30 Gallon Reef

M

miah2bzy

New member
Got a bunch of equipment from one of my uncle's. Have been wanting to setup something bigger than my 20.
Will be adding some more live rock (planning on getting a few small pieces of "high" quality rock from my lfs to seed and then also adding some more dry rock) and argonite sand and letting that sit for a while before adding anything else. Here is what I have so far:

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10 lbs of dry rock from an older tank I had, 10 lbs of sand.

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Lighthood is a little overkill but will downgrade later once I add fish. Right now it's running 1 96 watt actinic and 1 96 watt 10,000k bulbs.

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I got this last week off of craigslist, it's a Reef Octopus BH-100. It's been running now for about 5 days and having to adjust the collection cup throughout the day - still haven't found the sweet spot yet but am getting closer.
 
There's also an old seaclone that I had as well hanging on the back - practically worthless but I am keeping it to run as a mini-fuge; took out both tubes that were in it and adding some refugium rubble from a friends tank and then the macro algae later on.
 
Got my 20 gallon quarantine tank setup last night: 30 watts of light, penguin biowheel filter, and heater - bare bottom, no decor.

How long should I let the fish sit in this tank until moving them to the display? I think at one point I had read 2-3 weeks. Any thoughts?
 
Added another 20lbs of live rock from a friends 400 gallon tank. He threw in some small corals to get me started.
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First time superglueing my corals down and I think I may have had too much on them, wasn't sure how to do that but they were extending their tendrils out later on so that was good.
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I am not sure what this is, it floresc green under the atinic, but only on the tips. Forgot to ask him.
Here is a second pic of it:
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Picture is a little blurry but here are my green star polyps. I tried to keep them away from everything and gave them their own corner because I had read that they tend to take over whatever rock they are on.
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Ricordia:
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And lastly, red and green mushrooms:
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There was also a small piece of xenia that came with some polyps and a few small blue polyps - I am unsure if the blue polyps or the xenia will survive though.
 
Added 20 lbs of argonite sand today and 3 new torcus snails.
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This is probably the coolest shot I've gotten of the florescent mushroom - didn't notice the blue dots on it before until just now.
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I moved it to the sandbed, had read that was where they do best.
Thoughts?
 
Got 2 perculas on Monday. They've been sitting in my quarantine tank.
Had added the new sand and this caused a spike in the diatoms, the trocus snails are taking care of it.
 
I wouldn't say the lighting is overkill, their really isn't such a thing. if you have good flow you could grow some acros in their.
 
Did a 10% water change on the tank (3-4 gallons). I shut everything off before hand and then turned everything back on after I had put in the new water, which was the same salinity and really close (within a few degrees) to same temp. The protein skimmer isn't producing small bubbles anymore, instead it's a lot of larger one's and no skimmate pulling through. Is this normal after a partial water change?
 
Did some aquascaping last night, moved some things around and tried to be sensitive to light needs of the corals. Here's what it currently looks like now:
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Side views from couch:
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And lastly the clownfish still in their quarantine:
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Did a freshwater dip on them this morning for 5 minutes, had seen one of them flashing a little bit yesterday. Didn't notice anything in the containers afterwards so we'll see how they react over the next few days. Hoping to be able to add them to the display in less than a week.
 
Had quite a bit of green hair algae this morning, thinking it might have been from the water change. Still getting some diatoms but not as much. I used tap water treated for chlorine, hadn't ever needed to worry living in the mountains about the water quality but may need to switch to RO/DI if the water changes continue to produce algae blooms.
 
Finally found a use for my old Seaclone Skimmer. Took out the inner tube, broke the riser tube and attached it to a maxi-jet using 5/8 in tubing that I clamped tight to skimmer. Filled it with chaeto macro algae and it now runs great as a modified hang on refugium. Will post pics of it later.
 
Moved the clownfish over to the display tank today:
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Made a chaeto reactor out of my old seaclone. I think this hitchhiked in it, any ideas as to what it is?:
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Feeding the clown prime reef and a flake got caught in one of the hairy mushrooms, it now looks like this:
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That's just a bristle worm. Nothing to worry about. Just don't touch it with your bare hands as the bristles are really thin and can pierce skin without gloves. I can only assume it would feel like a splinter. The mushroom is just feeding on what it caught.
 
JDMR2 said:
That's just a bristle worm. Nothing to worry about. Just don't touch it with your bare hands as the bristles are really thin and can pierce skin without gloves. I can only assume it would feel like a splinter. The mushroom is just feeding on what it caught.
Click to expand...

It opened back up after about an hour. Hadn't seen that happen before. Glad it likes flake food!
 
JDMR2 said:
That's just a bristle worm. Nothing to worry about. Just don't touch it with your bare hands as the bristles are really thin and can pierce skin without gloves. I can only assume it would feel like a splinter. The mushroom is just feeding on what it caught.
Click to expand...

you can also be allergic to them. I got nailed by one and my finger blistered up. But bristleworms are good to help keep the tank clean.
 
I think one of the mushrooms is splitting:
<a href="http://s1363.photobucket.com/user/miah2bzy/media/IMG_6378_zps00b41ab6.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r706/miah2bzy/IMG_6378_zps00b41ab6.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo IMG_6378_zps00b41ab6.jpg"/></a>
I was cleaning out my HOB refugium and as I was sifting through the chaeto - glad I had a bucket to do this in - I found a baby starfish, I put him in the main tank:
<a href="http://s1363.photobucket.com/user/miah2bzy/media/IMG_6374_zpsf90376b8.jpg.html" target="_blank"><img src="http://i1363.photobucket.com/albums/r706/miah2bzy/IMG_6374_zpsf90376b8.jpg" border="0" alt=" photo IMG_6374_zpsf90376b8.jpg"/></a>
 
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