A lot has been happening in the world of my reef-to-be.
First thing is, I installed a Tunze Osmolator Nano 3152 ATO System with the 7.1 GAL ATO Reservoir. Man, oh man, life is so much easier with this thing. Now, I just need another one to maintain my little QT.. Hahaha
In order to install the ATO, I had to clean up the mess of cords and boxes on the side of my stand, something that I have been putting off for way too long. I also noticed that the strips I have my equipment plugged into are not GFCI (Bad, bad, bad!), so I will be running to the hardware store this week to correct that potentially major issue.
Before image is a little bit after I had already started cleaning it up......Shameful.
ATO installed with 7.1-Gallon Bucket Reservior
Once I got that whole process taken care of, I began to prepare my corals for transfer from QT to DT considering their 30 days was up. I have been battling GHA in mt QT, so I took some of the great advice provided on this thread and gave each frag a 50/50 peroxide scrub. AMAZING results, I am absolutely thrilled by how much better my frags look now:
I will certainly be incorporating a good peroxide scrub into my QT & maintenance routine for my new frags!
Up to this point, everything had been going great and I was really excited to transfer everyone over to my display. I made the transfer VIA drip acclimation just to be safe and placed all of my frags on the sand bed. This was the beginning of my first disastrous attempt at stocking my tank
Before I attempted this transfer, I had run the full spectrum of water tests and got the following results:
Ammonia: Nearly indistinguishable. The plastic piece that came with my Salifert test had completely clouded out making my tests nearly unreadable. I tried it again using an API vial, but still couldn't tell where the color landed between 0 and 0.25. Weird.
Nitrate: 20ppm (API)
Phosphate: 0 (API)
Temperature: 79.8F
Specific Gravity: 1.025
pH: 7.93 (Hanna Checker Plus)
*My Hanna Checkers for nitrate, phosphate, calcium, and alkalinity have since come in so my API kits will be going into storage for emergencies.
Considering the high nitrate reading, I was lead to assume the tank had cycled and all was well, so I did a 50% water change, retested for nitrate, which came back at 5ppm, and called it good.
So, back to the transfer attempt:
Upon entry into my display, all of my corals immediately closed up, despite some of them even remaining open in the drip acclimation bowl. I attributed this to the stress of the move and wrote it off. The next morning, still no extension from my corals, so I just figured they needed more time to acclimate to the nicer lighting, higher flow, etc. This was my first mistake. I didn't turn down the lighting in my tank because I was more focused on the fact that they were on the same photoperiod rather than lighting intensity. Silly me.
That day, I had plans to make a run to a new LFS I had found, so off to Orlando I went. By the way, Marcey at
@Sea in the City is FANTASTIC. I can't recommend her enough. I am actually making a second trip there today....I think I finally found my LFS soul mate... Hahaha
Anyway, from Sea in the City, I brought home a tiny Fat Head Dendro frag (seriously SOOOOO excited about this), a beautiful white Watchman Goby and her paired Tiger Pistol Shrimp (I have since named her Darla and the Tiger Pistol Pete), a gorgeous Bullseye Pistol Shrimp (who hubby named GunSmoke), and a Neon Goby (still nameless).
All new inhabitants went through drip acclimation before entering my display (the Fat Head was dipped in ReVive and went into QT. I chose to skip Bayer on this one because the polyp is little bitty and I didn't want to damage it by missing the plug since you can't see through the Bayer solution).
All five new additions are doing great, eating really well. The Neon Goby is a little questionable considering its little mouth is so small I can't really see if it's eating but it looks great (to me, at least). I am picking up a few different kinds of food for these guys at the LFS today.
Here are some photos of everyone (Fat Head Dendro photo to come):
My very dysfunctional pair, AKA Darla & PIstol Pete
Darla posing for the camera
Neon Goby
GunSmoke (camera shy apparently)
I chose not to place these guys in my QT considering they all came from the same place, shared water, and they are my first fish/inverts so there are no other inhabs that they can infect. I do not plan to add any further fish/inverts unless they have gone through quarantine, and the only other fish I am looking to add in the near future is a Randall's Goby that I had to place an order for, but probably won't come in before I have successfully transferred everybody out of my QT tank.
I am going to wrap this post up for now, but more on my disastrous coral transfer to come once I have permission to post the PM conversation in which we have been troubleshooting.
Thank you so much for reading!
Edited to Add:
Why is Darla white, you may ask?
Explained here:
Hello all! Introducing our first fish! Only problem is, it came into the LFS as 'Watchman Goby' with no other info. I spoke with the store owner, who was super kind and helpful, and she told me that her supplier typically sends her any of the 'oddball' fish he comes across and this happened to...
www.reef2reef.com
What do I mean by 'Dysfunctional Pair?'
Explained here: *Ongoing
Hi there all! I recently added a not-so-Yellow Watchman Goby and her paired Tiger Pistol to my tank along with a Bullseye Pistol. Since adding them, the Bullseye has stayed well away from the Goby-Tiger pair after an initial shoot out where both shrimp walked away seemingly uninjured. This...
www.reef2reef.com
