Turtle's Fairy Tale

[SashimiTurtle]

Meh.... Tariffs added 10%, the currency exchange rate made it 12% cheaper. Any price increases were from other causes.

But speaking of prices, did you see that power was selling for over $9k per MWH in Texas today?

They sure used it as an excuse to go up in prices by a good bit.

I just make it, I usually do not pay attention to how much it costs. Even at home... ;Facepalm;Nailbiting

 

[Fudsey]

Black Friday? Or last year? A lot of stuff went up in price this year(thanks tariffs :mad

Last year but they were over 300 new back then as well.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

So, Aphrodite has been doing very well. She's gotten bold at feeding time and actively chases food in the current. Here's her and Ahi swiming around at feeding time.

Unfortunately, I have not seen the bipartitus leopard. I cleaned the sand yesterday, had a bit of a dead spot and some very minor cyano that was dying off so I stirred what I could reach. Unless she's still hiding within the rocks somewhere.... hopefully she pops out soon but I'm not very optimistic.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Just curious before I left for work. Alk tested 8.9dKH at 0500. I'm done now, it is stable. Weekly testing it is.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Tank maintenance day.

Turtle made up a bunch of water yesterday. 44g Brute can 95% full. After getting the water to 1.026 we tested the alkalinity. 8.1dKH.

Oh, yea THATS what our salt mixes at and why we originally had the tank at 8.0dKH. So, um... for now, we buffered the fresh mix with 25ml of BRS 2 part. That bumped us up to 9.0. In the future we are going to let the tank sag down to 8.0 gradually and hold there. That way, there are no extra steps to forget or mess up when doing water changes.

Alk has been pretty stable tho, just tested after the tank has had a few hours to settle after the water change and we are at 9.1dKH, which is still within error range for our 9.0 target, but may show a slight trend upward. We're going to be lowering our dose to let the tank sag some, so this may be of no consequence.

Ok so what maintenance did we do? Well, we used the 150gph utility pump that was under $10 on Amazon and 20' of 3/8" tubing and pumped the sump out the back door, off the porch and onto some weeds I need to cut. Weeds hate saltwater! After I had each compartment pumped out as much as I could, I used the shop vac to get the remainder of the water and detritus that had settled in the refugium. We went bare bottom refuge last maintenance day, and it seems to be much easier to remove unwanted detritus that way.

To fill back up, since my living room is sunk 6" beneath the rest of the house, rolling a full brute over to the tank is impossible. We have a neat method we use. I pull enough 1/2" hose over to the tank to reach the sump, and my girlfriend plugs in the old 200gph AC pump from the Menagerie. I let this fill the sump enough to turn on the return pump, and I have her unplug it right when it hits the ATO sensor. Teamwork makes the dream work.

I added a few more of the branch rocks to the sump, if for no other reason to get them out of the 20 long I'm wanting to set up as a frag tank. Ripped the top part off the chaeto that was white and stringy because it had been pushed put of the water and baked under the Kessil.

I still cant get the color right for my FTS. Even in Lightroom. That monti isn't orange... it's more of a pinkish red.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I decided to change the dose to 3ml per day, down from 6ml. Hopefully that will allow the tank to gradually fall down to 8.0 over a week or so, at which point I can bump the amount back up to hold it steady.

Having a wifi doser with an app that I can easily change the dose in just a minute instead of trying to fiddle with the calculator controls on the Jebao feels like it will help me keep this tank stable enough for SPS. Time shall tell.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Water test day. It is Sunday after all. Calcium and alkalinity are right where I want them, so I moved back to 6ml per day on the dosing pump. It was so easy, all I had to do was adjust the total dose on each head and it automatically splits it evenly between all my set times. Way easier than the Jebao.

I glued the new corals, then chopped up some zoas that were growing too far up. I made all the sympodium scream too. It was getting too large also. I saved the colony, altho it's broken up. I'll glue a piece somewhere else maybe. I turned the spot it was in into an acan garden. I needed to glue a few of them and I wanted them to grow together.

Axe murdering the zoas and peeling the sympodium off the rocks has the tank kinda milky right now, but I got these pictures before I muddied up the tank.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Now that I'm up, and the tank is clear...

Acan garden!

 

[Scurvy]

Looking great! Hoping those Monti Caps spiral into something stupendous for you!

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Looking great! Hoping those Monti Caps spiral into something stupendous for you!

The red one is really taking off. I'm hoping the others catch up and dont get choked out...

8/13-8/25

 

[Brew12]

The red one is really taking off. I'm hoping the others catch up and dont get choked out...

8/13-8/25

Looks like how mine grows. The orange/red one grows a LOT faster than the other ones in my system.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

So we tested out a new coral website that is like a collection of different vendors on one page. Auctions and straight sales.... one of the locals I buy corals from was having some auctions and I picked up a few pieces for a pretty good deal. Only one was for the 90, but I can show you another one. You'll have to go over to the Menagerie to see the third.

First up is a Bali Green Slimer. Yea, testing the waters with an acro again. Something that has been around for a while and is on the noob friendly side of acropora. Looks happy and healthy seconds after putting in on the rack.

The second coral is going in the Reefer250. Well, it's already there. It's a bicolor trumpet. Red with neon green centers. I think its 6 heads? Forgot to count... wasn't worried about heads, I just wanted the color for the girlfriend's tank. Shes got a lot of large green corals... need something to break it up.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Got something happening with the tank. Skimmer was overflowing last night and ended up dumping 3 full cups of water before it would calm down. It was full of water again this morning so I dumped that as well. My trachy hasn't been inflated the past few days and my montis are looking like they have lost some color. Everything is obviously stressed.

Hopefully whatever it is clears itself out. I'm going to replace my carbon tonight and see what the salinity is in my brute can. I think I have about 30 gallons mixed up but salinity was around 1.018-1.020 last I checked. Cant remember if I added more salt or not. Water change most likely tomorrow after work. Tonight I have plans after work, I'll put in some fresh carbon after that.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

We've ruled out everything down to axe murdering zoas in tank that caused the stress. There are 3 other salt water tanks in the house and none of them were effected so it is not environmental, and nothing else was added to the tank that could cause it other than removing those zoas and the sympodium. The tank did have a milky haze to the water after everything was done, but cleared up quickly.

The skimmer quit going nuts after removing 4 cups of overflow water, has been running for 48 hours now without overflowing and is pulling a dark skim out. It had about an 1/8 inch of coffee colored water in the cup last night. My trachy is still not fully inflated, but is looking to be in a little better shape, acans are opening back up as well(I did move quite a few of them so may not be related to the zoas). The Monti spongodes is still lacking color, it's a very pale green, but is also the closest to the zoas that were fragged/ripped off the rock. Polyp extension appears to be unphased and I don't see any tissue damage.

The Monti cap multi colony over on the right side of the tank, the purple polyp birds nest and purple stylo frags on the rocks, as well as the new green slimmer frag on the rack are all fine. Also, the Monti setosa that is on the opposite side of the zoas as the spongodes, is oddly unaffected.

 

[Scurvy]

I guess zoas could be the cause but it seems unlikely to me. Totally not a zoa guy so what do I know but could something else have spawned?

 

[SashimiTurtle]

I guess zoas could be the cause but it seems unlikely to me. Totally not a zoa guy so what do I know but could something else have spawned?

Unless my girlfriend poured a bunch of drain cleaner in the tank, and she would never harm the tanks... I can't think of anything else isolated to that tank. The drop-off is 10 feet away and it's perfectly fine. I did squish quite a few of the zoas and a thick milky substance came out of them. Consistency of snot and lingered in that area. I had flow turned off while working. I need to find a better way to control and contain those things... maybe in future builds, they will be excluded, or at least secluded.

Maybe, my girlfriend will let me borrow her bicolor angel that seems to have an appetite for zoas... lol. Too bad it also appears to have an appetite for acans as well. Leaves blastos alone tho, which is odd. I figured they'd be just as tasty as acans.

At least everything is looking like it is recovering. A few weeks and hopefully I won't be able to tell anything was wrong.

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Alk tested at 8.5 Friday night. The ATI calculator is pretty helpful in plugging in numbers and giving a suggested dose. I told it the tank volume, my current dose, where my alk was, where it went and it told me how much less I should dose. Current daily dose is 4.4ml. Hopefully, September's line is a lot flatter than August's. We did have that 9.0dKH brain fart in the middle of the month also...

 

[SashimiTurtle]

Pictures...

 

[crusso1993]

Pictures...

Nice!

 

[homer1475]

Just read this entire thread(yes all 117 pages!), very nice tank!

I'll now be following as I just got into SPS myself, and have the SCA 80G cube(just 4 inches shorter then your 90). We basically have the same system with the exception of I got their PNP system with their sump, although I cut it apart and remade it to fit my needs.