Slow and steady build thread

Creggers · Sep 1, 2020

So I've neglected to provide updates for a week or so now as I wanted to save it for when I felt that I had made some marked progress.

I'm sitting in the arline parking lot waiting for my shipment of KP Live Rock to come off the plane.. So there may be a double post today but a lot has gone down over the past few weeks.

In addition to getting the tank officially wet, I've blown through some of my targets and sit with a fully operation tank just waiting for cycling.

I purchased a used ReefBreeders Photon V2 plus from a local reefer for an absolute steal
I ordered an MP40QD from a member on this forum that got lost in the mail, so while I work to get my money back I picked up an IceCap Gyre 4k and paired it with a cheap Aqueon 900gph pump to get flow. Long term I want either another Icecap (probably 2k) or a MP40/10 to get 360 degree flow
I picked up a Tunze Ecochic refugium led
Added sand and rearranged aquascape at least 15 times
Completed my sump

Here's some pictures of the tank with the lights on and a better photo of the sump. Probably some more photos coming either later today or tomorrow cause I should be holding some new rocks here pretty soon

revhtree · Sep 1, 2020

Nice progression!

Creggers · Sep 2, 2020

So my box of rocks came! Spent essentially the entire day yesterday figuring out how to set up my tank and also made one minor mistake along the way

.

The 40lbs of KP aquatics aquacultured rocks arrived and were in my tank less than 24 hours after they were dropped off at the airport. I would say I had very minimal die off that I could see from shipping. The bottom of the bags were completely void of dead critters. After meticulously searching every nook and cranny of the paper that the rocks were lined in, I found two dead brittle starfish. The boxes smelled like an afternoon at the beach!

As for hitchhikers, I'd say I got a lot of brittle starfish. I counted at least eight, and it seemed like every rock I introduced to the tank had one on it. I also saw three pencil urchins hidden in cracks and holes throughout the rock. The only 'bad' hitchhiker that I found in the rock was a black Mantis Shrimp. He's about an inch long and I'm not very worried about him at this point. If he becomes a problem, I'll set a trap and banish him to the LFS. I also have a questionable red crab that I found that I banished to my sump who was hanging out at the bottom of the bag. He looked like he may have gotten a bit beat up in shipping and I didn't want him to die in a hole somewhere. I snapped a photo of him incase you guys could help in identification. Also a snail that I am not familiar with, including a photo below for identification

I got a pretty cool looking feather duster as well, and a lot of sponges and other random interesting algae and such. If it weren't for my mistake last night I would be able to snap some more pictures of the rockwork. Unfortunately the cheapo aqueon powerhead fell off the glass last night and kicked up a huge sandstorm overnight. When I returned to the tank this morning there was a fine dust on everything. I made every effort to try to blow most of it off, but I think I'm just going to need to give it some time.

I've got my last piece of major equipment coming today, an ATO unit so I can keep my hands off the tank for a while. I'm going to start testing the levels in the tank and see if we get any kind of cycle, but I'd be surprised if ammonia ever got too elevated due to the freshness of everything when it came in. Including a video of the aquascape. Very open to suggestions there

Perfectly packaged and ready to be opened

First rock pulled - there's an urchin here that I tried to get a shot of but it's hard to see

Brittle Starfish I saved from a papery death:

Tiny Featherduster:

Mr. Crab the red hitchiker (need to get a better photo but it's not a gorilla crab)

Crappy shot of the only snail I found - any idea what kind it is?

Video:

Creggers · Sep 10, 2020

Been a quiet few days, just letting the live rock mature in the tank. I just hit the uglies with the dry rock in the tank, it's about 70% covered in hair algae. The Live rock has none. 20/20 hindsight it would have probably made more sense to go with 100% live, and given the chance to build another tank that's the approach I'll be taking. The only downside I'm really noticing at this point is that it's considerably harder to get an 'attractive' aquascape with the LR as you can't really glue it in place like you can dry.

I've also been making nightly trips to check out the life that comes out of the rock, I've actually started a separate thread in my signature to chronicle my experience over the first few months with the live rock. Check it out here as a majority of my activity will be there while I wait around 60 days before adding fish. Wont be adding any coral worth updating this thread for until I get an Apex, so it'll probably be around a month before I check back in here! Including some photos of the tank as it stands today, you can see the algae growing on the dry rock and the live rocks looking as if nothings happened.

Creggers · Sep 20, 2020

I know I said it’d be a while before I checked in but due to a GHA explosion I’ve done some work with the tank and figured it was worth an update.

