A Living Room Reef: 90 Gallon Mixed Reef Build

[troubadour11]

And last but not least, we put a bit of work into our new front and center-piece. :wildone:

- Here's the last newest addition in it's Revive bath... Branching neon yellow hammer coral.

^^^ and that picture is really pretty accurate to it's color using just a white light flashlight and ambient room like to grab that shot in the measuring cup.

Now here's where things really got interesting. Since moving that Zoa rock up to the front of the tank, this plan has been slowly coming to fruition. And now with this new hammer coral, we can finally plant the tri-fecta down and just fill in around them as needed.

- Here you can see the Orange Firefish asking "WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU DOING!!!???"

^^^ That's my zoa rock up on top of the far left tower. Since there was no SPS up there yet, it made a convenient shelf to set the rock on because I had a Frogspawn, Torch, and a few Zoas loosely attached to the rock.

Time to pull that sucker out for a few minutes, attach things better and at better angels. Much easier up out of the tank to do this work!

- Just setting it up there made it look almost like a perfect fit! I may need to add a smaller ball shaped rock up here on the top just to give a little more variation because I kind of like this thing sitting up there.

- Other then it being slightly to big and having a bunch of LPS on it ;-)

Sorry for the blown out poor quality on these last couple. Just snapping WIP's (works in progress) and not really focusing on "pretty pictures."

- Then I forgot to take some shots with the rock out doing all my gluing and stuff... but here it is dropped back into position and all attached to the rock. Right after dunking into the tank to stay.

- Here's the little hammer finally starting to peak out after all the drama and being moved around all afternoon. A nice shot next to our zoa purchase from the last round too.

- And our tri-fecta of Euphyllia all attached to a separate rock that can be removed to frag and keep these 3 pieces a little more isolated hopefully keeping sweeper stinging tentacles away from the other future coral pieces.

- And fingers crossed, our new clown pair will find this as a suitable host site in the near future...


- That new mushroom GLOWS under the moonlight LEDs.

- And a final BLUE reef photo. Still working on learning my camer phone. One day I'll be off work long enough to actually play with my toys or see my reef under daylights and not only moonlights or lights off!

- At least here you can see the placement of the tri-fecta rock and what's going on around the rest of the tank at night. You can see the 3 new pieces. Front right corner, middle on the rock, and front left corner. And by the way, it's not really that blue to your eyes.

Well, that was my 1 day weekend and the sneakiness we got up to. Now it's time to get this job put to bed and get up to date on some maintenance. Time for a water change and then filling back up the ATO/kalk mix after we get the new water swapped in. That may not be until the weekend though. So time to watch and wait for now :thumbsup:

 

[DisBeReef]

"The Mrs."

"The Mrs."

....And so the time has come... your wife has invaded your man space.... :wavehand: I've decided that I have come far enough in this hobby, and have formed enough opinions and questions of my own, so I took your advise to "stop asking you to ask people and just join the forum"- so take that with a spoon full of sugar. :love1:

To Biggles and Bello... I believe you have been more friend than foe to me in my trying to get my way with things- so I thank you. :beer: I have enjoyed snooping through the threads and reading all the playful banter (even that which was at my own expense... and quite frankly, I'd rather be called "The Lionfish" than "The Mrs.") Troub and I have both used the words "But Bello/Biggles said...." ! Honestly though, my husband (what do I call him? The Mr.???... The Big Fish?? ... taking suggestions here......) has come to value the opinions, first hand accounts, and insight that has been provided to him by everyone on these discussions. In case you haven't noticed, he is ready, but a bit timid, to try new things- which is why our recent Fungia purchase put me in.... wait for it... DisBeReef (HA!) :lmao: He is more the perfectionist and cautious one in the marriage (including non reef-related), whereas I'd just throw everything in there and learn my lesson the hard way- so I guess between the 2 of us we'll manage to have an awesome tank with only small margins of error. :debi:

I feel I should end this by participating in an actual reef discussion... so here are my current questions:

- We want to eventually put a fish (or a few) in the refugium just to keep things moving in there- is there any benefits to, or not to, keep fish in the refugium? (Is that a stupid question?) Any recommendations as to a more preferred fish to throw into a 75 gallon deep sand refugium?

- Will acans or blastos spread across a rock structure if there is sand covering/separating part of it? See photo below, we have a solid rock structure that has a 'foot-island' sticking out of it, and I am curious to know if they will cross over where there is sand covering 1/2- 1 inch over the rockwork. 'The Big Fish' is nervous it will be able to move onto the main rockwork & we would rather keep some of the encrusting things more contained if possible.

