93 Gallon Build: An introduction to patience...

JBKReef · Sep 14, 2018

I now get why Galaxia “stretch armstrong” needs a foot of space all to himself. This frag is about the size of a half dollar and has about a 5 inch sweeper out right now. Beautiful but there is a reason he’s on an island with only GSP close enough to tick off.

JBKReef · Nov 5, 2018

Not a whole lot going on, the tank has been a bit on auto pilot. Only updates lately have been shifting some corals around to find proper placement and the fish in QT have made it into the display.

Livestock is now sitting at 8 fish. 2 MaiThai clowns, 2 Bangaii Cardinals, 1 Blue Green Chromis, 1 Yellow Corris Wrasse, 1 Starry Blenny, and 1 Tailspot Blenny. New inverts to the club are a brittle starfish, green legged hermit crab, and a handful of cerith snails. Currently in QT is what I hope to be the last and highlight of the tank. I've been keeping quiet to not jinx my QT but so far its been eating like a hog and over halfway through QT. An aberrant bristletooth tang. This guys is so tiny and perfect to grow in my 93. I could only see issues if the Blennies and he do not get along. But other than that he's currently in QT with the first fish for my office tank. The 25 gallon thread in my signature.

Only other thing to call out was my first order from WWC. I won 8 corals on their ebay auction last week, and I combined that with a 3 month coral club subscription. A detailed post with the contents for both my tanks will be posted in the next couple days when I really have time to dig it. All around though it was and is a great experience working with @WWC Chris from their customer service team helped with a handful of detailed questions I had. Taking care of combining shipments and all around making sure I got what I needed. I have 2 more months of my coral club coming but dont see any stopping to extended that. Great company and great product.

najer · Nov 5, 2018

Watch the tang with the jewel / starry blenny when you put it in, the jewels have a very strong personality!

JBKReef · Nov 5, 2018

najer said:
Watch the tang with the jewel / starry blenny when you put it in, the jewels have a very strong personality!

That S O B is the meanest thing in my tank. I am half tempted to let the tang ride out a couple months in the 25 to get some meat on its bones before going into the 93. Right now its a bout the size of a half dollar if fully finned. The tank of a starry I have is a proper fish stick size right now. All threats intended.

JBKReef · Jan 6, 2019

Not a huge update but I have been using the @Polyplab lens and these shots are just amazing especially for just using my iPhone X.

scott11106 · Jan 7, 2019

JBKReef said:
Not a huge update but I have been using the @Polyplab lens and these shots are just amazing especially for just using my iPhone X.

i use one for my pics and it works great !!

JBKReef · Jan 19, 2019

While it will take some time for editing the wife and I took a snorkeling trip while on a vacation to Punta Cana. We hit the reefs off Saona Island and they were absolutely gorgeous.

JBKReef · Jan 30, 2019

Once we got settled back into our routine and house after our vacation I started to dive back in with the reefs. They were not neglected while on vacation, but not cared for at the same level. They were getting fed, they had water topped off, ensured nothing was knocked over, and the filter floss/socks were changed.

That being said I'm struggling with a nuisance, I believe its an algae. The core of my problem I believe zero phosphate and zero nitrate. I've switched to skimming extremely dark gunk, keeping the socks in the sump for an extra day once full and running a day without any sock occasionally, and finally instead of having my refugium on every night its now one one off one, I have also picked up feeding 2x a day. These are not all changes I have made at one time but changes over the past 90 days or so. I still can not get detectable levels. Ive checked my test kit against my LFS and the numbers are annoyingly accurate. I would not have a problem with running a low nutrient tank if everything was happy.

Whatever issues im having has caused a stringy algae to start to coat my sandbed corals. Some zoas have been closed for about a week now, I lost a blasto, and its starting to choke some of my xenia. The corals on my main rock structure are not effected. In fact the euphillia and couple pieces of SPS I have are thriving. Monti's are growing, Birdsnest is taking off like a weed, and I'm seeing amazing coloration and extension in my hammers.

I'll get some photos of the nuisance but effectively bringing up my levels will be my goal 2019. To bring up nitrate without hurting corals as long as it is effective and in a healthy manner.

count krunk · Jan 30, 2019

how many fish do you have?

what are you feeding? 0's are not ideal as you know.

JBKReef · Jan 30, 2019

yungreefer2410 said:
how many fish do you have?

what are you feeding? 0's are not ideal as you know.

I have 9 fish currently in the 93 cube.

2 Mai Thai Clowns
2 Banggai Cardinals
1 Starry Blenny
1 Tailspot Blenny
1 Yellow Corris Wrasse
1 Blue Green Chromis
1 Bristletooth Tang

Its starting to really concern me... anything on the sandbed is starting to go downhill. Its an algae or maybe diatoms. I know its not cyano. I just did a water change which probably isnt helping the issue, but my calcium tested a little low. (400) Alk was at 8.

count krunk · Jan 30, 2019

sounds like the telltale signs of byprosis.

count krunk · Jan 30, 2019

and or dinos. I don't have experience with either though.

JBKReef · Feb 26, 2019

Havent had an update here lately so I figured I would chime in. The 93 is running surprising well while my 25 gallon lagoon is struggling. Check out that thread in my signature for details.

