75g SPS build on the cheap

[NickC]

Lights are now hung, and working.

 

[NickC]

Not a whole lot going on last couple weeks. I’ve been treating the pair of clowns and tailspot blenny in the quarantine tank. First clown had flukes pretty bad, then on the second round of prazi/metro the other one started to show signs of either brook or ich. Currently treating the tank with chloroquine phosphate.

Other than that, I epoxied the rock work together today. After moving some around a few times, my wife and I were happy with how it looks.

Waters a bit cloudy from having my arms in there.


My son is still diggin the quarantine tank.


Besides that I’m just waiting for a couple actinic strips to show up so we can have a bit of light on the tank until it’s ready for the real thing.

 

[NickC]

Figured I’d post an update on the tank. The supplemental LED strip lights showed up pretty quick after my last post, and I’ve been running them ever since I installed them (3 or 4 weeks). Don’t really like them, they make the tank a bit “digital” looking for my liking. It’s not a huge deal, as the halides will be on most of the time anyway once I start running them. That being said, I haven’t started running the halides except for an hour here and there when I really want to see the tank.

I put the ocellaris and tailspot blenny in the tank after they finished a 30 day quarantine around the beginning of the month. The misbar ocellaris didn’t survive unfortunately, he had flukes that survived four treatments and multiple fw dips. Must have been resistant to prazi, but they didn’t seem to hop on the other two fish luckily.

Here’s a shot of the first two additions.


And a full tank shot


So far everything is going well I think. There is some brown micro algae that popped up when I turned the LED’s on, but the tailspot has really knocked it back (not that it was bad to begin with) and its growth has appeared to either slowed or stopped completely.

Still taking the slow and steady approach. Pretty soon here will be two months with the tank running, and three months from when I started to cycle the rock.

I’d like to add another couple fish, and I think the tank would benefit from it, but work is about to be pretty busy so it might be a little while. That’s ok though, it’s just more time for things to settle. I have had thoughts of putting the big lights on a timer soon, starting out with a couple three hours per day and slowly lengthening the period unless things go out of control. Im picturing a few days to a few weeks before I do that, so it’ll be soon.

Other than that, my skimmer is being a pain in the butt. Being hard to dial in, it either doesn’t skim or overflows the cup. Thinking it’s probably because the near zero biolaod and dry rock. Not gonna replace it at least until I’m absolutely sure it’s the skimmer itself, as it used to work great.

All in all I’m really happy so far with the progress.

 

[NickC]

Quick update, kinda using this thread as a tank journal for myself. Halides have been running for a couple of weeks, turned them on shortly after the last post. They’re currently running at five hours a day. I’m upping the period by a 1/2hr per week or so. No increase in algae growth so far.



I’ve added a mini cleanup crew. Couple of banded trochus, handful of ceriths, and a couple small blue-legged hermits. Other than that, I hooked up the AWC yesterday as I’ve been letting my alk drop from the 10 or so dkh the tank started with. Tested yesterday at 7.7, and after messing with the AWC and the corresponding 2gal water change during setup it tested at 8.1 today. Currently set to do about 3/4gal once per day. Hoping it doesn’t continue to climb too much with that amount, as my freshly mixed instant ocean tests at 11. It has been mixed for several weeks but I hadn’t tested it until yesterday. Should be fine, but time will tell.

 

[NickC]

First corals are in! I put a couple of peppermint shrimp in the sump to hopefully munch on any aiptasia that pop up, and one in the display. Also added a couple of astrea and two turbos. Last night I figured what the heck, the tanks been running for 3 1/2 months let’s grab a couple of frags.



I picked out the healthiest looking acros my small lfs had, their one frag tank is kind of sad. Checked the plugs for eggs at the store, quick dip when I got home and plopped them in.

The auto water changer doing 3/4-1 gal per day has kept alk steady at 7.9-8.1 since I hooked it up 10 days ago, and I have a dozen or so small spots of coralline showing up on the bottom glass. The brownish hair algae/diatom stuff on the rocks is almost completely gone from the snails, and it doesn’t seem to be growing much at all anymore.

Only issues I’m battling at the moment is the amount of particulates flying around in the display tank, and still having trouble with the skimmer. Since I’ve never used dry rock before, I’m kinda blaming the particulate on that, thinking the rock needs some coralline/algae growth on its surface to keep stuff from getting kicked up into suspension. Any thoughts? It got a lot worse after the addition of the cleanup crew.

As far as the skimmer, I dunno. Could be that the bioload is too small, could be that the pump is tired. I contacted coralvue and they basically said the skimmer is too old and they don’t have a pump that will fit so buy a new skimmer. Kinda bummed out on that... I remember deciding between the reef octopus or a life reef when I bought the thing years ago, and I am really regretting my decision. A 500$ skimmer should not become obsolete because a company decides to make their new, proprietary pumps not fit older models. So looks like I’ll be budgeting in for a new lifereef skimmer at some point here.

Currently have 2 mp40 running reefcrest at appr. 75%, halides are at 6hrs. I’ll see if the iPhone can get a better picture of the corals once the big lights come on.

 

[NickC]

Here’s a slightly better pic of the coral under 250w radiums only. I can’t stand the fake blue look the LED’s give the tank, esp the blue shadows they cast everywhere.

The frags are pretty blah at the moment, hoping they color up and turn into something cool. The bigger one with the big fuzzy polyps has potential for some purple tips and light cream/blue I think. Time will tell.

