Fred's Planet Aquarium 225 Reef Build.

[Freddy0144]

After some internal debate with myself, and some youtube binging, I have pretty much decided to add an Apex to the system as soon as the version that I want is back in stock at BRS. While the tank will not be fully automated by the APEX there are enough benefits to adding it for the long term.

I am also thinking that it may be time to replace my lights with in the next year which I am not totally happy about, but the par reading were all over the place.

 

[Gatorpa]

After some internal debate with myself, and some youtube binging, I have pretty much decided to add an Apex to the system as soon as the version that I want is back in stock at BRS. While the tank will not be fully automated by the APEX there are enough benefits to adding it for the long term.

I am also thinking that it may be time to replace my lights with in the next year which I am not totally happy about, but the par reading were all over the place.

I went back and forth for weeks about buying an Apex finally did it with the trident and have added the DOS i think it’s well worth it to be honest.
makes it easy to dial in Ca+ and dKH with the dos

 

[Freddy0144]

It has been a bit since an update, I have been away on a family visit and then back for 3 days and gone again for a week. Anyway, the tank has just been maintaining standard norms. Funny thing happen when I was gone. I have a Seneye and I watch it all the time. While we were gone I watched the PH go from 8.20 to 8.26 normal swing to 8.34 and 8.36 with a high of 8.40. I was kind of freaking out and realized that because nobody was in the house my PH was increased due to none of the mouth breathers in the house.

I have added Cheato and a light to the fuge area of the sump, and going to have a custom fuge built that will be about 20 ish gallons. The Cheato has taken off and I have watched the Phosphate slowly go down. I am glad to report that I have been testing once per week so I am getting a good understanding of what the baseline is going to be for the tank.

I am going to post this in a different thread, but in June I ordered from Dr. Reef Quarantine fish. The fish were due to ship during the time frame that I was away. A simple call to them and we pushed back the ship date they were very accommodating. So the order shipped yesterday and arrived today. The three fish were beautiful and two of the three were in great shape. However the Yellow Belly Regal was in a bag that leaked and was in bad shape when it arrived to my house. I added all three fish to my drip acclimation bucket and added a little more water than I wanted to quickly to get some fresh oxygenated water to them. So then I dripped normally and put to the two healthy fish in the tank and they are doing great. The Regal tang was in a bad way floating on it's side. I let it drip for about 90 minutes and decided that it needed to go in the tank. It took off and went into the rock work and hide, I am thinking oh great now I am going to have to fish that out of the tank when it died. Well, a few hours later I decided to feed the tank. The Regal fish backs out of the hole and began eating vigorously and since has been roaming the tank.

I guess the long and short of this story is that I am impressed with Dr. Reef. I emailed then to let them know what's up and received a response with in a few minutes. Thankfully, this story is still going and the fish looks great now getting very nice color back and swimming nicely.I dont think this story would have ended as well had the fish not been in QT from Dr. Reef, the fish really looked remarkable when they arrived.

I will post some pictures when I have some more time.

 

[Freddy0144]

Well, this week has been a huge set back for the tank. Everything was humming along, we really were not adding anything to the tank and just letting it mature. I think it had been about 6 weeks since I added anything and my yellow belly hippo started looking and acting odd. He was a rather odd fish anyway so I did not pay it much attention, Had I, I may have been able to avoid the whole situation. But the tank suffered a huge velvet break out. Because we had not added fish in a while I am not sure what this came from. Anyway as of today we have lost 10 of 16 fish. Very disturbing. to remove all the fish and get those that were still alive, I had to remove all of the rocks, (I also ordered a fish catcher from Nyso) we will see how that works.

After catching the rest of the fish, and putting the tank back together it will remain fishless until december or so. Since I purchased a hospital tank, We will convert it to a QT tank after this incident.

Using Copper Power to combat the velvet, I tried a peroxide solution to ease the issues the yellow belly was experiencing, but he was too far gone, I did not put any other fish in the peroxide.

This really makes me wonder what happens in the wild and how fish combat velvet in the wild.

 

[Freddy0144]

Well, Just a quick update here, Looks like we have gone the first round of the parasite falling off the fish. There are 5 remaining as of today. All three Wrasses (makes me wonder if they are healthier or what) the diamond and watchman goby are also still looking good. As of this morning, one of the wrasses that was covered in white has all of its color back and swimming quite normally, the six line also began swimming today rather than sitting on the bottom of the tank, so we will see what happens. I was able to get the copper power up to 2.55 and has stayed there with ease so far the copper power has been great and easy to work with.