My 65 Gallon build

[sde1500]

Nice. Glad it's working for ya. Wish it worked for me, but already in the vodka dosing and designing a recirculating biopellet reactor for myself. I think tomorrow I'm going to bomb my tank with chemiclean also. We'll see how that goes.

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Cool good luck. You were having some nitrate issues right? Might have been just too much food for the algae for Vibrant to overcome. Who knows. Found your diy reactor, I'll follow along, diy projects are always cool.


Quick update on the tank inhabitants. Added a pair of wrasses and they seem to be settling in well. Melanurus wrasse and a blue and red fairy wrasse. The fairy tends to stay in the rocks but is starting to swim around more.

 

[sturner91]

Yea Nitrate hit me out of nowhere. It spiked to 80ppm and my phosphate was staying below .5ppm. As of now nitrates are sitting at 40ppm but there's so much cyano plus the hair algae is coated in cyano so I'm pretty sure the readings are way off due to this. At this point I just need to do a full flush with chemiclean. I've already tackled what I assume to be the nitrate/phosphate issue which was from overfeeding. But we'll see what happens after the chemiclean.

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[sde1500]

Tank algae getting better every day.

New project started rolling today. My plan for this tank originally was to build it with a big fuge to support pods to keep a mandarin. Got cold feet about it and didn't even end up incorporating a fuge into the build. Naturally, the wife came with me to my LFS and wanted a mandarin. And so here we are.

Top three tanks just got seeded with the 5280 mix of pods from Algae Barn, green from some phytoplankton. Three tanks in the middle will be for more pods, need a bigger air pump first, 30+ gallons of water in all. Bottom shelf will be for growing phyto, once my order of nanno and tet come in from Florida aquaculture.

 

[sde1500]

Tank has really cleared up. Got some Chaeto, so the reactor is running again. Bumped the lighting intensity up, haven't been seeing great growth from some of the corals, so wanted to see if more intense lightning helps. Zoas are looking good though.

 

[sde1500]

Pods really starting to take off in the three tanks running. Starting to see them swimming all over and on the sides. Next phase started a little later than planned, but phyto is in and growing. Went with nanno and tet.

 

[sde1500]

Just realized my tank turned one the other day! Been quite the year for it, and me. For my first full blown reef tank, I'm quite happy with where it is right now. Not seeing quite the growth I'd like, I swear that pink birdsnest coral hasn't grown at all, but nothing is dying. Fish are a little tougher for me, I've lost more than I had hoped too. Pains me that it may be my fault and that my learning pains have caused a fish to die. Hard to say, but who knows. This year I resolve to get better at it, including a more refined approach to QT. I'm aware I have been lucky up to this point, now I want to be smart. Still on the fence about QTing corals, probably not going to still. We'll see. And I'll end with an updated FTS.

 

[sde1500]

The phyto culture is expanding.

 

[sde1500]

My 65 Gallon build

Couple SPS shots.
Red dragon, starting to encrust more on the base, can't tell how much it's actually growing otherwise. Def slowly for me.

Forest fire digi. Growing. Nicely, a lot of encrusting on the base already on the rock not just the plug. And the branches are growing. Kinda bummed though it's not really green with red polyps anymore. More white with red polyps. Still looks cool but I miss the green.

 

[sde1500]

Having issues with my ATO again. If Tunze wasn't so responsive I'd probably be cursing their name. But as it is working with them to figure out what is wrong, pump isn't pumping and this is the replacement barely a month old. Hope to have it worked out soon.

And since no post is fun without pictures, probably my favorite coral is about a year in my tank now. I'm a big fan of zoas, but can't at all beat the growth I've gotten and the movement I get from this torch. Got it as 4 heads it's easily 12 now and I can see a few more splitting right now.

Year ago:

Mere minutes ago:

 

[sde1500]

Came home the other day to my fairy wrasse missing. Found it dried out behind the tank. Don't know how it made it out of the tank, it was too big to fit through the egg crate. Sucks, it was such a pretty fish. Only thing I can think of is it got through the overflow into the external box which isn't covered. Might rig something up to cover that, just in case. It will be a while before I add any new fish to the tank, everything has been running so well for a while, I don't really want to do anything to possibly upset that. Won't add another wrasse though. As much as I like them, my Melanurus did chase the fairy around a lot, so probably best to leave that as the only wrasse.

 

[CL8869]

Nice build! Nice seeing a fellow RI member also!

 

[sde1500]

Hey thanks! It certainly keeps me happy and busy.

 

[sde1500]

Well after a couple water changes where I was adding a little more water than I was removing my salinity had crept up. Now how did I catch this? Sadly not with my refracometer but my red dragon RTN over night. Lost one accidental frag and had to cut 3/4 of the colony off. Sucks. Lesson learned though to be more careful adding water back. It had crept up near 1.029. Waterchange to bring it back down and added carbon just in case. Seems to have stopped the tissue loss. Everything else seems ok, beyond a little extra algae. Though this mermaids cup is getting borderline out of control. Got a ton of stalks everywhere and it seems to really be bothering my gsp colony. Not going to do anything drastic yet but we'll see.

 

[sde1500]

Got lucky yesterday. Came home earlier and found that my heater had failed. Failed off though. Fish were all cold, water was cold, but other than that no problems. Back up smaller heaters in and a new heater/controller from JBJ in the mail.

 

[sde1500]

Tank is warm again. Though my new heater isn't in yet. In as in the tank. It's in my living room. But doesn't fit the sump lol. Whoops. Backups keeping up for now so no worries there. Might just go in person to Petco to make sure I get one that fits.

Copepod and phyto cultures are back on track. Managed to save both phyto cultures and just got them split so that's a win at least. Pod culture is really doing well. Might be able to do a mandarin soon.

 

[sde1500]

New heater and controller are in.

Little side project for the phyto, made an improved looking system. Design wasn't my idea but looks a lot nicer than what I had going. All pvc with two LED grow light strips in tubes. Increases my control of the airflow and also my capacity for growing. Can now connect more bottles than before. Hopefully does well enough that soon I can add a culture of rotifers in to start feeding the coral.

 

[sde1500]

Memorial Day weekend FTS update. Tank coming off a water change and 2 day blackout and looking really good. Amazing how little algae survives after just a couple days of no light.

 

[sde1500]

Quick update. Tank going pretty well. Almost everything is growing, algae included... Been working hard to keep the GHA down. Don't have a recent test results but never really seem to have many nutrients when I test. Did a 3 day blackout and very large water change. Admittedly I've been a little slacking on those. Resolving to set a day to do one every week now. Of course while doing the WC I knocked off a large branch of my forest fire digi, sucks was just about to do a comparison pic from when I first got it. It's been growing well, guess I have two to grow now. Stuck it on the same rock, figure they'll grow together eventually. Haven't added anything in a while, starting to get the itch it buy a few more corals and fish but I want the algae managed first.

 

[sde1500]

Been about as active keeping up on my tank as I have been updating it here sadly. Home improvements have taken all of my time, as I rush to complete a bunch before my son is born in the next couple days. Algae has been a steady grower, I keep it pruned when I can. After I wrap up the house updates I'll be putting together a pump system to greatly simplify water changes, I'm done lugging buckets.

Tank currently has no power, and I really need to get a generator to stop worrying about it. Ran some pumps and a heater off my car all evening yesterday, it lasted all night without any aeration, ran pumps again for a couple hours this morning. Hopefully it lasts again until I get back from work. Currently wrapped in a flannel sheet to keep some heat in.

 

[sde1500]

Tank ain't dead yet! The three fish not good at hiding are accounted for. The others are missing assumed hiding. Might be another 24 hrs of this. I now know the tank can make it close to 10 hours no heat or circulation on a chilly fall day. I'd prefer not knowing this, a generator will be purchased in the coming weeks for sure.