Your Average Joe's 75g Mixed Reef

[ChrisOFL]

Hello everyone and welcome. This tank was established in January of 2016 and is just shy of two years old now. It was an upgrade from my 29 gallon which I had started in June of 2014 and that was becoming overrun with hair algae. I decided to start fresh with a new tank and some experience under my belt to create a proper saltwater aquarium. The tank is a standard 75 gallon rimmed aquarium and for a sump I went with the 3rd generation Eshopps R-100.

Day 1:

The first year of the tank was not a failure but I was not seeing the growth I was expecting to see and a hair algae bloom caused problems for a lot of my corals. I was also having trouble keeping SPS; they would survive for about 4-6 weeks looking great and then one day they would RTN. I always wanted to keep things on this tank as natural and simple as possible, which is why I have a deep sand bed, so at the beginning of this year I removed all chemical filtration (GFO/chemipure) and my filter floss as well. My Deblius' lobster had failed to molt after keeping him for over 2 years and I had been dealing with the hair algae bloom so I thought I would change up my filtration methods in an attempt to have better success with my corals.

Post cycle algae bloom:

2nd Algae bloom just after one year old:

The algae issues solved themselves over time with a little manual removal during water changes and focusing on proper parameters. In March, after removing all chemical filtration, I wanted to focus on promoting denitrification and allowing bacteria and other detrivores to remove organics from the water. I started dosing NO3-PO4X daily, added a sulfur doped "brick" for better denitrification, and raised the water temperature to 81F. I still run my protein skimmer but sometimes it is off for a day or two (snails block the intake ) and these changes seems to really have turned things around. All of my corals have been visibly growing over the past 6 months, including my SPS. I'm hoping to continue this success as I would like to get a pair of panda gobies sometime in the future but they require a larger pocillipora coral to call home.

Filtration
~90lbs Haitian Live Rock
4” Deep Sand Bed created with Nature's Ocean Marine White #0 (120lbs) and Live Aragonite Reef Substrate (32lbs)
Eshopps R-100 Refugium Sump
Aquamaxx CO-1 Protein Skimmer
Sulfur Doped Aragonite Brick (rated @1000g)
Chaeto Clump

Lighting (Sunrise/Sunset based on local time, 5.5 hours at peak intensity)
Aquatic Life 6x54W T5 (2xBlue+ 1xCoral+ 1xAquablue Special)
Custom 100W DIY LED ([email protected] Royal Blue, 5@2W Hyper Violet, 5@2W Violet)
120W Black Box LED for refugium (16 hours at night, whites only @100%)

Flow
Jebao RW-8 (W1 mode at 100%) and RW-4 (H mode at 100%)
Sicce Multi Quiet 4000 return pump

Fish Livestock
Tomini Tang

Breeding False Percula and Snowflake Clown Pair


I plan to post updates and future progression of the tank for anyone following along. My current plan is to find some new fish for my tank. Only 3 fish is definitely not enough for a reef! I would also like to get a Battlebox in the coming months since I have been having much better success with my SPS than I have before with this tank. Thanks for taking to the time to check out my thread.

FTS as of 11/11/2017

Alk: 8.0 Calc: 430 Mag: 1500 NO3: 15 PO4: 0.00

 

[Adam G]

Nice write up of your progress. Your rock sure did color up nice. Are you dozing to part to maintain your ALK, Mag, and Ca.?

 

[jsker]

Great build!

 

[DSC reef]

Nice build progress, thank you for sharing. The tang is beautiful.

 

[ChrisOFL]

Nice write up of your progress. Your rock sure did color up nice. Are you dozing to part to maintain your ALK, Mag, and Ca.?

Thanks, the corraline is growing very nicely and definitely gives the rocks a nice hue. I dose sodium carbonate, calcion, and magnesion. I'm going to try switching to aquaforest calcium because they have a different form of calcium I've not seen in other products. It seems like a much better product from what I've read so far.

 

[ChrisOFL]

Nice build progress, thank you for sharing. The tang is beautiful.

