails came in, I think he just couldn’t handle it. When he started pealing overnight I knew it was over for him. The favia stayed a brownish burgundy for a couple weeks, but has recently started to get it’s original colors back, which is so cool.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

As algae got stronger, I beefed up my crew, and added some more coral. Ordered
X2 nerites
X4 asteras
Mint chip pavona
Screaming green seriatopora
Bubblegum monti digi
TSA cold fusion monti
Whisker coral
Electric flame scallop

Snails were off to the races immediately after being added, scallop was opening and full looking while still in acclimation. He chose this spot to settle when he got in the tank, hasn’t left since. He’s a little retracted today, I think the new turbo annoyed him while he was mowing.

The older toadstool had to be moved away from the blenny perch cause he kept nipping it on the one side. But he seems to like his new digs.

The screaming green and mint chip are in fine condition. Fusion seems ok too.

The bubblegum monti is a little worse for wear. Can still see thd red where the polyps are in person, but the body looks pale to me.

Was going to save this for a later post but I have to show what I’m looking at right now.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

My next order came in as follows.
X12 astreas
X4 ceriths
X2 porcelain crabs
X2 mandarins
X2 royal grammas
X2 sexy shrimp
X2 nassarius
X2 nerites
Tried to order x2 ignitus anthias, but they were out of stock by time I placed the order, and have been unobtainium since.

The crabs I only see towards dawn and dusk, they crawl up from their crevices and pick at stuff in the water, not a care in the world. I added the mandarins and the grammas to opposing ends of the tank so they could settle in, and by the next morning, both sets were in the same area of rockwork, under where the blenny lives, and in front of the yellow watchman burrow, in the eel side of the tank. The grammas will posture and gap for a few seconds, then swim together like nothing happened. The larger would chase for about 3 seconds then they’d swim, but neither one has made contact. The larger one does gape if the blenny gets to close, he’ll gap back, then they go their separate ways. With no contact, I call it growing pains.

The mandarins do engage in a little chasing, but they also don’t make contact. I haven’t seen anyone bother them, nor have they bothered anyone but each other. And even with that and all the left side of the tank available, they continue to coexist in the same cave as the grammas, the goby burrow, and each other.

The shrimps came in extra small so it’s entirely possible they became a snack, despite being added in the dark directly into the rock. Maybe I’ll request the largest ones available next time. I’d love a pair of harlequins, I’m considering an experiment to try to get them tong trained to take chunks of shrimp. If it’s possible to train them, tank raised on a simpler food source, it will make their care easier. Again, vendors will sell and people will buy, I doubt that will change. For now that’s on hold. Of course, if anyone had one/two to donate after using it for the pesky hitchhiker stars, I’d certainly take it .

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along! That is a good cuc list!

 

[Wandering Albatross]

That brings us to the most recent order, having just arrived yesterday.

X4 Mexican turbo snails
X1 tiger sand conch
X2 spotted mandarins
X2 blue/green chromis
X1 yellow watchman
Purple and green polyp hammer
Fungia dome coral
Stag horn acro

The turbos came in waaay bigger than I expected, but wow do they work! Those buggers are so strong though.

I put them all on the glass, and they’re leaving nice little trails, just eating all day.

The chromis are not shy at all, they add so much movement to the tank, no aggression between them. I’m seriously tempted to get 3 more, make it a nice group of 5 so they can school. I can walk right up, they only hide when it’s lights out. They’re in the upper water column all day, picking floating things. The larger gramma gapes at them if they get too close, but never makes contact. Just a little ‘get off my lawn’ moment. The yellow I got as a replacement for the perceived lost one is still a bit shy.

I added the 2 spotted together on the opposite side as the normal mandarins, but of course, one of them is over in the same cave as everyone else. I haven’t yet observed any aggression between the mandarin types yet, and several times they’ve been less than 3 inches apart. Now all 4 of them are very small, so it could be an age related thing. My thinking is if it’s going to work, having them all grow up together gives it the best chance.

The hammer is still grumpy from travel.

The dome coral was fuzzy in less than an hour.

The acro had some pe, not super fuzzy, but better than the last one. He’s being shy now.

And yes he is close to his buddy, yes he will move, he’s just there for his initial observation. Flow is pushing from the back left just around the rock.

 

[Wandering Albatross]

The new pumps were added, 2 maxspect gyres pushing 4000 gph, and 2 midsize tunze. Lights run from 6am to 6pm with a 1.5 hour ramp time. Had to keep the flow high enough to kill deadspots, but controlled enough to feed the eels and keep from making sandstorms.


Our running stock is as follows (unless a snail has died somewhere), the fish I know I still have:
X2 blue gudgeon dart fish
X3 garden eels
X2 yellow watchman
X2 royal grammas
X1 tailspot blenny
X2 mandarins
X2 spotted mandarins
X2 blue/green chromis

X4 turbo snails
X6 ceriths
X 4 nassarius (2 small, 2xl)
At least x2 nerites
At least x12 astreas
X1 feather duster
At least x2 porcelain crabs
X1 tiger sand conch
X1 hitchhiking micro brittle star
X1 derasa clam
X1 electric flame scallop

X2 acros
X1 hammer
X1 fungia coral
X1 favia
X 1 bubblegum monti digi
X1 fusion monti
X1 blue monti digi
X1 galaxea
X1 toadstool leather
X1 mint chip pavona
X1 whisker coral
X1 green seriatopora

Planned further stock:
X2-4 penderson cleaner shrimp
X 2 ignitus anthias
X2 blk/wht clowns
X2 orchid dottybacks
X1 tailspot blenny
X2 Catalina gobies
X a bunch more coral

Considering:
X1-2 lettuce or Greek goddess sea slugs
X3 more green chromis
X 1-2 sand dollars
X1 anemone
X1 clam undecided
X1-2 harlequin shrimp
X1 reef safe star
X maybe a tang

 

[Wandering Albatross]

I saw the newest yellow today. He’s a little white still from the travel, but I know he’s alive.

For those of you who said low nutrients was the issue with my sps, thank you. I’m running the skimmer in small spurts and feeding more. And now both my remaining acros have some pe. The oldest was too weak. The blue monti is still iffy, but that’s the most action I’ve seen on either acro since I’ve had them. I did also consider my toadstool poisoning them, as he’s been in since the beginning, and had several weeks where nothing would make him happy. As it stands this is a minimal water change system, and I hadn’t thought about the potential for the toxin to build up if indeed he was using it. I got some activated carbon and a little bag for my sump, I’ll run a lesser amount to see if it has any effects, before determining if I want to use it regularly.

My snails are doing their jobs, and their cleaning revealed something I hadn’t noticed previously. My glass is full of pods. I thought it might just be little micro bubbles, but on the clean glass, I watched them twitching around, trying to outrun the snail. I take that as a good sign, especially since I have 4 young mandarins with very small mouths.

Speaking of which, I caught this about 10 minutes before lights out…