Matt's Innovative Marine 100 EXT

[mattzang]

Tank: Innovative Marine 100 gallon EXT

Stand: APS Stand

Lighting: 2x reeFi duo extremes

Kkimmer: Tunze 9410 DC

Flow: 2x Reef Octopus Octopulse 4, AI Nero 5

Return: Simplicity 2100 DC

Algae Scrubber: Santa Monica Rain 2

Corals:

green slimer acro
pc rainbow acro
ORA red planet acro
ORA hawkins echinata acro
green aussie table acro
miyagi tort acro
aussie gold tort acro
rainbow stylo
ORA purple stylo
green anacropora
bubblegum digi monti
rising phoenix monti
rainbow phoenix monti
unknown encrusting monti

Fish:

potters angel centropyge potteri
multicolor angel centropyge multicolor
copperband butterflyfish chelmon rostratus
schooling bannerfish heniochus diphreutes
burgess butterfly chaetodon burgessi
2x ORA ocellaris clownfish amphiprion ocellaris
2x ORA kamohara blennies meiacanthus kamohari
midas blenny escenius midas
ORA neon goby elacatinus oceanops
yellowhead jawfish opistonagthus aurifrons
randall's assessor assessor randalli
sunburst anthias serranocirrhitus latus
azure damsel chrysiptera hemicyanea
springer damsel chrysiptera cf springeri
red line wrasse halichoeres biocellatus
yellow wrasse halichoeres chrysus
small tail hawaiian pencil wrasse psuedojuloides cerasinus
flame fairy wrasse cirrhilabrus jordani
hooded fairy wrasse cirrhilabrus bathyphilus
orangeback fairy wrasse cirrhilabrus aurantidorsalis
pintail fairy wrasse cirrhilabrus isosceles
moyers leopard wrasse macropharygondon moyeri

inverts: 1 blue tuxedo urchin, 1 halloween urchin, 1 ORA pincushion urchin, and 2 purple spine urchins

2 skunk cleaner shrimp
1 fire blood shrimp
1 red/black brittlestar

 

[mattzang]

so over Christmas time I decided I wanted an upgrade. I kept seeing quite affordable tanks being sold in the 120g~ range and figured why not! I started kind of planning and acquiring stuff and then started to really look for a tank. A lot that were available were still running tanks with livestock and what not, so executing one of those moves would've been difficult during covid times. I live about 1 hour east of Orange County/LA County so 2 hours of drive time at least + a full breakdown + a full setup would've been a lot. I was getting a bit discouraged and even started looking at acrylic tanks, but was quite unimpressed with those. Then one day I got home from checking out some tanks and stumbled upon the innovative marine website who just so happened to be having a 15% sale..

I wanted the 150g tank, which is 48x36x20 for that real lagoon look, but for where I wanted to put the tank it would've looked pretty dumb. So the 100 EXT it was. Fast forward to delivery day and I get the tank and move it into my house. Well, turns out I had a termite guy coming a couple weeks later and he said there were termites and the entire house had to be fumigated. Great.

So I decided I didn't want to try keeping things going in the house during that, so I decided to move all aquariums out (QT tanks had fish in them) and I also didn't want to leave the dry 100 EXT tank in the house either. Probably should have.. or not who knows.

Well I got it into the garage and put it on the stand and found a very concerning chip at the bottom front corner.

Yikes. So I wasn't gonna risk that in my living room and contacted innovative marine. I have no idea if it happened during shipping or happened when my brother in law and I moved it to the garage, nonetheless they weren't gonna replace the tank, but did offer me 20% off a tank only, so that was cool of them at least.

I did have to drive to Cerritos to pick it up, but at least I was able to inspect the heck out of it and then move it directly into my house and onto my stand while being extra careful.

 

[mattzang]

Fast forward a few days of filling up with water and deciding I needed to get the fish out of my parent's house where they had been for a couple weeks. So I gave myself a weekend to get the salinity right and execute the move. I kept all live rock from my other tank + fish + corals in a couple tubs over there.

I moved them all over and the corals were immediately clearly upset. I remember seeing my black brittlestar like twitching in clear agony, but I had no idea what the issue could've been at that point.

hard to tell from that picture, but everything was sliming up like crazy. I was super tired and figured it was just moving stress and went to bed. Woke up the next day and, woah.

They were all done for along with a lot of inverts. It didn't seem immediately obvious to me what it could've been. Cycle? No ammonia, I had live rock + dosed biospira. Super high alk? But that wouldn't bother inverts.. and the fish were acting funny too. Not just new tank uncomfortable, but swimming weird. I finally tested salinity a day or so later and got 1.034. Oops. That'll probably do it. I did numerous 5 gallon water changes to get it down ASAP, but before the week ended I lost my bangaii cardinal along with pretty much all inverts and corals. Not hermits, though!

