My 65 Gallon build

[sde1500]

I have power again!! Tank is looking just ok. Digital thermometer reads 63. House is 54. I have my robust house heat blasting and all my backup heaters in the tank. Coral are unhappy. Fish I can find look cold. GHA looks entirely unphased naturally. Also my astrinea population seems to be gathering for a meeting. Took the opportunity to scoop a ton out. They were getting too plentiful.

 

[sde1500]

So tank had recently taken a back seat. Why? Well the house is a bit of a fixer upper and I've been doing a ton of work on it. All in preparation for this guy.

And now that he is here well I don't have much time still. Tank looks decent, but algae is a plague. Decided to dose the tank with Fluconazole. Read a ton of great things so I want to give it a shot. I have two doses worth. 1600mg went in the tank just now. Pics below taken today. I'll be sure to update as time progresses. Carbon and skimmer are off line. I think it will take about three weeks. In the meantime I may add a coral or two at a Black Friday event, but my main focus will be setting up a pump and drain to connect my sump directly to a drain and my saltwater bin in the basement. I don't do water changes often enough and I don't like lugging buckets. Simplifying it will allow me to spend less time messing with the tank but still keep up maintaining it. I hope...

 

[JamesZebedee]

Hey, i just read through this thread. great work keeping it all updated, etc.

Congratulations on the kid, and good luck with the algae.

 

[dvddelay43]

Hey, i just read through this thread. great work keeping it all updated, etc.

Congratulations on the kid, and good luck with the algae.

Do some water testing check your phosphates might be high get some crabs to help them get the hair algae down
David

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

 

[sde1500]

Hey, i just read through this thread. great work keeping it all updated, etc.

Congratulations on the kid, and good luck with the algae.

Thanks for reading through it! It has been a trip. Got to share the good and the ugly and its been a little of both. Few tweaks and I think the tank will really be where I want it to be. Got a few small little projects for it that I'll kick back into gear once its clean too.

Do some water testing check your phosphates might be high get some crabs to help them get the hair algae down
David

Sent from my Nexus 6P using Tapatalk

Hey thanks for stopping by, and welcome to ReefCentral! I do know how to keep the tank algae free. Unfortunately like I said, just haven't had the time. Getting it cleaned up quick hopefully with dosing now, then I'll be back on track to maintaining it.

 

[sde1500]

Been close to two weeks with Fluconazole in the water. Did some manual removal as well. Going to give it another week or so then do a big water change and more manual removal. Looking better but there is still a lot. Restarted my algae reactor too, to start getting nutrients down.

 

[Shrinkette]

Wow, what a journey!
Really interesting read --
So glad you included pics,
And congrats on becoming a father to that beautiful boy!!!!!

 

[sde1500]

Wow, what a journey!
Really interesting read --
So glad you included pics,
And congrats on becoming a father to that beautiful boy!!!!!

Thanks! Yea its been an interesting almost two years with this tank. Overall theme sadly seems to be algae but it is starting to fill out with coral nicely. Theme for next year definitely will be keeping up with maintaining it. Should be a interesting task with the little one around now.

 

[sde1500]

Ok Fluconazole has been in the tank 23 days. Worked great. I would recommend a big water change before and after. I didn't do one before and with the die off nutrients started to have adverse affects. However it's much better than GHA. Seems like some areas of cyano and that's all. Hope these pictures come out visible enough. Weekly progress shots top to bottom is start to finish.

 

[sde1500]

Interesting observation. Post Fluconazole I have a cyano outbreak. Kinda expected it, that was a lot of GHA die off. Its appearing to kill a lot of the aiptasia that are in my tank. Keeping it off the corals, letting it stay on the aiptasia to see what happens.

 

[sde1500]

Long time since I posted here. Brief run down, tank has survived 4 power outages lasting for 24+ hours each since October with no losses. It has survived massive GHA outbreaks, and cyano, and GHA again recently. Mainly due to general neglect of maintenance thanks to my 6 month old and house updates taking all my time. Obviously I needed a solution. Enter the stenner peristaltic pump to do auto water changes. Went live today so we'll see how it works out. Just had flucanazole in the tank for the last month and algae is mostly gone. With increased water changes I hope to see it all go. Plan is for daily 1 gallon change.

Picture of the pump all hooked up.

Current FTS

 

[sde1500]

A few quick closer shots of some of my current favorites in the tank.

Ignore the mermaid cup macros around this one, they are a small plague on the tank that come and go. Hopefully this will slowly encrust right over them.

This was a small frag I broke off the main colony that is growing next to it. Interesting growth, the main colony is doing a ton more encrusting, less branching. This one is mostly branches.

Aforementioned encruster:

Love all the colors on this Orange Crush Acan Echinata:

I really need to get working on taking pictures with my good camera.

 

[sde1500]

Snapped a quick top down of the left half of the tank while doing a little work on it.

 

[sde1500]

Phyto cultures still going strong. I split every 1-3 weeks. Typically 2 and just getting super dark green phyto. Even had one bottle crash to super light green then actually come back to life. Was interesting to watch.

This jug is all for the DT. Another is for the pod cultures. DT is definitely processing more now. It clears up much faster when I add it, and some times I dump a lot in at once.

 

[cjohn214]

looking good!Love seeing other people's tanks.

 

[sde1500]

Nothing much new to update. Most everything in the tank is growing well. Stopped growing phyto and pods for now, a baby and home remodel was just taking up too much time and the cultures were suffering. May fire them up again later.

Forest fire monti colony is growing like crazy.

Ring of fire zoas also growing quite well.

 

[Cstaricansrfer1]

Good job sticking through the algae. Tank is looking great now.

 

[sde1500]

Good job sticking through the algae. Tank is looking great now.

Thank you! Yea I am very happy with it. Best thing I could have done was treat it with fluc and set up the auto water changes. Been an absolute game changer.

 

[BranchingHammer]

Bump

 

[sde1500]

Thanks for the bump! Not too much new to report on though. Tank all seems to be growing pretty well. I wish I had taken monthly or even weekly pics of my monti digita because it's growing like crazy. Moved a frag of what I believe is an Oregon tort, got stung a bit by my torch so I don't want it to die. Definitely just in a grow out phase. I may add some new corals and fish in the spring. But for now I'm just letting it grow. Considering adding a gyre pump, plus getting an auto doser and frag rack as a few of these corals start growing past where I want them to. Crappy FTS from this morning, GSP in the middle sadly wasn't out yet.