New tank, sump location question

[jcw]

Shout out to aquapros in glen ellyn. Picked up some small colonies for frag prices and a strawberry shortcake frag that was 1"+ long for $10.


Said that he was getting some cool sps's this week. Can't wait.


Haven't tested calc in several days. Ran out of reagent and wanted to wait on a group buy from brs.

Tested today and everything is reasonably stable with the new dosers.

Calc-470
Alk-8.9


Everything looks happy so far...

[Wolfmann81]

I like how you were able to integrate your QT chamber into the bottom of your sump, so you don't have to find a separate place for it in the house. Well done, looks very good.

[jcw]

Originally Posted by Wolfmann81

I like how you were able to integrate your QT chamber into the bottom of your sump, so you don't have to find a separate place for it in the house. Well done, looks very good.

Thanks! But it's not really a separate QT.

It was conceived as a refugium. At times, it was packed with chaeto.
Then, I wanted to convert it to a second display. Put clownfish and a carpet in there. Then, I thought maybe a dwarf lionfish and that urchin.
For now, it's a frag grow out tank. New frags grow in there to hopefully color up and I can pick and choose what goes into the DT. I have set up a seaparate 20g for QT frags in the past. But decided I will try this and dipping instead.

My tank did the best nuisance algae-wise when both my sump and that side tank was filled with chaeto. I get by with the chaeto in the sump only, but am going to move stuff around to try to double the area in the sump for chaeto.

[jcw]

Slowly losing my favorite frag, the bellina acro from DD. Dying from the base up which is not far to go. I looked for some AEFW but didn't see any. I'm wondering if some crab decided to munch on it.

All the other frags seems to be doing well with polyp extension at night and at "dusk."

SPS are such touchy things...

Waiting for some red dragon frags to come available and another try at a garf's bonsai. Then I'll be done with the acro frag buying.

An arrow crab was sold to me from liveaquaria with the clean up crew. He looks like an alien. Today I found him snacking on a smaller peppermint shrmip in his grasp, dead. I'm considering getting him out. He's growing like a weed and looks to have a rather voracious appetite.

[jcw]

Arrow crab 2, peppermint shrimp 0. It's hard to understand how it could catch and hold a shrimp with its skinny arms.

Time for the arrow crab to "move on."


I'll have to keep an eye on the other "crabs" in the tank, I guess.

[jcw]

Arrow crab- 3. Rest of the tank- 0.

Due to my laziness and my work schedule, i haven't been abke to get the arrow crab out yet. Tonight, i get home and i hadn't fed the tank yet. The arrow crab was in his niche munching on the body of my smaller anthias. Maybe it was going out already. If so, the crab is a great scavenger. If not, the crab is an assasin. I can't believe that tiny bodied crab needs to kill three tankmates for food.

[jcw]

Frag grow out tank pics

Under ai sol blue


Some close ups. Not a great camera or a great photographer...

[jcw]

Changed GFO a couple days ago and a couple spots on a tricolor developed rtn. Weird. I don't know if it was the fines from the GFO that got washed into the tank or the drop in nutrients.

All tests are salifert
Phos-undetect
Mag- 1200
Calcium- 410
Alkalinity- 9.3

Replacing mag. I turned down the alk dosing slightly to prevent burnt tips I've read with low nutrients and alk >9. Rest of the corals/frags really looking pretty good with good polyp extension at night primarily.

Just when I thought the tank was getting good...



Arrow crab- 4.
Arrow crab took out a largish astrea snail. I saw some blue legged dwarf crabs picking on it earlier in the day. I think the arrow crab was finishing off. Funny, the tail of the snail was a bright baby blue color when the arrow crab pulled him out of the shell.

I have never seen a smaller animal eat so much.

[jcw]

Buying tips...

when buying corals,

if someone can't turn on their lights to take a decent pic and posts dark actinic pics, it's probably because their corals are browned out.

if someone posts really cheap frags for sale and only posts pics of the mother colony, it could be because the frags are ridiculously small.

[niteowl03]

Good looking corals!!

[jcw]

Originally Posted by niteowl03

Good looking corals!!

thanks, but not really.

Most of the frags are shades of brown. but I'm finally getting some of them to color up. My favorite frag is the sixth pic in the above post that was sold as a purple nana. as you can see it was mostly brown but has since grown purple tips with splashes of green through the body. Almost like a tricolor of something along that lines. I'm looking for a good place for it in the main display.

There are a couple colonies I'm very happy with namely the neon green birdsnest (it really pops and the polyps are big enough to sway in the current), the green plating monti (I love the growth pattern), my green bali slimer (not that exciting but easily my healthiest looking coral with very dense polyps and both encrusting and staghorn growth), jedi mind trick monti (colors are very nice and blend from green to brown to purple). I'm happy with my rainbow and sunset montis (color is nice, growth is mostly encrusting with a little bit of plating starting), green psammacora, cats paw stylophora.



I'll post up some growth pics tonight.

[jcw]

[jcw]

It was time to replace the GFO and I thought since my phosphates are close to zero (I don't detect a color change on the salifert test kit), and nitrates are zero, I would just run carbon, no GFO, for awhile.

It's funny because I still have hair algae growing on ONE rock. If it falls off into other parts of the tank, it never takes hold for long and dissappears eventually. My bubble algae problem has almost resolved. The clean up crew has taken care of alot of it, and the popping of the rest hasn't seemed to have made it spread. It does show up in low light areas behind the rocks and in the overflows. I just cleaned up the overflow box and removed a sheet of it.

I'm still dosing vodka and vinegar at low levels (2cc and 3cc in my ~180g system) into the 55g cryptic fuge. The sponges in there are growing and spreading.


The arrow crab and I have come to a tenous agreement. I feed it a couple pellets every night and some fish once a week and it doesn't kill any more livestock.

Unfortunately, not before all the peppermint shrimp were murdered. The aiptasia are trying to make a come back. Time to break out the laser again and get some more peppermint shrmips.

Coral are doing pretty well. my tricolor however has pretty much bleached. No change in position, no change in flow, no change in light. So I'm guessing from too low nutrients since starting GFO. Go figure...

Started to dose some zeo product. It says 1ml per 25g every day but I'm only adding it about once or twice a week.

Fish are fine. The larger fish eat first and are fat despite feeding only once a day. the smaller fish not so much and could benefit from more frequent feeding but I'm still trying to find a balance between too much nutrients and too low.

Ich free still! (well maybe not ich free but no outward signs on the fish that I have noticed.) It has been 7 months since the last outbreak!


Picked up some frags locally and online. I'm at the point where I know what to look for so I'm only cherry picking some nice frags. pics to follow...

[jcw]

My spotted cardinalfish has a mouth full of eggs...
Sphaeramia nematoptera



It's jaw was sitting much lower than the others and I thought something was up. I finally caught a glimpse of them in there when he coughed.


I've got a bad case of redbugs.



Most of the hairy corals are doing fine though

[jcw]

I'm losing a nice sized acropora colony. Looks like fast stn or slow rtn.

It had great polyp extension the entire month in "Qt" and for the first week in the dt. Then the polyp extension went away and last pm see the tell tale signs of flesh flaking off from the skelton.

Alk is a little low at 7.7. And maybe overall, the slow swings are not helping the overall healthy of the more delicate corals.

I would say 1/2 of the corals are doing well, the other 1/2 are not growing and stagnating.



Cardinal fish still has the mouth full of eggs. I wonder if I should do anything?

[jcw]

so my luck with liveaquaria continues to suck. (can I say that?)

I sit in front of my computer like a reef fanatic/geek hitting the refresh button just so I can get a Dr fosters and smith Red Dragon Acro. Hit the refresh button probably 100 times.

Got a beautiful frag and scheduled pick up at the local fedex shipment center today.

I get there about 9AM. Sign for the box. I immediately notice the box is replaced with a Fedex box and not the usual liveaquaria box. Oh No...

I open the box and the invoice and catalog is soaking wet. I open the styrofoam and the frag is suspended in the air with about an inch of water at the bottom. Divers Den packages their frags with styrofoam block that the plug is attached to presumably to float it in the water upside down. Well, because of the lack of water, the styrofoam actually kept the frag OUT of the water, not that 1" of water would have kept the frag completely submerged anyway.


I call LA immediately and let them know what happened. They said, yes, Fedex called them and notified them of the problem. I told them there were pieces of the skin/skeleton on the inside of the bag. So, she basically apologizes and tells me to take it home and try to acclimate it. Acclimate it from air to water, I guess.

I then asked since it is a difficult piece to get due to the demand, would they be able to hold one for me when available. She repeatedly said she was sorry and couldn't do that.



I have a sad...


And IMHO sorry doesn't mean jack if you can do something about it and you don't.