 

[Bello]

Geez, I goof off for a week and there's sooo much going on!!!

That's a pretty good hack job on the RP, Troub.... How is it doing now? I ask because the tissue on the acro looked a bit thin, but hopefully I'm wrong .

The Jawbreaker looks pretty sweet. Is it one color or multiple? Can't make out clearly. I doubt it's a Ric though, most probably a Discosoma..

I really like the fungia and the neon yellow hammer, great pickups :thumbsup:. Never seen them in person here. Is the fungia orange with green tentacles and purple tips? Once again, something I've never seen here :thumbsup:. Glad to see more corals coming into the system now .

Have you noticed any growth in the older Euphyllia species? If not, maybe stronger lighting will help.

And to the Mrs./Lionfish/Mrs.Troub/DisBeReef (lol, pick one), welcome to Reef Central :thumbsup:. It's pretty awesome that you share the hobby with Troub :thumbsup:. We kinda figured that the cautious/quick thing out, but credit to you guys that you've started pretty well, with minimal losses .

- Currently, I have a refugium as well, which is a barebottom tank with Chaeto. I have a 6-line wrasse and a Tomini tang in there. The purpose for these choices is that the Tang is detrivore but not very keen on Chaeto, so he's pretty much on clean up duty for excess food that overflows. The 6-line is there because I have no other place to put him, lol. While the tang is a good addition IMO, the 6line decimates all pod life in the refugium, which I'm not overtly concerned about right now. Thus, I'd say that certain fish can be kept, as long as they don't eat what you want to grow in the fuge, whether that's algae, pods, worms, sponges etc. Since the tang and the wrasse both eat whats already in/passing through the fuge, I never intentionally feed them. I think fish like clowns/chromis/maybe cardinals etc would be fine in the fuge :thumbsup:

- I have limited experience with blastos and acans, but here goes.... Blastos grow very very very very slowly and I find them to be a bit picky, especially with flow. Acans on the other hand have been more tolerant for me, and grow quicker IME. Note: I have never intentionally fed any of them, so they grow only with light. I'm pretty sure that neither will grow onto the sand, and will require a solid base under them to encrust and grow. I couldn't see the pic unfortunately. So rock islands would typically isolate them to a large extent. For more uniform/natural acan growth, I place them onto a flattish rock, and fill up the sides of the frag with putty, so it can encrust and grow over it, neatly.

Whoa.................... I've rambled like Troub , and with no bloody coffee!!

 

[rale2001]

This is a sweet build I read all 18 pages of it i have a 90g also there needs to be a 90g tank thread for people to show off theirs... very impressive sir

 

[troubadour11]

....And so the time has come... your wife has invaded your man space.... I've decided that I have come far enough in this hobby, and have formed enough opinions and questions of my own, so I took your advise to "stop asking you to ask people and just join the forum"- so take that with a spoon full of sugar.

Yikes!!!! Everybody HIDE!!! She found us!!!!! Let's try to keep it clean though, honey. In the future, try to avoid invading my "man space." :worried: It gets dirty in there and is quite uncomfortable when housing invaders :bum:

But please feel free to hang out here on the forums with us and chip into the conversation about our system and others. If we start to disagree on a direction to take the tank, we can always come here and put it up to a vote.... Judge Troub presiding, of course :hammer:

Geez, I goof off for a week and there's sooo much going on!!!

That's a pretty good hack job on the RP, Troub.... How is it doing now? I ask because the tissue on the acro looked a bit thin, but hopefully I'm wrong.

The Jawbreaker looks pretty sweet. Is it one color or multiple? Can't make out clearly. I doubt it's a Ric though, most probably a Discosoma..

I really like the fungia and the neon yellow hammer, great pickups. Never seen them in person here. Is the fungia orange with green tentacles and purple tips? Once again, something I've never seen here :thumbsup:. Glad to see more corals coming into the system now .

Have you noticed any growth in the older Euphyllia species? If not, maybe stronger lighting will help.

- Unfortunately I've been crazy busy with work lately on this job and I haven't had much time to watch or work with the tank. In fact, DisBeReef just cleaned it out and executed a water change for us Saturday morning while i was at the work. :thumbsup: to her! But because of that, things have been looking pretty dismal for the SPS in our tank right now.

I'm guessing we will end up completely loosing the RP and probably the Purple/Sky Blue piece we bought at the same time.

I checked all our levels and other things over the weekend to try and narrow down any problem areas. If memory serves me correctly we were at PH=8.3, CA=450, Alk = 7.8, Mg=1280 for our levels.

