Amoo's now 60 gallon Pasture (Closed)

Amoo · Aug 4, 2015

I've been asked a few times to add a tank thread, so why not. I'm the tinkering type and always doing something, may as well share with everybody. This thread will be for my 125G tank and I'll do a separate one for my "nano". First let's start with a picture

This tank was setup in July of 2014 with the purpose of housing the 3 H. Mags Anemones you can see pictured. All of the rock was dry rock, acid washed then cleaned and the sand is CaribSea Special Grade. As a fun little game (kind of dorky, but whatever) I decided to see how long I could go without introducing any coralline algae. I made it almost 9 months with "moonrocks".

The first year of this tank's life was devoted to the fish and nems with no coral additions. About a month ago I decided to add a few new pieces of rock and redo the aquascape. This was probably the worst thing I could have done as now I'm half way between mature tank and new tank syndrome. It was apparently necessary though as my rock work was much more compacted and moving things around and opening up the flow spiked my NO3 and PO4. That combined with over cleaning the algae in my sump and then came the hair algae in the DT, and here we are...

Let's get to some equipment and more pictures. (I apologize in advance for any of the yellow looking pictures of things not in the tank, I forgot to reset the white balance on my camera

)

We'll begin with a look under the hood:

Wax On

Wax Off

Equipment List:
DIY Metal Stand with Magnetic panels
Apex Lite
26G Cube/ATO container
75G homemade sump
Eheim1262 return pump
RO 225INT
BRS Reactor running BRS ROX GAC
Custom LED Lighting
Jebao Dosing Pump
Tetra Whisper AP-300 (New Today)
Santa Monica SURF 2x (New today)

Let's add a few pictures of some of our friends

My Picasso's had been spawning regularly for a few months, but they stopped after the aquascape change. No worries they are back at it again, and here's dad guarding the 1st new batch which is in a new location in the tank.

A classic, some nice and easy frogspawn, I have 2 different kinds, the pink head and the green head.

Miami Hurricane Chalice

Probably has a name but I don't know it

DO YOU SEE THAT HAIR ALGAE?!?!?! We'll get to that.

Amoo · Aug 4, 2015

So for the last few months I've been trying the carbon dosing thing and not having a ton of success with it. After desperately trying and failing to reseed my fuge with algae I decided to take a more advanced approach. I tried GFO for 1 day and immediately saw some RTN on my corals and that was enough of that little experiment. Luckily John at Reefcleaners has always got my back and I ordered up a few Turbograzers and a couple of Fuzzy Chiton for the DT along with some Flame Algae and Mangroves for the fuge. Concurrently I hit up Santa Monica Filtration and ordered a SURF2x Upflow Algae Scrubber. One of these two methods will (better) work, the other will just get moved to a different tank if they can't live happily together.

So as of today, I'm watching all my fish for signs of seizures or blackouts as they will be getting no more Vodka from me. So let's take a look and see what came in the mail today. Again the yellow pictures.....

I generally have nice things to say about the places I do business with, but sadly this isn't one of those times, so I'm just not going to say anything other then all items arrived well packaged and in a timely manner. I'll get a picture of this thing in the sump later as my sump lights don't come on for another few hours.

As per the instructions I am to leave the black cloth covering all but about an inch of the LEDs for the first few weeks. So I took care of that and hooked it up. As per their website the absolute best pump to use with this unit is the Whisper AP300. I can tell you the pump is dead silent. Literally dead, silent. The SURF itself does make a little bit of noise. My skimmer used to be the loudest piece of equipment in my tank. That's no longer the case as I can hear the faint bubbling of this thing from about 12' across the room. It's a little annoying, but not overbearing so if it works, I'll learn to live with it.

Here are the two designated test areas I have chosen in my tank to continually update with pictures:

The first is a piece of my base rock. We will call this piece Test1

The second is a decoration piece. We will call this piece Test2. Test2 also has a Chiton on it, so he may interfere with out testing. We will track him with the red circle.

According to my last test Sunday NO3 was at 10ppm per Red Sea and PO4 was at .11ppm per Hanna ULR. The SURF2x is to have bubbles 24/7 and light up to 22 hours per day. So I have the lights on a timer to go off from 10pm to midnight and the Whisper is hooked straight into a power bar. 1st day of no Carbon dosing and tomorrow is testing day. I'm scared.

kschweer · Aug 4, 2015

Looking good. Nice clowns and nems! Hopefully things start settling down for you soon.

Tahoe61 · Aug 4, 2015

Really nice, thanks for sharing it.

Following to see results. Interesting process to say the least.

Amoo · Aug 4, 2015

Welcome aboard guys. Let this be a lesson as to why you should NEVER completely clean out your fuge compartment in your sump. It was literally inches of the yummy green stuff.

"Ah it'll grow back just as fast right...."

143MPCo · Aug 5, 2015

Following...

Amoo · Aug 6, 2015

Teaser

Amoo · Aug 12, 2015

1 week update, nothing to report. I will post pictures and test results tomorrow, but as of right now the surf has nothing more then a light dusting of green in the very bottom. Certainly not the "massive" first week harvest some are reportedly seeing, but this process isn't supposed to be an overnight fix, so we'll keep trucking along.

Amoo · Aug 13, 2015

Here's the updated pictures I promised. Unit was installed 8/4/2015 these are from 8/13/2015. 22 Hour light cycle with the black cloth.

Here's Test 1

Here's Test 2

Here's inside the SURF

I've had a huge increase of algae in my fuge and some algae increase in the DT, meanwhile the surf is apparently still trying to get going.

EIDT: NO3 - 14ppm (Red Sea) PO4 - .16ppm (Hanna736)

hybridazn · Aug 13, 2015

Nice! Following!

Amoo · Aug 13, 2015

So in the last two weeks I've had two different shipments of corals with two completely different experiences. I've debated writing this update as I don't like writing about not so great about experiences, but fair is fair and I feel people deserve to know. The first shipment came from FishnReef who is a sponsor here. I saw on their pick 20 corals for $369 and said hey <$20 a coral, that's a great deal. They had some type of issue which didn't allow my corals to ship out the day they were supposed to, no big deal for me as I work from home, but as the email didn't come until later in the evening it could have caused others some issue had they taken time off work for the shipment. They were able to meet the second promised date and get the corals out. I was really happy with how everything was packaged, which you can see from the picture a few posts up, all individually double vacuum sealed bags. Each bag had what was inside written on the bag. There weren't any freebies per say in this order, but I did accidentally pick one coral that was one sale for below their $45 limit and they included it anyways so that was nice. The corals were mostly nice minus a few spots of RTN on both a Tubbs Monti Stellaata and a Teal with Blue tip Acro. A few pieces were broken in shipment including what was once a nice Green with purple rim Monti and a Green Digi which started to RTN from the broken area.

So things were going decent and I was moderately excited even with the few issues, then I found this guy:

Which looks a lot to me like this guy

Yeah not cool. I was in contact with FnR and let them know about what I had found and kind of got the "we typically Bayer dip on the way out the door so we'll have to see how this guy got through. We'll go check our stuff immediately." They have asked to be kept informed on how the corals go as they offer a 10 day guarantee, but honestly even the few pieces with RTN which I may loose I'm not really sure I have the stomach to deal with it. This is not in any way a suggestion that they are difficult to deal with or wouldn't stand by what they sold me, but when you order corals from somewhere and they come with pests it really leaves a bad taste in your mouth. So as nice as a couple of the pieces are, I don't think I would shop with them again.

As I said though they did send me a couple of healthy and nice pieces, here's the GARF Purple Bonsai I received pictured today.

The second experience I had was with @AquaSD , another sponsor as I participated in their auction and sale over the weekend. Holy cow what a difference. I'm more of a cheapy and prefer to buy cheapy stuff that I like, not expensive corals just because they are popular. While I appreciate the rainbow pieces and stuff like that, it's just not really my cup of tea. I ordered 17 pieces in total. Not only did I receive an embarrassing amount of freebies, but what I received as frags are what most vendors would classify as colonies. A Zoa "Frag" was usually in the 5 head range. A few of the sticks had multiple branches and were a few inches in height. The freebies were tailored towards what I bought and there are a few nice pieces.

I had a scare as the box was wet when UPS showed up at my door. We all know what that means. I immediately thought to myself, "Oh no here we go again". I rushed everything inside and began opening things up and getting them sorted and into the bayer dip. I couldn't believe how well everything was packaged, double bagged with thick bags. I can honestly say I feel this bag broke because the 4+" Super Freak Tort that I won the night before the sale punctured it along the ride. Much to my surprise though, even with most of the water out of the bag and the coral partially out of the water, it's doing just fine and doesn't look like anything happened.

I also had a Super Tenuis that appears to have expelled it's zoos during shipping. I didn't know sticks could do this as it still looks to have flesh on it, but there is no color to it what so ever. I mentioned it to AquaSD in my "shipping report" email and told them I didn't feel a replacement was necessary as the freebies and quality of all of the corals was so nice, I felt bad even mentioning it, but always send an honest report of what I receive and how it made the trip. Much to my surprise instead of basking in the positives of my feedback they immediately jumped on the negative and apologized for the Blue Tenuis and told me they would replace it in my next order.

I'm sorry but what? This is the kind of service I receive from John at Reefcleaners, but I've not had tons of experience with online coral vendors as I'm more a Nem and clown guy so this was a surprise to me. It may or may not be dead, I don't know tons about them, but it has a chance to make it I believe. I expected them to maybe just ask me to keep them informed, but nope. Now let's be honest here, if this coral pulls through, there is NO WAY I'm asking them for a replacement, and will honestly probably "forget" to mention it even if it doesn't make it, but man, you can't beat that kind of service.

Enough words, nobody reads those anyways, let's see a few pictures of things in the 125G.

Here's a Super Poccli and a Orange Passion Chalice (From AquaSD)

I want to apologize for this picture but I just had to share it. I was working hard to focus on the Nem and Eggs which should hatch today and as I was about to snap the picture both clowns slipped into the nem at the same time. Made for a great photo had I been trying to actually focus them and not the background

Amoo · Aug 13, 2015

Maybe I need some acitnic pictures to wake you guys up a little. Not normally my thing, but why not. Even I have to admit some of these things look cool in only acitnics.

Left Side of Tank

Right Side of Tank

A few of the goodies acclimating in the sand

Tahoe61 · Aug 14, 2015

I read the entire vendor write up and appreciate the honesty.

The acclimating frags (in the last image) are they the ones from AquaSD. I have never purchased from them, maybe I need to rethink that.

You can certainly tell you got your cuc from reef cleaners.

Amoo · Aug 14, 2015

Tahoe61 said:
I read the entire vendor write up and appreciate the honesty.

The acclimating frags (in the last image) are they the ones from AquaSD. I have never purchased from them, maybe I need to rethink that.

You can certainly tell you got your cuc from reef cleaners.

Yes that is just a handful of them. The Lobo in the back left is my oldest resident coral. Starting from the left:

Back Row - Super Freak Tort (Won in auction from auction forum), Fancy Nuclear Tenuis ([HASHTAG]#345[/HASHTAG]), Blue Matrix ([HASHTAG]#395[/HASHTAG]) The pink and orange chalice looking things were freebies and I have no idea what they are exatly.
Middle row - Another freebie chalice I think which is kind of hiding behind the Super Tenuis
Front Row - Super Deep Purple Digi ([HASHTAG]#111[/HASHTAG]), The Zoo-less but not tissue-less Super Tenuis (#69)

You can find the numbers I listed from their sale post here: https://www.reef2reef.com/threads/8...ay-4pm-pst-7pm-est.209403/page-3#post-2397623 This link will take you directly to the picture of the Fancy Nuclear Tenuis so you can get an idea of the size they are advertising vs what they are upon arrival. The fish in the picture is a Bi-Color Angel for reference.

John at RC is the best IMO. Since I started this tank with no live rock or sand what so ever I needed to find things that could do the same job of good things I could have brought in on live rock. So while I don't have any worms or small stars or things like that I have ordered bulk packages of Ceriths and Nassarius snails to fill the void.

kschweer · Aug 14, 2015

Great new additions! Love the clowns in the anemone.

Amoo · Aug 14, 2015

Ninja edited in test parameters as I had forgotten to add them the other day.

braaap · Aug 15, 2015

Are those 3 AI Nano lights?

Amoo · Aug 15, 2015

braaap said:
Are those 3 AI Nano lights?

3 AI 26s

fishnreef · Aug 26, 2015

Dear Amoo,

We would have IMMEDIATELY responded to this post earlier if we had known about it.

Vendor feedback is very helpful. We are adding more information to your existing post. We really appreciate your choosing to purchase 100% captive grown corals from us. And hope that we can keep this as our only post on this topic.

****
FOR THE BENEFIT OF THOSE WHO DON'T HAVE TIME TO READ BELOW: After Amoos order we sampled the 21 different types of montipora corals and frags we propagate. There are NO montipora-eating nudibranch in our systems.
****

The possilbility of pests such as Amoo states is taken very seriously by Fishnreef. We are in the business of 100% growing frags and shipping to customers. If there were pests in our large tubs growing corals, we would have lost our stocks or at least easily seen disease or symptoms of infestation. We have not. After we spoke with Amoo, we began systematically dipping our montiporas to see if there are any others. We have not found them.

We have acted upon receiving only a blurry photo. However, we are unsure of if the customer is an expert reefer or marine biologist? If they know nudibranch species on sight (more on this shortly)? We are experts and spend thousands of hours and dollars to make sure our systems and livestock are maintained optimally.

Understand that Fishnreef is NOT a chop-shop receiving wildcaught specimens that can have pests. We live and breath coral propagation, every day for hours on hours. We are a coral farm and at any point in time have a couple of thousand frags growing in our SPS or mixed systems. We have 21 (yes, twenty one) different types of montipora on our website with another 4-5 in grow-out. Over 200 types of corals, either on the website or in growout. Every coral is captive grown and sold. So ALL corals have to be examined, treated and monitored before introduction and during growth. Any pest that mentioned would have spread and decimated our coral stocks. Simply not the case.

Our coral frags can sit for months and even though they have normal inhabitants, we dip corals before shipping as many clients do not want anything but the corals.

Are there critters in our systems? Yes! Healthy normal ones like copepods, amphipods, feather dusters and the like.
Do we have nudibranchs? Yes! We propagate Aptasia eating Berghia nudibranchs. They start out extremely small and we do loose them in our systems. So if one ends up on a coral, we may not know it and may result in mistaken identity.

Finally, on the comments on your order:

- Thank you. Really glad that you liked the packageing and labeling. We try to make it easier, especially when customers get 20 frags at a time.
- Happy to include the frag which was over the $45 price limit.
- We try to keep our customers really happy and apologize for the delay in shipping notice. We ship out at about 6:30-8 PM with FedEx to keep travel minimal so if there is an issue this backs up to the evening time.
- RTN occurs when shipping and Fishnreef absolutely still stand by our 14 day guarantee. Contact us if any corals die.
- Broken pieces occur as shipment can be rough on the frags when a box is tossed around. Again, any RTN will be taken care of, contact us if any corals die.

We stand by our livestock and aim for 5 star customer service. All corals are 100% captive grown. Every coral purchased is one that is not being cut out from the oceans reefs. We are confident in our livestock. Every coral comes with a 14 day guarantee.

Finally, and again, thank you for choosing Fishnreef as a coral provider. We appreciate your review and like all customer feedback look to improve from it.

Amoo said:
So in the last two weeks I've had two different shipments of corals with two completely different experiences. I've debated writing this update as I don't like writing about not so great about experiences, but fair is fair and I feel people deserve to know. The first shipment came from FishnReef who is a sponsor here. I saw on their pick 20 corals for $369 and said hey <$20 a coral, that's a great deal. They had some type of issue which didn't allow my corals to ship out the day they were supposed to, no big deal for me as I work from home, but as the email didn't come until later in the evening it could have caused others some issue had they taken time off work for the shipment. They were able to meet the second promised date and get the corals out. I was really happy with how everything was packaged, which you can see from the picture a few posts up, all individually double vacuum sealed bags. Each bag had what was inside written on the bag. There weren't any freebies per say in this order, but I did accidentally pick one coral that was one sale for below their $45 limit and they included it anyways so that was nice. The corals were mostly nice minus a few spots of RTN on both a Tubbs Monti Stellaata and a Teal with Blue tip Acro. A few pieces were broken in shipment including what was once a nice Green with purple rim Monti and a Green Digi which started to RTN from the broken area.

So things were going decent and I was moderately excited even with the few issues, then I found this guy:

Which looks a lot to me like this guy

Yeah not cool. I was in contact with FnR and let them know about what I had found and kind of got the "we typically Bayer dip on the way out the door so we'll have to see how this guy got through. We'll go check our stuff immediately." They have asked to be kept informed on how the corals go as they offer a 10 day guarantee, but honestly even the few pieces with RTN which I may loose I'm not really sure I have the stomach to deal with it. This is not in any way a suggestion that they are difficult to deal with or wouldn't stand by what they sold me, but when you order corals from somewhere and they come with pests it really leaves a bad taste in your mouth. So as nice as a couple of the pieces are, I don't think I would shop with them again.

As I said though they did send me a couple of healthy and nice pieces, here's the GARF Purple Bonsai I received pictured today.

The second experience I had was with @AquaSD , another sponsor as I participated in their auction and sale over the weekend. Holy cow what a difference. I'm more of a cheapy and prefer to buy cheapy stuff that I like, not expensive corals just because they are popular. While I appreciate the rainbow pieces and stuff like that, it's just not really my cup of tea. I ordered 17 pieces in total. Not only did I receive an embarrassing amount of freebies, but what I received as frags are what most vendors would classify as colonies. A Zoa "Frag" was usually in the 5 head range. A few of the sticks had multiple branches and were a few inches in height. The freebies were tailored towards what I bought and there are a few nice pieces.

I had a scare as the box was wet when UPS showed up at my door. We all know what that means. I immediately thought to myself, "Oh no here we go again". I rushed everything inside and began opening things up and getting them sorted and into the bayer dip. I couldn't believe how well everything was packaged, double bagged with thick bags. I can honestly say I feel this bag broke because the 4+" Super Freak Tort that I won the night before the sale punctured it along the ride. Much to my surprise though, even with most of the water out of the bag and the coral partially out of the water, it's doing just fine and doesn't look like anything happened.

I also had a Super Tenuis that appears to have expelled it's zoos during shipping. I didn't know sticks could do this as it still looks to have flesh on it, but there is no color to it what so ever. I mentioned it to AquaSD in my "shipping report" email and told them I didn't feel a replacement was necessary as the freebies and quality of all of the corals was so nice, I felt bad even mentioning it, but always send an honest report of what I receive and how it made the trip. Much to my surprise instead of basking in the positives of my feedback they immediately jumped on the negative and apologized for the Blue Tenuis and told me they would replace it in my next order.

I'm sorry but what? This is the kind of service I receive from John at Reefcleaners, but I've not had tons of experience with online coral vendors as I'm more a Nem and clown guy so this was a surprise to me. It may or may not be dead, I don't know tons about them, but it has a chance to make it I believe. I expected them to maybe just ask me to keep them informed, but nope. Now let's be honest here, if this coral pulls through, there is NO WAY I'm asking them for a replacement, and will honestly probably "forget" to mention it even if it doesn't make it, but man, you can't beat that kind of service.

Enough words, nobody reads those anyways, let's see a few pictures of things in the 125G.

Here's a Super Poccli and a Orange Passion Chalice (From AquaSD)

I want to apologize for this picture but I just had to share it. I was working hard to focus on the Nem and Eggs which should hatch today and as I was about to snap the picture both clowns slipped into the nem at the same time. Made for a great photo had I been trying to actually focus them and not the background

steve&mari · Aug 26, 2015

Tahoe61 said:
I read the entire vendor write up and appreciate the honesty.

The acclimating frags (in the last image) are they the ones from AquaSD. I have never purchased from them, maybe I need to rethink that.

You can certainly tell you got your cuc from reef cleaners.

Not to highjack this but I also can say Will is a amazing vendor here and has beautiful corals always tossing in freebies and at prices everyone can afford something. I highly recommend aquasd you won't be sorry.

Very nice tank and some nice additions keep pics coming.