A Living Room Reef: 90 Gallon Mixed Reef Build

[Bello]

Everything looks according to plan..... :thumbsup:

also a +1 to Reef Roids

Perhaps its time to get some quality test kits? Just listing what I use, perhaps you find it useful,

Alk - ELOS
Cal - Salifert
Mag - Salifert
NO3 - Red Sea
PO4 - Hanna
Potassium - Salifert

You could do with just the NO3 and perhaps the PO4 kit for now, potassium is largely unnecessary btw.

 

[troubadour11]

Thanks for the tip on the Reef Roids. I'll add it to my list. Maybe I'll grab that and some phyto and swap on and off once or twice a week for a bit to help try and boost/establish the pods and everything. :beer:

We got some interesting and exciting deliveries this week! I've just been busting my A** at work with OT. So I'll pop in for a quick update to tease you all with until I get a bit more time to post pictures and info.

Both deliveries from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms and Reef Cleaners were delivered Wednesday. I was at the office, but my wife got them all acclimated and split between the tank and fuge.

It looks like we ended up receiving about 15-20 Nassarius Snails
- Something like 30 Dwarf Ceriths
- A good little group of bristle worms
- A nice little ball of spaghetti worms
- A little baseball sized wad of cheato
- Supposedly 6 mini-brittle stars. But my wife said she couldn't even get a picture of them. A few specks in spot of water.
- A bag of water :furious: LOL (well, it was guarenteed to be seeded with 300+ assorted pods, mini-shrimps, etc) but my wife said "We got sold an empty bag of water." :celeb2:
- and then a little bag of assorted empty shells. Not really planning any hermits. So we just dropped them in to just add some "decoration" to the sand bed and break up the empty sand look a little. Only like 10-15 shells that can get mixed and turned in the sand bed or be used by a future shrimp or something.

So far a couple nights later, things seem to be doing ok. Most of the new snails were hidden under the sand, when I threw some food in last night it was like zombies rising from their graves :uzi: So I'll take that as a good sign. Also been seeing the bristle worms slither around a bit and we've been seeing tendrils of the spaghetti worms above the sand bed. No sign of mini-stars yet.

We also received a big package with our LED lights to start that build! :celeb3: I haven't even had time to open it and check it out yet... but I'm excited to destroy our newly cleaned house with a new project for the build :headwally:

As far as tests go. We've been monitoring the salinity of course. Then using our expired kit for Ammonia, ph, nitrate/nitrite. It's probably not accurate, but it's showing the levels rising and falling like you would expect during a cycle. When testing before the new livestock additions, it showed 0 - Ammonia, almost 0 - Nitrite (down by over 50% from the last test), and registering close to the same level as before of Nitrates. Which we know are increasing based off the appearance of the brown algae. And we've had our water tested at the LFS twice just to confirm our expired test wasn't to expired. But yes... it's getting time to get a better test kit for a few things.

We also have the Red Sea Pro Reef Foundations kit which has Ca, Mg, and Alk. We've done the tests once... I think I was slightly off on the testing. Getting just the right amount of drops to squeeze out will take some practice. But for my first go (since high school advanced chemistry) with tests like that, it was close. I registered pretty close to what I would expect. At the time, our salt was a bit low, so I shouldn't have seen the highest numbers.

The one thing I am curious about is PH... What level should I be trying to keep my system at currently. When tested, the Alk was somewhere in the upper 7 to 8ish range. I can't remember any of the PH values off the top of my head. But I know matching PH is usually a concern when adding new life (along with temp, salinity, and getting them out quickly enough before ammonia builds up to toxic levels).

Until next time friends... :artist:

 

[biggles]

Nice update Troub, sounds like you got a nice load of goodies recently mate. :thumbsup: The bag of water sounds cool, see if you can get bags of skimmer intake air from them as well mate - won't hurt to ask...........
Give it a month and all those critters will be multiplying and settling in, takes a bit longer when you aren't using all live rock that's stuffed full of all manner of things like i did lol.

Glad your LED's arrived, i was getting worried you wouldn't have anything to decorate the tree with this Xmas Troub........ I know Bello is thinking about changing out some bulb colors so you two should get your heads together and try slightly different spectral layouts to save each other the hassle of tweaking the LED's so much and share the results.

Bello is spot on about the test kits, you don't need all of them right away but get good quality and easy to use ones as in Bello's list. I use Salifert for everything except phos which is Hanna. I've checked my pH twice in 9 months Troub.......... check it first thing in the morning and last thing at night before lights out and let us know what readings you get mate, a swing is normal and to be expected - don't chase pH over any other parameters.

