Mako's 50 gallon cube(ish)

[Salty.Reefer]

My durso drain was making a lot of gurgling sounds so I decided to fix it. This was before And after with my ultra expensive, high tech fix
Yes that is a 7/11 slurpie straw.

Finished product. Not clean but who cares.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

I ordered brs natural frag mounts to keep in my sump to provide a place for pods/ add natural filtration/ have extra small rocks for frags and scape adjustments.

I thought it would show up ready to use but most rocks were covered in algae and some even were filled with black gunk

I gave them a 1:10 muratic acid/ rodi bath

and this is what came out

I thought they would be whiter and cleaner but after a good scrubbing I guess this is as good as I am going to get. They will sit outside for the next 6 days while I go on a quick trip with the family.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Got back from Mexico and everything with the tank worked out great. The auto top off only used 3.5/5 gallons over 5 days.
Scans looking nice. Their little feeder tentacles are out almost all the time.

I picked up some pieces of red monti for almost free. I could have probably put them in better but it might end up looking cool so I am going to leave it.

I also added a 5k 550 lumen led and the recently clean brs natural frag mounts.

I noticed that my zoa colony hasn't been opening for the past few days. Then I found this little bugger.

Did a dip in hydro plex and found 5 nudibranchs.

I am going to keep a close eye on the zoas to see if any more poke their head out.
Shrooms looking great!

Also found my first snail baby!

I also did my first water change with natural sea water.

I poured the water through a filter sock with filter floss. The floss stayed white which is a good sign.

 

[Lilmatty5dimes]

Tank is looking good. Interested in how the sea water is going to work out for ya. Are you getting right off the shore line or a little way offshore?
Take a flashlight and look for some more nudis at night. That's usually when they're out eating.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Tank is looking good. Interested in how the sea water is going to work out for ya. Are you getting right off the shore line or a little way offshore?
Take a flashlight and look for some more nudis at night. That's usually when they're out eating.

Thanks I will check tonight. I am collecting right off the shore line at high tide. It hasn't rained in southern CA for a long time. There is a pier not to far away and I thought about driving there and collecting off the end because it is pretty deep at the end. But the beach I am collecting at is only about 300 feet from shore line to drop off which dives from 10-15 feet to 200+ rapidly. I feel this with a tidal push should supply me with good salt water. I would never collect after a rain storm because it gets really nasty.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Wow haven't done an update for a little bit. After checkin back on old pictures I can really see a difference which is exciting. I think I will break this update into two pieces in order to cover everything.
First of all I added leafy clopera, cheato, and one another I forgot the name of (the red one) 20 days ago. I felt like there hasn't been much growth because I have been checking it everyday but the pictures really show that isn't true!
Day 1

Day 21! I also added more of the BRS ruble rock with the goal of increasing the total surface area for natural filtration.

I have also added a few frags since my last update. All came from 3 @Shipwreck Cove Corals live sales.
Green Slimer Monti on day 2 in the tank. It looks so much better now but don't have the pic.

I love this clavularia coral. It is growing like a weed.

I also got a Conch. I had one in my last tank and I loved him and lasted for years! This guy cruised around my tank for about a week and a half now he spends most of his time buried underneath the sand. For multiple days at a time. Has anyone else experienced this? My old Conch didn't do this, only at night would he go under.

Open brain really looking good. You can see in the picture but it is getting stripes of orange.

My cleaner shrimp sherman molted for the first time which is exciting.

He is growing up so fast

Also found a different type of baby snail. Is this something I should be concerned about? I thought for the most part outside of the super small snail eating snails they are not much concern.

And then I was able to pick up the big haul!

Work station set up in the kitchen while the GF was away. She hates the mess.

Meteorite, JF Setosa, some branching monti I believe.

SCC chong bongz, Vampires, and SCC punk chaos closed up.

And for the final picture of this post a treat! One of the amazing pieces at SCC. It is truly a rainbow brain. I am surprised no one picked it up at almost half price during the live sale but it was too far out of my price range.

I guess I can't delete this photo when I edit so It is staying. I had one head of my torch suddenly die about a week ago. I figured it was from a temperature swing because it got super hot in my house. Then 7 days later the next head looked like it was on its death bed. I took it out to inspect it and it was covered in 100+ black bugs the size of grains of sand. This picture is two days later after an iodine and fw dip. The torch recovered but there are still som remaining bugs as you can see in the far right and upper portion of the picture. Has anyone ever seen these?

 

[Salty.Reefer]

And here we go for part two. Cranked out the first one so I am riding the momentum.
Green slimer in the morning blues. I really need to learn how to use my nice camera for the aquarium.

Milky way chalice

Rastas

Branching hamer and rainbow Acan echinata.

Another picture of the vampires.

Love the Chong Bongz

Cruddy Iphone blues picture from a couple days ago

An attempt to show off the colors of the acan. Haha forgive me

Top down shot and sherman showing off one of his many tricks haha!

I saved this update for last. My 6 week fallow period is OVER! I could have set up the QT tank like a month ago to pregame this moment but I spent all my reef money on frags. But I have a 10 gallon tank from petco so all I need now is a HOB, heater and a plan. oh and of course fish haha. Anyone got any suggestions. I want some smaller fish which I think will make my tank look bigger. I also naively slammed larger fish in my 34g biocube in many years past and never want to do that again. Any tank raised, sustainably caught, or aquacultered fish is greatly preferred. I would love to hear about your fish and suggestions!

