Hi All,
I want to share my experience as a new reefer (~9 weeks in). Hopefully my pictures and bullets speak for itself, but for me, it was about husbandry, consistency, research, and understanding the chemistry (I did major in Microbiology and definitely helps me to understand). And, I must admit that I don’t like the advice that puts a time frame or fix without understanding how it works. Yes, I got an anemone 8 weeks in, but I am prepared to cater to it (keeping water chemistry consistent, soaking food in vitamins and spot feeding weekly, putting sleeves on powerheads, and etc). Now, it is important to take the advice and learn from other reefers, but understand what went wrong, so you can learn from it. I don’t listen to advice when people say wait 6 months without giving me a reason why.
What I mean by husbandry: I probably spend 10 hours weekly on culturing copepods, making my own RODI and salt water, water changes, dosing, cleaning, tuning, preparing food, and etc. Don’t be lazy!
What I mean by consistency: (salinity is always ~35.3ppm, temp 78F, ALK at 8.4dKH, nitrates 5-10ppm, weekly 20% water changes, feed the same amount and same time daily, lighting schedule doesn’t change, and etc)
What I mean about research: I read and watched Youtube videos for months on the Carpet Anemone I wanted before buying one ( this is important as I encountered LFS giving me wrong information)
What I mean by understanding chemistry: I dealt with a dino outbreak and then algae outbreak, that I was able to resolve within a week each. I did not approach it with temporary fixes like 3 day blackouts, but instead I tried to understand the root cause and approached it biological to address the root cause. WRT to the dino, I approached it by adding macrophage bacteria that outcompeted the dinos.
Equipment:
1. Red Sea Reefer 250 (w/ sump and ATO)
2. MP10 Powerhead
3. Ecotech D2 return pump
4. Simplicity skimmer
5. Kessil AP700 with mount
6. Ecotech back-up battery pack
7. Some random low cost power head in the sump to circulate cheato for my refugium
8. Two Phytotanks to culture about 5 gallons of copepod solution per week (add about 8Oz daily at night to tank for Mandarin)
Lighting schedule:
1. 24 hour (12 hour starting deep blue peaking at white 70%, then a 12 hour Lunar Cycle). I prefer to keep lunar cycle because it keeps a balance of enough Algae to feed my CUC and urchin and blenny)
Misc material:
1. Red Sea Pro Salt Mix
2. Aquavitro Fuel (dose daily)
3. Reef Nutrition Phyto feast (dose daily)
4. Red Sea Coralline Gro (dose daily and how I keep my ALK consistently at 8.4 dkh)
5. 50+ lbs of dry rock
6. 1 bag of dry substrate
7. 2 blocks of marine pure blocks in sump
Livestock Fishes:
1. Frostbite Clownfish
2. Snowflake Clownfish
3. Pair of firefish
4. Pair of Banggai Cardinalfish
5. Mandarin Fish
6. Lawnmower Blenny
Livestock Invertebrates:
1. 3 blue leg crab
2. 3 nassarius snails
3. 10 Trochus snails
4. 2 red/white coco tube worms (one was a hitchhiker on my Leather)
5. Rose bulb Anemone
6. Toxic Green Carpet Anemone
7. Maxima rainbow clam
8. Tuxedo Urchin
Livestock Corals:
1. Multi-color frogspawn
2. Green/purple frogspawn
3. Green/purple hammer
4. Neon green hammer
5. Purple hammer
6. Purple/green torch
7. Aussie gold torch
8. Blue/yellow Gonipora
9. Blue/yellow Chalice
10. Red Chalice
11. Leather toadstool
12. Cystphera (meteroshower)
13. Rainbow encrusting montipora
14. Purple Stylophora
15. Blue acropora
16. Toxic slime acropora
17. Red digitata montipora
18. Mint green acropora
19. Blue plating montipora
20. Red plating montipora
21. Green star polyp
22. Red Zoathids
Lessons Learned:
1. Green/purple frogspawn went through polyp bailout, but spawned additional heads and currently growing out (no idea what caused this)
2. Bella Goby killed my Tiger Watchman Goby. Will not add anymore conspecific fishes together anymore (unless they are a pair)
3. Bella Goby jumped out through DIY eggcrate. Will not add anymore possible jumpers until my lid from top lid comes in
4. One frostbite clownfish died by Mandarin fish. Mandarin fish had a slime coat in the early morning that floated off his body, and the clown mistook it for shrimp, took a bite, and immediately started to hyperventilate. He seemed OK the next date, but ended up dying the next day
5. Starry night Blenny just died 24 hours after I added him (first attempt at blenny before lawnmower). I don’t know root cause, but it might be shock. I now do more slow drip acclimation
6. Royal Gramma was attacked by one of my other fishes (I think it was one of the sand sifting gobies since they were sharing the same burrow/cave)
Current challenges:
1. Starting to see an outbreak of Aiptasia (about 4-5 visible now). My plan is to buy about 12 Berghia Nudibranches
I want to share my experience as a new reefer (~9 weeks in). Hopefully my pictures and bullets speak for itself, but for me, it was about husbandry, consistency, research, and understanding the chemistry (I did major in Microbiology and definitely helps me to understand). And, I must admit that I don’t like the advice that puts a time frame or fix without understanding how it works. Yes, I got an anemone 8 weeks in, but I am prepared to cater to it (keeping water chemistry consistent, soaking food in vitamins and spot feeding weekly, putting sleeves on powerheads, and etc). Now, it is important to take the advice and learn from other reefers, but understand what went wrong, so you can learn from it. I don’t listen to advice when people say wait 6 months without giving me a reason why.
What I mean by husbandry: I probably spend 10 hours weekly on culturing copepods, making my own RODI and salt water, water changes, dosing, cleaning, tuning, preparing food, and etc. Don’t be lazy!
What I mean by consistency: (salinity is always ~35.3ppm, temp 78F, ALK at 8.4dKH, nitrates 5-10ppm, weekly 20% water changes, feed the same amount and same time daily, lighting schedule doesn’t change, and etc)
What I mean about research: I read and watched Youtube videos for months on the Carpet Anemone I wanted before buying one ( this is important as I encountered LFS giving me wrong information)
What I mean by understanding chemistry: I dealt with a dino outbreak and then algae outbreak, that I was able to resolve within a week each. I did not approach it with temporary fixes like 3 day blackouts, but instead I tried to understand the root cause and approached it biological to address the root cause. WRT to the dino, I approached it by adding macrophage bacteria that outcompeted the dinos.
Equipment:
1. Red Sea Reefer 250 (w/ sump and ATO)
2. MP10 Powerhead
3. Ecotech D2 return pump
4. Simplicity skimmer
5. Kessil AP700 with mount
6. Ecotech back-up battery pack
7. Some random low cost power head in the sump to circulate cheato for my refugium
8. Two Phytotanks to culture about 5 gallons of copepod solution per week (add about 8Oz daily at night to tank for Mandarin)
Lighting schedule:
1. 24 hour (12 hour starting deep blue peaking at white 70%, then a 12 hour Lunar Cycle). I prefer to keep lunar cycle because it keeps a balance of enough Algae to feed my CUC and urchin and blenny)
Misc material:
1. Red Sea Pro Salt Mix
2. Aquavitro Fuel (dose daily)
3. Reef Nutrition Phyto feast (dose daily)
4. Red Sea Coralline Gro (dose daily and how I keep my ALK consistently at 8.4 dkh)
5. 50+ lbs of dry rock
6. 1 bag of dry substrate
7. 2 blocks of marine pure blocks in sump
Livestock Fishes:
1. Frostbite Clownfish
2. Snowflake Clownfish
3. Pair of firefish
4. Pair of Banggai Cardinalfish
5. Mandarin Fish
6. Lawnmower Blenny
Livestock Invertebrates:
1. 3 blue leg crab
2. 3 nassarius snails
3. 10 Trochus snails
4. 2 red/white coco tube worms (one was a hitchhiker on my Leather)
5. Rose bulb Anemone
6. Toxic Green Carpet Anemone
7. Maxima rainbow clam
8. Tuxedo Urchin
Livestock Corals:
1. Multi-color frogspawn
2. Green/purple frogspawn
3. Green/purple hammer
4. Neon green hammer
5. Purple hammer
6. Purple/green torch
7. Aussie gold torch
8. Blue/yellow Gonipora
9. Blue/yellow Chalice
10. Red Chalice
11. Leather toadstool
12. Cystphera (meteroshower)
13. Rainbow encrusting montipora
14. Purple Stylophora
15. Blue acropora
16. Toxic slime acropora
17. Red digitata montipora
18. Mint green acropora
19. Blue plating montipora
20. Red plating montipora
21. Green star polyp
22. Red Zoathids
Lessons Learned:
1. Green/purple frogspawn went through polyp bailout, but spawned additional heads and currently growing out (no idea what caused this)
2. Bella Goby killed my Tiger Watchman Goby. Will not add anymore conspecific fishes together anymore (unless they are a pair)
3. Bella Goby jumped out through DIY eggcrate. Will not add anymore possible jumpers until my lid from top lid comes in
4. One frostbite clownfish died by Mandarin fish. Mandarin fish had a slime coat in the early morning that floated off his body, and the clown mistook it for shrimp, took a bite, and immediately started to hyperventilate. He seemed OK the next date, but ended up dying the next day
5. Starry night Blenny just died 24 hours after I added him (first attempt at blenny before lawnmower). I don’t know root cause, but it might be shock. I now do more slow drip acclimation
6. Royal Gramma was attacked by one of my other fishes (I think it was one of the sand sifting gobies since they were sharing the same burrow/cave)
Current challenges:
1. Starting to see an outbreak of Aiptasia (about 4-5 visible now). My plan is to buy about 12 Berghia Nudibranches
