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My first tank with corals: 26 gallon bowfront- it has reached old man age!


Butchy21

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Hey everyone,

I am new to Nano-reef and I am excited to be able to get some helpful comments back from this community. I live in Boston and to be honest, the options for LFS are very lacking so it would be great to have more frequent dialog going on issues I encounter.

 

I had a 26 gallon bowfront FOLR tank for several years but had it in storage for a bit. I've finally made the leap to upgrading my equipment and getting some corals going.

 

I currently have:

 

Octupus 1000 skimmer

Aquaclear 30 filter

Current USA Orbit LED Light

2x Koralia Nano 42 powerheads

 

The tank has been up and running since July 2014 but I am just now creating a post for it.

First fish were added in September with corals to follow.

First coral added in December (Single head frogspawn $20).

 

Im routinely checking nitrate, nitrite, ammonia, and pH with 20% water changes every 10 days with reef crystals. Looking to buy Salifert's calicum and alkalinity tests with the addition of more LPS.

 

 

 

 

 

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Welcome butchy to NR. There are a lot of really nice, knowledgeable folks here who will be happy to help you with any questions you might have. I have a bowfront myself.

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Ah that's good to hear. I always had a concern about the bowfront being so deep but the more I research, there are tons of low light requiring corals to stick on the bottom. Zoos, mushrooms, etc. It just takes a ton of live rock to give the tank some height!

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So in January I added two types of zoos and some yellow polyps, to get some movement in the tank. The zoos have not spread to any connecting rock yet- looking forward to expanding the colony a bit. They have great color at night when only the actinics are on. I'm surprised the clown fish have no interest in the frogspawn at all yet. :closedeyes:

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And with the new corals came a Watchman goby- I'm confused because he eats very little of the pellet and brine/mysis (will not eat flake either) so i am assuming he is filtering the sand for snacks but i have not caught him in the act in several months that I've had him. My last one was gargling the sandbed constantly.

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I'm currently having issues with brown algae/diatoms on the sand bed. I have two 425gph koralias- am I not pushing enough water?

 

I have one powerhead on the left shooting straight across to the right and I have one on the right pointing towards the sand bed shooting to the left.

 

Would adding a 3rd powerhead be over kill?

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I started with the same flow as you in my 26 bow, eventually I went with 2 mp10s at 75% each. I'm not in the mood for googling the mp10's flow but that's like 2-3 times what you have.

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Ah thanks for the info- that is really helpful, especially with someone having the same tank dimensions. I just looked it up and wp-10 does 530-1000gph- so you are running a good 2x from me. Someone else just suggesting Jabeo RW series- so i'm thinking of keeping 2x 425gph koralias and then using the adjustable 200-1000gph Jabeo rw-4.

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Ah thanks for the info- that is really helpful, especially with someone having the same tank dimensions. I just looked it up and wp-10 does 530-1000gph- so you are running a good 2x from me. Someone else just suggesting Jabeo RW series- so i'm thinking of keeping 2x 425gph koralias and then using the adjustable 200-1000gph Jabeo rw-4.

My thread may help a bit, although there may be some random nonsense in there.

http://www.nano-reef.com/topic/322155-chads-26g-is-coming-down/

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Added a few new things to the tank- I got a trumpet coral and a six line wrasse that is sneaking into the picture. Trumpet has a good number of heads- the one side though looks to have recessed.

 

Has anyone seen this color of trumpet or is it bleached? I have my doubts about my LFS and their ability to keep corals healthy. They had three large Wellso's but 2/3 were badly damaged.

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I have had trumpets that are a pale blue-ish green. They look ok to me. Of course mine eventually died, so what does that say? LOL

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Ha, ok i guess now I wait and see. Almost all of the heads put out their tentacles at night and about half do during the day so I think they are happy. They readily grab shrimp if I feed as well.

 

Any luck fragging them?

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I actually never tried to frag them. It sounds like they are doing exactly what a healthy trumpet should do so I think they are fine.

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I literally spent 4 fricking hours last Saturday redoing my whole rockscaping- every rock i moved i had to wait and let the sand settle so i could even see. There has to be some easier way to do it! Since the tank is 21 inches high, i needed to get way more elevation and make some ledges to put future corals on. I also just ordered some epoxy so i am considering giving it a little help in being more stable.

 

I will post pics soon- i'm really happy with it (that is what 4hrs will get you). :P

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Another trip to the LFS- I got a six line wrasse then added some mushrooms, kenya tree and green star polyps.

 

Any idea what type of mushrooms they are? They are brown-dull orange but have a great orange color under actinics. From looking at pictures , I would think the raised bumps suggest they are not hairy mushrooms but that means I am unsure of the species.

 

Now I'm just waiting on amazon to deliver my new powerhead so i can get rid of that annoying brown algae.

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So here is the new aquascape finally! I was waiting on grabbing a few extra pounds of LR- needed to get some more height in the this tank for high light corals.

 

Jebao RW-4 finally showed up too! I'm hoping within a week or so the extra water movement clears up the brown algae. Right now I am running it in pulse mode at 80%. So far all of the corals remained open after screwing with powerhead placement so I guess that is a start.

 

Yellow polyps either are not coming out last few weeks or are dying. I had them at the bottom of the tank and just moved them up higher, maybe they can recover.

 

I also did some driving around (hit up two private reefers) for corals Saturday- I focused on small frags and I got a ton of new species!

 

Pics to follow in the near future.

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So I recently found a few guys that are semi-local and made a great weekend buying extravaganza on corals!

 

Here are some newbies for the tank:

Two ricordeas

Elegance

3 types of zoos

blue xenia

small hammer

small frogspawn

red monti

green slimer

birdsnest? I'm not positive about this one.

acan

duncan

neon green trumpet

 

Everything looked really great after a few days with the exception of the acan which took nearly a week to start puffing up. The one ricordea has started developing a second mouth already too. I'm awaiting the xenia to start pulsing hopefully but it remains very small still so maybe it will start when growing substantially.

 


Some more of the newer stuff-

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  • 2 weeks later...

LOL, you have more variety of coral in your 26 bow than I have in my 36 bow! It's going to be something when everything begins to grow! My problem is all my money is going into the seahorse fuge instead of the display reef, ha ha.

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LOL, you have more variety of coral in your 26 bow than I have in my 36 bow! It's going to be something when everything begins to grow! My problem is all my money is going into the seahorse fuge instead of the display reef, ha ha.

Thanks! Ya, I sort of went out again and bought a ton more stuff. I must be over 20 species by now. Added two acans, green hairy pavona, a few more colored zoos, a few types of palys, some larger button polyp species, i think a hollywood stunner challice, a beautiful micromussa, utter chaos single polyp and an awesome favia.

 

Pictures to follow when i get time!

 

I was having all kinds of problems with getting Magnesium levels up- dosed 100ppm per day several times with no increase in magnesium. Salifert test kit was reading 960-990ppm no matter what i did. Bought a water sample to LFS and they got 1200ppm with Seachem test, so it was my kit that was bad. The problem was getting water tested was another excuse to buy more corals lol.

 

Ah don't let my girlfriend see any pics of the seahorses, at the LFS- she was asking "can we put those in the tank" haha. Do you have your seahorse tank up and running yet?

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Some new tank additions, plus I finally started pulling corals off plugs and gluing them down. Ugh those turbo snails make a mess if you don't!


All of my acans, micromussa together, utter chaos paly and full tank view.

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