Been running my lights to keep the coralline alive and threw mysis shrimp and phyto in a couple times. Really underestimated how quick the GHA would explode and it led to it basically taking over my tank. It mostly settled on any surface without coralline coverage, score another point for live rocks.

During my water change today I pulled all of the dead rock and scrubbed them as clean as possible. In the process I made some adjustments to my aquascape. Also had a chance to run a par-meter to map out average par at various spots in the tank. Including a before / after shot below.

I’m keeping the lights off until Thursday when my clean up crew from reefcleaners arrives. I ended up getting a mix with some emerald crabs, the way I see it I can always pull them if they become a problem down the line.

I’ll also be receiving my icecap 2K this week which is the prefect size to fit between my corner overflow and the glass on the left side. I plan on running it in the opposite configuration from the 4K, and should have absolutely no problem with flow long term!

Before:

After:

Creggers · Sep 23, 2020

I’ve got some free time to think about what my stocking list is gonna be when the time comes to put fish in. Thought I’d get some feedback from the community to see if anyone has feedback. Posting in order that I plan on stocking the tank as well.

-Yellow Watchman Goby
-Lawnmower blenny
-Royal gramma
-Black Ice Clownfish (2)
-Reef safe wrasse (too many choices here, still trying to decide)
-Tomani Tang

Creggers · Oct 9, 2020

Been holding off on an update for a while as some things come together.... And boy have they!

I finally picked up an Apex EL, I was up in the air about how much value I'd get outta this thing but holy cow is it worth every penny. There's plenty of reviews out there so I wont bother wasting a bunch of time on it but seriously everyone should own one of these if they're planning on having any real success in this hobby!

Along with getting the Apex, I also picked up a doser & some three part to get my levels steady. I'm using the coral pro salt mixed to about 11dkh, when I tested the other day it was all the way down at 7! So I've slowly been bringing it back up to my target of 10.5. The auto doser seems to keep it steady, so I'm just dosing about .5 hardness a day to slowly get it back up.

I've introduced two fish - a full CUC - and some beginner corals to get things moving here! Photos below and a full tank shot, but to list em out for those that are interested.

I also rented a par meter from a local reefer and dialed my lights in so I have a map of what the intensity is like. Let me just say this was super important as I had a lot of hotspots and I really had to dial the lights back.

I've also put in an order with Quarantined Fish for a Naked Ocellaris, black frostbite clown, and a royal gramma. Should be receiving those by the end of this month. Once they are received I'll be ordering my tang!

So far my tank is stocked with the following:

Fish:
Spotted Hawkfish
Algae Blenny

Zoa / Paly:
Pizza Paly
Green Paly
Pandora Paly
Rastas
Blondies
Green Zoas
Red Zoa

LPS:
Blue Hammer
Green Splatter Hammer
Frogspawn
Green Trumpet
Blue / Red Micromussa
Purple / Blue Favia

SPS:
Green Birdsnest
Frogskin Arco
Purple Stylo
montipora spongodes

Since everyone loves photos here's a FTS - all my coral is so tiny you can barely see it

Pandora Paly

Frogskin Arco (I got some glue on the stick when placing in tank - I need to find a better way to handle mounting sticks)

Micromussa

Favia

Frogspawn

Splatted Hammer

Blue Hammer

Green paly rock

Trumpet (just split a 3rd head)

DC Reefer · Oct 9, 2020

Looking really nice and Dito on the Apex!!!

Daniel@R2R · Oct 27, 2020

How's the reef doing @Creggers? Looks like it's going in the right direction

Creggers · Oct 31, 2020

Figured it's a good as time as ever to check in. Had an absolute whirlwind week at work and with the tank over the past two weeks. I'm going to separate this post out cause there's a lot to add

As all posts should start - leading off with a current Full Tank Shot

Tank Update

So not a whole lot of equipment changes as of right now - only addition is that my Icecap 2k finally came, so I was able to turn the 4k down a bit and have some more turbulent flow in the tank. Coralline algae has begun to spread to my dry rocks and I'm super thrilled to see that progress already. I have begun the painstaking task of removing all the Pencil Urchins that I find, and I will be baiting a trap to catch the mantis shrimp as now that fish are going in I do not want them to become snacks. The only other bad thing I've come across is a polyclad flatworm - I'm going to need to find a way to get it out of there ASAP.

Tank Params:
DKH: 9
PH: 8.1-8.2
Ca: 450
Mag: 1400
Nitrate: 2.5

Coral

I've probably gone a bit overboard recently with my coral purchased LOL. Luckily everything is doing well in my system and I've only had one setback that ended up turning into a learning experience. You can check that out in This thread, but long story short I broke a frogspawn head in half and now I have two

! I'm including a bunch of photos below cause that's all anyone comes here for. I also ordered some new filters for my DSLR - maybe some better photos coming soon!