A few tank pics when you can will let us know how the cycle is going. Keep the skimmer running flat out and carbon for water clarity along with GFO will all speed up the process of exhausting the system of the initial phos present in the rocks, sand or wherever else it is. Any algae that's easily removed by hand will also speed up the removal process. Btw the GHA will be great for your micro critters to establish and grow in so don't look at it as a complete bastard of a thing lol.

I feel that it's important to point out something that you may be taking for granted Troub.

Both deliveries from Indo-Pacific Sea Farms and Reef Cleaners were delivered Wednesday. I was at the office, but my wife got them all acclimated and split between the tank and fuge.

You are either one lucky bastard having a wife who is as keen on the reef as you and willing to get her hands dirty or......... she's a bloody alien in disguise ! The only time my ex wife showed interest in anything salty was when she asked me to get take away seafood.:rolleye1:

 

[Bello]

You are either one lucky bastard having a wife who is as keen on the reef as you and willing to get her hands dirty or......... she's a bloody alien in disguise ! The only time my ex wife showed interest in anything salty was when she asked me to get take away seafood.:rolleye1:

:lol: Hahahaha.... Hilarious

I agree with not chasing pH, at all. I do have an extra pH probe on my GHL which monitors pH, currently at 8.06, but I really don't take it seriously at all. Once you get your Reef Angel setup, can always buy an extra probe for eff's sake.

 

[troubadour11]

So it's been a few days since I've been able to get pictures loaded up to the net to share in here. So there are already a couple future picture posts in the works. I've got some from the critter packages we added (holy-cow... that was over a week ago now already!) and then I'll start the write up on the LED build I'll be getting underway soon.

I know I still need to grab a couple Refugium plumbing and overflow box pictures that were requested. I didn't forget about it... just been busy working right now. They're coming as soon as I have a weekend off work :mad2:

Now for my current State of the Tank report:

- Obligatory FTS -

- The sand is a little over exposed and blown out. But in general the water is crystal clear.
- We're seeing lots and lots of little white specs floating around in the water column now. Very obvious at night with a flashlight or only the blue LED's turned on. I'm hoping this is the pod population starting to distribute throughout the system? I didn't notice as much particulate in the water column before the livestock addition a week ago.
- The glass has a consistent film algae on it that the snails are all over.
- The dry rock is looking like it's taking on something. It's gone from bleached white all over. To having large portions of the rocks that appear more yellowed then original.
- And there continues to be new growth what I thought was the start of red algae that I pointed out before. It's continuing to grow and spread on the rock surface and has started to grow in some spots on the sand bed in both the Fuge and DT. You'll see what I'm calling the red algae more clearly in the next couple pictures.

- A medium close up of the DT. -

- You can make out the red algae that is spreading. Pretty much anything rust colored. The top LR in the center right of the picture used to be deep purple colored. Now it's covered in red rust colored algae and the purple has faded some. You can see the rust is slightly spreading over to the dry rock in the top center. Straight down from that in the center you can see some of the algae showing up on the sand bed.

- Into the Fuge we go!!! Here is a great capture of the red/rust colored ?algae? we are seeing show up and spread through the system. The Fuge has 10x the amount and is lots easier to see - Left end of the Fuge by the return feed -

- 2 Live Rocks (top left and far right) that are still a faded purple but COVERED in rust colored growth as you can see. 2 dry rocks bottom left and center showing the same.

- Right end of the Fuge by the overflow drain. A shot of the little baseball sized ball of cheato we added in last week. -

- We added the cheato and only turned on the far end light for the first 2 days. Hopefully to avoid shocking it with to much direct light after being shipped in the dark for 2 days. So it got indirect spill light from the opposite end of the tank. Then since last Saturday or Sunday we've been running the Fuge lights (currently 2 small compact fluorescent lamps) on a reverse cycle from the DT.
- I also turned over the ball of cheato last night when I was looking at the tanks. It's under a CF fixture sitting loosely on the rocks right now. The flow through my fuge is fairly low. Probably around 250-300 gph from my fluval filter. Do you think this is placed ok for now? Does the cheato need a heavier flow? I expect to add a small powerhead in here eventually to create a bit more internal flow against the laminate flow from the return at the far left end to the overflow at the right end.

- A shot down the back of the Fuge. You can really see the rust color along the rocks and you can see heavy patches of it growing on the sand bed at the far end. -

- Should my snails, worms, etc be able to get up the pvc pipe legs onto the eggcrate tables? I have not see any snails or worms crawling around up on the rocks in the Fuge... do I need to lay down a rock as a bridge up to each table?

Point taken on the PH monitoring. I'll monitor that a bit later. I do have a PH probe that came with my Reef Angel. So I can install that in the fuge or sump once that system gets set up. I was just wondering if it was something I needed to be watching more closely when adding snails or shrimp at this stage.