[HostileYet]

Personally I would throw a ***** fit for which the light of day has never seen, until they fix that problem. It's unacceptable for the company and FedEx to do that and they need to get the replacement and fix any problems.

[jcw]

Haven't had the best week.

One of my MP40's seized and the excellent customer service department told me my options are buy replacement parts or send it in for repairs. So much for spending $400 for a pump that lasted me one year.

The red dragon acro frag was sent in a badly leaking bag and arrived out of water. customer service told me to acclimate it and wouldn't consider replacing it although someone on here offered to make it right.

So far, most of the frag survived and I'm watching it closely in the tank.

Moved my frags up from the secondary tank and mounted many of them earlier this week. I feel like I should mark this week as week number one as I'm pretty much stocked for corals. The tank seemed to do the best with that secondary tank set up as a refugium with more chaeto.

I hope the redbugs don't cause a significant problem.

So far, growth has been sporadic. If I let alk drop a little, growth seems to drop off dramatically. Keep it 9 and higher and it restarts. The red cap monti turns on and off like this. Some corals grow noticeably, others not so noticeably.

maybe some pics in the AM.

[jcw]

strawberry shortcake coloring up nicely




speciosa growing. losing that deep green color, though. Redbugs?




red planet not doing so hot. Redbugs?




jedi monti, green birdsnest doing very well...





the main body of this acro appears dormant. but beautiful branches are coming from the bases and sides...

[jcw]

Don't buy corals from me!!!
Redbugs...

[jcw]

Received my frags from copps. As large or (some significantly) larger than advertised. (except maybe the purple monster, but it's sooo slow growing I can understand)

Color on the aussie strawberry shortcake is the best I've seen. I have a couple from Liveaquaria and one wild from a LFS. Copps is the most colorful straight out of the bag by far. Too bad it's not mine.

Would not hesitate to order from him again (if I have room in the tank).

The difference between him and Divers Den is that even though the frags from DD are top notch, the ones from him have a more cared for appearance than the more commericial produced frags. Better color, prettier. The growth on the DD frags are usually great at the slight expense of color. That's just my inexperienced sps eye's take in it.

[jcw]

For the past month or more, since starting GFO, my phosphates have been undetectable on salifert. I've noticed at times my birdsnest will lose color and several other frags get pale. I have difficulty maintaining pink and green colors. Funny thing is that things go toward brown which I thought was excess zooxanthellae from excess nitrients.

Monti's look to be doing fine. It's the acros that seem to suffer.

I'm thinking now that I've gone from too much to too little.

I've been feeding more last week and so far no increase in phosphates. The color on the birdsnest is a light shade of brown.

Thinking about feeding reef chili or coral smoothie regularly.

Maybe even increasing the light duration/intensity. Unfortunately with a 6ft tank, light options are all expensive...

Some of this has to do with the redbugs. I'm working on locating some interceptor.

[jcw]

Tests with salifert
Calcium- 390 (extra dose added)
Alk- 9.3
Phosphate- undectable

I repeated the phosphate with double the volume and reagents to double the sensitivity per the instructions. Still got no visible color change. Then took water from the external side of the siphon overflows and doubled the volume. I think I got a very faint color change but still less than 0.015.


Spot fed the corals and tank with reef chili, tonight. Plan on doing this every other day for a week. Also added one of the zeo products as well, coral vitalizer I think. I hate dosing stuff you can't measure but oh well...


At an alk of 9 and greater, the corals are growing well. I have a beautiful efflo frag, a gorgeous tricolor from Copps, shortcake frag from LFS that is coloring up nicely, a purple nana that looks awesome from a local reefer.

Funny, my red planet is just soooo slow to grow and color up... It has to be one of my favorite corals for the growth pattern and color.

[jcw]

So after much internal debate, I decided to restart the GFO for another couple weeks.

reasons were and evidence for residual nutrients in the system...
1) hair algae keeps coming back in a couple spots.
2) my chaeto grows regularly requiring pruning
3) some of my acro turn brownish

so despite undetectable levels on salifert, I'm taking the advice of some experts here and putting aside the readings and responding to the condition of the tank which tells me that there are still nutrients around. I plan to run GFO and spot feed the corals.

Time will tell.

[jcw]

Calcium still 390
Magnesium 1290

adding both...

so far tank is tolerating the GFO fine. Spot fed the coral last PM. Seeing less build up of algae on the glass.