Fish

I ordered my first set of fish from https://quarantinedfish.us. Huge shoutout as they're super easy to work with. Unfortunately this is where the wheels started to fall off

. I ordered my clownfish pair, a frostbite clown and a naked as well as a royal gramma. Unfortunately the shipping stressed the naked clown out to the point that he's absolutely hanging on by a thread. He's deteriorated quickly since he arrived and despite a 45 minute drip acclimation he struggled to swim in the high flow of the tank. He acted as if he had swim bladder disease. He's been sequestered in a specimen container - unfortunately this led to my second mishap... The frostbite clown got spooked and shot himself out on top of the screen through the little space that was created by the container. Unfortunately the frostbite died.

The royal gramma is the only fish that I think will make it of the three. Luckily Quarantinedfish is standing behind their promise and will be replacing both the clowns assuming the naked doesn't make it.

I do plan on getting a tank appropriate tang (I'm ready for the tang police to kick my door down but I can handle it. Leaning towards a White Tail Bristletooth right now but who knows what i'll end up with.

Naked Clown

Frostbite Clown

Royal Gramma

Bubblegum Digi

Cherry Tree Monti

Ultra Button Scoly

Revived splatter Hammer

Bonsai Acro

Chaos Staghorn

Oregon Tort

TSA Bill Murray Acro

Creggers · Dec 30, 2020

12/30/20 End of Year update #videotime

I wanted to share a quick wrapup of my tank here now that it's the end of 2020. I've had a few setbacks none of which are entirely unexpected. Unfortunately neither of the clownfish made it

. The naked clown died from whatever stress induced issue he was having and the frostbite decided to go carpet surfing. I also got a pintail fairy wrasse that met an untimely demise due to the hawkfish that has since been rehomed. I've had only one notable coral loss, a TSA Sour Patch that STN over the past week.

I had to rearrange my aquascape in the process of removing the hawk, so the video should give you a pretty good idea of where I ended up. The only equipment that's really changed is the addition of a carbon reactor that I'll run 24-48 before water change to clear the water up. I know this may seem counter intuitive, given that I'm doing a WC anyway, but I do it to remove the tannins from the water that will remain, as well as any inorganic contaminants that may have found its way in over the month. My tank seems to really hate water changes however, so I think I'm going to dial them back to bi-monthly for now for added stability.

I have an order in with @Dr. Reef of a Yellow Coris, Indian Gold Ring Bristletooth, and two replacement clowns. I've also got a live aquaria order coming in tomorrow with a fairy wrasse and three blue reef chromis (both from the diversden). I've also since added a purple tang that is a juvenile. I plan on rehoming him to a larger aquarium that I will have within the next two years - he's under 4 inches long right now and doing perfectly fine in my 4ft tank. I think from a stocking perspective, I'll be done after these additions. If there's space and my tank can support, I'd consider adding a few more fairy wrasse but nothing more.

I'm also making a photo-diary of my SPS to track growth that I plan on sharing once I've got 3-6 months on the books. I've already seen some growth in the 60 or so days that they've been in my tank. I can't get enough of this hobby!

I hope you all have a fantastic New Year - I'll check in come 2021!

Creggers · Jan 18, 2021

So 2021 didn't exactly start off strong. I'm going through a wide-scale tank crash, and I'm still trying to sort out what happened. Going to call out to the #reefsquad to see if there's any idea what's going on. Going to chronologically list out the issues all which started over the holiday break.

Every single coral (accept for one green stylo) that has small polyps (birdsnest / lepto / anacrapora / acropora / montipora) is losing color and dying off. They've all been slowly losing color and having less and less PE. Now there's no PE and the color is very drab, with base up STN happening to nearly all of them.

Timeline:

1: Over the Christmas Weekend I left my tank alone for 3 days. Something went wrong with my ATO (back siphoned some salt water) and my SG crept up to 1.028. My doser also went awry, and my calcium dropped from 430 -> 350

2: About two weeks later I spilled some water on the floor and realized that I had some stray voltage in the tank (shocked myself) after a few days I was able to sort out that both a power head and a heater were throwing current into the water. (promptly replaced)

3: Around the same time I solved this issue, I mounted my lights to my ceiling, lights were originally 14in off the water and moved up to 18. I also added supplemental T5s that I have yet to turn on. I did not increase the intensity of my LEDs as I was experiencing some mild tissue recession and didn't want to aggravate it further.

