My 180 gallon reef tank

feegus · May 28, 2021

Hi guys I started this thread as a sort of journey of my saltwater fish history so far.

I would also like to use this as an opportunity to ask questions and receive criticisms and feedback regarding my tank.
Thanks

Jekyl · May 28, 2021

Welcome to R2R!

feegus · May 28, 2021

Jekyl said:
Welcome to R2R!

Thanks man, I’ll be posting what photos I have of my journey so far soon.

JumboShrimp · May 29, 2021

Glad you’re here... and you will find all the help you need.

feegus · May 29, 2021

This all started when I stumbled across a youtube video of an absolutely stunning freshwater fish tank. Previously I had only thought that you could have goldfish. So to see beautiful colourful fish and plants was very surprising. I immediately began researching how to look after them, to see if it was hard or required tons of money. After a few months research and touring many fish shops, I decided to give it a go. Purchasing a Juwel Vision 260L tank. I sadly don't have any photos of my freshwater tank setup, I think they must have gotten deleted. After a while of that I decided to give saltwater a go, but having a freshwater tank without a sump, skimmer or lights made this difficult. This is what resulted... A bare tank with no colour. But I was excited and a little bit nervous and I think thats a good enough combination for success. About 3 weeks later with no disaster I was confident I could try a few more fish and my first corals - but this is where the problems began. Stupidly, against my research I decided to try four clownfish and a sixline wrasse. It was okay for a few months but eventually it resulted in the two black clownfish and sixline wrasse chasing the orange clownfish. I had to take black clownfish out and put them in quarantine, to keep them safe. During this time I also built new rockwork.

feegus · May 29, 2021

Fast forward another few months and I really wanted to try that four clownfish combination again, at the time they were my favourite fish and I wanted to get a family going, like in Finding Nemo. I had been steadily adding coral and hoped adding a bunch of fish all at once would help when reintroducing the clownfish. My biggest problem was my QT tank was too small (60L) to hold the new fish and the clownfish all at once. So I decided to put them all in the display at once (Moorish Idol, Blue Tang, Yellow belly Damselfish, two Clownfish). But after a couple of days ich broke out in my tank. As mentioned, my QT tank was too small to hold all these fish, so I tried reef safe medication which required I turn off my skimmer. This was a disaster, it didn't really work, and also resulted in there being a lack of oxygen in the tank, all the fish were on their side on the sand gasping for air.

I lost a lot of fish that day. It nearly made me quit.

What would you guys do in a situation like that, when white spot is rampant throughout the tank and your QT tank isn't large enough to hold all the fish. Is there anyway to effectively cure it, other than copper? Since then I haven't really had any issues as I have been QTing my new entries, but I still would like to know.

feegus · May 29, 2021

After this event I was much more careful about choosing fish and coral that were more peaceful, and made sure to QT them for 6 odd weeks, depending on the individual. As expected I had some hiccups over the way.

My favourite is when introducing my melanurus wrasse. She was relatively large compared to the other fish at the time so I didn't expect there to by any trouble. She was swimming and eating fine in the fish shop, and I had been watching her for some time before purchase. She went through QT very well, eating everything. After introduction to the display tank she went straight under the sand (something I hadn't seen before). Surprisingly she didn't reappear during the day for about 10 days. I saw her once at around midnight during this time. Eventually when she came up during the day, she was swimming funnily, and couldn't stay upright and wouldn't eat anything. I couldn't believe it, she was fine during QT and I had treated her for parasitical and bacterial infections. After quick research I discovered it may have been a swim bladder issue, her stomach was very bloated. I fed her green peas (boiled and chopped into edible portions), and within a few hours she had returned to normal.