The Mg had tested low lately, near mid-1000's. So I'm wondering if the SPS were hating possibly low Mg after starting to drip kalk and being late on a water change? Because it seems like, for the most part, that things are pretty close to in-line and I'm just trying to minimize any swings in those areas. I did dose some Mg after the tests following the water change. Thinking it might be best to attempt to keep Mg up near 1350-1400 most of the time.

Also, just to be safe and avoid any potential unknowns from causing problems we weren't aware of... We double checked our refractometer and made sure it was calibrated to the proper levels with a known solution... It was... And I also tested my RO/DI output and I am still getting perfectly clean water for both ATO and water changes....

Both Monti's (Pink Cap, Orange Digi) seem to be doing just ok. Maybe a bit bleached/pale though too. But there's PE on both on and off throughout the day. There's also PE on the Red Planet despite it slowly fading away. :-/

So we're kind of down on SPS right now. But we knew there was the risk adding it when we were trying to get dosing and all of our levels stable. I'm hoping all the changes we've been slowly making will even out the system and at least let a few SPS survive.

Can to much or to little flow cause slow tissue recession or bleaching on SPS? Other then our levels possibly fluctuating some over the last month (which could very well be the issue) as we started dialing in the dosing adjustments, everything has been pretty rock solid. We were late on the water change and the Mg dropped a little low as I mentioned. But any fluctuations couldn't have beem to dramatic. I went from mid- 6's DkH slowly up to high 7's, Ca was high 300ish up to 450ish, and Mg has been between 1000 and 1350 the whole time. And those adjustments happened slowly over a month as we started dosing Kalk.

The other culprit could be the LED lighting which I have not tested with a PAR meter. But, both the RP and Purple SPS pieces have been at basically the same depth in the tank as my torch coral, duncan, monti's, and trumpet coral that are all doing fine with the lighting. I did reduce the white/color max output %'s and lowered their run-time by 4 hours (to help combat algae and give corals that were showing bleaching a little less light to see if that was the cause). And that lighting change was 3 weeks or so ago now.

All the LPS seems to be doing just fine to me. I can't say that I've notice any growth on the Frogspawn or Torch. But they both are fully extended and seem plenty happy. In fact, that 3 Euphyllia rock with the Zoas seems to be doing the best of anything in the tank right now. And it looks AWESOME with the "normal" colored green/pink Frogspawn, gold with glowing purple torch, and neon-yellow hammer on it. And the new hammer has settled in just fine as well.

Oh, that "Jawbreaker" new mushroom is pretty much solid, vibrant, neon red. At least it's face is... underneath the disk and around the foot area it's a deep fleshy purple/red kind of color. Not bright neon red like the face So, 2 colors if you count the foot area. But basically bright red on top, and then deep purple/red on the bottom. But it does have a bumped/bubbled texture to the disk similar to how ricordeas look.

And lastly, the Fungia disk coral is really interesting. I'm extremely glad DisBeReef talked me into it! :thumbsup: The disk area is pale white/pink (kind of striped radiating out from the mouth along the tentacles) and gets to a pale pink-to-dark-purple edge and underneath color. Then the tentacles are the "typical LPS semi-transparent green" with purple dots on the tips. Here's the shot from the store I go to taken under 20K metal halides. (not my exact specimen, but a brother/sister of our piece.

Well, I may have rambled here on that a bit for you Bello. I started the post on Saturday at work. Left it open, and then modified and finished it up today on my lunch break. LOL.

Bottom line is I would LOVE to get my SPS stable. I see growth on the Pink Monti-Cap and Birdsnest, but both seem pale and struggling a little despite actively building their base structure. I won't be adding much more until I can maintain a few more of them successfully.

This is a sweet build I read all 18 pages of it i have a 90g also there needs to be a 90g tank thread for people to show off theirs... very impressive sir

Hey there rale2001! Thank you so much for the complements and reading through the build up to now. It's starting to get to be a bit of a bumpy ride. But we're slowly getting there. I still have a long way to go on my build... finishing the canopy/stand woodwork. Building the backdrop. Finishing off all the programming and for the RA unit and such. But lately we've been trying to get a few more things stocked up and fun to look at.

In fact, I may take some time now to let things sit and settle a bit since we're fighting with make our SPS happy. Maybe slowly work on the stocking list a bit more for fish and try to finish off some of the literal "building" of the system. Then once things start to turn around on the SPS side (hopefully in the next month as all of our levels finally settle down and level off) we can get back to stocking more corals. I don't know... we will see. But I'm not adding much more until things seem happy again....

