First Reef Tank - IM Nuvo Fusion 40

muzikalmatt · May 1, 2020

Crazyju said:
That brain looks amazing! Do you have a problem with the rock flower moving around? My wife has one in hers and it will not stay put. It wants to move on top of another coral.

Thanks! It's a platygyra brain coral and one of the first corals I added to the tank. It was about the size of a quarter when I got it and now it's about the size of a softball cut in half.

Surprisingly, I haven't had much issue with the rock flower moving. When I first got him I tried keeping him on the sand bed but he moved around a bunch. Once I put him on the lower ledge of the rock work, he moved over maybe 3" to that specific spot and has been there ever since. I actually have a second one that's right next to him, but it's hard to get a picture because it basically faces the back of the tank. I think the key is not too much lighting and not too much flow and they'll stay put. Hope that helps!

muzikalmatt · May 8, 2020

I took some videos of the tank recently and figured I would share some of the more interesting ones.

Here's one of the feather duster coming out of his tube.

muzikalmatt · May 8, 2020

Here's one of the pincushion urchin "relieving" himself. Nature is weird sometimes.

Murica · May 9, 2020

pics? us pee-on iPhoners can’t view the vids

muzikalmatt · May 10, 2020

Dang. So if I just post them straight from my Android phone, iPhoners can't view it? I'll try reformatting them to .mp4 and see if that works.

BlazinNano · May 10, 2020

Love it. Welcome to R2R

muzikalmatt · May 10, 2020

@Murica See if these videos work for you. Sorry that they're vertical. ;Facepalm

Tahoe61 · May 10, 2020

Not working for me. :-(

Murica · May 10, 2020

muzikalmatt said:
@Murica See if these videos work for you. Sorry that they're vertical. ;Facepalm

meh it is what it is, i can imagine it and it’s glorious.. ha. I think only YouTube vids work for us

muzikalmatt · May 11, 2020

@Murica @Tahoe61 Third time's the charm? I uploaded them to YouTube this time. Hopefully that does it!

Tahoe61 · May 11, 2020

Wow feather duster video is awesome..

muzikalmatt · May 11, 2020

Thanks! I'm glad the video finally worked!

Murica · May 11, 2020

Yup it worked! That duster has a huge crown!

muzikalmatt · May 11, 2020

Murica said:
Yup it worked! That duster has a huge crown!

Thanks! It's grown a ton in the 15 months we've had it. All of the grey color on the trunk/tube is new growth. It's easily one of my favorite tank inhabitants.

muzikalmatt · May 18, 2020

I took some macro shots over the weekend with the Polylab macro lens. I hadn't really used it before, but I think it does a pretty good job considering it's just a magnifying lens on a phone camera.

WWC My Clementine Zoas (bought these during a live sale a little over a year ago with 5 polyps)

Bubble Coral

Sunny D's (started as one polyp I bought from my LFS)

Utter Chaos (also started as one polyp from my LFS)

Coco Worm

Tahoe61 · May 18, 2020

Looking good.

Sunny D and Chaos are fast growers.

muzikalmatt · May 18, 2020

Tahoe61 said:
Looking good.

Sunny D and Chaos are fast growers.

Thanks! That's great because I love the colors on both of them.

muzikalmatt · May 30, 2020

So after over 5 months of no new corals, including no visits to the LFS, I made a bit of a splurge. I picked up 5 corals in the recent WWC Live Sale, a Starburst Monti Cap and a random four pack. I also went the LFS to pick up some frozen food and snails, and ended up leaving with a new frogspawn head as well.

Below are some pics of the new frags. I had to break out the frag rack to make some room.

From front to back: jedi mind trick monti, bullseye micromussa, cactus pavona (with a trochus snail on it), glitter bomb favites, and starburst monti

And here's one of the frogspawn head

Here's a second one of the frogspawn with the polyplap lens filter on.

I'm really digging the frogspawn already, and it'll be interesting to see what the WWC frags grow into. I think the bullseye acans are going to look sweet! Everything seems pretty happy in the tank so far. I'll probably leave them on the frag rack to grow for a bit before finding a spot for them.

muzikalmatt · Jun 1, 2020

So it's been a bit of a ride for my tank in the past 24 hours. Last night while doing a water change I bumped the birdsnest with my elbow and broke it off the rockwork at the base. It had previously died off a bit, but was growing back so I figured I'd take the opportunity to frag it up and see what happens, especially since I already had the frag rack setup. Below are the results of my impromptu frag session.

I tried to save all of the branches that looked they had healthy growth/polyps on them and ended up with 5 frags.

Then tonight as I was looking at the tank, I noticed I had flatworms. Aaaaaaaaarrrrgh! I'm thinking I have both red planarias and acoel flatworms, but I'm not too sure. Take a look at the pictures below and let me know what you think. So far, I haven't seen any on the corals and I looked for a looong time, but I still want to be proactive about them. I'm planning on picking up a yellow wrasse and maybe some flatworm exit to combat these little guys. Any advice would be very much appreciated.

muzikalmatt · Jun 18, 2020

So the flatworms don't seem to be bothering anything for now, so I'm not as worried as I was initially. I may still pickup a wrasse to keep their population at bay. I always wanted a wrasse anyways so this kind of gives me an excuse to get one. Some of the frags I got from WWC weren't doing so hot on the frag rack, so I've moved most them to the sand bed as I suspect I was overlighting them. We'll see if they recover. All of the other corals in the tank are super happy and the birdsnest frags are already growing out again, so that's good.

I took a few shots of some of the happier corals recently. Check them out below.

Utter Chaos