4: I did an ICP test through triton, discovering that I had elevated TIN in the water (14 µg/l). I also had low CA/MAG which made sense given the dosing issue I had (slowly brought back into line, full details below) I began doing water changes which led to...

5: Dinos took hold on just one of the rocks in my tank, its one of the dry rocks I used. It's my zoanthid garden so I'm considering doing a peroxide dip to clear them out

I realize that this is a bumpy ride and could lead to more sensitive corals receeding from the base up, but it's strange that all of my corals that have smaller polyps are struggling. Even LPS like Chalice & cyphastrea are dead and / or dying. The strange thing is my Acans have never looked better, and one of my hammers that has historically had very minimal PE is thriving!

Fish stocklist:
Lawnmower Blenny
3 Blue Reef Chromis
Purple Tang (juvenile)
Fairy Wrasse
Royal Gramma

Full params:

Salinity: 35ppt (Calibrated refractometer)
PH: 8.1 -> 8.3
DKH: 10 (Hannah)
CA: 435 (Hannah)
NO4: 4.5 (Hannah)
PO4: .04 (Hannah)

Nanoreef13 · Jan 18, 2021

Looking great!

Ron Reefman · Jan 18, 2021

You've identified some serious issues and resolved them. But sps and lps corals can be fussy about some issues like stray voltage.

Hang in there. Keep working at it and ask questions more often! Just so you know, I really struggled my first 2 or 3 years in the hobby.

Creggers · Jan 19, 2021

Just pulled out two of the acropora that were over 50% dead to do a coral dip to confirm there aren't any pests - I figured I'd leave them in an aggressive amount of dip to shake any pests off (this coral was already written off as a loss unfortunately so they were taking one for the team)

The good news is I didn't see any pests come off of the two sticks - the bad news is it still leaves me at a relatively complete loss for the struggles I'm having and the wide spread crash. At this point the only logical answer is the stray voltage..

Creggers · Feb 1, 2021

Just an update - I've lost all of my stony corals... Over 2k worth of losses across all kinds of coral species. The only thing I can assume at this point is I stocked too quick and was riding a very thin line until the stray voltage event tipped everything over the edge.

I've got a couple frags that I'm keeping at friends houses and don't intend to add them to my tank until some time passes, but I don't even know when it'd be safe again. This is really demoralizing.

My acropora(s) are pretty much completely skeleton at this point, very little flesh left and by tomorrow morning it'll be gone.

Montipora covered in algae and my chalices looking horrible as well. Montipora spongodes rapidly going downhill as well. I'm even losing a war coral... The only thing that doesn't look terrible is some Favia, Euphilia, and some Acans (they only look good if I feed them).

I place a majority of the blame on myself for moving quickly (IE Adding corals prior to getting N/P under control) and the BRS heater that was throwing enough stray current into the tank to painfully shock me when I put my hand in the tank. I usually wear gloves so I think the heater was throwing this current for a while.

I'm not giving up and I intend to forge forward - I really enjoy this hobby but god dang is it a kick in between the legs when it seems like nothing is going your way?

Creggers · Mar 9, 2021

6 month update

After much thought and consideration, I believe that there is some kind of environmental contaminant in my basement that is leading to the decline of all the corals in the tank. Taking into account everything that I've seen from BRS / reports on this website / local reefers I should not have had a full tank crash the way that I did even given some of the speedbumps that I hit.

When I introduced the live rock I essentially created an instant cycle - I added coral and fish quicker than you would in a dry rock setup however at no point was my tank densely stocked.

I had a hiccup or two with water parameters, however never did my DKH drop from 11 -> 5 or anything, all of the errors or issues were identified quickly and corrected accordingly. Based on all of my history in the apex app, none of my levels were ever 20% off of their target, and generally stayed within 10%.

At this point I've lost basically every coral in my tank - at one point not too long ago my acropora were growing.... Something changed and reverted my success. I believe it is either some kind of contamination in the basement that has built up to levels in the tank that are detrimental, or some kind of biological issue that I cannot test for.

I'm seriously considering restarting my tank - I haven't completely thrown in the towel and I got flamed pretty bad on another post for saying it, but I just can't get over how bad this tumble was.

On a very positive note - my fish are super happy! I made my own fish food for them which was a load of fun and they're plump and devour it whenever I put it in the tank... So I got that going for me.

I'm at the very least going FOLWR for a bit while I sort out what I'm going to end up doing to get things back on track. Coralline Algae is growing like wild too which isn't a bad thing that's for sure

Reefer of Oz · Mar 10, 2021

Way to persevere! Don’t give up! You clearly find deep joy in this craft, hence the heartbreak after the crash. The money sucks, but it is watching the decline and demise of something you put so much focus and energy on that delivers the real blow. Don’t be discouraged. Learn and grow and become a better aquarist. Thanks for sharing your experience so others here can do the same.

A couple obvious take aways for me:
Ground probes are a cheap necessity.
Go slowly stocking.

Creggers · May 12, 2021

Soft restart:

After much reflection following my last post in march I realized that somewhere along the way I made a fatal error that threw my tank out of whack. I couldn't identify through various testing methods (Triton Water Analysis / Hannah / Red Sea) where I had gone wrong. I toyed with the idea of a full breakdown and restart but opted for the less intrusive and more logical let nature run its course.

I gave away a majority of my frags, and was down to just my Zoa Rock(s) and a blastomussa frag that seemed to be happy. I added copapods and dosed some Microbactor7 to deal with my dino problem and shut off my skimmer for the majority of March. I also pulled off my dosing pumps and let the tank run up until the end of April without much intervention.

The 3rd week of April I began mixing up 25 gallon water changes, scrubbed the glass, and did a series of 25 gallon water changes, cycling out 150% of the water. I did this because I felt that there could be some kind of contaminant in the water that none of the kits could identify. I also hadn't done a waterchange in many weeks as I was fighting Dinos for abit there, so I knew that my NO/PO was probably out of whack (No I did not test prior to the water changes, as they needed to happen regardless).

The first week of May I picked up a Neptune Trident for two reasons - 1: I will be away from my tank periodically and want to know it's stable. My original backwards slide started during a short vacation and I suspect that some steep swings set in motion the eventual crash. 2: the cost (600+reagents) is well worth it if I'm adding hundreds of dollars worth of coral on a monthly basis. Good intentions today to test religiously will quickly fall to the wayside and I know myself well enough to say that monthly manual testing is much more likely vs. weekly / biweekly testing.

I've also rethought my approach to dosing, water changes, and nutrient export.

Dosing: I started off with the intention to do the Triton Method, however I've decided to not run that method on this tank. Main reason is the only reason I went that way originally was to reduce my waterchanges and to feed my chaeto. Since I stopped dosing my chaeto has grown at normal speed and there are other products on the market to improve chaeto growth. I'm going to switch to a more basic two part, leaning towards Bionic as I've only ever read positive things about it.

Waterchanges: I had originally thought that I could allow the tank to tell me when a water change was needed, either through increased NO/PO or through overall health and happiness of corals. Lesson learned, when you see things on test kits or manifesting in coral health, it's probably too late. I'm now doing weekly 5 gallon water changes, and a monthly 25 gallon WC.

Nutrient export: Besides the increase in waterchanges, I started running carbon in a reactor 24/7 changed monthly. I don't run a lot of flow through it (probably 1x tank turnover) and I see value in pulling out any inorganic compounds that find their way into the tank. The crystal clear water is just an added benefit. For less than $2 a month, this seems like a no brainer. I am also considering running a rollermat, but will hold off until I add more fish as I feed very light currently.

From a stocking perspective, I will be adding corals VERY SLOWLY over the next few months and started doing so yesterday. I signed up for the WWC Coral Club and will only be introducing their corals into my tank and nothing additional. I will also be adding some new fish, specifically a Yellow Corris Wrasse and clowns, but I am in no rush to add that livestock at this time.

Finally the plan moving forward is pretty straightforward:

Stay true to my maintenance schedule (weekly 5 gallon WC w/ gravel vac, monthly ~20 gallon WC)
Keep an eye on my major elements via Triton
Slowly stock Corals May / June / July via Coral Club, then observe their health through the month of August before resuming

I'll post in a few days with some shots of the WWC corals as they accumulate to the tank, they looked happy when I introduced them yesterday but I want to wait before sharing as history has taught me day one and day five aren't always the same!

Thanks to all of you that have popped in over the past nine months or so as I got this thing off the ground. Really happy to be getting back on track and cautiously optimistic that I'll have some success!

Creggers · May 14, 2021

My WWC subscription box came and I'm going to post up what came through now that I took some pictures.

Overall I wont lie it isn't cheap at ~300 for 3 months, but I think there's value in getting high quality frags that are aqua cultured from a trusted source. Overall impressed with my first lot of corals - Looks like I even nabbed the last of their Fried Circiut platy as it's listed as out of stock now. I will say that I could have sourced these frags locally for much less but I did a lot of that last time and I think that could have led to some of my issues.

Neon Green Hairy Mushroom: