Kyle's Reef - ~150g combined system

[teenyreef]

Those look like good spots to me. My duncan doesn't bother anything - it doesn't have sweepers like the euphyllia get.

[fishfreak0114]

My duncans have so far only bugged a trumpet.  Everything else has been fine.

[Kyl]

Visited the guy today whom I got the monticaps from last fall for some free replacements that I lost to the nudibranchs, and picked up a couple other things as well.

 

Replacement green monticap (not shown), flowerpot monticap (behind) and sunset encrusting montipora. As well, a nice Tyree Blue Matrix piece and small Hawkins Echinata frag.

newfrags41 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

The 10's getting jam packed as a frag tank, still trying to figure the best way to go about getting the huge birdsnest in there without smothering everything else..

[Kyl]

Something's missing!

byebirdsnest by Kyl, on Flickr

 

Now I know why it's called birdsnest, look at that mess of growth (about 6" x 6" x 4"). The bare portions are where it was fighting with the purple Pocillopora.

yuge by Kyl, on Flickr

 

And it all started with these 1.5" pieces back in July 2016

birdsneststart by Kyl, on Flickr

 

This does however give me a chance to introduce a 3 week old resident to the tank, Mr. Polkadot Acro crab

acrocrab by Kyl, on Flickr

 

And not only does he hide in SPS and defend them from the scourge known as the tailspot blenny, he also does handstands clawstands!

handstand by Kyl, on Flickr

 

Not sure where I want to put the replacement birdsnest frag, possibly on the far right.. or maybe not in the tank at all. Looking at how much room it took up, there's a huge difference in gaining almost 1/3 of the tank width back for coral scaping.

 

[Kyl]

Now I know how finicky some of the higher SPS can be. Hawkins is basically all gone, skin just peeled right off since acquiring it on Saturday, so I cut off the end of the last branch with about 3mm left of tissue. Sunset monti had massive tissue loss, not sure if it's going to be salvaged, about half the size of a dime now. Apparently the acros are from a tank with AEFW which I didn't realize till I read our local regional forum elsewhere on Sunday, and after reflecting on what we were talking about when I was picking them up I can't believe I overlooked that when it sort of came up during conversation.. So I'm being very aggressive with dips every three days and constant monitoring, thankfully it's in the "frag tank" 10 gallon. Also pruned it down quite a bit to remove any spot without tissue, but I haven't seen any eggs or bite marks with each inspection under magnifying glass, nor AEFW during the three dips so far with Melafix or CoralRx.

 

I think the one thing that has saved some head-aches are I always remove all frags from their plugs pre-dip (or cut them off just above the plug), and if it's an encrusting piece I like to trim every side of it after prying it off the plug glue and scraping the back with a scalpel. 

 

On the plus side the Midas and Tomini are now in copper QT together with minimal behavior problems so far. Both are eating like champs, going to ramp the copper up progressively over the weekend. Sunday also marks an achievement of the 65 being fallow for 76 days, so the velvet survivors are heading back home (sans the bi-colour blenny). Also re-worked the stocking goals a bit more, and will pick up the wrasses as I see them become available locally since the QT factory is running!

 

Spoiler

1x Lyretail Anthias

1x Flame Angel

1x Lubbock's Fairy Wrasse

1x Firefish

1x Leopard Wrasse

From all I've read the flame angel should be one of the last added, and they're very common locally so that's probably how it will shape up. Still eventually want a sifting goby and a mandarin, but the tank pod population sans fish still isn't so great.

[Kyl]

Guess the next tank to go fallow 76 days!

ich by Kyl, on Flickr

 

Always suspected this tank had it from early on just due to throwing fish and coral in, looks like I'm going to be catching nano fish this weekend.

[Weetabix7]

Oy. 

[Kyl]

Seen a speck here or there over the months, but yeah, this guy is covered and the little tailspot is also showing more than a few. Wonder what the final stresser was, maybe when I removed the giant birdsnest.

 

Oh well, I know what to do now, and they don't seem in distress. Kind of funny how this has lined up, I'm wondering if I should just tank transfer these guys or run them on copper for a month. I could just put a divider in the copper tank, only really worried about the wrasse for tank transfer. Haven't seen another at all locally since picking him up last year.

[fishfreak0114]

That's a bummer  

[Hirsh]

Whoever sold you the frags should give you your money back or something. That is just piss poor hobby etiquette. 

[Kyl]

1 hour ago, Hirsh said:

Whoever sold you the frags should give you your money back or something. That is just piss poor hobby etiquette. 

He's currently getting huge negative reputation repercussions on the local coral sales forum, Facebook group and only LFS in town that will take frags for store credit that has any decent sales turnover (where it was discovered). I know some of the main SPS frag sellers locally are saying it will cost him multiple-thousands, so frankly I'm not too worried about a couple 20's and 1.5hrs of driving total there and back. Was in that area last weekend so I went to pick up the free replacement montis, and the frags were placed into my previous fusion 10 tank that I turned into a frag holding / QT tank. Won't be buying anything again in the future, so it'll be another learning experience.

 

Judging by how the Tyree Blue Matrix is currently looking I'll just toss it out as well, and then any AEFW in the coral holding / QT tank will have nothing to eat as that is the only piece of acro left. I'm not at all worried about the nudis again, those monti frags are 100% clean after the dips, cutting and bottom skeleton scraping, but they're also not in the 20 yet so I can make 100% sure. My fish right now are also the larger concern, going to be a busy two weeks, it reads like a shopping list!

• Velvet survivors transfer back to 65 gallon tank tomorrow
• Get 20 long copper QT up to 2ppm and start the 30 day timer
• Catch and begin tank transfer method for the guys in this tank starting tomorrow
• Pick up another 5.5 gallon tank to do TTM in to cut down on cleaning hassle
• Create a divider for the observational 20 long because these blennys will end up in the same tank for a period of time
• Modifying the refugium return in my 65 gallon setup to produce more focused flow
• Getting a 90w grow fixture to replace the 10w ebay flood lamp lighting said refugium
• Repairing the acrylic bracket on the IM minimax reactor which snapped off 
• Yanking the disintegrating pieces of Marinepure out of each tank and replacing them with Aquaforest Life Bio Fil
• Create new eggcrate/bridal tulle tops for QT tanks

If things were stagnant I would easily become bored. This is like an ever-evolving challenge that no matter how crappy it gets at times, when I sit and look at all that's going on in the tanks, it's all worth it.

[Hirsh]

In my experience, once an SPS begins to go south, its a goner. Reef tanks are like gambling, the thrill isn't in the winning or losing, its in the challenge and struggles we encounter. If this shit was easy, there would be as many reef tanks as there are gold fish tanks. Good luck my friend.

[teenyreef]

I think you've got a good plan and an even better approach to thinking about it. Good luck! 

[Kyl]

It's been a while, so time for a big wall of text! The tank is so-so, and though parameters check out okay (8.3/430/1450) it just isn't very healthy right now. Nitrates are about 3ppm and PO4 is measuring at .027.

 

Crypto/ich aside, I'm having tissue loss on two of the chalices and the acan, the dinos are still lingering and my torch is almost always receded far into the skeleton every day. I'm kind of at a loss, as other than the continued bacterial dosing (Vibrant) nothing has really changed since it was going so much better a few months ago. I've left the fish in it for now choosing to go the route of ich management while my QT systems are running full bore for the 65 gallon tank. I had a little yellow clown goby in "acclimation" QT for a couple of weeks and put him in the tank, and I can see why people avoid these guys. Ate pellets and mysis like crazy in QT, won't touch either now and just hangs around picking at the pink lemonade acro. Still, happy with the colour and goofiness he brings to the tank. The tailspot blenny was not impressed, but I haven't seem them directly fighting, just sudden darts towards each other and a bit of a stand-off before they resume behaving normally. And I found what I thought was a molt of the acro crab, but it was full of tissue so it's also gone to crab heaven. My last purchase though and one which I will get more of was a small fighting conch. This guy is hilarious to watch, named him Mr. Snuffleupagus as he putters around. I will definitely be picking up two for the 65 in the future, not sure why I held off till now.

 

The anemone has been doing a bit of a hide routine the past week, but came back out full bore a couple days ago and is almost as big as the entire rock it's sitting behind. It's also starting to move towards the front a bit, so I've held off on mounting things still. Unfortunately the tank is packed with survivors of all the frags I could save in my 10 gallon, which got wiped out in a matter of days. Never seen tissue loss occur that quickly on everything, from the montis to my established encrusting monti frags, everything. I'm not sure if it was related to the frags I picked up earlier, but the worst loss was the large birdsnest ball. It went from fine but closed polyps to 3/4 skeleton in less than two days. Again, the water I use in that tank is the same as this sans dosing (7.7/410/1400), but something happened.

 

For now I'm starting to focus more on the 65 and getting it going completely. I'm debating eventually removing the doser from this tank and moving it over, I'm barely at 7ml/day for alk/calcium, seems like a waste of resources. I did have a failure with that tank though, the cheap 10w ebay floodlamp stopped working. Unfortunately it never really did grow chaeto well, it's been replaced by a 90watt grow light today that's been making the rounds up here. Seeing the BRS segment really cemented my ideal of focusing heavily on chaeto for nutrient removal, hopefully it really starts to take off now that my place looks like a grow op from outside haha. I'm also debating creating a HOB chaeto reactor for this tank as I want to get away from dosing and chemical media as much as possible (GFO). Just looking for something that won't be aesthetically ugly, might try one of those TLF phosban reactor housings with some RGB ip68 stips. I think there's been some threads here on NR about them, so it's time for more reading.

 

 

[Kyl]

More MTS ramblings:

 

The Midas blenny and Bristletooth Tomini tang are done with copper quarantine , tomorrow they get moved into the final observation QT for 2-3 weeks which is still housing the Bicolour blenny. This presents a problem as I don't have the heart to get rid of the bicolour to the only LFS near me right now (they're overstocked), but I know mixing blennies is bad, especially so in a small tank. So out of necessity comes DIY, and I happened to have some acrylic left over from the sock holder project.

