Ad's Tackle Box

[Admonition]

I can't believe it's been seven months since my last update, it's amazing how time flys. The angel sadly died, bullied I believe by the dominant clown (although it looked like they were finally getting along). To make matters worse I never found the angel's body and believe her death helped a sudden GHA outbreak that quickly took over the tank. It took awhile but I've finally gotten it mostly under control. The rocks themselves are heavily pokedotted with coralline algae and are coming around nicely as well. 

 

At this time I still only have the three headed blasto frag, which is doing well. I haven't added anything new in months just because a promotion at work has kept me extremely busy as I had to essentially learn two different positions at once. But I'm back and ready to fill this tank up with happy corals like my previous tanks  

 

I still want to stick with LPS and softies. And I'm still toying with the idea of an easy SPS frag on the top center rock. Hopefully I can find some other reefers looking to sell frags in the coming months and get this puppy looking pretty! I'm thinking torches, duncans, favias, acans, zoas, a frogspawn, and absolutely neon green candy canes (my favorite!). As for the SPS, something easy and branching that loves light if it goes in the top center but I'm not sure what. 

 

I am also thinking about adding another fish or two. But I'm worried about the clown. If I did add another fish, I want to try the acclimation box I've seen people use. This way I can at least help ease everyone together and find out if I need to find my new fish a different home before they get hurt. Any suggestions? I love six lines, and even toyed with the idea of another clown fish- but I'm not sure how my current one will take that. 

[Admonition]

Oh here is a current shot of the tank. Look how sad it is with just one coral =p 

[Admonition]

Aaaaaaand I've been horrible again with updating this darn thread. Work and life has kept me away from this great community and my own thread, but I've finally been able to breathe a little since my last update. The above post is one of the reasons why I love documenting our tanks. I completely forgot how white my rock structure was, and I can't believe that it used to look like that only three months ago lol. It might be hard to see in the below photo but almost all of the rocks are covered in coralline algae, finally! Although I still have little hair algae on one of the rocks, almost all of the stuff has been gone from the tank since my hair algae war of 2017 lol. The fish have been doing great and so has my little frag of blasto. With that being said, I happened upon my LFS a month ago for some snails and found some freshly cut duncan and candy cane frags. Usually I refuse to buy any corals or fish from my LFS because the corals always look horrible and the fish always have ick. But these frags looked -amazingly- happy and looked like they had just been cut (not a spec of debris on their bright white frag plugs). So I grabbed a head of duncan and a double head of candy canes  They've been acclimating for awhile now and they're doing awesome. 

 

Then comes yesterday. The day that will be known as holyfragsbatman day. I had the opportunity to drive down to Miami and meet up with @HarryPotter, who had advertised free torch frags. Little did I know I would be leaving with a box of stuff lmao. By the end of my trip I ended up with number of acros, a couple types of montipora, and seven heads of frogspawn, in addition to the six frags of torches I originally came for. Needless to say I am extremely appreciative of Harry, and ridiculously excited to grow them out. Hopefully some day soon they will get fat and happy enough for me to have the opportunity to frag these bad boys for other local reefers. All in all Harry's tank looks even better in person than it does in his photos, and it was great being able to see his setup and pick his brain about his tank! 

 

So here's a full tank shot as of today (I almost didn't have enough frag racks!). Everything has opened up and looks very happy. I will keep two of the torches and already plan to give the others away to a few new reefers in my area to help start them on their journey. Same with the frogspawn, as I'll be keeping the large piece on the left and donating the other heads to the new guys and gals. The goal with the SPS is to grow it out on the top half of the rock structure, maybe some montis on the sides fanning out, and then have my LPS dotting the bottom rocks. We'll see as things start growing out, for now, I plan to carefully start acclimating them to my LEDs as they were very high up under T5s. 

 

[HarryPotter]

"holyfragsbatman day" xD I love it. 

 

Enjoy all the frags, its great being able to give away and sharewhat I've grown as opposed to you or others buying wild corals!

[Admonition]

And so it begins again. Again. 

 

Having been established for years, my Fusion 40 tank has had its shares of ups and downs. I've had coral flourish to the point of literally giving away frags to local reefers, as well as healthy corals just die without so much as a reason why. I've had my AI Hydra 52 light just suddenly die after years of faithful service, followed by my sheer panic of omg, my corals will die without a light, I can't believe I now have to drop hundreds on a new light immediately (I ended up with a Radion XR30w G4 Pro due to a luckily placed sale the same week). I even upgraded the Fusion 40's return pump to the MightyJet 538 when it became all the rage, because reasons. And then there's the infamous, aggressive bout of algae in early 2021 that took almost a year to bounce back from. Good grief Charlie Brown would be an understatement 😵. And after finally having come back from the edge of insanity with that algae attack, I had begun to discover the world of NSA aquascaping- and I fell in love. I had never been a fan of my original pile-of-rock aquascape, but at the time the only other alternative I was aware of was complex rigging with acrylic rods and mortar- nothing I honestly wanted to deal with at the time. But watching people make these amazing, personalized sculptures with such a simple process...well....the desire to do the same finally became too much. And with the encouragement of my wife and a local reefer, the decision to move forward with the idea became reality.  

 

I ended up purchasing some of the 'foundation' reef saver rock from BRS so that I could make sure this time around that my rocks had a nice, flat foundation on the glass bottom instead of jagged edges on top of sand. With those pieces as my foundation (no pun intended) I went ahead and started breaking up some left over dry rock I had from my previous build, and went to town in my garage with a bottle of thin BRS super glue . And I have to say, what an absolute blast it was creating my own personalized scape. I must've built and tore down thirty different 'ideas' until taking the official plunge and ultimately landing on my final product. 

 

 

 

Not exactly NSA (I may have went a bit overboard with the foundation rock), but I definitely found it more pleasant shape to look at than the pile of of rocks I had before- think of the coral placement possibilities! And lets be honest, its just fun to tell people who see the tank, "See that? Yeah, I sculpted that." 😎 

 

I then began the process of curing the now sculpted dry rock in a plastic brute bin, using Dr.Tim's One and Only (his brand of ammonia). The process took just over a 45 days to complete appropriately, and I gave it another two weeks of consistency before finally committing it to the tank. I then removed the frags, fish, and inverts I had currently in the display tank into a quarantine tank I had setup, along with some of the live rock from the display tank. Once the livestock was safely transferred to the temporary tank, I drained the display tank and removed the current sandbed entirely. I then quickly added my new rockscape so it sat flat on the glass bottom, added about 20lbs of reef grade dry sand (which I had previously rinsed for a few hours and had let dry), and filled the tank with thirty-two gallons of saltwater I had already made that morning (and had left circulating at temp for just this moment). 

 

 

 

 

I then allowed the tank to settle and make sure its parameters matched that of the previous tank, and eventually moved my livestock back over when it was good to do so. And with that, the evolution was complete. Whew. I naturally checked my parameters constantly for the first few weeks, making sure there were no mini-cycle issues but everything thankfully continued to stay on track, and none of my livestock showed any signs of distress. 

 

Front

 

Right side looking left

 

Left side looking right

 

 

And so now here we are. The tank has been up and running for about a month now and has really hit the ground running. My goal is to pick up a few more fish, specifically I would ultimately like to end up with a pair of clowns, a pajama cardinal, and a royal gramma (some of my favorite fish). The plan is to at least try and pick up the clowns sometime next month after I gather some supplies to follow BRS' 80/20 quarantine procedure. I've never quarantined fished in the past, but after loosing my clown last year (which I had had for 3 years) after adding a new fish (both of which died within 2 weeks of the addition), I decided I'm going to start quarantining my fish from now on. I know its not foolproof, but its better than the game of Russian roulette I've always played. 

 

As far as coral stocking, I would like to get my hands on a nice frogspawn, kryptonite candy canes, a duncan, and some sort of 'easy' branching SPS. But all good things in time. 

 

So yeah, SO much has happened since my last update 4.5 years ago lol, but I really wanted to document the start of this new evolution of the tank! 

[debbeach13]

Welcome back! I love the new sculpture.

[Admonition]

Thanks! Good to be back and glad you like it 

[Admonition]

Small update today. Normally the pompoms stay hidden within the rock work during the day in their separate areas, but today they suddenly decided to grace me with their presence, love these guys! The top one I believe is male and the bottom one I know is a female as she was carrying eggs when I first picked her up. 

 

 

Also, I had a pretty cool experience with my new Hanna calcium checker. I have difficulty discerning certain colors, and like a lot of us hobbyists, I usually have to ask my significant other to help me tell the color change with my Red Sea kits. I've slowly acquired Hanna colorimeters to help and have loved them all- except the dreaded Calcium checker (I bought the original years ago). Two weeks ago I stumbled upon their 'new' kit, which comes with a pipette designed to dispense exactly 0.1mL of tank water (which seems to have been one of two issues people were running into with the old syringes that accompanied the original kits). I also read that the RO water that was supposed to dilute the sample was also a factor in inaccurate readings. So I decided to pick up this new kit from BRS and give it a whirl. 

 

After getting the checker last week I tried it out and bleh, I got a crazy high reading. BUT. I remembered that I read some articles saying that another issue could be the RO or RODI water used during the test. And although I did use RODI water I make at home myself, I was willing to admit there is always a possibility that my RODI water could be effecting the test. So seeing as I needed to order a few things from BRS anyway, I added some of the Hanna deionized water to my order. 

 

I got my package today and gave the test another try. And wouldn't you know it, the very first test result gave me a reasonable 437 reading. I then blindly checked with my Red Sea kit and was stuck between two plunger points (darn colors). But when I when to see what my Red Sea readings actually resulted in, I was at 430 and 440 (depending on which plunger mark I actually saw the color change at). I went ahead and had my wife do the test on her own and she got 440! I'll continue to do the next few Calcium tests this way (double checking my Hanna against my Red Sea) just to make sure- but it looks like I can finally start checking my Calcium with the easy press of a button!

 

</rantaboutacalciumchecker> 

[schgr.cube]

I wish my pompom would come out during the day! I hardly ever see it during the night nowadays, I should probably get a second.

[Admonition]

Yeah mine usually spend all their time during the day hiding, which is why I was so excited to see them out when I walked up to the tank. I literally scrambled for my phone to take a picture and tried not to spook them 😆
 

I say go for it with getting a second one! 

[Admonition]

So last week brought about a few changes. I finally decided to place the coral I’ve had sitting in racks for awhile into their new spots across the 'scape. So far everything seems to have settled into their new homes without issue, but I’ll continue to check for signs of distress. 

 

 

Both of my pompom crabs seem to have claimed their areas of the tank, with one of them deciding the tippy top of the rock structure is his domain- much to the dismay of my monti I’m sure lol

 

 

 

I also got tired of manually dosing the small amounts of alk & calc I've needed to every day so I dug my old Neptune DOS out of the garage and set it up. Once I made sure old Betsy was still operational I ended up grabbing a Simplicity 6L triple dosing container and the Red Sea reefdose tubing kit from BRS. 

 

 

I’m not thrilled at how the inside of the stand looks, but given the width of the doser the only way it would fit was sideways. Ultimately I’m going to try and see if I can get a local carpenter to build a small cabinet that fits next to the tank stand (I have an empty odd shaped corner area next to it), and I’ll setup the doser and container facing forward to make them easily accessible. Until then, this is what I got. 

 

Other than that, the only interesting (but also scary) experience I’ve had recently was a big jump in my pH. My tank normally runs between 8.15 and 8.3 pH in a pretty consistent pattern every day. Well, the wife and I went away for 3 days and I watched in horror as my pH got up to it’s normal 8.3 peak….and then it just stayed there instead of going down to its normal valley. Then the next day when it would normally go up it went all the way up to 8.44 followed by a ‘low’ of 8.38. The next day it went up to a high of 8.47. Then (after the wife and I got home) it slowly made its way down to 8.25. 

 

I remember reading forum posts about the carbon dioxide we breathe out could affect our reef tanks, but this was definitely interesting to see (and I assume is the reason for the jump in pH as it began to lower after we returned home). Kind of cool to see that without us in the house, the tank’s natural pH is 8.4. 

 

Anywho, that’s all for now! 

[debbeach13]

The tank looks great! So, does inside the cabinet crowded but organized. Very interesting, tracking the PH. I hope you enjoyed your vacation.

[Admonition]

Thank you! Yeah I tried to make it as organized as I could given the limited space lol. And thanks, we had a good time. 
 

Yeah it was pretty interesting to see the change in pH just from no one being in the house, and the tank is back to its ‘normal’ pH range 

[Admonition]

So I noticed the returns were pumping out a lot of microbubbles over the last week, which I discovered were coming from my skimmer. I’ve always placed a piece of filter floss along the return of the skimmer to stop the microbubbles, which has always fixed that particular issue. But for some reason this time it wasn’t working. It took me a little bit but I noticed there was back pressure of some kind in the body of the skimmer, because the bubbles inside the skimmer weren’t contained just within the bubble plate cylinder, but ‘leaking’ out into the body. I tried a lot of things before finding an old forum post suggesting salt creep in the venturi tube can cause this. Sure enough, I ran RODI water through the venturi,l tube, and it must have dislodged/dissolved the salt creep inside because the skimmer fell back into its normal state and the microbubbles were gone 🙂 I think the ‘silencer’ being so close to the water line draws in salt so I’ve detached my venturi inlet from the silencer. Hopefully this helps with any salt creep in the future. 
 

But needless to say, I’ll be adding this little bit of maintenance to my monthly routine! 
 

In other news, I picked up a bunch of new coral! I grabbed a kryptonite candy cane frag from my LFS, I’ve been looking everywhere for a frag of this (that didn’t cost an arm and a leg per head) and was ecstatic to find it. And then I grabbed the rest from a semi local reefer who always has awesome frags available. I grabbed mostly SPS frags plus a nice frogspawn with purple tips. Hopefully I can get these growing out nicely!

 

[Admonition]

Oh and I almost forgot to show the new print the wife got me during our last Disney trip a few weeks ago, I love it!