Update 09-09-22
I have not realized it has been 6 months since my last update... There is so much I have done, it's not even funny. I have made some mistakes along the way and some major victories as well! I have purchased the majority of my fish from my lfs who pre qt's all of his livestock. There are two fish that I purchased from Dr. Reefs since my lfs could not get his hands on them at the time. Livestock wise I ended up with a pair of long fin Wyoming white clowns (Hades and Persephone- clowns are mean lol), exquisite wrasse (Hermes- he's a jumper and has already hit the net top 3 times that I have seen), McCosker's wrasse (Zeus- son named him), melanurus wrasse (Apollo god of plagues), purple tang(Ares- hes the boss aka god of war and bloodlust), whitetail tang(Artemis- seemed fitting for this beautiful fish), and a chocolate tang(Prometheus- stole fire and I equated this with his color transition). I have one more fish in qt with my lfs a Black Barred Convict Goby. I'll get into that later.
I have faced a few major issues so far. First was I beat bryopsis in qt that came on my live rock. So I started my tank and bryopsis came back in my display this time. Dosed 2nd fluconazole treatment and I did beat it for good that time. The second issue was small cell amphidinium (dinos). I battled this for months dosing silicates, sodium nitrate, trisodium phosphate, mb7, eco-balance, and rigorous maintenance and countless microscope slides analyzed. Once beaten large cell amphidinium showed up which I was able to "beat" by adding aquabiomics sand and 10+ year old rock from a friend's tank. I say "beat" because it is not as prevalent as it was but I believe it will eventually go away completely over time when my tank's biome matures. I am now currently battling these giant amphipods that eat some of my zoas, war coral, duncans, and other meaty types of corals. I am not asking for a debate on whether some amphipod species eat coral or not so please don't even start. I have tried dosing Interceptor twice once with 1x strength and once with 2x strength. It did nothing but wipe out a good portion of my copepods. This is where my BBCG comes in. He is a nocturnal goby and is said to decimate their populations. I will obviously stay on top of special feedings with him if he ever eliminates my microfauna population.
Onto the fun stuff! I have added tons of new gear and tons of coral. I currently have Favia, cyphastrea, torches, hammers, frogspawns, gsp, micromussa, blastomussa, spongeode, smooth skin acro, tenuis acro, zoas, duncans, war coral, stylophora, montipora (encrusting), candy canes, gonipora, and a milli acro(not doing well). I have lost a few pieces to those pods (I think) a few duncans and an elegance coral.
Equipment wise I am now running an A3 apex pro(love it), red sea doser 4 head(love it), octopus 150 int classic(love it), and same jebao scp-150 gyres and jebao dcp-15000 return pump, and same sunpower 6 bulb(LOVE IT). I currently dose BRS 2 part and Mg, mb7, po4 occasionally, ab+ occasionally, phyto occasionally, and reef roids about once a week.
I am sure I am missing/forgetting something but if anyone has any questions feel free to reach out! Here is some pictures and a video of things recently!
The following day I dosed 1 pill of ReefFlux into the 10g qt tank. Then spotted another molt of a tiny tiny crab. So time for more critter hunting