Well, I'm off for now. Let me know if anyone has thoughts on all that. I'll be popping back in probably later in the week and give FTS's and document the condition of things. I should have some downtime coming up and can bring you all up to date with some pictures :beer:

 

[Bello]

Good day to the Kimye Reefing couple ....yeah that was a cheap shot, I agree . Shame on me

SPS are always going to be more finicky and difficult to understand, but it'll happen in time and experience :thumbsup:. I suspect the monti's are looking pale, because of an excess of light. Happens a lot, not much of problem once you move it down a bit.

It's important to get the big 3, as stable as possible. I doubt its the flow thats irritating them, most likely the fluctuations. Frags are more difficult to care/more sensitive for, than colonies, IMO. But that's really the joy of it, to watch them grow . Also, for Mg, mine's usually around 1200-1250ppm, with no real problems. I don't really test for Ca and Mg, so dunno the current levels. I just assume that the Calcium Reactor releases 'em in balanced amounts .

 

[martinphillip03]

First of all, I am no LED expert. But I have read numerous LED users start at 60 or 65 % and slowly ramp them up.
Comments are encouraged.

Marty

Good day to the Kimye Reefing couple ....yeah that was a cheap shot, I agree . Shame on me

SPS are always going to be more finicky and difficult to understand, but it'll happen in time and experience :thumbsup:. I suspect the monti's are looking pale, because of an excess of light. Happens a lot, not much of problem once you move it down a bit.

It's important to get the big 3, as stable as possible. I doubt its the flow thats irritating them, most likely the fluctuations. Frags are more difficult to care/more sensitive for, than colonies, IMO. But that's really the joy of it, to watch them grow . Also, for Mg, mine's usually around 1200-1250ppm, with no real problems. I don't really test for Ca and Mg, so dunno the current levels. I just assume that the Calcium Reactor releases 'em in balanced amounts .

 

[DisBeReef]

SPS Carnage

SPS Carnage

the Fungia disk coral is really interesting. I'm extremely glad DisBeReef talked me into it!

- I LOVE the Fungia! It is definitely an interesting coral and has more shapes and fluctuations that I expected to see!

- Unfortunately I've been crazy busy with work lately on this job and I haven't had much time to watch or work with the tank. In fact, DisBeReef just cleaned it out and executed a water change for us Saturday morning while i was at the work. :thumbsup: to her! But because of that, things have been looking pretty dismal for the SPS in our tank right now.

- Just to clarify the above- refers to him working... not because I just did the water change (BTW- pat on the back to me for doing a water change all by myself for the first time AND not making a mess of things) :wavehand:

Good day to the Kimye Reefing couple ....yeah that was a cheap shot, I agree . Shame on me

Ouch....! New TV Series Coming soon: 24 Hour Reef Reality TV "“ watch as everyone's favorite couple try not to kill all of their corals (and each other) after spending all of their money at the LFS!

Speaking of killing corals.... as mentioned- our SPS are not looking so well right now (it's actually quite embarrassing). :facepalm: Since Troub's been working so much I took some photos quick today to show what is starting to quickly look like an SPS graveyard on the right side of the tank- very frustrating. My inexperienced opinion is that the 5 week delay of a water change is a big part of the culprit... but I could be very wrong as we have been messing with a lot of little variables too and I have not done nearly the amount of research that Troub has to know what i'm talking about...

Red Planet:

SPS on Left, Center & Right

 

[troubadour11]

Good day to the Kimye Reefing couple....yeah that was a cheap shot, I agree. Shame on me

HA!!! Cheap shot, yes. But here's how lame I am... I had to look up the Kimye reference :facepalm: LOL But once I got the reference :angryfire: Hahaha.

SPS are always going to be more finicky and difficult to understand, but it'll happen in time and experience. I suspect the monti's are looking pale, because of an excess of light. Happens a lot, not much of problem once you move it down a bit.

It's important to get the big 3, as stable as possible. I doubt its the flow thats irritating them, most likely the fluctuations. Frags are more difficult to care/more sensitive for, than colonies, IMO. But that's really the joy of it, to watch them grow . Also, for Mg, mine's usually around 1200-1250ppm, with no real problems. I don't really test for Ca and Mg, so dunno the current levels. I just assume that the Calcium Reactor releases 'em in balanced amounts.

First of all, I am no LED expert. But I have read numerous LED users start at 60 or 65 % and slowly ramp them up.
Comments are encouraged.