Thank you! I wanted one for the longest and I'm glad I found this one, probably the most peaceful tang on the planet. He is supposed to have a brown body with orange tips but his looks purple under the tank lighting so his color is definitely a nice illusion.

 

[DSC reef]

I agree, that's one clean looking Tomini tang. I'd have one but our purple tang wouldn't have that. Lol

 

[ChrisOFL]

A few pictures of my more fluorescent corals that my phone can capture under the blue LEDs only. The frogspawn was one of the very first corals I purchased in 2014. It was a single head when I placed it into my first tank and has grown 12 individual mouths but seems to me that it is still quite small for being 3 years old. My ORA hydnophora frag took almost 5 months to start growing but is encrusting well and appears to be starting a new branch from the base. It also has a nice bright yellow appearance during the day and a neon green fluorescence under the blues. Zoas are some of my favorites but I'm trying to keep them limited in this tank so I have held back on purchasing a large variety. My ricordea is half way through splitting in this photo. Surprisingly, it doesn't seem to have any issues being in contact with my acan and neither does the acan. That acan in the photo is BRIGHT red in person but unfortunately my camera can not capture its color properly under the blue lights.

 

[ChrisOFL]

Some shots of the more noticeable growth in my corals. There are about 6-7 months in between photos for the LPS and the pocillipora is ~2 months worth of growth.

Acan


Favia


Pocillipora

 

[DSC reef]

Very nice! Frogspawn looks amazing under blues and that acan colony is looks great.

 

[ChrisOFL]

Berghias from reeftown are finally here! Finally can get rid this aiptasia once and for all.

 

[ChrisOFL]

Just wanted to share something unique that I purchased when I setup my first tank. I bought this rock out of a dry reef rock bin, not labeled anything special, I just liked the domed shape. But the first night in my tank I discovered that it glows in the dark! It lasts for a really long time and makes for a great moonlight in a small tank I'm curious if anyone else has ever seen or found something similar?

 

[DSC reef]

That's wild! It's like a biolumenescent algae.

 

[Teke Left]

I’m curious to see if others have had that! &&& I need some!

 

[ChrisOFL]

That's wild! It's like a biolumenescent algae.

Yeah it almost seems like that but I'm still not sure how reef rock would be able to obtain this type of mineral property. Natural fluorescence in rocks is pretty rare and usually only occurs under UV lighting.

I’m curious to see if others have had that! &&& I need some!

I've yet to find anyone. People at my LFS who have been in this hobby for 20+ years have never even heard of reef rock glowing in the dark. Just a lucky find I guess

 

[Fin]

Kryptonite?

 

[ChrisOFL]

Kryptonite?

Haha I like to think it's radioactive

 

[ChrisOFL]

Well it's been months since I've added any fish to my tank. I've been looking at getting a mandarin for a while so I decided to spontaneously buy one from Top Shelf. The quality of health of their fish are just fantastic if anyone is in the area. The pattern really caught my eye on this one, and I'm hoping it's color will return from a healthy supply of pods in my tank. It looks like it could be a nice orange/blue but the orange is very drab right now. I'm going to setup a live phytoplankton and copepod culture since algae barn has an amazing BOGO deal right now. I got two packs of 5280+pods and two 16oz bottles of live phytoplankton so I will use one bag for the display and the other to get a culture started. Going to head to Walmart and get a couple clear water bottles and a 1gallon mason jar with a spigot for easy copepod dispensing.

 

[PastaMario]

Cool glow in the dark rock and nice mandarin!

 

[ChrisOFL]

I wanted to be able to feed my new mandarin baby brine shrimp like Paul B but upon researching I found a local aquaculture facility that sells decapped baby brine shrimp with 95% hatch rate and is shelf stable for 5-6 months (in the fridge). I ordered and 8oz bottle which is supposed to be enough for 100, one teaspoon servings so I'm looking forward to trying out this product. I just need to build a little hatchery disk for my mandarin to eat from Here is a link to the product if anyone is interested. I also got my copepod and phyto culture station ready, I should be starting them on Wednesday and will make a little video of what I have then.