Sabdali's 50 gallon lagoon

[Sabdali]

Hello everyone! This is my first journal on R2R and hopefully I'll be here for a while. I made a journal on nano reef as well but I figured let me have one here so that I can get more info and advice since I am most definitely a newbie in the reefing hobby.

Bit of a background, I've been in aquarium keeping for around 12 years but stayed in freshwater until 7 weeks ago. After keeping almost every freshwater fish I wanted to keep, I decided to take the dive and go headfirst in to coral care.

My tank is a 50 gallon lagoon measuring 28 x 24 x 18 inches. It was set up November 24th and has been running well since then.

The fish in are:
2 bonded misbar clownfish
1 copperband butterfly
1 purple firefish
1 six line wrasse
1 diamond goby

Below is my third update from nano reef. I'll be updating this one as well moving forward. Welcome to my tank journal!

As usual, im slow to update but here's the next update on the 50 gallon lagoon. Lots have changed since my last update and I've realized I'm a terrible terrible impulse buyer especially on live sales.



Concerning live stocks, I've added a lot. After the last firefish, I added a copperband butterfly and a diamond goby. Both have been doing fairly well and have been in the tanks for around 2-3 weeks but I've noticed a bit of ich on the copperband which I am monitoring very closely. I had added a gold sleeper goby before the diamond goby but unfortunately, it died overnight in the tank. Still not really sure why.



For coral, I'll just make a new full list of all coral since there was honestly a lot. Here goes:



Zoas:

Utter chaos

Scrambled eggs

Ultimate joker

Blue lagoon

Daisy dukes

Purple monster

Illuminati

Vamps in drag

Rainbow incinerators

Rainbow infusions

White zombies

Pink hallucinations

Bam bams

Radioactive dragon eyes

Fire and ice

Gold dust

Raggedy Ann

Fairy godmother

3 unnamed zoas



Euphillia:

3 types of frogspawn

Tonga torch

Purple and green wall hammer

Green splatter hammer

Branching rainbow hammer



Sps:

Red monticap

Sunburst monticap

Bonsai

Birdsnest

Blue slimer (currently brown and was shipped brown)

Forest fire digitada



Anemone:

Sherman rbta

Watermelon rbta



Others:

Two lavender duncan

3 leathers (long polyp, standard, tree)

Riccordia

Superman mushroom

Jawbreaker

Purple and green favia

Blue and green favia



So far, I've only done one water change in the 6 weeks that the tank has been running. Tested weekly and the numbers never really dipped to a point where a water change seemed necessary. I was also able to mostly defeat the algea issues I was running into through the diamond goby and tossing in gfo to combat higher phosphates, the only parameter that seemed high.



However, recently I've noticed my alkalinity has started dropping and is right at 6.7. I'll monitor it and if it does continue to drop I'll have to start dosing way earlier than I thought I would have had to.



All in all, as beginnings go, I consider this to be relatively successful especially since I was able to get through the diatom phase without too much trouble. Running a bit of gfo has definitely helped but nothing beats nutrient export and manually scraping the walls of the tank.



My next steps will be to let the tank mature and make sure everything grows well. Aside from the ich on the copperband and decreasing alk, the only other issue I've found has been the brown blue slimer. I'm sure it will eventually gain its color but for now I'm not inclined to chase parameters or raise light intensity to help it as it is only one coral and my others are thriving.



As an ending to this update, I have to say, bubble tip anemones really walk everywhere. The current location for the Sherman rbta is where I had originally placed it 3 weeks ago. Since then, it decided to walk over the entire tank, from one major rockwork to the other, before finally settling back in to where I had originally put it. For the past 5 days, it has held its location and fingers crossed it stays there.



Any ideas on what inverts I should get? I'm thinking of a cleaner shrimp but I'd love input on others or even a go ahead for the cleaner shrimp.

 

[SPR1968]

Beautiful tank and great detailed write up as well!

 

[Sabdali]

Beautiful tank and great detailed write up as well!

Thanks you! I've been reading up everywhere to try and be proactive on any problems I face. 3 weeks ago I was knee deep in a diatom bloom that was incredibly persistent but running gfo helped with that. Of course, at that time the tank did not look very pretty at all

 

[Sabdali]

My last update was almost a month ago so it's time for an update!

This month was where I hit my first major snags. I had gotten caught up with my senior design project (final year of undergrad for mechanical engineering) and hadn't done proper testing or maintenance on the tank in around 6 weeks. My alk dropped to about 5.2 and pretty much wiped out my blue slimer and bonsai acropora. Even now, my birdsnest is bleaching from bottom up. Aside from those, my other sps took the alk drop in stride and haven't shown any negative signs.

With the alk drop and death of coral, I decided to start dosing brs 2 part using a jebao dp3 doser. Hopefully, this can replenish the major elements while I'll use water changes for trace as needed. Currently keeping alk at 8.0 and calc at 420 and dosing very lightly to maintain those parameters.

Keeping up with trend of loss, my copperband wasted away. That was truly heartbreaking as it was such a beautiful fish. I tried my best to feed up by offering up numerous different types of food, including clams, but nothing worked. I don't think I'll try again for a copperband anytime soon.

I've gotten a bunch more coral as usual but will be getting a fair amount of sps soon so I'll hold off on a complete list until then.

Here are some pictures of the tank taken today, lots of growth all around with the exception of the bleaching on the acropora.

First a full tank shot