Tuffryu's IM Fusion 10: SPS McLovin

[Tuffryu]

31 minutes ago, SaltyBuddha said:

Wow that kinda scares me. Next investment for sure

 

Thats just based on my experience Salty. I may have bought a bad kit so you should take that with a grain of salt.

 

I do like the Redsea and salifert kits better than API though.

[Tuffryu]

Woke up this morning and found this little guy on the glass. 

Asterina maybe?

 

[Tuffryu]

Trace elements in. Let's see what happens.

 

 

Cabinet shot.

[Tuffryu]

LFS had a 30% sale. The tank is pretty full so I'm holding off on new frags for a moment.

 

I am gonna try (yet another) firefish goby - this time with IM10 lid. Such an awesome looking fish for $10.

 

 

[Tuffryu]

When I saw him munching on an acro frag, I had to net him. The yellow clown myth is real! Couldn't believe it. Didn't want to believe but it was true, and now my acro frag thats on the rack is going thru STN. Live and learn.

 

[HighCurrent]

I feel your pain!

[Tuffryu]

Been a while since I posted so here goes. 

The seachem reefbuilder is doing really good to the tank after 3 weeks use. I'm doing about 2ml a week, and use it along with acropower. I can see some big differences in color and polyp extension (color moreso). I've been able to successfully maintain NO3 at 3-5 and phosphates down to .1 and the tank has never looked better.

 

 

 

New blue/purple digi frag.

 

 

Above tank shot. Monti caps are going to have to get cut back soon. 

 

Firefish and assessor shot.

 

Night mode.

 

 

 

Happy humpday!

[teenyreef]

Aw, yes, looking good! Slightly elevated nitrates plus low phosphates really seems to be the right formula for your tank.

[Tuffryu]

22 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Aw, yes, looking good! Slightly elevated nitrates plus low phosphates really seems to be the right formula for your tank.

 

Thanks Teeny!

I can't agree more. Doing less frequent water changes to try and maintain the NO3 level, so I'm doing a gallon every 2 weeks. No complaints of course. 

[Tuffryu]

I go in my LFS simply to buy water, and 9 times out of 10 I end up buying something. This time it was another frag and a bi color blenny.

What a steal for $10 - an entire birdsnest colony!

 

 

Can't beat that with a stick.

 

The blenny is cool as shit. Laid back and chills.

 

I'm out of tank space unfortunately. 

 

 

 

[neilcostes]

Wow your tank is beautiful!

[JR!]

wow what a great tank. well done

[ew_fish]

On 3/12/2017 at 6:15 PM, Tuffryu said:

My peppermint shrimp has been a great addition to the tank - taking out aiptasia and what not. But in the past months he's been tearing up all of my snails.

I thought they were just dying maybe due to starvation, but I was literally buying new snails almost every other week.

 

I used my small fish net and a pointer stick, trying to catch this thing for hours - knocking coral frags down etc. Terrible idea. After doing some research, I came across a few vids that showed how to catch fish/shrimp using a water bottle. 

 

Ta da....my first fish/shrimp trap.

 

 

Held the bottle at the bottom of the tank...less than 10 mins and bam!

 

 

Took the peppermint to the LFS for some credit - which was the intent.

 

But found myself bringing sexy back.

 

I see why everyone is so intrigued with these things. They're amaze. Simply beautiful. 

 

Happy Sunday. It's water change day!

 

This is funny because I had bought a snail for my Nuvo 10 and as soon as I dropped him in my peppermint went after him for about an hour. Although the snail ended up living and the peppermint stopped attacking him it was interesting to see him do that. LFS had never heard anything about them doing that back when I saw it I googled it because I bough 1 larger snail because my other smaller snails vanished. 

[Tuffryu]

On 6/29/2017 at 6:13 AM, ew_fish said:

This is funny because I had bought a snail for my Nuvo 10 and as soon as I dropped him in my peppermint went after him for about an hour. Although the snail ended up living and the peppermint stopped attacking him it was interesting to see him do that. LFS had never heard anything about them doing that back when I saw it I googled it because I bough 1 larger snail because my other smaller snails vanished. 

 

Yes, I've seen them go after and pick at anything. Your LFS has plenty of other things to tend to as opposed to seeing shellfish behaviors in nano tanks

I've had numerous snails disappear and I can only see one culprit. They're probably better for larger tanks.