 

[dbjonesjr]

Looks better than the SPS my LFS carries! They seem to be plenty happy.

 

[NickC]

Looks better than the SPS my LFS carries! They seem to be plenty happy.

Thanks! I’m sure they all have some silly, new fangled name like “fraggle blaster 2000” or “super neon alien goo” or something. I don’t care, and didn’t ask. Their corals come in looking ok, but the longer they sit in the frag tank it seems they either brown out or lose tissue and die. I’m not sure of the parameters or how stable their frag system is but something is up, I do know they don’t get much light though. They run reefbrite xho all day, but only give them 2hrs from the t5 fixture. They say it bleaches them.

We’ll see how some old school mh does em!

On a positive note, there are a bunch of tiny coralline spots popping up on the bottom glass of my tank. Haven’t noticed any on the rock besides one tiny speck, but now that it’s started it should explode in the next couple months. I was happy to see that, now I just need to keep things stable.

 

[NickC]

Added a couple more frags yesterday. Since I had the Bayer out I dipped the first batch again with the new additions. The big fuzzy Tenuis seemed a little ticked off from the second dip but polyps came back out when the halides turned on this morning.

Got what looks like a browned out A. Valida and another Tenuis I’m assuming.


Also been spotting more and more coralline popping up on the rocks.


They’re tiny spots but hey, that’s how it begins.

 

[Hemmdog]

Your stand and plumbing is so legit! I love it! You should be very proud.

 

[NickC]

Your stand and plumbing is so legit! I love it! You should be very proud.

Hey thanks so much! Pretty happy with how everything turned out.

 

[NickC]

Everything’s been continuing to go well. I got sick of looking at the frag rack on the bottom of the tank so I mounted the corals to the rocks. I think they’ve been liking being closer to the halides but no real change in color or anything.

They’re so tiny it’ll prob be hard to see em in a picture


In some bigger news, another member saw one of my previous posts about my skimmer. Turns out he had a lifereef that was sitting in storage and asked if I’d be interested. He hooked me up at a fair price, and I’m super stoked. Just got it running today.


It’s only been running for a little bit, and hasn’t started making foam yet. The smaller footprint let me move it to the far left chamber of the sump by the overflows. I’m liking it.

 

[NickC]

Skimmer started to foam a couple hours ago, it’s working way better than I expected this soon. So far I have absolutely zero negative things to say about it.


There is so much air going through the thing that the foam never has a chance to sit idle in the neck. Every once in a while it gives a good blast and shoves it about 6” up and into the cup. Very quiet as well, although it doesn’t matter much being in the shop.

 

[NickC]

Got a couple new additions, my lfs put an order in with ORA the other day. Had them get me a couple fish, and a couple frags.

Got another clown and a pseudochromis,



And a pearlberry


And a yellow mari

 

[NickC]

I’ll get the fish eating and keep an eye on em for a couple weeks in the quarantine tank, frags got dipped and mounted.

Other corals have been in for a month almost, not a whole lot of change but colors are shifting a bit. Some lighter, some darker. Looking good I think.

 

[NickC]

Been awhile since I’ve updated this thread. Went through an unfortunate accident with the tank a few months back and was pretty bummed out for quite a bit.

Anyway, this past fall here in California was a wild one. Our electricity provider pg&e (who covers most of the state) decided they were going to shut power off to millions when it got windy for days at a time to prevent anymore wildfires like the ones we’ve had the last few years.

No big deal, I’ve got a generator for the tank and the fridge so we’re good. Well, we were good, until we got notice there was going to be a planned outage when we had just left to visit family for a week and a half.

I ran the house sitter through what to do with the generator and aquarium, the whole protocol. Everything went fine, power came back on and she turned the generator off, plugging stuff back into the wall.

We got home five or six days later and instantly I knew something was wrong. When she took the generator offline she forgot to plug in the return pump back into the wall....

So needless to say, almost a week with no heat, rising salinity from no ATO, and no skimmer, we had a bit of a disaster.

All in all, we lost all of the corals within a week of getting everything back home. Of the fish, we only lost the tailspot blenny. A few weeks later the tank went through a massive algae bloom of some time of brown hair algae, might have been some variety of Dino I’m not sure. Either way, it was a pain and it would grow back faster than I could remove it.

Lots of manual scrubbing, filter socks, water changes, new r/o filters, and time later she’s come back around. It was weird, it seemed like all I was doing was having zero effect but then one morning I woke up after a good scrub down and the algae hadn’t grown back. All of a sudden, overnight it was a million times better. Bizarre!

here’s a picture of how the tank looks currently

I ordered a quarantined tailspot blenny and kole tang from humble fish and they arrived super healthy and awesome a couple weeks ago. Also grabbed a couple acros, zoas, and a small euphyllia from my LFS since things have been looking good for a bit now.

it’s been a wild ride!

 

[NickC]

Corals are looking great a couple weeks after my last update, took a couple pics with the iPhone that I figured were share worthy

Pc rainbow

Slimer

Chalice

Chalice

Duncan

 

[NickC]

Also, I placed an order with Adam at battlecorals for 8 frags that will be here in a couple days. I am PUMPED!! I gave him complete, full control on what to send me. All I told him was that I already had the two acros so I didn’t want duplicates and that the tank is lit with halides. Pretty dang excited to see what I get.

 

[NickC]

Well I’m a happy camper! Got my battle box today and the frags look absolutely awesome. The quality, quantity, price, and customer service from Adam simply cannot be beat. Will not be my last order from him!

Just top notch stuff from battlecorals