75 gallon w/ detailed cost breakdown

[starypotter]

I love the idea for your water changes! Right now I'm looking into where to set up my RODI since it's just hoses strung out around the house. I really like this thought though, I've never seen an 'automatic' water changer set up so simply I guess, or maybe I never looked into it but it's much more doable than I would have expected. Good luck with the new clownfish!

 

[Bob2bob Verified Admin]

Thanks @starrypotter! It's been great so far, highly recommend it. It's made water changes very quick and I actually look forward to them. The hardest part is making sure I have enough saltwater mixed. They take about 7 minutes to do ~10% change now.

 

[Bob2bob Verified Admin]

So it has been a year since my last update...things have actually gone really well (with some hiccups) in the interim and I'm long overdue for an update. I've been wanting to do one but each day that passes makes it a little harder, so I'm just going to do a summary now as I won't be able to remember all the details of the last year.

In no order, the summary

• About 1 year ago I added a lawnmower blenny. I had a starry blenny years ago in a previous tank and loved it and was a bit disappointed that the lawnmower seemingly had less personality for the first 6 months but recently it's really come into its own and has been full of life. Also helps that it keeps an eye on my algae. Affectionately we call him "the grandpa"
• About 6 months ago added a one-spot yellow fox face and a flame angel. Unfortunately, the flame angel died within 1 week, while the fox face has been doing great since then. I suspect though I'll never know that it was a case of cyanide. I have since got another flame angel (about 4 months ago) and it has been doing great. No other fish since then but I'm actually looking to get some more shortly, thinking a pseudochromi group of some sort.
• About 3 months ago a local reefer was shutting down his tank and I got a great deal ($250) on 5 huge corals. Ever since doing this the tank has started to look much less empty and began its upward swing
  • Snakeskin torch (maybe 10 heads, the size of a very hefty grapefruit)
  • Green Aussies torch (maybe 7-8 heads, slightly smaller than the snakeskin)
  • Toadstool (about the size of my hand)
  • Rainbow Ricordea (4-5 eyes)
  • Orange Ricordea (5-6 eyes)
• I think the most significant change in my tank has been changing my fuge light from a nanobox to an illumagic blaze mini. Since I made this change about 2 months ago my Chaetomorpha has come to life! I'm cutting out almost a gallon every two weeks and have gotten rid of any algae problems I had in the display tank which wasn't much but always felt like it was on the brink of taking over. I've been slowly increasing my display tank lighting duration and intensity since then and so far so good.
• About 1 and a half months ago I had my buddy @AquaCultureLife over and he helped me understand that I was struggling with my alkalinity stability. We did a test using an unopened (;Facepalm) hanna checker I had and I was at 5.9...He (and I) think that was one of the reasons why some of my zoa's melted while others were ok but not great and that while my LPS were doing well and getting a lot of polyp growth had almost no skeleton growth. Since then, I added the coralbox wifi doser and am dosing the 2 part ESV B-ionic. I got the 4 gallon containers from BRS to keep costs down since I have space under the water station to keep them. Should last me a long time considering I'm only dosing 20mls of each a day right now and tests show my alk at 8.9 now and calcium at 496. Those are both a bit high but I've recently added a whole bunch of new corals so that should hopefully get used up soon.
• Speaking of adding corals, over the last 3 months I've been on a mini tear winning some ebay auctions and then at MACNA I bought some more. In the last year I've added:
  • A 2 headed duncan that now has 6 heads.​
  • An ORA spongodes montipora that is about 3x the original size, though it broke so thats in two spots.​
  • blue sympodium polyps that have about doubled in size in 6 months​
  • The 5 huge corals i mentioned above​
  • An ORA sour apple birdsnest that we named "Pablo" and is absolutely growing like mad. It's bee about a month and we can easily count like 8 new points that it is growing.​

