New Crystal Dynamics 180 gallon Tank

[Cesteban721]

Just read this whole thread, excited to follow along, great design and set up! I like your options for a Pygmy Angel, hoping the hogfish is ok in a couple days btw

Thank you. Definitely been a fun process and excited to keep working on it!

 

[Cesteban721]

Long over due update:

I hope everyone had a great Holiday and an even better start to 2021. Between the holiday season and work, I have not been updating this thread however the additions have not slowed down!

Picked up several new fish since my last post and all are doing very well. Fish acquisitions in order of additions (not all at once):

-White Tail Tang (in the tank for roughly one month starting December 1st)
-Royal Gramma (beginning of December)
-Starry Blenny (middle of December)
-Circus Goby (middle of December)
-Gem Tang (January 1st)
-Yellow Assessor (1/7)

My experience with tang addition:

Not sure if I mentioned in my prior posts but this is the largest tank I've had and my first experience with tangs. Having stated that, I have a great local fish store in Austin, TX that gave me great guidance on the additions. They recommended to establish the White Tail first since they seem to gravitate towards film algae more than the Gem would. So he went into the tank and went straight to work on the diatoms and film algae that arrived after the lights were on.

The Gem had been in the store for a while. The store was able to get him eating pellets, so I now have a gem that destroys every type of food fed to the tank. This definitely made the purchase easier and relieved all of the stress associated with the purchase of this expensive fish.

I did notice quite a bit of aggression from the White Tail when the Gem was added. I threw a mirror on the side of the tank and that eliminated all of the aggression from the White Tail. After 3 days, the white tail completely forgot about the Gem so this method definitely works. It also worked on the Mystery Wrasse which had the tendency of overly checking out new tank additions in the past.

The Gem is an avid nori eater and has also taught the White Tail that the nori clip is a source of food. Prior to this, he would not touch Nori in the tank.

Before the Gem Tang arrived, I picked up a Starry Blenny to help with algae control. This is a super cool fish and one of my favorite additions. (With the current stock list, it is hard to pick a favorite but he is definitely in the top 5.)

I picked up a Circus Goby knowing that I would almost never seem him. A buddy has one of these in his tank and I've always thought it was a cool fish. He hangs out behind the overflow box and I only see him when I feed the tank. As soon as food floats by the overflow, he attacks it like crazy so I know he's still there.

Last addition has been a Yellow Assessor. The same store I purchased the Gem from had this guy for almost 2 months. When he first arrived, he was dark green but has since colored up very nicely. I plan on adding a couple more of these guys once they become available again. The Gramma and Chalk Bass don't seem to notice him.

I have had some unfortunate losses. My Trio of Bangaii's have been reduced to one. The largest of 3 bullied the other 2. The Pink Bar Goby also did not make it.

On the equipment front, I added an Avast Kalk Stirrer in preparation of adding coral. My Alk has been hovering at 6.9 DkH. I use Tropic Marin Reef Pro and would like to see this parameter closer to 8. The tang addition also resulted in a lot of fish poo piling up in the back of the rock work. An MP40 added to the bottom right side of the tank quickly fixed the issue. When I first fired it up, the tank turned into a poo snow globe. Afterwards, the bottom of the tank is pristine.

The clean up crew was also added over the last few weeks:

-3 Pin Cushin Urchins
-18 Trochus snails

Fish I am still planning for:
-Yellow Assessor Group
-Anthias

For the Anthias, I am leaning towards 5 Dispar or 5 Ignitus.

Photos of the fish are not from today. The bottom of the tank was still covered in film algae which has since disappeared.

 

[Billldg]

Fish are looking great!!! ;Woot ;Woot ;Woot

 

[Cesteban721]

Meant to post this earlier and forgot. Anyone have an idea about what is going on with this firefish? Fins are intact. No signs of nipping or abrasion however they are losing color. Could this be based on nutrition or could it be something else?

 

[Cesteban721]

Current tank photos.

 

[Cesteban721]

First coral addition

 

[kingjoe]

First coral addition

First coral addition

 

[kingjoe]

Your tank looks to be coming along very well, overall. I have the same tank, which I'm in the process of filling this week. I've been cycling a pile of dry rock that I had in a Tankanyikan cichlid aquarium, and I'll likely order some live rock in a week or two. My stocking plan is roughly sketched out, and other than a yellow tang, the Hawaii ban shouldn't affect me too much. Keep us abreast of your progress.

 

[Cesteban721]

Winter Storm in Austin TX Update:

Who would have thought that Texas would have been put in the situation that we were in this week. I wont get into the politics of it all, but I have to say I am pretty disappointed in the situation that we were all put in. Fortunately I grew up on the Texas coast and have experienced my fair share of hurricanes and their aftermath so making things work with no power or running water can be done.

Lost power Monday morning at 2:00AM with outside temperatures in the 20s. My house is a new construction, so we were able to maintain "heat" till morning. Tried boiling water and floating it in containers with the tank wrapped in towels to maintain some kind of heat in the tank. After 4 hours this was not going anywhere. The house had dropped into the 50s at this point and I could not keep up with the heat loss. The below picture was taken just before we lost power.

Fortunately, one of my coworkers had an inverter they were not using and were kind enough to lend it to me till the power came on Tuesday afternoon. The only issue with this showed it's ugly face at 1:00 in the morning on Tuesday. The outside temperatures dropped to single digits and the inverter froze. At this point, I assumed the tank would be a total loss. Brought the inverter inside for the night and hoped that the prior 12 hours of running put enough heat in the system till I could restart the inverter in the morning.

First light, fired it up. Ran for another 4 hours before power came back on. The thermostat showed the house to be sitting at 55 degrees and the tank temp had dropped to 65, keep in mind this was after the inverter had run for 4 hours so the temp had to be significantly lower.

I kept the towels on for a couple of hours after the power was restored. I lifted the towels up a couple of times to while the invertor was running to see if any of the were fish floating. The only one that was moving, barely, was the Gem tang. No one else was out.

I was completely surprised to see that everyone made it after the tank warmed to about 70 degrees. I have 0 dead loss. The water had turned green during the power outage, that's it. Cannot thank my buddy enough for his generosity in lending me his invertor while he was also without power. Goes to show that in times of need, it's a blessing to have people around you that you can fall back on. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for tanks across the state.

I was very fortunate that my home made it through without any damage. I was even more fortunate that everything survived.

Still dealing with cloudy water. I've been running carbon to clean up the water but still have not conducted a water change. Plan on doin this in the coming days.

Lessons learned:

-Generators/Inverters are going to be a necessity moving forward.
-Don't do anything to shock the system. Let it come back to temperature slowly and run carbon to deal with the excess organics.

My $0.02 but it seems to be working so far!

 

[kingjoe]

Winter Storm in Austin TX Update:

Who would have thought that Texas would have been put in the situation that we were in this week. I wont get into the politics of it all, but I have to say I am pretty disappointed in the situation that we were all put in. Fortunately I grew up on the Texas coast and have experienced my fair share of hurricanes and their aftermath so making things work with no power or running water can be done.

Lost power Monday morning at 2:00AM with outside temperatures in the 20s. My house is a new construction, so we were able to maintain "heat" till morning. Tried boiling water and floating it in containers with the tank wrapped in towels to maintain some kind of heat in the tank. After 4 hours this was not going anywhere. The house had dropped into the 50s at this point and I could not keep up with the heat loss. The below picture was taken just before we lost power.

Fortunately, one of my coworkers had an inverter they were not using and were kind enough to lend it to me till the power came on Tuesday afternoon. The only issue with this showed it's ugly face at 1:00 in the morning on Tuesday. The outside temperatures dropped to single digits and the inverter froze. At this point, I assumed the tank would be a total loss. Brought the inverter inside for the night and hoped that the prior 12 hours of running put enough heat in the system till I could restart the inverter in the morning.

First light, fired it up. Ran for another 4 hours before power came back on. The thermostat showed the house to be sitting at 55 degrees and the tank temp had dropped to 65, keep in mind this was after the inverter had run for 4 hours so the temp had to be significantly lower.

I kept the towels on for a couple of hours after the power was restored. I lifted the towels up a couple of times to while the invertor was running to see if any of the were fish floating. The only one that was moving, barely, was the Gem tang. No one else was out.

I was completely surprised to see that everyone made it after the tank warmed to about 70 degrees. I have 0 dead loss. The water had turned green during the power outage, that's it. Cannot thank my buddy enough for his generosity in lending me his invertor while he was also without power. Goes to show that in times of need, it's a blessing to have people around you that you can fall back on. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for tanks across the state.

I was very fortunate that my home made it through without any damage. I was even more fortunate that everything survived.

Still dealing with cloudy water. I've been running carbon to clean up the water but still have not conducted a water change. Plan on doin this in the coming days.

Lessons learned:

-Generators/Inverters are going to be a necessity moving forward.
-Don't do anything to shock the system. Let it come back to temperature slowly and run carbon to deal with the excess organics.

My $0.02 but it seems to be working so far!

I'm happy that things seem to have turned out alright for you. I went through a similar situation many years ago, so you certainly have my sympathies. I'll be buying a generator next fall to power my current build should the electricity go down. Hopefully, everybody in your tank comes around ok.

 

[Cesteban721]

I'm happy that things seem to have turned out alright for you. I went through a similar situation many years ago, so you certainly have my sympathies. I'll be buying a generator next fall to power my current build should the electricity go down. Hopefully, everybody in your tank comes around ok.

Thank you. I feel for everyone else in worse situations. This storm was no joke and really messed up a lot of peoples lives in Texas. Generators are great investments. I hope to never have to use it but I won't let what happened last week put me in the same situation again if I can avoid it. I used a 3500 watt inverter from Harbor Frieght. It was enough to power the Apex, return pump, skimmer and 600 watt heater.

 

[martinphillip03]

Winter Storm in Austin TX Update:

Who would have thought that Texas would have been put in the situation that we were in this week. I wont get into the politics of it all, but I have to say I am pretty disappointed in the situation that we were all put in. Fortunately I grew up on the Texas coast and have experienced my fair share of hurricanes and their aftermath so making things work with no power or running water can be done.

Lost power Monday morning at 2:00AM with outside temperatures in the 20s. My house is a new construction, so we were able to maintain "heat" till morning. Tried boiling water and floating it in containers with the tank wrapped in towels to maintain some kind of heat in the tank. After 4 hours this was not going anywhere. The house had dropped into the 50s at this point and I could not keep up with the heat loss. The below picture was taken just before we lost power.

Fortunately, one of my coworkers had an inverter they were not using and were kind enough to lend it to me till the power came on Tuesday afternoon. The only issue with this showed it's ugly face at 1:00 in the morning on Tuesday. The outside temperatures dropped to single digits and the inverter froze. At this point, I assumed the tank would be a total loss. Brought the inverter inside for the night and hoped that the prior 12 hours of running put enough heat in the system till I could restart the inverter in the morning.

First light, fired it up. Ran for another 4 hours before power came back on. The thermostat showed the house to be sitting at 55 degrees and the tank temp had dropped to 65, keep in mind this was after the inverter had run for 4 hours so the temp had to be significantly lower.

I kept the towels on for a couple of hours after the power was restored. I lifted the towels up a couple of times to while the invertor was running to see if any of the were fish floating. The only one that was moving, barely, was the Gem tang. No one else was out.

I was completely surprised to see that everyone made it after the tank warmed to about 70 degrees. I have 0 dead loss. The water had turned green during the power outage, that's it. Cannot thank my buddy enough for his generosity in lending me his invertor while he was also without power. Goes to show that in times of need, it's a blessing to have people around you that you can fall back on. Unfortunately the same cannot be said for tanks across the state.

I was very fortunate that my home made it through without any damage. I was even more fortunate that everything survived.

Still dealing with cloudy water. I've been running carbon to clean up the water but still have not conducted a water change. Plan on doin this in the coming days.

Lessons learned:

-Generators/Inverters are going to be a necessity moving forward.
-Don't do anything to shock the system. Let it come back to temperature slowly and run carbon to deal with the excess organics.

My $0.02 but it seems to be working so far!

How are your ammonia and nitrate levels? I just started reading your thread today. my heart dropped when you mentioned the Austin Fish store. Hopefully your tank will return to normal. Thank you for the update