SDReef's 330G CDA Acropora Dominant Mixed Reef

[sdreef]

The frags from battle corals remained in good condition. Upon receiving the frag, I temperature acclimated and then placed them in the quarantine system where the parameters are Alk 7.8, Ca 430, Mag 1320, salinity 35 ppt. No initial dipping of the frags. I've observed over the past couple weeks.

I experienced acclimation stress from two of the frags that demonstrated necrosis in the initial 24 hours. The frags arrived well encrusted and in healthy condition and the quarantine tank has remained stable. One demonstrated central focal necrosis and remained stable following a glue patch. The other frag had more diffuse necrosis but I was able to salvage some of the tips and remount.

The other 12 frags are all in great condition. The frags that were more freshly glued on the plugs were removed from the frag plug, dipped, and remounted. The frags that were well encrusted, I used the bone cutter to remove the frag plug stem and remounted the disc after dipping. The frags were generally clean aside from a ball anemone and a couple asterinas. The new additions are reacclimating primarily on the sand bed and the sand bed frag holder.

 

[sdreef]

These are beautiful in their own right. Where are you sourcing these? If I didn't have sponge eaters in the DT, that is where mine would live. I have a fuge with a divider in the middle, I am going to use your experience with all of these on top of mine to see if it would be worth splitting the fuge into half macro and half sponges. To be totally honest, if I had a sponge section.... I would have to get an angler for that section as they just fit the bill for sponge tank.

Are you running carbon proactively for the first few months incase of death/decay of any of the sponges. Read some articles showing their toxicity when dying. The level of toxicity seem to unclear in regards to closed system volume and filtration method. A blanket toxic claim is hard to gauge the level concern I should keep. Simply put if angles and idols eat these in the wild as their main nutrition source, how toxic can they really be. Curious your thoughts on the matter.

The ball sponge came from liveaquaria, the red tree sponge from Alyssa's seahorse savvy, and the orange ridge ear and dragon's flame came from Aquaculture nursery farms. I think all of the sponges originate from the Caribbean.

I am running rox carbon in a reactor, and was thinking about changing it out monthly, but I don't have schedule for this yet. Do you run carbon, and if so how often are you changing it out?

I hadn't thought about the toxicity in terms of polluting the tank such as a cucumber sucked into an overflow or dying box fish for example. I was thinking about it more in terms of direct contact or close proximity sort of like when corals grow into each other. Also, I think ingestion would be a problem for many organisms that hadn't adapted to include sponges in the diet. But I suppose if I start experiencing unusual symptoms in my corals, this could be one possible source that I hadn't considered. ;Dead;Bookworm;Jawdrop

That would be very sad, but so far everything in the tank is progressing well and growing from the lps to the few sps frags that I've had in there for this relatively short time. I would rate my own level of concern as low, but it is an unknown risk, so difficult to quantify, and may be a mistake. I hope not!

 

[rds85]

The ball sponge came from liveaquaria, the red tree sponge from Alyssa's seahorse savvy, and the orange ridge ear and dragon's flame came from Aquaculture nursery farms. I think all of the sponges originate from the Caribbean.

I am running rox carbon in a reactor, and was thinking about changing it out monthly, but I don't have schedule for this yet. Do you run carbon, and if so how often are you changing it out?

I hadn't thought about the toxicity in terms of polluting the tank such as a cucumber sucked into an overflow or dying box fish for example. I was thinking about it more in terms of direct contact or close proximity sort of like when corals grow into each other. Also, I think ingestion would be a problem for many organisms that hadn't adapted to include sponges in the diet. But I suppose if I start experiencing unusual symptoms in my corals, this could be one possible source that I hadn't considered. ;Dead;Bookworm;Jawdrop

That would be very sad, but so far everything in the tank is progressing well and growing from the lps to the few sps frags that I've had in there for this relatively short time. I would rate my own level of concern as low, but it is an unknown risk, so difficult to quantify, and may be a mistake. I hope not!

Multiple vendors but still makes sense that they are all Caribbean.

I do run carbon, with monthly change unless I need to change it out earlier for some other odd reason.

I was going off limited literature and minimal data sets! So like I said, I am not sure to what level of a concern this actually is. I am sure everything will be fine!

 

[sdreef]

 

[TX_Punisher]

Nice tank. Did crystal dynamics do the stand and wood wrap as well?

 

[sdreef]

Nice tank. Did crystal dynamics do the stand and wood wrap as well?

Thanks. Crystal dynamics built the steel structure and wood wrap for the stand.

 

[sdreef]

Coralline has been taking off and covering the rocks. My calcium consumption has gone up significantly the past couple weeks.

I noticed the freeze dried food that I'm putting in the plank has a lot of powdered crushed particulate. I decided to filter this out with a simple sieve to reduce the small particulates. I'm tossing the powder out and going to start only adding the larger food. I am continuing to mix this freeze dried mysis along with freeze dried calanus. The cyano has improved and is minimal and hopefully this will help keep it that way.

 

[sdreef]

 

[sdreef]

I'm happy with how the system is progressing for the first five months. Early on, I was spending a lot of time with the tank. I've reached a point now where there isn't much to do on a daily basis. The continuous water change has made life much more enjoyable. I've figured out the actual water volume is around 250 gallons, and I'm changing 2.5 gallons every day over a 12 hour period.