I've been feeding heavier trying to increase my bioload. Its ticking up some nuisance algae but the corals are also significantly happier. I have some acans which have trippled in heads in the past 2 months, a frag on Armor of God zoa's which are looking like a proper colony. The craziest thing is the SPS in the tank is doing great as well. I have some birdsnest, a green slimer, and a tricolor acropora. The birdsnest is growing to where I think I should frag it soon, the tricolor acro is encrusting over the plug, and the green slimmer is starting to get some new heads.

I had some nuisance algae growing on my sand, I had not cleaned it for months trying to let the detritus increase nutrients some as I had been running <1 Nitrate and zero phosphate. This started to creep onto my frags and tick off my zoas. My prized coral, the utter chaos zoa colony that started asa single polyp for my first coral is still ticked off. The new growth polyps are healthy but the 4-5 polyps still on the frag plug are closed and have been for going on 10 days. Just last night however I started to see some orange at the center, so I'm hoping they will ease up and open up soon.

Happy Reefing everone!

JBKReef · Mar 27, 2019

Have not provided an update in a little over a month so I figured I'm due.... well my efforts to raise nitrate backfired on me. The "Feeding heavy" with reef roids and reef chili spiked my phosphate up to .3 and some GHA exploded. I've been manually scrubbing rocks one at a time but I'm kicking myself for trying to chase numbers. It's bounced back pretty well. I've upped my GFO and it seems to be stripping the access phosphates well.

Something that was really cool was my grandmother came over for dinner. I made an amazing prime rib, if I do say so myself. Once dinner was over we moved into the living room where the tank was. My grandma just pulled up a chair and sat staring at the tank for a good 30 mins. Asking questions about the different coral, fish, and inhabitants. Growing up she always had a large garden both for food and visual appeal. I realized maintaining a tank is kind of like maintaining a garden. She was really impressed and captured by the tank. Anytime someone comes over its a great conversation starter. Makes me happy to share the tank with others.

I did a DEEP clean last weekend, cleaned the skimmer, scrubbed the power heads, and siphoned out the sand. I maintain a very small sand bed, about an inch. You can see in most areas the sand is not even over the silicone. I would remove the sand actually but I have a couple conchs and yellow corris wrasse who require it. This tank has kind of been on auto pilot recently. Not adding any new corals or fish, just trying to let everything grow in. I've got an order from @WWC in the quarantine tank waiting to be added but its gonna be super crowded. I've began to frag up some of my digitata to trade in to my LFS. I still have a desire to add in T5 lighting with the tank but I'm now leaning more towards a DIY floating canopy with T5 retrofits. I'm going to do this first on my 25 gallon and then see how that project goes before undertaking it on a larger scale for the 93 cube.

As always happy reefing everyone!

najer · Mar 27, 2019

No idea how this slipped off my radar, looking nice.

dwest · Apr 16, 2019

JBKReef said:
Have not provided an update in a little over a month so I figured I'm due.... well my efforts to raise nitrate backfired on me. The "Feeding heavy" with reef roids and reef chili spiked my phosphate up to .3 and some GHA exploded. I've been manually scrubbing rocks one at a time but I'm kicking myself for trying to chase numbers. It's bounced back pretty well. I've upped my GFO and it seems to be stripping the access phosphates well.

Something that was really cool was my grandmother came over for dinner. I made an amazing prime rib, if I do say so myself. Once dinner was over we moved into the living room where the tank was. My grandma just pulled up a chair and sat staring at the tank for a good 30 mins. Asking questions about the different coral, fish, and inhabitants. Growing up she always had a large garden both for food and visual appeal. I realized maintaining a tank is kind of like maintaining a garden. She was really impressed and captured by the tank. Anytime someone comes over its a great conversation starter. Makes me happy to share the tank with others.

I did a DEEP clean last weekend, cleaned the skimmer, scrubbed the power heads, and siphoned out the sand. I maintain a very small sand bed, about an inch. You can see in most areas the sand is not even over the silicone. I would remove the sand actually but I have a couple conchs and yellow corris wrasse who require it. This tank has kind of been on auto pilot recently. Not adding any new corals or fish, just trying to let everything grow in. I've got an order from @WWC in the quarantine tank waiting to be added but its gonna be super crowded. I've began to frag up some of my digitata to trade in to my LFS. I still have a desire to add in T5 lighting with the tank but I'm now leaning more towards a DIY floating canopy with T5 retrofits. I'm going to do this first on my 25 gallon and then see how that project goes before undertaking it on a larger scale for the 93 cube.

As always happy reefing everyone!

Hey @JBKReef I live in Richwood. I see you are in Burlington. Have to get together sometime.

Nice tank!

BTW, you forgot to invite me over for the prime rib!

JBKReef · Apr 16, 2019

Ha. Thanks! You should come up for the CincyReef gatherings. The next one I think will actually be in Cincinnati but at least half of them are usually held in NKY.

dwest · Apr 16, 2019

JBKReef said:
Ha. Thanks! You should come up for the CincyReef gatherings. The next one I think will actually be in Cincinnati but at least half of them are usually held in NKY.

Agree. I’ll check one out soon. Just looked at website. It looks there is no place to the April meeting yet. Or did I miss something?

JBKReef · Apr 17, 2019

dwest said:
Agree. I’ll check one out soon. Just looked at website. It looks there is no place to the April meeting yet. Or did I miss something?

One of the biggest topics at the March meeting was actually updating the Website because it is so old and dysfunctional. The best place to get information would be on the Facebook page, it is much more active than the website itself.

Cincinnati Reef Keepers Society