Fishfreak2009's 75 Gallon Mixed Reef

[Fishfreak2009]

Picked up a couple ORA captive-bred Pincushion urchins at Petco of all places today. They were only $11.99 each, plus they had 20% off all saltwater livestock, plus Chase had a promotion where any purchase made at Petco through today earned 10% cash back when you used your debit card. Not a bad price at all, and hoping they mow down the hair algae.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Already mowing down hair algae

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Video quality got butchered, no idea why it won't upload at 1080p HD, but it still shows the average evening feeding in the tank.

The fish tend to be much more ferocious about eating in the morning when the natural sunlight hits the tank.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Wife just got home and my fourmanoiri tilefish is dead. Was acting great until yesterday, when it didn't want to eat, and had a seizure, then dove into it's burrow. Never came back out. Today she came home from work and it was sticking to the maxi mini anemone, half eaten by hermit crabs.

I think I may just hold off on any more tilefish. That's 0/3, even doing anything right and I hate buy a fish that is just going to die being pulled off the reef.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Corals are growing so nicely! I have a couple pictures showing the difference from 3/13 to 4/23 as well as some other assorted pics. You can see how well the Acros are encrusting, some of the new Acropora frags from 3/14 are already encrusting onto the frag racks! And the clarkii clown pair laid eggs again, and attacked my wife's hand today while she was working in the tank for the first time ever.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Figured I'd throw some nice pics from tonight of the corals on here.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Couple non-tank pics from tonight and some snorkeling pics from yesterday.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Quick update: corals are continuing to grow well. I'm going to be doing a deep clean when I get home later this week!

 

[dvgyfresh]

Everything looking happy and great! Keep it up

 

[Fishfreak2009]

A few pics from tonight. Going to try and get some really good shots from tomorrow. I did some maintenance in the tank today, trimmed the red digi, dug up the GSP the clarkii had buried, and moved around a few frags.

Since I'm home now, I did a count on fish, and both the royal gramma, both fang blennies, and the Cirrhilabrus finifenmaa are missing. Seems like they've been missing for a while, at least according to my wife who was maintaining the tank for me. Everyone else seems to be doing really well though! Even caught a glimpse of all 4 red stoplight cardinals today.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Some pics from today

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Snapped a couple pictures tonight and rescued one of the red headed gobies from the overflow. They like to hitch rides into the filter socks

 

[Fishfreak2009]

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Some pics from today

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Managed to snag a pic of one of the extremely elusive red stoplight cardinals today. Starting to spot them more frequently, especially at feeding time.

Also snapped a pic of the tank this afternoon, and of the clownfish spawn under their anemone.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Snapped some pics even though I desperately need to clean the glass. Wednesdays are my weekday off at the new job, so Wednesdays are now cleaning days for the aquariums and reptile cages.

The first pic is the little acro we got from @AquaSD as a brown freebie. It originally turned purple, then colored up to this! It's really taking off in growth and is now encrusting onto the rocks.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

A couple pics from today. The tank is really coming into it's own. Most everything is doing great, the clowns keep spawning. The pipe organ coral slowly withered away, so we moved an Acropora granulosa frag where it had been. The Acro is growing nicely. Also the clarkii clowns knocked the birdsnest colony off the rock and onto the gold hammer below it. It did not make it, so moved an Acropora granulosa frag there as well.

 

[Fishfreak2009]

I need to take some more pictures of this tank. Everything continues to do well, except the lubbocks fairy disappeared. It was slowly losing weight, even after deworming and with frequent feeding. It was an adult male that had been at the store for over a year before we brought it home, so I'm theorizing that it was already at the end of it's lifespan when we got it.

I did take some pictures of flowers from the yard today though! We've been working very hard to get the yard all cleaned up (still a work in progress). The grape arbor is doing wonderfully as well! We should have easily 20 lbs of grapes this year!

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Ended up removing the Alveopora today, as it kept getting stung by the gold hammer and the GSP. It is now in my wife's fluval evo, where I'm hoping it will recover and thrive.

The male banggai is also carrying fry in his mouth again. Hopefully a few fry successfully hide and grow up in the rockwork!

 

[Fishfreak2009]

Well, I've basically been just feeding this tank, topping it off, and cleaning the algae off the glass, and today I came home to 2 of my Acro frags on the frag rack RTNd. I've noticed lately that my Acro growth had slowed a little, and that I had some burnt tips on the garf bonsai colony. I've also had more hair algae lately. So I did a bunch of water tests and got these results.

pH: 8.3
dKH: 7.3
Mg: 1410
Ca: 425
NO3: 40ppm
PO4: 0.5

Obviously nitrate and phosphate are WAY too high, most likely because I feed so much food 4 or more times daily. I don't like doing large water changes, as it swings my alkalinity too much (I use well water with naturally high alk and calcium and reef crystals salt), and I already run a decent sized refugium and harvest around 2 lbs of Caulerpa every 2 weeks.

As of tonight I started vodka dosing. I am starting at 2mL daily for the first week, and will test nitrates every other day or so and see where I'm at. I want them to drop, but not too fast. I'm also dosing Microbacter7, and running my skimmer to pull a wetter skimmate. I am also going to rinse all my filter socks and sponges on the overflow pipes and powerheads daily from here on out.