Marty

Thanks for chipping in Marty, I definitely started low when I first added them to the system and worked my way up. Expert or no. Your (as well as others) ideas, comments, and thoughts will always be appreciated. So please keep them coming when you feel you might be able to help us along in our reefing journey. :thumbsup:

I totally get what everyone is saying on the lights. But both DisBeReef and I are really highly doubt it's a lighting issue at this point. Although we could definitely be wrong. A short lighting re-cap in regards to the current SPS issue we're having below:

I started my LEDs over LPS/Rics/Zoas and the Monti-Cap and Birdsnest (where they are both SPS currently still located) at about 45 or 50% (for both blue/UV and white/color) and slowly worked my way up to 100% over about a month and a half with no negative signs on anything. It then stayed at basically 100% for a few weeks. Also, it's at max output only for an hour or two per day because we run the sunrise/set effect from 0%-x%-0% between my rise and set times.

The LEDs stayed at the 100% level for those few weeks with no worries, and then I had the slight SG slip up and dropped to 1.024 for about 4 or 5 days until the level got back up to 1.025/26. That's when the SPS started to show signs of loosing color and some have continued slowly downhill ever since.

So I immediately lowered all the SPS down to 1/2 way deep in the tank and lowered my LED output on the white/color channel to much lower. I think I'm peaking at 70 or 80% max on that channel. And 80 or 90% on the blue/UV currently. Do you think the Blue/UV could be way to overpowering? I assumed it would be the white/color that would be to powerful.

Also. Do you think the Monti-Cap would bleach from to much light when it's sitting right next to a Trumpet that is doing fine and about an inch or so below a Duncan that is doing great under the same lighting at the same depth? Possible, yes probably. But I was under the assumption that if my LPS were super happy with the lighting and opening fully, any SPS near the same depth (in the bottom 1/2 of the tank at least) would be pretty safe from to powerful of light.

Bello, thanks for the thoughts on Mg. At this point the delayed or late water change, Mg levels, and the slight fluctuations as we started dosing were my leading hunches. As I think I mentioned, the Refractometer is calibrated and accurate and my RO/DI is still sending me 0-tds water for ATO and changes.

And even the fluctuations couldn't have been that dramatic... or so I thought. We basically went from mid-low 6's up to mid-high 7's for Alk. And that raised up at the rate of evaporation over the 4 weeks it took to drip the 1st ATO barrel. It hit 7.7ish about 2 or 3 weeks into dripping kalk and has tested at that level (or within .3-.5) every time I've tested it since. Ca started a bit low but has been solid between 425-450 ever since. Mg was the only thing we have seen dropping. Which makes sense since we can't dose Mg with Kalk and we were late on the water change. So I'm guessing I'll eventually add a doser to the Reef Angel for Mg. Or just manually dose weekly to maintain levels between water changes until then.

So it really is a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Those swings didn't seem to drastic to me. AND they were swinging "in the right direction" toward more typically ideal levels and have been slowly stabilizing. I guess I would say "swinging" less and more like "slowly adjusting to balanced stable levels." I would have assumed the SPS (Monti-Cap and Birdsnest) would have shown way worse issues during the 100% max lighting period with less then ideal levels swinging more uncontrolled previously.

But, if I end up with some downtime soon after this project. I can put all the lighting worries to bed and hopefully rent/borrow that PAR meter and REALLY dial in my lighting to ideal levels for a mixed reef. I'm currently about 1/2 way done setting up my WiFi connection for the RA unit. It's connected to my router (and phone app when I'm at home connecting to the router). I just haven't gotten it linked up to the internet portal yet so i can control it from any browser anywhere. Once I get that working, I'll be able to PAR test the lights. I need to be able to control the lighting easily and quickly at all different levels. I'm planning to map the tank for each channel separately (dimmest, 50%, max power) and then the same levels with our "ideal color mix." So probably both on dimmest, B/UV=60% C/W=45%, and B/UV=100% C/W=75/85%... but those mixed levels will be dialed in with the par meter.

Gah!!! Slow day at work for me trying to wrap up this project. I seem to have rambled on there, sorry... Moving on...

- Just to clarify the above- refers to him working... not because I just did the water change (BTW- pat on the back to me for doing a water change all by myself for the first time AND not making a mess of things)

- She is correct. Re-reading that, it did not sound right. I was happy DisBeReef cleaned the tank, I've been working lots and some brain wires were crossed. Thanks for translating me DBR :lol2:

Ouch....! New TV Series Coming soon: 24 Hour Reef Reality TV "“ watch as everyone's favorite couple try not to kill all of their corals (and each other) after spending all of their money at the LFS!