You are either one lucky bastard having a wife who is as keen on the reef as you and willing to get her hands dirty or......... she's a bloody alien in disguise ! The only time my ex wife showed interest in anything salty was when she asked me to get take away seafood.

SHE IS AWESOME :celeb3: She is NOT an alien... she has been vetted thoroughly :jester: And yes. I am VERY lucky to have a wife who is willing to seed creepy crawly bristle worms & spaghetti worms into the system! She really enjoys it. The aquarium, not the worms. Especially getting to tell me what we're going to have in our tank. LOL.

And lots of pats on the back for her. She has developed a new tool! An Astrea Snail Flipping utensil. She was able to right a snail in the back corner without having to take ANYTHING off the top of the tank Reached right through the temp egg crate cover to right the stupid little snail. LOL *patent pending*

I kicked back in my protein skimmer last night. It hadn't done anything but pull clear water since the sand dust settled from the initial start up. So I thought I'd give it a few days of rest after adding in the new worms and pods to just circulate it all throughout the system. Now thinking about that... maybe that's the reason I'm noticing more particulate in the water column lately. So equipment wise we are back to: return pump, 2 power head wave maker (in DT), protein skimmer, and Fluval 305 (running empty) to push water up to Fuge. And then the cheap-o DT lighting and 2 Compact Florescent fixtures over the Fuge. That's all the stuff running for now. I need to get heaters in there soon. The temp is getting cooler at night. Right now the tank has been ranging between 74 and 79. I'd probably like to bump that up to 77-81 range. But I don't think these temps will be any issue for anything in there right now, correct?

Well, that's about it for now. I wanted to put the current state out there to get some feed back and thoughts. It's moving along. Big changes are happening about a month into the system now. Hopefully all for the good and it continues to move along and establish. I'm ready for a weekend to just stare at the new developments and open up some of the new toys for the build.

I'm guessing I might be close to wanting to do a 10% water change soon? I don't want the algae to explode and overwhelm the system. But I don't mind there being some food for the pods and snails to munch on. And we've still been adding the occasional pinch of cheap flake food to provide some food for detrivores.

:beer:

 

[Bello]

I'll wait for biggles to advise on the water change...I usually am far to impatient to wait till this point without adding some fish or coral , how long since the cycle started? NH3, NO2 levels are ok?

Temp is not a problem...nothing to worry about there. The rust algae you see are diatoms, turbo snails eat 'em a jiffy. Not really problem algae...I still have diatoms in my tank now...its fairly safe, just not pretty

Flow for the chaeto should be ok, you won't see much growth from it right now... Think I'd get the lights going soon, if I were you....and I'd probably be tempted to throw in a mushroom coral or something.... but probably better to get the lights on first.

Don't worry about the snails worms having access issues...soon you'll wish you could tie them to a pole ...kidding...they'll be fine...

You're lucky your wife helps you out..... my wife won't notice a new fish coral or anything. She will however see the shipping bags, ask me how much...(I don't lie)...and she proceeds to prepare her shopping list of equivalent value

But....there's hope.... hopefully when my son gets a lil older...it'll be 2 against 1, assuming I can brain wash the poor kid

 

[troubadour11]

You're right on Bello. I WANT to add more stuff... but I'm going to do my best to hold off. Fortunately, the pace of the build helps handicap me from expanding to quickly.

I definitely want the lights done and over the tank as soon as possible. I delivered my last job finally, but I'm on call in case they need changes. So I have a little down time again for now. After these posts here this morning, I'm going to be cracking open that LED delivery and check it out! :thumbsup:

Oh, and a :thumbsup::thumbsup: to the fact that I'm getting a bbq planned for next weekend!!! That means I will hopefully be getting that electrical run into the closet done! Which is HUGE and really needs to be done. And that also means I might tempt all of you with another amazing piece of "Shelf Rock" BBQ :lmao:

The tank and cycle got up and running on 8/28. So we are just past 4 weeks of the system cycling. I added the 5 astrea snails at 1.5 weeks and more worms, pods, and the creepy crawlies at 3 weeks. So this weekend it will be running with all the updated livestock for 1.5 weeks and the full system for 4.5 weeks.

As of 9/18 we were registering no more ammonia. NO2 had dropped drastically and was almost not registering anymore. NO3 was showing the same amount that it showed the week before. But this is on that expired kit. So I'm not sure if those are off... It is showing different readings that follow the typical trend of a cycle though. So even if the numbers are off, I'm at least seeing the cycle. But as of a week ago, it looked like we were almost fully through the cycle.

I've tested for Alk, Ca, and Mg once. It was my first time testing them, and I think I might have gone past the end points and been slightly off. I'm going to retest all of them this weekend and record my findings.

I'm extremely tempted to try throwing in a mushroom or something. But we've resigned ourselves to not add any coral or fish until we get the electrical and lights up over the tank.

But that's the plan. Crack open the lights and have a look at them. Get that started, so that hopefully, I've got a good start on them by next weekend when we get that electrical done. Woo-hoo!

Now for a few pictures of when we added the creepy crawlies...

 

[troubadour11]

- The new arrivals (from a week ago) -

- Unpacking the boxes -

- Baby Bristle Worms in a bag -

- Pod Seeded Cheato, Pods+ (assorted pods, mysis, etc... or a bag of water to my wife), and some shells -

- We spent a dollar or two and got a few empty shells to sprinkle around and decorate the sand bed with. Maybe one day they'll be some useful building blocks for a burrow -

- It looks like we got about 30 or so Dwarf Cerith Snails. 1/2 in the DT, 1/2 in the Refugium -

- Acclimation time -

- Freeing up the snails -

- Jumping to a new post to avoid the picture limit -

 

[troubadour11]

- Creepy Crawly Bristle Worms being set free -

- Close up of one of the worms -

- Freeing the Spaghetti Worms -

- Worms and snails let loose in the Refugium -

- Top Down of the new Refugium crew -

And THREE CHEERS :beer::beer::beer: to my wife for taking the deliveries at work, testing all parameters, acclimating and releasing everything, AND documenting it all for us with some fine pictures while I was at work! :wave::bounce1:

 

[Bello]

Nice pics Troub :thumbsup:, you're wife's done a pretty good job :thumbsup:

Its fun to see all the life going into the tank. You're well on your way to having a well seeded tank :thumbsup:, bereft of unwanted hitch hikers.

I've been thinking, and I'd hope'd biggles would also comment, but I have a sneaky feeling that he's out staking out his LFS, waiting for goodies. He reserves his sneaky stuff for the weekend I tell you . Anyways, I believe both biggles & myself, started out with live rocks, (with possibly some die off along the way), in which case, nutrients from the rock are already leaching when placed into the tank. The reason then to take it slow with fish etc, is so that the nutrients are used up in the system, before the fish add more.

However, in your case, since, the rock you've used was possibly with fewer nutrients, so theoretically you could add a small fish, since I believe your cycle is over. I don't think the rise and fall of no2 would be seen with faulty test kits. Still wrangling with your stocking list?

So decision time , you could just wait longer, as you've waiting all summer

Hmmm, by all means have your BBQ, BUT NO PICS!!!, DON'T DEPRESS ME!!! , hopefully you manage to finish off the electricals and the lights this weekend :thumbsup:

 

[troubadour11]

I'm fairly certain we could add a fish at this point. But I'd feel better about it once I can get the heaters running. So I'm going to let the tank sit for another week or so while I work on the lights and electrics.

Since the sump and fuge are in the closet, we have the empty space underneath the stand. We've been thinking about setting up a small QT/hospital type tank in the stand. So we're kind of planning to get that little tank set up after we get the extra power. So I think we'll be shopping for our first fish soon. Because we can keep it in there for a bit while the system runs a little longer and we finish up the lights.

And speaking of the lights...

- New toys! -

- Let's see what we got! -

- Layers upon layers of goodies -

- All laid out -

- Checking out the heat sinks -

- What I'm thinking for the LED layout and wiring. You're looking at the top down view over the left side of the tank. The right side will be a mirror of this layout. Top of picture is the back 1/2 of the tank, bottom is front glass. -

- 7 Royal Blue and 3 Violet 410/420nm on a dimming driver per side of tank.
- 3 Neutral White, 6 Cool White, 3 Blue, 1 Cyan, 1 Deep Red on a dimming driver per side of tank.
- I'll have to double check, but all drivers will be run somewhere around 730-750ma max current. Now that I've got the wiring and layout, I've got to look at the numbers again and find the lowest chip on each string. That will determine what I set as the max for each string.

And since you're curious... We can start talking a stocking list. Here's ideas we've been looking at. And of course... this may be overstocked or changed. It's just the list of what we might be interested in and what we think we've narrowed things down to that might work together. And we kind of have a somewhat general order. But we expect this to take a good long time to stock because we will intermix this list with adding corals. But let us know what you think or might recommend.

Italics = already added

- Pods+ - Bag of 300+ assorted pods, mysis, etc - (09/18/2013)
- Bristle Worms - 6 or so - (09/18/2013)
- Spaghetti Worms - 6 or so - (09/18/2013)

- SNAILS -

- Astrae snails - 5 - (09/07/2013)
- Narsarius Snails - 15-20 - (09/18/2013)
- Dwarf Cerith Snails - 30-35 - (09/18/2013)
- Trochus Snails - ?
- Fighting Conchs ? - ? Refugium only for DSB?​

- Starfish -

- Mini-Brittle Stars - 6 - (09/18/2013)
- Brittle Star (NOT the Green) ? - 1 in DT, 1 in Refugium?​

- SHRIMP -

1.) Tiger Pistol Shrimp (YWG/shrimp goby Pair)
2.) Scarlet Skunk Cleaner Shrimp - (1 or 2)
3.) Blood Red Fire Shrimp - (1)
- Peppermint Shrimp - ??​

- FISH -

1.) Yellow Watchman Goby (Tiger Pistol Pair)
2.) Purple or Helfrichi Firefish (1)
3.) Pair Clown Fish - (2)
4.) Banggai Cardinalfish (5)
5.) Blue "Psychedelic" Mandarin - (1 or Pair)
6.) McCosker's or Carpenter's Wrasse (1)
7.) One Spot Foxface Rabbitfish - (1)
8.) Coral Beauty or Flame Angel - (1)
- Dispar Anthia ? (1)​

- Corals -
- We'll talk more specific about this later... but we're going for a mixed reef.

- Crabs -
- We might add an emerald crab or two into the refugium.
- I would look at trying to get the little symbiotic crabs that live in sps corals.
- Probably no hermits.

Anyway... That should give us a bit more to talk about. :idea: What do you all think? I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to change this around as we go. And there may be more there then we will get. But it's a thought for now to start the discussion.

 

[troubadour11]

- Scrubbed off the glass and cleaned all the fingerprints off :rollface: I figured I'd take a picture too :idea: -

I also moved the powerhead on the right end forward to the front corner to adjust the flow some. And I put a heater into the overflow box so I could run it on the outlet inside, not off an extension cord. That will take the chill off the tank at night for a week until I can set it all up in the sump.

 

[martinphillip03]

I believe a reef temp of 77 to 78 deg is fine. I feel 81 deg is to high

Marty

 

[biggles]

Everything is going along great Troub and as expected. A 10% water change will have stuff all effect on the algae cycle and at this early stage i wouldn't bother unless nitrates are sky high. I'm assuming you have zero nitrites now and phos and nitrates are the only things showing up. Bello is spot on about the rock, you are starting with a much more sterile system than Bello and i and you don't have to worry about the die off fresh LR can contribute to the nutrient soup so as soon as you feel you have nitrates under control i'd be throwing a skunk shrimp in there since they look AWESOME ! They eat mysis and small pellet food so don't stress about what to feed it and the bonus is it looks stunning from day one and will place next to no load at all on the system while you're going through the algae cycle.
Potatohead might be crazy as a sh*thouse rat but i wouldn't trade him for anything.
That's funny about the snail flipping, i regularly flick mine off the glass and some are as good at righting themselves as Bello is at finding a reef safe flame angel.........

I have no idea what that bloody scrawled diagram is........... is that a treasure map off Pirates of the Caribbean or something........


SNAILS - get heaps and exactly who do the fighting conchs duke it out with - if they punch out fish i'd grab a few.

Starfish - brittle stars are cool but stay away from those big fish eating green bastards.

SHRIMP - They're all super cool. I wouldn't bother with the peppermint ones as they look like crud compared to the others.

FISH - give em a miss, they're nothing but trouble...........

Corals - mixed reef hey, carbon is your friend Troub. Like the algae cycle you'll eventually get past this idea and remove all the silly putty corals for stiks........

Crabs - overall i'd describe crabs in general as sly sneaky bastards who get up to no good at night. Commensal crabs on the other hand are super cool so make sure you don't dip any of them if you're lucky enough to score one with a coral mate. I commonly get crabs and brittle stars living in most acros i buy so make sure you look closely at your corals before you kill something that needn't die.
The last pic looks good and it's very easy to spot the real rock in there mate. Skim lots now and the sooner you get those lights going the sooner you can deal with the photosynthetic fallout lol.

Did i mention - get a skunk shrimp ! :dance:

 

[Bello]

:lol:....you know what to do....get a skunk shrimp ...well i have 2, and biggles has potatohead, so you knew that was coming

Looking at the led wiring, things seem good...just one thing, you'd probably want the red to be flanked by cyan and royal blue on its sides.

Stocking fun

SNAILS: I have Trochus, do the job well, but keep flipping over and annoying to flip 'em back. Plus they breed like nuts.....that sounds great, until the little buggers get stuck in your pump impellers. But all said and done, they're not bad. Never had a chance to keep a fighting conch, so I'd probably go with that first.

STARFISH: Mini Brittle stars good...but fair warning....you'll never see them....unless you like to flip your rocks everyday to look

SHRIMP: In addition to the shrimp propaganda above, I like the idea of a yasha goby with pistol shrimp (i think that's possible)...looking for a yasha myself

FISH:
1.) Yellow Watchman Goby (Tiger Pistol Pair) - works
2.) Purple or Helfrichi Firefish (1) - works
3.) Pair Clown Fish - (2) - I don't like nemo
4.) Banggai Cardinalfish (5) - too many IMO...look at the blue eyed cardinals as well if you're hell bent on cardinals
5.) Blue "Psychedelic" Mandarin - (1 or Pair) - gonna need lots a pods
6.) McCosker's or Carpenter's Wrasse (1) - jumpers, but nice
7.) One Spot Foxface Rabbitfish - (1) - algae eating king
8.) Coral Beauty or Flame Angel - (1) - the gamble
- Dispar Anthia ? (1) - eats too much

CORALS: Throw in a crap mushroom first.... after that Limited Edition frags, that biggles and me have to beg for ....j/k

CRABS: Never keep anything that shares its name with a STD ...lol, commensals are fun, and they help... I don't like hermits though....bungling idiots :furious:

 

[troubadour11]

Ok... So #1: get a Skunk Cleaner... understood LOL

It sounds like the rest of the stocking ideas aren't sounding to crazy to you all?

- Snails, we will continue to add here and there as needed. I will probably add a few regular Cerith snails to each tank at some point since I added the Dwarf version already. I also think I want to pick up a tonga fight conch (Strombus sp. not the Queen Conchs) to stir the sand beds a little more. I used all sugar fine sand, so I want to make sure the beds get stirred well so they don't harden over time. I know locally I can get 1 for $7.99 or 3 for $21. I was thinking I might do 1 in the DT and 2 in the Fuge... What do you think?

On a downer note for the snails. I had 2 of the Astrea snails come up dead :-( I'm wondering if they slowly starved to death since I don't have much algae showing up. I thought I would see more of an algae bloom by now. But maybe with the super sterile tank, evertyhings moving slowly.?. They constantly graze on the rocks, glass, and any other surface. And I've had to use the magnet scrubber about once a week or so because there is film algae on the glass. Hmmmmm... on a plus side... the nassarius snails and such made a quick clean up of their mess.

Doing some testing right now while I watch the baseball playoffs starting up. Maybe we can find something interesting there? :bounce3:

Temp = 81/82 (I've got 1 heater running... trying to dial it in to about 78)

I added the heater after the snails turned up dead. It had dropped down to 72 or so.​

Salinity = 1.025/26
PH = 7.8
NH3 = 0 :bounce2:
No2 = 0 :bounce1:
No3 = 25
Mg = 1100 (I'm pretty sure this is accurate and I did the test right)
Ca = 410 (around this level somewhere... I think I stopped the test to early and it turned back while I was putting everything away... still practicing and learning I guess :fish1
Alk = 5.9 --- I think I must have screwed this up. Does this result make sense to any of you? Something I should be worried about with just the CUC in there if I didn't screw up the test?

But after checking out all of that. I would say we're safe to follow both your advice and add in a shrimp anytime we want. It seems that things are settling out of the cycle and stabilizing.

More stocking fun... lol

- Stars - the mini stars are cool. But you're right. Basically impossible to see or find. Luckily, it looks like 3 or 4 of them have taken up home right up front near the glass at the base of the closest rock. Ever so often we see them squiggling out around the base of the rock at night. They seem VERY shy of light. IF we do a regular brittle star in the DT, it will definitely not be one of those big green fish eating machines :facepalm: That would be sad.

- Shrimp - Do you think it's possible to do 2 pistol/goby pairs in the DT? It wsa something we had thought about... We ended up thinking only 1 pair, just so we could add in more diversity to the system. We could definitely do a Yasha/pistol pair Bello. I know right now I can get a pair for about $75-90. We were thinking of going with the YWG and pistol pair just because I don't think we'll have many yellow colored fish in the rest of the list. But either way, we know we want to try a shrimp/goby pair.

I was thinking 1 shrimp/goby pair, with 1 Blood Red Shrimp, and 2 Skunk Cleaners. There shouldn't be any problems between a group like that, right?

- Fish - I can do without the Anthia. We tacked that on at the end as a possible "alternate." So no worries on leaving that out.

I'm sure we'll end up with at least 1 Firefish. Whether it's red, purple, or Helfrichi... we will see. Is it possible to do multiples of any of these?

Sorry Bello, but we HAVE to have a pair of "Nemo's." That's one of the only ways I was allowed to build the system It's also the reason we'll be doing a mixed reef. I think project Anemesis has been delayed due to the recent government shut down. :facepalm: So we'll want at least some flubber to mimic an anemone for the clowns.

I had a feeling we had to many fish on the list, but wasn't sure. And I knew 1 easy place to cut would be the 5 Banggai Cardinals. My wife was really hoping to accomplish some type of shoaling fish in the system. These seemed to be an ok option with the possibility of watching them try to reproduce. But a small group of fish is what we're hoping for ideas on with them or in place of them. If anyone has other ideas, feel free to call them out.

I wanted a Mandarin from the start... that's been planned for all along. A mated pair would be interesting just to watch their dance ritual. That's why we expanded the planned system and used the old 75 fresh and the Fuge. Hopefully we'll get copious amounts of pods living and reproducing in there to feed and replenish the display. And another reason we're taking such a long time getting things established. We want the pod populations to really, REALLY establish here at the beginning.

I'm expecting to build a screen top for the DT. Specifically to keep whichever Wrasse and the Firefish and more in the tank. No carpet surfing allowed on my beach :fun2:

A Foxface Rabbit fish should do ok in a 90 gallon tank right? My wife isn't as interested in yelow tangs. So I thought this could be a good algae eating "king" to replace a YT and add a splash of yellow and an awesome fish.?.?.

The Angel, we will see when the time gets here. I would imagine we would stock every other fish prior to adding one. I love them, but am not sure whether we want to take the risk. I guess we'll see how good we are at keeping corals in the mean time. If I can't keep any of them alive, it won't matter and I can add a Coral Beauty. lol

CRABS: Never keep anything that shares its name with a STD ...lol

HHHHHHHHHHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Agreed and noted! LOL. That's my feeling on it. My wife REALLY likes crabs though and wants them. I may be convinced to add an emerald crab the the Fuge. Anyone see an issue with keeping one in there? She's amazed that she likes to go out and sit for a few minutes and have a peak at the tank in the closet But my feeling is non, except trying to get the commensal acro crabs for the DT when we get there.

- Corals... I'm SOOOOOOoooOOooOOoOOo tempted to throw a mushroom rock in there right now. But I'm doing my best to hold off until I get my lights going. I was expecting the need to run some carbon. I was hoping I could fill some of the slots in the Fluval Canister filter (which is currently running empty) with carbon or gfo when it's needed. I'm not really seeing the need to run carbon right now yet. Is there one?

So... getting on with my day... I'll leave you with this pic of some of the "Zombie like" Nassarius Snails coming up front to beg for some food.

 

[Bello]

First off, looking at your fish list again....I'd say hold the wrasse and angel until the very end.... I want a group of fish in my tank too, at some point . Cardinals :thumbsup:, but they're bit skittish initially from what I hear, depending on species. Firefish are nice, but I really don't know enough about keeping them in a trio etc.

Would say go for the Strombus over the conch. Have heard great stuff about them keeping things nice and clean.

Still working on the lights? What about the fuge? What you lighting it with? Get a shroom, the damn things survive on ambient light too

About the YWG and Yasha, since the foxface is also yellow, you could still do the yasha. I've never kept one but plan to soon. Also never kept a pistol shrimp either, so no opinion there.

Carbon? probably not....GFO you could IMO, but I'd wait to see what biggles also has to say, since he's cycled/started this way more often than I have.

I've also never kept both the blood shrimp and the skunk in the same tank. Biggles seems to believe its fine, but I've never tried it.

There's nothing majorly wrong with your params. Have you done a water change yet? At this time you may stock up or DIY, some alk, cal and mag supplments. You probably won't be needing much, since there won't be many inverts to consume them at the moment, but you probably wanna be prepared.

Crabs again lol...Have heard about Emeralds eating coral, but don't know much, never kept. Honestly I tend to stay away from them unless they're the smooth buggers on the acros, those are commensal.

Dunno if you did already, but google chucks addiction, he has lot of great info on critters.

I think your plan's pretty well thought out, much more so than when I started, so things should turn out pretty good :thumbsup:

 

[troubadour11]

First off, looking at your fish list again....I'd say hold the wrasse and angel until the very end....

- Sounds good, that was definitely the plan on the angel. Are wrasse's just more aggressive and active, so let the calmer fish settle in first?

Would say go for the Strombus over the conch. Have heard great stuff about them keeping things nice and clean.

- If I see them locally, I'll check them out. I could have ordered them with all the worms... but I chose to add the mini-brittle stars instead. I only had so much $ to put into that order.

Still working on the lights? What about the fuge? What you lighting it with? Get a shroom, the damn things survive on ambient light too

- I've picked up a soldering iron, some flux, and a few other odds and ends for the lights. But I haven't started putting them together yet. But today is ELECTRICAL day!!! So I'm getting those new outlets into the closet and will be able to hook up the Reef Angel and lights probably next week! :bounce2:
- The fuge is currently being lit by 2, 18 watt Power Compact fixtures. I will probably add my 48" normal output t-5 (2 bulds, from the old freshwater system) once I get the LED's built and can pull it from the DT.
- A Shroom rock is what I was going to start with... and I'm sure they could survive on the current lighting. But I'm hoping I get the lights on next week. And if I can do that, I'll probably do my 1st water change and be ready to add something right away. I'm getting the itch to add something new :dance:

There's nothing majorly wrong with your params. Have you done a water change yet? At this time you may stock up or DIY, some alk, cal and mag supplments. You probably won't be needing much, since there won't be many inverts to consume them at the moment, but you probably wanna be prepared.

- Isn't my Alk off and pretty low? Or is it not to much of an issue right now with only some snails and other little buggers in there? That was really my only concern.
- No water change yet. I was thinking I would do one right before I'm ready to add my next addition sometime in the next week or so. That way I can test both before and after the change to practice a bit more and to see if there is a change in the levels.

Crabs again lol...Have heard about Emeralds eating coral, but don't know much, never kept. Honestly I tend to stay away from them unless they're the smooth buggers on the acros, those are commensal.

- I've heard about them messing with corals as well. Which is why I don't want to deal with them in the DT. But that's why I was only thinking of allowing her to put one in the fuge. If she wants to go sit in the closet and watch him every so often. That's fine by me. He might be a useful grazer and detrivore in a fuge? I guess I need to do a bit more :reading: on what they eat. But if they don't eat the micro-fauna we just seeded. I might be willing to put one in the fuge.

Anyway... I'm off to BBQ and do some electrical work :dance:

 

[HiImSean]

Everything that I've read about foxfaces is they get pretty large. I was thinking about one for my 90g but decided against it.

Angels can be hit or miss on nibbling on corals. Again another fish I've decided against.

Wrasses are generally mellow. I have a melanarus wrasse with my clown and they get a long pretty well. There are times when one or the other will chase a little but I've never seen any damage what so ever.

I'm planning on a wrasse dominant tank for my 90g. They are very active and come in all different colors.

 

[Bello]

- Sounds good, that was definitely the plan on the angel. Are wrasse's just more aggressive and active, so let the calmer fish settle in first?

Yep, that's the plan. I would think that the firefish and SOME cardinals are a bit on the shy side, initially at least...And wrasses usually aren't very aggressive (my 6-lines are douches, but they're known to be douches), but I'd think there'd be NO aggression whatsoever, if added towards the end. Leopard or Tamarin wrasses are very docile, but will compete for pods with the Mandy, so that's the problem.

- I've picked up a soldering iron, some flux, and a few other odds and ends for the lights. But I haven't started putting them together yet. But today is ELECTRICAL day!!! So I'm getting those new outlets into the closet and will be able to hook up the Reef Angel and lights probably next week! :bounce2:
- The fuge is currently being lit by 2, 18 watt Power Compact fixtures. I will probably add my 48" normal output t-5 (2 bulds, from the old freshwater system) once I get the LED's built and can pull it from the DT.
- A Shroom rock is what I was going to start with... and I'm sure they could survive on the current lighting. But I'm hoping I get the lights on next week. And if I can do that, I'll probably do my 1st water change and be ready to add something right away. I'm getting the itch to add something new :dance:

You're picking up the pace, Troub finally. T5 lit fuge sounds fine, and the led lights, well that's what we're waiting for now, aren't we

- Isn't my Alk off and pretty low? Or is it not to much of an issue right now with only some snails and other little buggers in there? That was really my only concern.
- No water change yet. I was thinking I would do one right before I'm ready to add my next addition sometime in the next week or so. That way I can test both before and after the change to practice a bit more and to see if there is a change in the levels.

And that's exactly the way you go about a reef tank :thumbsup:. Good thinking and spot on. Test before and after the WC, and alk isn't much of an issue at the moment since there isn't much to consume it.

- I've heard about them messing with corals as well. Which is why I don't want to deal with them in the DT. But that's why I was only thinking of allowing her to put one in the fuge. If she wants to go sit in the closet and watch him every so often. That's fine by me. He might be a useful grazer and detrivore in a fuge? I guess I need to do a bit more :reading: on what they eat. But if they don't eat the micro-fauna we just seeded. I might be willing to put one in the fuge.

Think he'll be fine in the fuge. Doubt he'll be able to make his way all the way to the display without becoming souffle

Anyway... I'm off to BBQ and do some electrical work :dance:

Remember Troub, less time on BBQ and more on the electricals....Damn, now I'm hungry again :furious: