Balf's first reef tank - 150g

[MmmmBalf]

Must be time for some updates?

I'm on holidays in Qld at the moment. I didn't want to put anything in the tank before going away. The tank cycle appeared to be completed just before leaving. When I get back at the end of this week I'll dose ammonia again to make sure and do a good size water change after it's showing zero ammonia.

I haven't been able to run my skimmer till now - slight hiccup there. The pump didn't work. The skimmer was purchased about 18 months ago as part of a MASOV (Vic Marine Society) bulk buy from Orphek. It's been sitting in the box in storage ever since. I hooked it all up and nada. Not working. :mad: I contacted Orphek customer support who I must say were awesome. Within 30 min of me emailing them the Australian rep phoned me. Due to the time it was out of warranty, but Orphek said that since it hadn't been used they'd still replace the pump under limited warranty, which meant pump & controller were free but I had to pay postage. The pump arrived the day before we left, so haven't set it up yet. Need to get that going and get the Nitrates down. I'll have to hit someone up for some chaeto as well. During the cycle I've only been testing the basic water parameters. Now that the cycle is over, I'll test the other parameters and see where I'm at before adding any corals.

Can't wait to get something in the tank!

 

[Ljaus]

Nice, I hope you enjoy your time in sunny qld. Where are you visiting?

That's both crap and good with the skimmer. Good customer service and like you said even tho you were out of warranty they still looked after you.

 

[MmmmBalf]

Nice, I hope you enjoy your time in sunny qld. Where are you visiting?

Just the Gold Coast. Doing all the usual family things with the kids, ie, theme parks.

 

[Ljaus]

Just the Gold Coast. Doing all the usual family things with the kids, ie, theme parks.

Awesome mate. Hope you and family are having a good time!

Have you got time to check out any shops?

 

[MmmmBalf]

Have you got time to check out any shops?

Do you know any good ones worth visiting nearby? I'm assuming by shops you mean LFS Don't have a lot of time to spare but might be able to sneak in a visit.

 

[Ljaus]

Yeah lfs. There is one at Burrum heads need the tram and bus to get to it. It is a bit out of the way. Reef secrets is its name

 

[HowardJ02]

Looking good! Like the aquascape!

 

[john.m.cole3]

WELCOME to R2R! Fantastic build so far. I like the dimensions 5x2x2

 

[MmmmBalf]

Time for an update! Hope you all had a great Christmas. My tank finally has fish! They've been in for 3 days now (got them xmas eve). Diatom bloom has hit hard over last few days as well. My sand and rocks are covered with tiny bubbles which float up to the surface, which is annoying - is that a product of the diatom algae?

My skimmer has only been in operation for the last couple of days after the replacement pump arrived. My Nitrates are still high (around 50ppm) so hope to get those down soon. Fish are doing fine, eating well (frozen mysis & pellet) and the one coral I bought also looks good. So all in all going well and as planned.

Current stock:
Ocellaris Clownfish x 2 (M + F pair tank bred)
Blue Tang
Blue Chromis (got him free when he hitchhiked in the net at the store)

Long Tentacle Plate Coral (Heliofungia)

And now for some pics (excuse the unclean glass - the Flipper magnet cleaner hasn't arrived in the mail yet)

 

[Ljaus]

Woohoo. That's some good progress! Hope you had a good Christmas!

 

[MmmmBalf]

Added 10 snails - 5 cerith, 3 nassarius and 2 turbos. Will probably add more progressively.

Better shot of the heliofungia

Current FTS

 

[MmmmBalf]

Tank is continuing to tick along. Diatoms are receding and almost gone, GHA has made an appearance but isn't too bad.

Some new additions

Foxface & Firefish.

The Blue Tang & Foxface have quickly become besties, swimming everywhere side by side. The Foxface has mowed down most of the GHA in one day! Awesome.

More photos to come shortly. Thanks for looking!

 

[Ljaus]

Looking good mate!

 

[4FordFamily]

Looking great, it's coming along nicely!

 

[MmmmBalf]

Looking good mate!

Looking great, it's coming along nicely!

Thanks!

Here's the 2 new arrivals together.

 

[MmmmBalf]

Skimmer seems to be doing ok, despite the fact I have no idea what I'm doing as far as dialing it in. Not sure if I have the bubbles up high enough.

 

[Ljaus]

Skimmer is right mate. I would say it's slimming dry due to the darkness of it. So less collection but more potent. Adjusting the height of the bubbles in the neck would make it more wet which is a lighter colour.

 

[Ljaus]

How is it all going mate?

 

[MmmmBalf]

Tank is in the major ugly phase now! It's quite depressing, even when expected. I'm not sure what it's suffering from as far as diatoms, cyano or dinos - I've had differing opinions by LFS when shown photos. Most of my snails seem to have vanished. Thinking of blacking out for a couple of days to see if it has any affect. Fish are all fine and it hasn't affected my one coral. Nutrient levels are low when tested, but that may be because the algae is getting it first. Tests 2 days ago showed Nitrate 1.0 ppm and Phosphate 0.04ppm, yesterday Nitrate wasn't detectable and Phosphate was 0.02ppm. (Red Sea Pro)

I've done 2 water changes this week and vacuumed most of the algae out, I'll see how it goes. These photos are prior to cleaning:

It comes off very easily (sucks off the rocks just with syphon) and is very slimey. There's some floating on the surface and some brown spider-webby bits. It clogs everything (overflow, filter socks etc). Driving me nuts.

On the plus side, I bought some new gear:

Any suggestions most welcome.

 

[MmmmBalf]

It's been a while since an update, mainly due to my tank going through the major uglies and a couple of bouts of unexplained fish losses. The photos above did turn out to be dinos after viewed through a microscope. Luckily they were the type that responded to blacking out. A 72 hour black out completely wiped it out. Unfortunately during this time I lost a few fish, the Foxface and blue tang among them, suddenly. Still not sure of the reason, although have some theories. It doesn't seem to be disease as the other fish have been fine going on 2 months since the last death. (Not counting a recent jumper :mad

So after the dinos were gone, that freed up all the nutrients - hello GHA! Haha. But Vibrant to the rescue. Been using Vibrant now for 3 weeks and the GHA is almost gone. There's some other type of very dark, almost black, turf type algae, which is slower at disappearing, but it is going. So finally the tank is looking much better and enjoyable again.

Current parameters:
Ammonia : 0 ppm
Nitrite : 0 ppm
Nitrate : 0 ppm (Just got some Potasium Nitrate, going to start small doses to see if I can raise this to about 3ppm)
Phosphate : 0.02 ppm
Alkalinity : 7.7 dKH
Calcium : 430 ppm
Magnesium : 1260 ppm
pH : 8.0 (Want to raise this a little)
Salinity : 1.025

At the moment I'm just dosing manually. Have been using the Red Sea products but I'm just in the process of changing to Randy's Recipe #1. I plan to buy a doser in 2 - 3 months. Next big purchase is the Profilux 4 controller, which I plan on ordering next week. I'm going to order it from Germany through Sewatec as it's so much cheaper than buying in Australia. Then I'll get the GHL doser to go with it.

Current fish stock:
Ocellaris Clown Fish x 2
Fire Fish
Green Clown Goby
Flame Angelfish
Sailfin Tang

Some current tank shots :

Thanks for looking!