Reef Safe With Caution

[pcon]

Man I would Love a P. aya. too expensive for the fun-employed life!

Tried the good old, pill bottle coral lense for the iphone, some interesting results:

Venusta Posed half decent for this picture

Got a long nose hawk today, not the rarest but always a fun character on the reef. Hope it makes it through QT.

 

[Lorenzo Angotti]

Hi, sorry for your loss, nice tank, hope you have better luck.

 

[pcon]

Thanks! Constant ups and downs of the hobby. Good inspiration to get and set up UV sterilizer. I also am adding Gram negative and positive antibiotics to my QT prophylactics. Hopefully it all helps

 

[pcon]

Longnose hawk is doing well in QT probably will start meds in the next week.

Acro and monty finally hit the other morning, were sending clouds of mucus all over the tank.

Impossible angle to get a good picture of. Broke the glue holding the acro in place rotated and shifted the acro less than a half inch right gained some good space and probably 6 months before the same problem.

 

[pcon]

Tank is doing decently, coral is growing very well for me at the moment. Been doing a lot of testing and dosing. Unhappy with the Redsea pro calcium and magnesium test kits. Specifically magnesium has been pegged high, and generally highly variable in successive tests. Then, the calcium formed a precipitate in the test jar and has been reading off salifert since. In any case they expire soon enough its time to replace them anyway. I think I'm going to switch to salifert for magnesium, but what do people think about elos, nyos, and seachem?

The hawkfish is doing well in QT eating well. Decently acclimated to human presence outside the tank, comes up to check you out when I look at the tank. Poses for photographs

A brief fish lunch video, (we will see if it works)

 

[Angel_Anthias lover]

Tank looks great, especially the venusta lol.Have you had any issues with the rock flower anemones eating fish cause im always worried that they might, but pretty sure i read theyre less likely to than other anemones, but im still slightly wary lol

 

[pcon]

I am more worried about some of the shrooms eating fish. Generally I think healthy fish will avoid all but the nastyist of nems, but you do hear horror stories every once and awhile. neither of my rockflowers are big enough to eat a fish I don't think, but I recently saw one that was big enough that I might worry about it.

 

[pcon]

Cal academy Peppermint angel photo/video dump:

 

[pcon]

Last second water change before my trip to california resulted in a minor rescape after a rockfall. Best time for a scape change, right before a trip. Luckily it was only a minor shift, and despite the powerheads being left off I returned to mostly growth.

 

[pcon]

Helped a friend rescape the other night, got a small octospawn frag and a chunk of birdsnest. The birds nest is grown from a frag of the original colony that I lost over the summer. Hopefully does better this time. Finally got around to a reactor change, I have been running only mechanical filtration for a while but finally restocked on carbon.

Bicolor Octo, These two heads were being shaded heavily so were very small, so my friend cut them off while we were rearranging his tank. I am loving my little euphyllia garden. I hope the indo ban is lifted so we can get in some mericultured euphila in at reasonable prices. The current prices make me hesitant to buy nice pieces and risk them with the with caution fish I want to add as well.

The birdsnest, I put it in a similar location however the right side of the colony in this area always did better than the rest, so we will see how it goes, I am around and observant incase I want/need to move it somewhere else. The bleaching on the upper portion was there when I got it, it was under a larger stand of birds nest where it got cut off. There are still polyps and I tossed some of the small tips that broke off during transit and handling in the more desolate sections, so hopefully it colors up. If it stays I may have to keep the two colonies, monty and birdsnest, trimmed so they don't grow into each other. but there is more room than appears in the photo.

Reactor change day, I got to say I like these BRS ones off a manifold more than the lifegard standalone ones. I had been running just floss in the reactor for about a month as I havnt bought carbon and it was working well. I never liked filling the whole reactor with the carbon as it just clogged so quickly, so I am trying this, a hybrid layers of carbon, and filter floss and a sprinkling of gfo mixed in. I will probably change this every 1-2 weeks with my water changes. Speaking of water changes I left it long between the last one because of travel but my regular water change schedule for the last 8 months has been every 7-10 days a 40-50gal water change. This with daily calcium and alkalinity changes has been very successful for me, but I am always evolving how I manage the tank.

Finally, the Venusta posed nicely for a cellphone picture. the DSLR's charger is MIA so iphone pics are all for now sorry.

 

[pcon]

Things move slow on the reef, the hawkfish is out of QT and, after a bit of a rough first night, settled in well. The angelfish is out more, if only to bother the hawkfish. I got a new montipora at a local frag swap. Big water change and reactor change today.