Red Planet:

SPS on Left, Center & Right

- I thought I taught you how to post pictures? LOL :facepalm: This weekend I'll have to show you how and set it all up for you.... you are now Oh-For-Two on your picture posts. You are not going to want to read the PM shalacking Bello is going to give you if you go Oh-For-Three. LOL

Keep up the effort though, it's fun to hang out here as well as in person :lol2:

 

[Fishy 1]

Hey troub and Mrs troub lol, it great that your involved with the tank as well disbereef:thumbsup:
It's a shame about the sps but they aren't easy to keep, you'll get the hang of it.

 

[troubadour11]

Ok, enough with the downer-ness of our SPS. Most of them are still alive at least :dance:

So this was something new and interesting to see. Every Friday at work is a "donut day" where they cater donuts for the crews in the mornings. In honor of last Friday being donut day, our Fungia decided to mimic a sprinkled donut for me!
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I haven't seen it do that again. But then again, I haven't been around the tank as much lately. :facepalm: Everything seems to be fine. I think it was just moving around. It's really interesting how it inflates up and shifts all around that front corner open sand bed area.

And here is another newer update. I changed this out about a week or so ago.
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So both of those CFL light fixtures that came with my sump have shorted out ALREADY!!! For a week or two all we had over the Fuge was that little color changing LED light strip you've seen me move around and play with. The one I'm going to use in a build project for the tank a little later. That meant it was time to upgrade the Fuge lighting a bit and see if I can figure out why I can't get my cheato growing! :mad2:

A quick order off a local hardware stores website (because they only carried it online and not in the local stores) and I had 2 shiny new PAR30 LED spot lights (daylight, 5000k) and one inexpensive clip on fixture to test and see if this was an improvement.
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Now we have 1 of those clipped on over what little cheato we have left. I'll probably be buying another batch in hopes that this will really kick it's growth and filtering power into production. And just because I have it, I'm running the little LED strip on the cyan/green color right now.

Much brighter light right over the cheato ball now. I may eventually mount these lights up above the tank off the wall somehow. But this works for now. And if this really helps, I'll pick up another cheap-o clip on work light to add a second bulb to the other end of the Fuge.

I'm thinking I'll re-arrange the Fuge soon and put all the extra rock at the far (return) end of the tank. Then move the cheato basket to just below the overflow drain box we drilled in. Because if it ever starts growing well, that will make it so much easier to prune and harvest for nutrient removal.
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I can't say I've seen an improvement in the cheato. But I am seeing some coralline algae and a fuzzy neon green matt algae starting to grow on the LR that is under the PAR30 bulb. So I think upgrading to this light system will be a big plus for the Fuge in the long run.
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These aren't the best pictures of the state of the Fuge. But they were what I had time to snap when I was home long enough to set up the bulb quick and take a look at things. I promise, soon when I have some time, I will be photo-bombing my thread with a whole bunch of pictures to show the current state of everything and just take a look at the system throughout.

Until then :beer:

 

[troubadour11]

Hey troub and Mrs troub lol, it great that your involved with the tank as well disbereef:thumbsup:
It's a shame about the sps but they aren't easy to keep, you'll get the hang of it.

:lmao: HAhahahahah.... "MrsTroub." That so should have been your name DisBeReef. LOL You took my name in life, but not in a reef forum. I'm so ashamed :facepalm::ape:

 

[Bello]

Ouch....! New TV Series Coming soon: 24 Hour Reef Reality TV – watch as everyone’s favorite couple try not to kill all of their corals (and each other) after spending all of their money at the LFS!

Lol, makes for a whole lotta drama....Now if only there were a way to make corals behave b%^&y and manipulative..... these "reality shows" are getting out of hand :lol:... Glad that Troub has some great support there. My wife doesn't even look at my tank, but on the bright side, she doesn't complain about the time, money and space that I give to the hobby...

My inexperienced opinion is that the 5 week delay of a water change is a big part of the culprit...

It could part of the problem.... However, I'd assume that for lack of WC's to be a problem, you'd either have a rapid depletion of Trace elements due to consumption by corals OR presence of an external contaminant.... I'm not sure, with SPS it's very difficult to pinpoint a cause, hence best to try and keep things steady, stable and consistent . The pics would've helped

HA!!! Cheap shot, yes. But here's how lame I am... I had to look up the Kimye reference. LOL But once I got the reference Hahaha.

You have no idea how lucky you are , I'm ashamed I know the reference, not that I'd ever watch that. Reminds me of the wise old saying "Stop making stupid people famous!"

Also. Do you think the Monti-Cap would bleach from to much light when it's sitting right next to a Trumpet that is doing fine and about an inch or so below a Duncan that is doing great under the same lighting at the same depth? Possible, yes probably. But I was under the assumption that if my LPS were super happy with the lighting and opening fully, any SPS near the same depth (in the bottom 1/2 of the tank at least) would be pretty safe from to powerful of light.

LPS can take varying degrees of lighting depending on species. Personally, I have found Euphyllia can take huge amounts of lighting, while chalices not soo much...It depends on the species. In fact, my Hammer grew rapidly in high light and medium flow. So I'd put the cap a bit lower. Monti caps can roughly turn pale due to 3 reasons that I know off, low nutrients, high light and low potassium :reading:

Bello, thanks for the thoughts on Mg. At this point the delayed or late water change, Mg levels, and the slight fluctuations as we started dosing were my leading hunches. As I think I mentioned, the Refractometer is calibrated and accurate and my RO/DI is still sending me 0-tds water for ATO and changes.

And even the fluctuations couldn't have been that dramatic... or so I thought. We basically went from mid-low 6's up to mid-high 7's for Alk. And that raised up at the rate of evaporation over the 4 weeks it took to drip the 1st ATO barrel. It hit 7.7ish about 2 or 3 weeks into dripping kalk and has tested at that level (or within .3-.5) every time I've tested it since. Ca started a bit low but has been solid between 425-450 ever since. Mg was the only thing we have seen dropping. Which makes sense since we can't dose Mg with Kalk and we were late on the water change. So I'm guessing I'll eventually add a doser to the Reef Angel for Mg. Or just manually dose weekly to maintain levels between water changes until then.

So it really is a bit of a head-scratcher for me. Those swings didn't seem to drastic to me. AND they were swinging "in the right direction" toward more typically ideal levels and have been slowly stabilizing. I guess I would say "swinging" less and more like "slowly adjusting to balanced stable levels." I would have assumed the SPS (Monti-Cap and Birdsnest) would have shown way worse issues during the 100% max lighting period with less then ideal levels swinging more uncontrolled previously.

Those aren't very drastic changes to be honest. But since the tank is fairly young, that could be a cause.... At this point pictures would be most helpful :thumbsup:

 

[DisBeReef]

The Missing Photos

The Missing Photos

I was properly schooled over the weekend on how to correctly post photos on this site, so 2 are below..... don't know why I'm bothering since the SPS are now completely gone for the most part- very sad.

At least my fungia is still doing well:

and I must say that I am EXTREMELY surprised that Troubadour has not posted our new LPS corals from the weekend up yet since he had the day off of work... he must be getting ready to post a novel: you have been forewarned... :ape:

 

[Fishy 1]

I must say that I am EXTREMELY surprised that Troubadour has not posted our new LPS corals from the weekend up yet since he had the day off of work... he must be getting ready to post a novel: you have been forewarned... :ape:

OK thanks for the warning disbereef
Troub buddy your getting a bit slack with you posting, lucky for you disbereef is keeping us all updated on progress
On another subject, Biggles is saying that Marty and myself are hopeless and we couldn't even keep a goldfish alive let alone a reef tank. So because I'm hopeless he isn't taking what Marty said personally(Marty said that bellos acros are awesome and Biggles acros are average at best :lol: ) and Bello has turned Sahin's thread into the lounge thread:lol: and Biggles thinks that I'm going to smooth everything out for bello so he doesn't get in trouble when Sahin gets back, I'm sure not going to smooth things out for him:fun2: so Biggles needs a good talking too:lolspin: sorry to bore you with all that but it been very funny :lol:

 

[Bello]

Don't be too upset over the SPS losses, it takes time and a bit of experience to get the hang of things. Now that I've seen the pics, I'm unfortunately stumped. The bluish one has lost tissue from the top, while the red planet, from the bottom. Weird. In my limited experience, I wouldn't consider this typical die off. I hope biggles chimes in soon, he's bloody lazy . It may be worth running a polyfilter (10 bucks I think) for a bit, in case of any contamination, just a suggestion.

Looking forward to the next LPS chapter of "The Kimye Reefing Chronicles" (seriously, find me something better to call y'all, before I retch on the Kimye references)

And Fishy has provided the latest RC news :lol:...I didn't make it a lounge thread, well almost...this is what you get when you stay away from your thread for too long...though I hope he's ok

 

[Fishy 1]

And Fishy has provided the latest RC news :lol:...I didn't make it a lounge thread, well almost...this is what you get when you stay away from your thread for too long...though I hope he's ok

Glad you liked the RC news, buddy and yes that is what you get when you leave hopeless reefers unsupervised :lmao:

 

[troubadour11]

Ok, so I guess it's time to make some coffee and show off some of the good and bad going on in the tank. Right now there are some photos uploading. But while we wait for those I can get started with a few other updates that I already had.