 

divider by Kyl, on Flickr

 

It might be overkill, but will fit in the 20long perfectly. 11-7/8" wide, with a sizable bottom plate to keep stable without having to clamp or mess with the tank otherwise. Hoping it's enough to keep them apart, though the Midas has been rough-housing the copper tank at times. Really wish there was space to get a bit of a workshop going, getting the DIY bug for more things but it's hard to make much without equipment like a table saw, bandsaw, etc. Thankfully the carpenters at work have helped out on their breaks, but it's just not the same. 

 

A house would be so much nicer than a condo for this hobby!

[Kyl]

Tank seems to be at a 50/50 point now. Most SPS except the monticaps have lost almost all colour and are like a brownish-purple, but there are still polyps and some slight re-colouration over the past four days on the pink lemonade. I've taken the DOS offline as the tank is consuming almost nothing in this state, parameters have been holding around (7.8 / 430 / 1330), nitrates are about 2ppm, phosphate reading .031.

 

Livestock changes have been the clown goby managed to carpet surf somehow last week after making it into the overflow I'm guessing, but I've picked up a Yellow Assessor today. Should everything remain stable will be the last fish for this iteration of the tank unless I ever track down the Greenbanded goby.

 

Yellow Assessor by Kyl, on Flickr

 

He was sitting in a nice little hang on Lee's specimen container with some PVC all afternoon and evening, just released the guy into the tank proper about an hour ago. Aside from a quick cave hide he's been out and swimming the whole time (with the lights off). Eating mysis in-store, and was out swimming the whole time I was looking at him there so I think should he do fine I will have lucked out. Was a requested order that someone cancelled, been there a few months and was just recently listed for half off. When I had looked earlier in this tank's life they were going for $100, and it looks like for the US that price isn't far off either. So aside from a minor tail fin tear (was in a tank with a six-line), the colour looks very good when not seen through a scratched plastic container, or with fuzz on him from the fish net somehow. 

 

It's really looking like there might be some big changes coming up later this year so I've put off the idea of drastically changing this tank at all or upgrading to a larger nano, especially given the current struggles.

[Kyl]

Might have finally found a local source for ... Greenbanded Gobies! 

[fishfreak0114]

That's awesome!  They're so darn cute but I've never seen any anywhere. Not J&L or king eds or places in Kelowna  

[Kyl]

Might be through Fish Addicts in Langley, if not definitely through Victoria. J&L only ordered them via ORA, and ORA stopped producing them last year. Funny enough the Assessor is an ORA release, which they told me earlier this year they stopped producing as well. Sales guys never cease to amaze at getting things wrong.

 

Some more colour in the pink lemonade today versus yesterday, and some specs of light blue are starting to show on the rainbow monti frags so looks like recovery is happening.

 

 

[fishfreak0114]

If you manage to get them through fish addicts, I may have to give them a call. Last year when I went they were just starting to get into the salty side. And yay for recovery!

[Kyl]

RIP Midas Blenny, you survived copper without a hitch then just stopped eating while everyone else kept on trucking along. Think I'm going to give up on that fish for the 65, and put the bi-colour back in there instead. Now a new hunt for 65 gallon appropriate yellow fish..

 

For the other yellow fish, the assessor is hiding most of the time (as expected) but as soon as food hits the tank he's out and eating voraciously. Hoping things continue to turn around, alk is slowly dropping so that's a good sign.

[Kyl]

Quick little update clip, I could get lost watching the tank for hours. The assessor is starting to swim out in the open, and thankfully the tailspot hasn't been much of a jerk to it. The video this phone takes leaves a lot to be desired, but what do I know - I just feed fish and kill corals.

 

 

[Weetabix7]

2 minutes ago, Kyl said:

Quick little update clip, I could get lost watching the tank for hours. The assessor is starting to swim out in the open, and thankfully the tailspot hasn't been much of a jerk to it. The video this phone takes leaves a lot to be desired, but what do I know - I just feed fish and kill corals.

 

 

 

Just look at the fat bellies on those fish!!

Tank looks nice to me.

[fishfreak0114]

It looks nice in there!  The assessor is cute  what are those pink Zoas in the middle?

[Kyl]

I believe they're armour of god palys (sold to me as zoas, I didn't know any better), and they overgrew the entire rock which had a fruit loop? zoa on it. If anything touches that rock they give off a wicked plume of awfulness, I'm probably going to remove it and sell it eventually. The more I read of palytoxin the less I'm enthusiastic about zoas heh.

 

I have some old pictures of all the zoas as still somewhat new. They all started as 2-3 polyp frags on plugs which I pried off and glued to rocks that would sit on the sand. The palys were originally on a small piece of rock that I later put on a larger one.

 

Spoiler

zoas2 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

zoas1 by Kyl, on Flickr

 

zoas3 by Kyl, on Flickr