Current maintenance:
Washed frozen food once / day
Clean glass every 2-3 days
Add sifted freeze-dried food once / week
Adjust dosing once / week or as needed
Empty skimmer cup once / week
Change CO2 media once / 3 weeks
Make saltwater once / 3-4 weeks
Change carbon once / month
Change fleece once / 4 months (TBD)

Temporary additions to the routine:
KZ cyanoclean once / day
KZ Zeozym once / 1-2 weeks

The cyano resolved with a few additions
1. I knocked it down with chemiclean which cleared 80-90% of the cyano intiially.
2. I tried zeozym for the first time which helped produce more skimmate
3. I've been adding cyanoclean as well. I turn off the UV for an hour after adding.
4. I bolstered the clean up crew with nassarius snails and a sand sifting star
5. I added live mud and live sand from indopacific sea farms to bolster the microbiome
6. I started washing my frozen food and started sifting my freeze-dried food.

For the frozen food, I used to just dump it in or add it to the plank's mixing tube. Now I thaw the food in fresh RO and rinse it out in a brine shrimp net. Looking at how cloudy the water is when I thaw the food, I think its been helpful to wash this out rather than add to the tank. I hope this will help prevent other issues down the road.

I have been using a CO2 scrubber to bump up the pH. Without the scrubber, pH would be running 7.8-8 which I suspect would slow the progress of the system. With the scrubber, pH is running 8-8.2, and I think it's been helpful for the coralline and acros in the system. I noticed the low pH low was down to 7.9 yesterday and changed the media with the new low today up to 8-8.1.

This method of increasing pH is less efficient than I had hoped and I am changing the media every 2.5 - 3 weeks. I don't view this as a long term solution for this system. I'm hoping low pH is a problem that can be solved with more coral and photosynthesis during the day. If not, I may consider a kalk stirrer or other methods of increasing the pH once I bring the calcium reactor on line. For now, I'm just watching things grow and looking forward to adding more coral.

 

[Billldg]

Tank is really coming along, it is looking great. Hopefully I will not be to far behind you, lol!!!

Tank is getting wet today.

 

[VermontReefs]

Tank is really coming along, it is looking great. Hopefully I will not be to far behind you, lol!!!

Tank is getting wet today.

Where did you pick up your hawkfish? I haven’t seen that species before. I love my Flame Hawks

 

[sdreef]

Tank is really coming along, it is looking great. Hopefully I will not be to far behind you, lol!!!

Tank is getting wet today.

I saw that and I'm excited to see water going into your system!

I noticed you have a couple holes in your eurobrace. I do too, and I found the lid from a computer grommet fits perfectly. Gives me piece of mind with all of my jumping fish. No carpet surfers to date, although someone bounces off the lid routinely.

 

[sdreef]

Where did you pick up your hawkfish? I haven’t seen that species before. I love my Flame Hawks

Thank you. He's a family favorite. He's a tahitian golden hawkfish, Paracirrhites xanthus. I was able to have someone purchase him for me locally. I was tempted to add a flame hawk too, but not sure about the compatibility so I've held off for now.

 

[Billldg]

I saw that and I'm excited to see water going into your system!

I noticed you have a couple holes in your eurobrace. I do too, and I found the lid from a computer grommet fits perfectly. Gives me piece of mind with all of my jumping fish. No carpet surfers to date, although someone bounces off the lid routinely.

LOL, I was looking to do the same thing. My luck, a wrasse will find a way thru the whole, LOL!!! Filled it all the way up today, and then had to remove enough water to get below the bulkhead for the overflow box. I had one leaking. I just filled it back up enough to get the bottom 3rd of the bulkhead wet and will take it from there.

 

[Skynyrd Fish]

Cool setup. Following.

 

[sdreef]

LOL, I was looking to do the same thing. My luck, a wrasse will find a way thru the whole, LOL!!! Filled it all the way up today, and then had to remove enough water to get below the bulkhead for the overflow box. I had one leaking. I just filled it back up enough to get the bottom 3rd of the bulkhead wet and will take it from there.

I had the same thing happen to me. My heart sank a bit at first, but it ended up being a straightforward fix. I had a friend helping me and we ended up loosening and disconnecting the bulkhead from the overflow line. We were able to tighten the connection in the overflow box by turning the down pipe. I can't remember clockwise/ counter, but I was happy the unions were accessible from below the tank.

 

[sdreef]

Cool setup. Following.

Thanks!

 

[Billldg]

I had the same thing happen to me. My heart sank a bit at first, but it ended up being a straightforward fix. I had a friend helping me and we ended up loosening and disconnecting the bulkhead from the overflow line. We were able to tighten the connection in the overflow box by turning the down pipe. I can't remember clockwise/ counter, but I was happy the unions were accessible from below the tank.

I was going to push to get the return pumps running today. Now, I will just try to get it full of water to check the tank and bulkheads for the overflow. So far my returns, up to the check valves are not leaking. I still have the plumbing from the return pumps, thru the Algae and carbon reactors to check, but I can't until I turn on the return pumps as the are below the check valves. The fact that I was able to get it partially wet yesterday, fully wet today is enough.

 

[sdreef]

Unfortunately, last night I found an aptasia on one of my rocks. I took a rongeur and removed the rock surrounding the base of the anemone taking care to remove all of its tissue. I found a single aptasia at the base of one of my bubble corals. It has been removed to the quarantine system for now and I suspect it is the source. I had inspected all of my corals, but I missed this which is disappointing. I am hoping I caught this early enough to nip it before it evolves into a bigger issue. Will keep a close eye out.

After removing the rock at the anemone's base with the rongeur.

 

[sdreef]

I transferred over my highlighter tabling acro over to the new system. I was able to chisel it from the rock at the base.

It fit nicely into the new system. I have an Greg C Efflo frag low right behind the the sexy corals orange passion on the opposite side hoping to see it table across from the other side.