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Ugh so last night and this morning I found some creatures. Bad creatures. First one was this decent sized flat worm cruising the front glass.
Then this morning I was checking out the tank before the lights came on and saw something brown on my large zoanthids. I used my tweezers to pull on it and way more of the body was buried inside of the zoa. I think it is a zoanthid eating spider. Pretty bummed but that's the way it goes I guess. I am planning on stepping up my dipping from Seachem reef dip to Baer in the hopes of killing everything haha.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Found something cool this morning.

Some of the daisy polyps from my dt some how made it into my refugium.

Also after doing some Bayer dips I think I have eradicated the black bugs on my torch coral and I haven't seen any spiders. But I think the spiders won the battle with my blue hornet Zoas.
Looking healthy again.

I also got this little nub of a bleached green milli for free in an attempt to see if I can get it to color up. If successful this will be my first try and success with the species.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Had a heart attack this morning! Nooo Sherman! [emoji35]

Then I saw him come out of his cave to say hi. [emoji16]

Full system shot with morning blues

Glary fts

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Wow just checked the date for his last molt and it was hardly 2 weeks ago. Is this normal? Or is he just getting fat on reef roid soaked mysis he steals from my lps?

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Snapped this picture a few minutes ago. One of the first iPhone pictures that I am happy with.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Just some quick pictures before heading off to MACNA today! I'm so stoked to see all the amazing stuff.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

So I went to MACNA on Friday and lets just say so much more happened than I originally anticipated. This may take a few posts!

This is the first tank I was drawn to! ORA had in my opinion the best tank at all of MACNA. The top down view was stunning and the fact that all of the specimens are farm raised only makes it sweeter IMO.

There was also this sick drop off tank. It is the deepest I have seen in person but I believe some on R2R are deeper.

I also saw this cool new light from Kessil that is super slim and would look awesome on a nano. The Kessil A80.

I forgot who had it but I loved this cute box fish.

What I picked up from @BSA Corals minus the two frags on the right.

I shopped around a ton and looked at what seemed like every frag at MACNA quite a few times. The dry good and other products offered at MACNA was beyond cool to check out. I also got to meet people I look up to in the industry which was epic. Mark (@melev ) was a stand up guy and super personable. He was a true celeb at MACNA, everyone wanted to say hi. I also got the pleasure to meet George (@coralfish12g ). He was awesome and hooked it up with some photo filters. We talked about college and our tanks which was cool because most of everyone there is 30+. I also got to shake hands with Jason Fox, Ben from Cali Kid, and the guys at alternative reef. I really wish I would have taken more pictures but I was just blown away.

Then I met Frost Nguyen from AznNutty corals. I got some really nice meat corals, a pink rock anemone, and some nps sea fans. We talked for a while and after I purchased my corals, he offered me a box of coral that was in ruff shape that he couldn't fit in his frag tanks. I thought I was getting a small box, but when he pushed it under the table I knew this wasn't any small offer! The box was huge, heavy, and leaking water. By that time it was almost 4 and I knew I had to get out of there before my hour dive north turned into 2.5 hours in grid lock. This is what the box when I first opened it. There was aprox 15 food storage containers and 3 large fish bags.

All I can say was the smell was over powering, the water was cold, and all the cups where clouded. What happened deserves it's own post.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

I tried to take pictures as I went but it just became too much with the smell, dead coral tissue and water everywhere. The water temp was just over 71.
Was a nice sun coral colony.

Same as this one.

Stinky mucus mess.

Giant worm in the cup of a euphyllia coral.

All of these where casualties straight out of the cups.

All what I originally thought was savable. Most where acans. I had them in new clean water and only acclimated temperature. I added Iodine to the % gallon bucket with the hope of giving them a fighting chance.

I have a Qt setup and running with the intentions of possibly buying a fish or two because I still don't have any .
This is alsmot everything that looked like it may live. at about 6:30 or 7.

TBH at this point I was in a haze haha I have never done anything like this and was lazer focused on trying to do the best for these corals.

This massive sun coral colony was probably the nicest pice in the box unless the torch was something crazy. I had high hopes and really wanted it to survive as it was the healthest one. The more it sat in the Qt the more stuff came off of it. It might have been possible to save a handful of polyps but the rest was the main culprit for the water dramas. Such a bummer.

Some more casualties that released themselves from their skeleton.

In the morning the water was very brown, stinky, and slightly clouded. Some more didn't make it over night but to my surprise others had puffed up and had their tentacles out when if they where half shredded. This gave me a little confidence. WOW! So much to cover and I haven't even gotten to the fire corals I picked up. MACNA 2016 will be a forever memory!

 

[Salty.Reefer]

I will probably finish this tomorrow but here is a little tease of what I got.

Thank you to everyone who helped put on MACNA, sold their products, and even those who I bumped into!

 

[JaimeAdams]

So how many of the corals lived vrs. died? Are the live ones still doing alright? Thanks for the update.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

So how many of the corals lived vrs. died? Are the live ones still doing alright? Thanks for the update.

So as of this morning I have 21 acan frags of about 4 different color variations and two decent sized bubble corals. The live frags and bubble corals are now in my DT and every piece seems to be doing much better. About 4 Acan frags you would have never known they went through so much. Weirdly enough they are all the same color variant. I wonder if that has anything to do with withstanding cold temperatures and mucky water. I didn't not record the amount that died over the last few days but I am guessing 3/4 of the Acan survived up until this point, 2/5 euphyllias survived, and 0/4 sun corals survived.

As you can see they take up quite the real-estate. My frag racks full so I am planning on making a visit to my LFS to trade off some frags that I made before MACNA to try to make some room on the sand bed.

 

[Salty.Reefer]

This is the over night improvement after being the last two in the Qt and being placed in the Dt

 

[Salty.Reefer]

Sorry I haven't done a full picture review of my new corals but my Dt is such a mess with recovering frags.