And now I am coralless

I'm still unclear what I did wrong as I was testing salinity throughout that prior weekend. It slowly crept up from 1.022 and once I hit 1.026 I thought I was good. I think my problem was I was rushing the mixing of the water and it only fully mixed in the tank. Or my milwaukee refractometer just decided to be worthless, who knows.

 

[mattzang]

Now I'm about a month in with the new tank running. Aptasia not only did not die due to the salinity spike, it seems to have spawned :mad:

GHA is also pretty absurd at the moment. Probably lots of dieoff from my live rocks combined with no CUC combined with no herbivore fish plus the skimmer wasn't tuned in, not a great combo. And I didn't have the algae turf scrubber going, that I just ordered today.

Anyway, here's a few pics of my old tank when my tank had pretty corals in it. It was a 50g SCA cube that was running from about June/July 2018 to mid June 2020 and it was my first saltwater tank and first reef tank.

 

[mattzang]

My first tank went mostly pretty well. I did run into dinos towards the end, those things suck. Most of my growth in corals were the easier SPS, so this next go around I'm hopefully going to hit the acros hard. I do still like montis/stylos/birdsnest though, definitely going to have some of those still. I plan to add a few select softies, then a few LPS probably euphyllia, then get into the SPS whenever the tank matures a bit. I thought I'd get a head start on that with my live rock, but the salinity spike probably roughed up a lot of liverock goodies.

Fish wise I also like the with caution type fish. Angels and butterflies in particular. Unfortunately I thought I was going to be adding them to a tank with a bunch of corals already, but apparently that isn't happening..

Nonetheless, my future fish plans are to get another centropyge and then add it at the same time I add my flame in; he's in my 40 breeder observation tank with my orchid dottyback until I deem them safe to add.

I also want 2-3 butterflies of some sort. The aptasia necessitates this as well.

And I also really like wrasses, so gonna have to get more of those, but me getting them through QT has been rough.

 

[mattzang]

I should probably throw in a pic of my 40 breeder observation tank. I tossed in some of my GSP before the move and so now it's the only coral I have I plan to leave this tank up long term to condition fish and what not, or imprison fish until I can add other stuff like the two currently in there. The two clowns are my mom's clowns that she got tired of the female biting her so she gave them to me. So I figure I can toss in some corals in there that are super low light (I just have 2 random finnex marine lights on there, not quite cranking out the par). My mom's tank is overrun with branching GSP and orange yumas so I'll toss some of those in there and get me some pulsing xenia and I think that tank will actually be pretty cool.

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

I should probably throw in a pic of my 40 breeder observation tank. I tossed in some of my GSP before the move and so now it's the only coral I have I plan to leave this tank up long term to condition fish and what not, or imprison fish until I can add other stuff like the two currently in there. The two clowns are my mom's clowns that she got tired of the female biting her so she gave them to me. So I figure I can toss in some corals in there that are super low light (I just have 2 random finnex marine lights on there, not quite cranking out the par). My mom's tank is overrun with branching GSP and orange yumas so I'll toss some of those in there and get me some pulsing xenia and I think that tank will actually be pretty cool.

Thanks for sharing! Sorry about the losses in your other tank. Losing livestock is the worst part about this whole thing and at times makes you question yourself and why you're doing it. Glad you're sticking with it and looking forward to more!

 

[mattzang]

Thanks for sharing! Sorry about the losses in your other tank. Losing livestock is the worst part about this whole thing and at times makes you question yourself and why you're doing it. Glad you're sticking with it and looking forward to more!

thanks! yeah it was a huge bummer, but what can you do. It did make things a lot easier to go on a trip to Yellowstone for almost two weeks lol. I'm pretty into fish as well as corals so trying to work on that and remain patient

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

thanks! yeah it was a huge bummer, but what can you do. It did make things a lot easier to go on a trip to Yellowstone for almost two weeks lol. I'm pretty into fish as well as corals so trying to work on that and remain patient

Haha yes! I’m recently coming off losing all my acros due to an aggressive algae outbreak and “cure.” I’m refocusing on easier stuff And hopefully can relax a little more with it.

 

[mattzang]

Haha yes! I’m recently coming off losing all my acros due to an aggressive algae outbreak and “cure.” I’m refocusing on easier stuff And hopefully can relax a little more with it.

that's a bummer, i just perused your thread and saw the cause. it is funny how it's both crushing and relieving at the same time

i'm pretty committed to going full SPS this go around, but i can foresee a time in the future when i want a bit of a break and just going with "easy" softies and what not. not having to worry about your alk/calcium and all that. the reefbuilders soft coral tank is really appealing to me

 

[tippin.turtle]

Fast forward a few days of filling up with water and deciding I needed to get the fish out of my parent's house where they had been for a couple weeks. So I gave myself a weekend to get the salinity right and execute the move. I kept all live rock from my other tank + fish + corals in a couple tubs over there.

I moved them all over and the corals were immediately clearly upset. I remember seeing my black brittlestar like twitching in clear agony, but I had no idea what the issue could've been at that point.

hard to tell from that picture, but everything was sliming up like crazy. I was super tired and figured it was just moving stress and went to bed. Woke up the next day and, woah.

They were all done for along with a lot of inverts. It didn't seem immediately obvious to me what it could've been. Cycle? No ammonia, I had live rock + dosed biospira. Super high alk? But that wouldn't bother inverts.. and the fish were acting funny too. Not just new tank uncomfortable, but swimming weird. I finally tested salinity a day or so later and got 1.034. Oops. That'll probably do it. I did numerous 5 gallon water changes to get it down ASAP, but before the week ended I lost my bangaii cardinal along with pretty much all inverts and corals. Not hermits, though!

And now I am coralless

I'm still unclear what I did wrong as I was testing salinity throughout that prior weekend. It slowly crept up from 1.022 and once I hit 1.026 I thought I was good. I think my problem was I was rushing the mixing of the water and it only fully mixed in the tank. Or my milwaukee refractometer just decided to be worthless, who knows.

+ dosed biospira - I read that when dosing bacterias that one should increase oxygen/air flow into your aquarium. Did you have a base line on PH prior to dosing? Whats the chances that your PH dropped below 7.8?

 

[revhtree Verified Admin]

that's a bummer, i just perused your thread and saw the cause. it is funny how it's both crushing and relieving at the same time

i'm pretty committed to going full SPS this go around, but i can foresee a time in the future when i want a bit of a break and just going with "easy" softies and what not. not having to worry about your alk/calcium and all that. the reefbuilders soft coral tank is really appealing to me

Then again it looks like my favorite acro might pull through and you know what that means...haha

 

[mattzang]

Then again it looks like my favorite acro might pull through and you know what that means...haha

+ dosed biospira - I read that when dosing bacterias that one should increase oxygen/air flow into your aquarium. Did you have a base line on PH prior to dosing? Whats the chances that your PH dropped below 7.8?

hmm not sure. i did dose the biospira on top of the live rock, figured it shouldn't hurt. but i never tested pH. i have the octopulse 4 aimed mostly at the surface and ran the skimmer with the top off for a couple weeks so i don't think there should've been any o2 or pH issues, but can't say for sure.

 

[mattzang]

Trying out an experimental disease protocol. 2 hydrogen peroxide baths 6 days apart. this was the 2nd bath on my moyers wrasse so into my 40 breeder observation tank she went. Hopefully she doesn’t infect my dottyback or flame angel in there but this should have killed off velvet, brook, and possibly flukes

 

[mattzang]

picked up a couple fish i had been wanting from a local reefer that had QTed them and has them mowing down frozen. so they're in a quickly setup observation tank to just make sure they're good before i put them in my DT. i also might just turn off my lights on the DT for a few days to kill off some algae so might just leave the cbb and potters in observation until i do that as idk how well they'd adjust being in a dark tank

i also picked up a few black mollies from petsmart and i won't lie i kinda like them. especially an orange head one they had, but i've heard raising salinity on them can yield some losses so i'm trying to go slow and not get attached. i just plopped them in 1.016 water and just topped off today with saltwater. and one of the females (or males? don't know anything about mollies) was apparently preggo as a bunch of babies appeared overnight

also got my santa monica rain 2 algae scrubber today and unfortunately there was some shipping damage and a decent sized chip in the bottom of the scrubber, so i emailed santa monica and hopefully they'll give me a few bucks off or something. my DT is more of a display refugium featuring gha at the moment so hopefully i can get it going asap even if i have to superglue it. sounds like it'll take the scrubber a bit to really get working so maybe if i can get it going now i can maybe sneak in a couple corals a month from now or so. the lack of corals is a bummer

 

[mattzang]

old video of my midas blenny excavating sand in my old tank. well, for some reason, he continues to do this even in the new tank. idk what his objectives are, but i'll let it slide because he's a cool fish. i'm pretty sure he killed a fungia plate coral in my last tank, but what can you do and those sorts of corals aren't on the list this go around

 

[mattzang]

 

[mattzang]

3 of the 4 new fish in the tank. I’ll have to work on a better pic of the cbb and there’s also a multicolor angel cruising around, but has decided it doesn’t like my phone

 

[mattzang]

Copperband decided to not be shy and I think I spotted her upside down eating some aptasia! There’s a literal forest of that stuff in there so she can stay busy for awhile, but she also mows down mysis and various meaty foods

 

[Angel_Anthias lover]

Looks great. Is that a coral in front of the copperband? Or just an odd piece of rock lol