- Since we've started feeding the refugium a little more lately using phyto, we picked up this giant feather duster.

- So far it seems to be doing well right smack in the middle of the tank.

- You'll also note that in a lot of these pictures we are seeing a resurgence of cyano again. I'm attributing this to a couple known factors. But basically we've raised the nutrient imput into the tank some with phyto, reef roids, etc.

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The feather duster has been neat so far. It's open almost all the time. I've been turning off the return pump to the refugium and feeding it 35 ml of phyto every 3-5 days for a week or so now. I let it circulate with the powerhead for about 5 or 10 minutes and then turn the return pump back on and let the phyto run through the system until it's consumed or pulled out by the skimmer. This new addition is part of the reason why we're seeing some cyano showing back up I'm sure.

 

[troubadour11]

Despite our troubles with the few SPS pieces right now. Our LPS seem to be doing great. So we decided to fill in a few more of the open spots in that section.

- Kryptonite Trumpet Coral

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We got this trumpet coral and this next piece to fill up a few of the darker spots in the back-left corner. We actually thought we were getting an Acan when we were looking at them. But I'm not so sure about it now. Can anyone id this next piece. Either way it's seems to like similar lower light/flow, so I think it could still work for the place we were thinking.

- ID? Here it is during it's Revive dip.

- And now mounted to a rubble piece sitting in it's potential home. It's similar to an acan, favia, or something similar to that. This piece actually has another head in the process of forming.

- It has a yellow/green outer, wrinkled up ring. Then a small, smooth purple ring. And then it's kind of a sandy white color around the mouth. On the first night, I did see it open up some with some clear, short feeding tentacles. Similar to a trumpet coral. The feeding tentacles extend from between the purple and white boundary.

- A little wider shot showing the current placement of these two pieces.

- Here's a more close-up shot on the new head the is forming on this mystery piece.

Time for a short break... more to come in a moment. :bounce2:

 

[troubadour11]

So, I thought I had a few more close-ups of this as I popped it off it's frag plug and attached it to some rubble. But I guess not. Here are a couple pictures of our new Blasto.
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Only a single solitary little head. But it's one of the best looking ones I've seen them have in there for awhile. And since it was a single polyp, it wasn't very big bucks to give it a try.

Right now we have it sitting on a rock ledge that is underneath the birdsnest in the center of the tank. It seems to be doing ok. It's shadowed by the rocks around it and looks to get a medium/low pulsing wave for water movement. I would guess if it is expanding and flexing in the water column, that the current is not to heavy for it. Anyone have pointers or recommendations?
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With this latest round of purchases. We did some shuffling around of a few of our previous pieces. So here is an update on the Duncan progress. We decided to move the Duncan back to it's original spot. It seemed to love that spot when we first got it. We tried moving it back to the side more, but it never seemed to be as full. This spot got more shadow from the above rockwork. And possibly a some softer current as well.

Now it's back out on the front edge of our left tower looking great! It looked good before, but now it's great and looking happier :fun2:

- Here is just after moving it.

- And a little later on when it came back out.

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I can't say I can see a difference in it's size. But I'm guessing it's growing and getting bigger. It shows a great feeding response to Reef Roids and whatever frozen food got thawed. To me, it's looking healthy and thriving. :thumbsup:

Here's a hammer coral and latest Zoa purchase update for you all.
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They're both looking good. Lots of extension all the time. The hammer seems to have really settled in now. We have been testing the lighting hypothesis of it being to strong. So we've been slowly lowering the output on the LEDs. These newest Zoas never stretched for light before. Now they are starting to show signs of reaching. So I'm going to stop lowering the lights and VERY slowly bring them back up just a bit until the Zoas quit reaching.

- The Aussie Gold Torch is still looking good. This is not the best picture. The golden color is all blown out white. But it's a good shot of it opened up and feeling around.

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And here's the Frogspawn. It seems to be doing fine. I think it's much happier that we gave it some separation between the Gold Torch. It fully inflates all day long and drifts down current from the torch. Again, I can't say that I've been able to notice it grow at all. But the polyps are full and it seems to be doing good and eats anytime we target feed it. I have noticed all three of the Euphyllia have been expanding more since dimming the lights. Their colors seem a little thinner with the extra expansion. But all still looking great in my limmited experience and opinion.
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...photo break...