Some Baby Hammer buds started showing up:

New Montipora Setosa, I know more red and orange not exactly the colors I need but I like the coral and it was at a decent price at a local frag swap.

I am guessing this is some sort of spaghetti worm that has been growing under this other montipora:

Big Water Change always convenient for some top down pics:

Side shot of the tank to close:

 

[CasaReefer]

You should have waited so long to share... Welcome and Great Looking Tank... You should be Proud.

 

[pcon]

You should have waited so long to share... Welcome and Great Looking Tank... You should be Proud.

Thank you, it's a labor of love like us all right. It took a few years to get the hang of the basics. Really only came into my stride after moving in february, and properly setting up a sump.

 

[pcon]

Quick video from after the fishes' lunch

 

[pcon]

Went back through my phone for full tank shots to make this annotated progression: 7 months of the tank.

April 16 2019:

This tank was an upgrade from my 40b in late 2017, and was moved in february this year. Had a hideous overflow box that took a quarter of the tank and still leaked so have been experimenting with overflows since removing that. Photos on my current phone only go back to april.

May 19:

June 2:

My friends montipora had grown too large and shaded many of the corals lower in his tank, so we cut it up and he gave the trimmings it to me.

July:

I lost the burgess butterfly and male venusta angelfish in the weeks leading up to getting a puppy, in july and so taking pictures of the tank and cleaning the glass to take pictures of the tank took the back seat for a little bit.

August 19:

Dosed praziquantel in response to the lost fish, not in time to save the burgess. The stress of the second round of prazi killed the large birdsnest colony. Added 40watt Pentair UV and mechanical flow meter in hopes of reducing chances of future disease, in addition to tightening QT protocols.

September 23:

some of these photos are not the most consistently framed, that with the random dates makes it seem like this was not planned out.

October 6:

October 21:

Left the powerheads off for a week while out of town and lost most of the pipe organ coral in the lower right.

November 1:

Got the bird nest and octospawn from helping a friend rescape, the large clump in the upper right promptly RTNed after being in the tank a week. smaller frags in other spots are doing alright and have grown small amounts in the few intervening weeks. Seems the top of the rightmost rock stack does not grow this birdsnest.

November 18:

Added the hawkfish after quarantine, conditioning the longnose hawk was a refreshing change from the butterflies and angelfish. My makeshift acclimation box hit was running into a montipora. So I introduced after lights out and after some initial scuffles in the first 48 hours the hawk happily cruises the tank.

I am not sure why images keep getting repeated at the end of my posts,

 

[pcon]

Really enjoying the Euphyllia garden, cleaned the MP40 last week and the octo and frogspawn on the right were getting blasted too much. All the Euphyllia some of the motipora and the duncan were all a little upset with the increased flow. So I turned it back a few notches and it all seems happy now.

Starry blenny in one of his favorite perches.

Long nose hawkfish in one of his usual haunts.

Shrimp and goby doing their shrimp-goby thing.

 

[mattzang]

awesome tank man, super bummer about the venusta and burgess

 

[pcon]

Thanks @mattzang means a lot coming from you. Loosing the venusta and burgess was a painful couple weeks. Good lesson on belt and suspenders of QT+UV.

 

[mattzang]

how was the burgess with corals?

i'm aiming for an upgrade and i think instead of tangs i want to do more butterflies. seems i could do several of them and as long as i stick to sps in that tank i think i'd be ok, although polyp extension might be terrible. but i'd also have some dwarf angels in there too so PE will just be plain bad anyway

 

[pcon]

Honestly the burgess was pretty awesome with corals. Better than a lot of angels. He would nip at zoanthids, I don’t think he was going for the zoas but pods between them. This caused small patches to close up around where he picked, the repeated irritation caused zoa frags too much stress. However larger colonies were unharmed. The burgess was most interested in eating rock flower nems for the first day in the tank. I would just put a dead acro skeleton over the rock flower, to hold it in place and prevent the burgess from nipping at it.

My venusta is way worse about curbing daytime polyp extension. And picks at blastos and the one acan related coral I have.

My general rule for this tank is I can’t have any corals I’m not okay with loosing to the fish. And then generally no brains: acans, lobos, Trachys, meat corals, mazes, favias ect.

I’m really interested in keeping more butterflies, I am looking into Prognathodes, and The true Roa. Probably a Prognathodes aculeatus, as the rest are so expensive. I’m seeking a bit more of a mixed reef tank than the classic SPS+butterfly tank.