Sorry I have been super busy and slacking on the updates.
So I continued to do a long cycle running 1 kessil for only 2 hours a day added an old hang on skimmer, copepods, some media from another tank and let that go for about 3 months. Then I took a week off of work after Thanksgiving and did about an 85% water change, tested the tank, everything was fine except phosphate was still super high (.25) even after the water change, so I moved the bicolor to another tank and just hit it with a hammer (lanthium chloride) since there was no other resistance in the tank. Gave it a few days and levels came down to .08 so did a 50% water change and was down to .05 which is close enough to the tank it would be connected to (.03).
So I gave it another week to make sure parameters were stable and close to the attached tank that would be sharing the same water so nothing in that existing tank would get irritated.
Once the tanks were running together I added a Talbot damsel, inspiration from one of your tanks (Ghostbuster) to test it out. All was good so about 2 weeks later added a yellow corris wrasse, a shortspine urchin, and a clean up crew. 2 weeks after that a blue eye kole tang. I then added another kessil on and slowly started ramping the lights to about 200 par at the top and 50 at the bottom (45% intensity). Never saw an ugly stage which is good.
Now to the last month or so, I started moving over some excess frags and everything seems happy and healthy with no issues so far, definitely the easiest set up so far.
So now the good news/bad news....
My wife is ready to move back to N.C. (where we are from) and I agree is better for our girls (3 and 5) since the school system here in Charleston is lacking. So we have a few acres of land we are having a house put on and should be done around August. So here in the next couple weeks I am going to go ahead and start consolidating tanks all into the 90g to make the move easier. I plan to throw a new stand together Saturday to accommodate the equipment underneath, and within the next couple weeks im going to order some rocks to build a new aquascape and go ahead and have that cooking in a stocktank I have. Good news is the new house has a spare 4th bedroom she said I could have as a fish room but I don't think I'm going to take her up on that offer for the time being with the selling of this house, the move, and everything else involved I don't think I will have the time, so I plan on just setting up the 90g in one of the living rooms since the wall it will be against has the laudry room on the other side with space for a mixing station and a walk in closet for storage. I plan on keeping all the tanks and equipment and storing in the basement until I am ready, and most likely will end up setting them up down there so I have more flexible space and can build it to my liking and I will let my wife keep the spare room as long as I can drill a hole or 2 in her new floors hahaha! So with all that said I won't be adding additional live stock since the 90g is about to be packed out until it comes time to move the tank I will just frag what I want to keep and sell to my lfs the run over so I can start new on the 90g when it's moved in and add just what I truly want in there, so maybe another dozen acros lol.
So going to be a busy year ahead for sure, I will try to keep you guys updated better in the process.