  • Zoanthid	Utter Chaos
    Zoanthid	Sunny D
    Zoanthid	"Rasta"
    Chalice	lazerbeam
    Porites	Mean Green
    Goniastrea	Lightning
    Setosa	Flaming
    Leptoseris	Hulk
    Acropora	WWC Aussie High Voltage
    Acropora	Bali green slimer
    Acropora	BC Frankenberry
    Acropora	PC Rainbow
    Acropora	Garf Bonsaii
    Zoanthid	Spidermans
    Zoanthid	orange somethings
    Polyps	Green Star

    
    starting from the lazerbeam chalice I picked them all up at MACNA. I was shocked at how much I liked the goniastrea. I think it might be my new favorite coral though the setosa is also amazing. The acros are all super tiny but hopefully they do well in the tank. I havn't lost anything in about 6 months and don't want to start now
    
    For those keeping score here is how much i've spent on livestock and how much I have left:
    
    
    
    
    equipment and tank setup are still the highest costs but livestock costs have now overtaken my water mixing station by a ton and will over take the tank setup shortly i assume. This is without getting anysuper fancy corals/colonies and shopping for deals on ebay auctions and small frags.
    
    
    
    
    
    Im pretty terrible at taking iphone photos of this tank (have tried with the aquarium app and also with the orange lens over the camera) but here are a few shots:
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    

 

[Jon Fishman]

The first rule of reef-club, is you don't talk about the cost of reef-club

 

[Bob2bob Verified Admin]

The first rule of reef-club, is you don't talk about the cost of reef-club

Ha! it's certainly not for everyone but this isn't like that other club

 

[Bob2bob Verified Admin]

A few of my more recent frags:

Sunny D Zoa (ebay auction)

Utter Chaos Zoa (though i think its a play considering its size, looks like in just a few weeks another polp is about to pop out)

A WWC Aussie High Voltage Acro

Flaming Setosa (this is a top 5 coral for me right now)

Hulk Lepto (didn't expect to like this one so much either, might have to get more leptos)

Mean Green Porites (I don't know how christmas tree worms and porites work but I hope somehow this gets them when it gets bigger)

Lazerbeam Chalice

Lightning Goniastrea (this is another coral I didn't expect to like so much and is in my top 5 now unexpectedly)

 

[robmiller2]

Loving this build. Great corals.

 

[Bob2bob Verified Admin]

Loving this build. Great corals.

thanks @robmiller2 been working on that for a while now that this tank seems to be stabilizing

 

[Bkab_Jay]

I wanna see more pictures. Some high def darkened room lit tank pics. Nice close ups. All that.

 

[Bob2bob Verified Admin]

Long overdue for another update so here goes...

In general, the tank is doing quite well though I do have three issues that I'm currently dealing with in aiptasia, bubble algae and I think they're called tube worms. For the aiptasia I tried berghia's but that has not seemed to do anything in 3 months, I'm now just committing myself to constant aiptasia x and that seems to be working a bit -- I doubt I can solve this problem but at least this will make it manageable. The bubble algae came back since my emerald died a few months ago and I just got two small emeralds to handle the issue (plus they're really cool).

Now for the good updates. The tank looks pretty pretty good these days, the corals are mostly exhibiting growth and I haven't lost anything since I added 6 Chromis about 6 months ago which only last about a month

My good friend moved out of town and gave me some really nice treasures:

• wwc Red Jawbreaker mushroom. 1 polyp about a year ago that now has grown to have 6 small to medium sized polyps as well
  
  
  
  there is another one in there...
• cluster of firework clove polyp
  
  s (maybe 10 to 11 flowers)
• two tiny yellow jawbreaker mushrooms
• 1 tiny cheetah mushroom
• a rainbow bubble tip anemone from top shelf aquatics (maybe the size of a nickel)
  
  
• 1 yellow tang
• 1 tomini tang
• 3 chromis
• 2 bangaii cardinalfish

I wasn't kidding when I said treasures. Everything he's given me seems super happy so far and alive which I'm grateful for and with all the new fish the tank is really lively. 75g is probably pushing it for both a Yellow and a Tomini but they seem pretty happy so far. In all this makes 11 fish, give or take 50 coral varieties, and 4 inverts (2 crabs, a shrimp and a turbo snail that is a mammoth)

I'm still a terrible photographer/videographer but here's some more: