Red Sea reefer 250 - Mixed reef!

Chrille26 · Apr 7, 2020

Confession time.
I have been slacking with testing my parameters. I check for nitrate before I do my weekly water change to see how high it gets within a week, otherwise I dont really know whats going on. I know that is bad practice and I will change that now.
Time to get a good understanding of what is happening and when I got a clear picture, I will begin to use some sort of system to keep parameters stable.

Bonus pic of one of my Emeralds hosting in my Frogskin acro. Kept a close eye on him and he didnt apear to be bothering the coral. If I notice anything he will be munching algae in the sump.

Chrille26 · Apr 9, 2020

Busted pipe!
Woke up to an intensive gurgling sound early this morning! Thought the worst that the aquarium was leaking and there would be water everywhere. Opened the cabinet to the sump and quickly saw the that the overflow pipe had cracked out of nowhere and was both leaking water and sucking in air.
Some glue and a zip tie sealed it for now, but I guess I will have to order a new pipe to ensure it wont start to leak again..

Also added a bigger basket for the Chaeto, it quickly outgrew the first one so added one witch is atleast twice the size.

Whats good about this hobby is that there is allways something going on that keeps you on your toes.

Chrille26 · Apr 10, 2020

Everything going good!
All corals and fish are doing great.

Needs more coral though..

Chrille26 · Apr 10, 2020

.. And more corals there shall be!
Two acans bought, dipped and placed. Will update again when they are happy again.

Over and out!

Daniel@R2R · Apr 10, 2020

Looking good! Following!!

Chrille26 · Apr 10, 2020

Daniel@R2R said:
Looking good! Following!!

Thank you, appreciate the comment!
More things to come.

Chrille26 · Apr 11, 2020

Acros purking up!
The new Acro frags really found their home right away, coloring up nicely.

Bonus pic of my Millipora looking hairy.

Happy easter!

Chrille26 · Apr 13, 2020

Picking bubbles..
When people say bubble algae quickly get out of hand they aint joking. Noticed the first a couple of weeks ago, and added two Emerald crabs. The crabs have made no difference at all and the bubbles went from a few, to a couple, to a full on outbreak. Spent the afternoon handpicking about 20 bubbles, popped about the same amount and managed to release the rest into the water column. Siphoned those I found so hope the rest get stuck in the filter in the sump..
My tip to you, if you dont have it in your system, be very careful about adding frags and stuff without scrubbing them good. Because when this get a hold it spreads quick.

Lots of bubbles together with some hair algae growing with it.

Chrille26 · Apr 15, 2020

Ups and downs.
As we all experience in this hobby. Yesterday I lost one of my clownfish. No signs of parasites or wounds, just looked off and wouldnt eat for a day and the next day it was gone. Allways sad to lose fish but atleast Im glad it wasnt to ich or something else that would take the rest of my fishes out.
Also lost my Frogskin Acro to RTN. My guess is low alk or other stress, no other coral look unhappy at this point.

Also decided to switch salt. I have been using Aquaforest reef salt and my alk
have been quite low the last couple of days. I couldnt get ahold of TM pro salt so went with RS coral pro.

As I got the salt I decided to add more Copepods to the fuge, poured 360 ml straight over my Chaeto.

And my corals seem to appreciate my feedings of amino acids and phytoplankton, they are all reaching for the food.

Green slimer:

Euphyllias:

Chrille26 · Apr 17, 2020

New buddy for the clown and new coral addition!
Thought my surviving clown was looking lonely swimming around without his buddy, so went to the LFS to see if they had anything home. My initial plan was another classic orange Ocellaris but then I spotted a black one and was sold rightaway! So here is the newcomer:

Took about 30 seconds til they found eachother. Looked like a friendly greeting but time will tell if they are compatible

.

Also grabbed a neon green Sarcophyton leather coral. It looked awsome in the shop and I have allways wanted one despite gearing more towards stony corals. I think it will make a nice addition once it opens up and extends its polyps.

Have a nice weekend!

Chrille26 · Apr 17, 2020

Toadstool reaching!
About one hour after being dipped in Coral RX the new toadstool is looking happy again.

Chrille26 · Apr 19, 2020

Sunday is maintenance day.
Waterchange, picking algae and all those other to-do stuff done.

Found a Real reef gen 4 shelf in a box when looking for something. Decided to do some additional housings for the pods in the temp fuge. Smashed the shelf to rubble, washed it and added it underneath the Chaeto.

Otherwise nothing new so here are some shots of happy corals!

Rastazoas finally growing outside fragplug, soon covering the rock!

Montipora capricornis stacking shelves.

Duncan looking hairy.

Green slimer branching with new growth.

Tricolor used to be smooth, now polyps all over.

One week old Acan frag looking full.

Hysterix or more common birdsnest.

Stylophora looking fuzzy.

New green Sarcophyton thriving.

More coming next few days.

Chrille26 · Apr 21, 2020

Let there be growth!
Just upgraded my refugiumlight from 40w to 100w, interesting to see if there is any significant change in growthrate.

Its super bright in the cabinet now!

Chrille26 · Apr 22, 2020

Another sad day.
Lost my last orange ocellaris today. Not sure what caused it. Looked fine yesterday, eating and swimming. No signs of external parasites so either it was internal or something took it out. Either way, I probobly wont get any new livestock til I know if something in the tank is causing this. All other fishes are fine at this moment.
Dont think I will add any more clowns, I will leave the new black one in and just let her do her thing, and focus on other more fun spieces fit for 35 gallons.

Chrille26 · Apr 27, 2020

Next level
I cannot keep a stable alk, or any parameter for that matter, by just doing waterchanges anymore. Im loosing well over 0.5 alk per day.
So now Im starting to dose 2 part daily.
Going to be fun seeming how much improvement there will be with stable params.

Chrille26 · May 2, 2020

Algae going strong, in a good way.

My Chaeto have already outgrown the bigger basket I added after switching to 100w led growlight. The Chaeto is even breaking the surface a bit forcing me to turn it more often. Good problem to have I guess.

Also me seeding it with Copepods have really payed off. Its hard to get good clear pics but the Chaeto and glass is really crawling with lots of diffrent pods.

Something not so good is that I found a small patch of what I belive is Cyano in a low flow part of my rockwork. Hopefully its a flow issue so I have ordered a Tunze streamer that will be aimed in that direction.

Also decided to make feeding a little smoother by make own mix cubes of frozen. Mixed Mysis with Brine shrimp and clammeat, the fishes and corals love it!

Other then that its going great. Just staying ontop of maintenance and hopefully a fragpack with SPS shows up this coming week.

Here is a last pic of my Caulastrea eating my cleaner shrimp molt.

Have a great weekend!

Chrille26 · May 3, 2020

Harvest.
Decided to harvest my Chaeto today. It grows above the surface and its so incredibly thick that it had no more space to expand, so was worried about dieoff.
Hard to estimate how much but the bag holds 5 litres so I guess about 3 litres of Chaeto removed. Left about half of it so will be fun to see how fast grows back.

Afterpicture, beforepic is in previous post.

Chrille26 · May 5, 2020

More flow and more pods!
Today I added another tunze 6020 streamer, partly to combat some cyano in low flow areas, and also just to increase the overall flow since Im about to add more sps corals.

Pointed in the opposite direction of my first 6020 to help create more caotic flow and combat the low flow areas behind the first streamer.

Also I figured I would pour another batch of Copepods in my fuge. Since I removed half of my Chaeto I figured some went with it so why not seed with some more.

Hopefully tomorrow I have another update containing a couple of SPS frags!

Chrille26 · May 6, 2020

Some new sps frags.
Even though I lost two acros recently Im not ready to give up hope, thats why a box of frags arrived today!

The frags ordered where:
Acropora prostrata
Montipora setosa
Acropora austrea
Montipora forest fire
Acropora hyacintus

Even though the shipping was 24 hours and the box was well packed the watertemp was quite low at arrival! Hope all of them pull through!

Will update when all are dipped acclimated.

Chrille26 · May 10, 2020

New frags.
Unfortunatly the new frags I posted above had a hard time recovering from 24 hours in transport. The watertemp got too low. It sucks a bit but I took a chance ordering during Swedish spring when nighttemps still are close to 0 or lower degrees celcius. Right now the Digitata forrest fire and Montipora setosa are alive out of the whole pack.

On another note, here is a shot of one week of Chaeto growth since harvest last week, its really going strong witch should mean I have alot of nutrients in my water, not so good I guess.