 

 

 

[Tuffryu]

I haven't posted in a while...primarily because I was on vacation. I came home to this....

 

If you've never experienced this folks...it's a snow storm. Cause by elevated alk dosing during the day. Not sure exactly what happened, but it looks like one of the motors on the doser failed to stop. It works normally now, but I'm sure the tank went through some shock. I'm basically in rehab mode and taking steps to get the tank back up. Everything seems to be happy except for the branching digitatas - which I thought were unbreakable but they're pale and not extending at all. 

 

This guy has been keeping my spirits up though

 

I saw this guy (a crowntail) at a LFS and just had to take him home. Had a goldfishbowl, a spare heater, and RO water so I figured why not. 

Beauty....

 

Happy 4th of July everyone!

 

 

[ew_fish]

I hope things bounce back. Keep us updated!

[Tuffryu]

The tank is slowly stabilizing again. After a series of water tests, Alk is finally at a steady place hovering 7-8 dKH. Calcium on the other hand, was an issue where it was reading around 520+ ppm at the highest point. Cut back Ca significantly over a couple of weeks, and things are starting to rebound. 

 

Lost a couple of frags and the digitatas are starting to expand again. Shot below shows how they look when the terrible spikes were happening.

After losing a few things, I am starting restock slowly. These pink/purple acans were a steal for $15.

 

And bumble bee snails. Thats it for now

 

.

 

 

 

[Legendary Corals]

I can't believe this:

 

Equaled to this in 2 weeks:

 

With my luck, I think that nuvo would have been empty from having to start over. 

 

Glad to hear that most of the pieces made it through!

[Tuffryu]

12 hours ago, Legendary Corals said:

I can't believe this:

 

Equaled to this in 2 weeks:

 

With my luck, I think that nuvo would have been empty from having to start over. 

 

Glad to hear that most of the pieces made it through!

 

Thanks! Yea things are starting to get better. Some corals are back to normal while some still look rough. Will have to wait and see.

 

 

[Tuffryu]

Cheato experiment take 1.

 

Took out the ball of algae and shook it carefully to get the critters out of it. There were little things falling out everywhere.

 

Floss, carbon + Rowaphos bag, and algae.

 

I cut the back cover of the IMfusion with a razor and a ruler to expose the caddy area where the cheato was.

 

 Blurry, but you get the idea.

 

The light - nice and compact. Very purple/pink/bluish in color.

 

I used the circular 2-sided stickers and cut them in half so I'd have 4 of the for each side.

 

 

I have it turning on at night from 12AM - 9AM. We'll see what happens. I basically want to start doing direct feeding, and all the while keeping NO3 to a minimum. 

 

Did some water testing and NO3 is still hovering around 5.0 which has worked pretty well for me. I think I'll aim for lower.

 

Other tests this weekend...

PO4 at ~.1

CA 420

Alk 7.0 and 7.5 

Mag 1420

 

The crazy thing is, I am dosing a considerable amount of Alk for this tank (+20ml/day) which is concerning, and very little calcium (2ml/day). 

If anyone has any idea what's going with my params, I'd really like to hear from you. Thanks!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DaveFason]

Check you MAG. Normally this can happen if something is using much more. Also be careful with dosing that much ALK and the salinity. I have seen salinity slowly creep up due to this. 

 

Start with a smaller piece of Cheato as well. It will grow FAST! 

[Tuffryu]

Some minor updates - and thanks Dave for your input. Mag has never been an issue from the Coral Pro Redsea salt I've been using. 

Salinity is in check, but I am monitoring closely. I think it's NO3. I've been dosing NO3PO4-x this last week or so and finally have some decent polyp signs. 

 

In other news: the Cheato experiment was a complete fail, and the algae basically disappeared probably from the lack of nutrients. It literally went from a full size that occupied the entire bottom chamber....to less than a couple of pinches in a week and half. Which is probably why the skimmer was going cray.

 

 

[teenyreef]

I've had the same problem every time I've tried to grow chaeto. Not enough nutrients and it just dissolves over a couple weeks. On the bright side, that means you really didn't need to grow it in the first place 

[Tuffryu]

On 8/14/2017 at 10:48 PM, teenyreef said:

I've had the same problem every time I've tried to grow chaeto. Not enough nutrients and it just dissolves over a couple weeks. On the bright side, that means you really didn't need to grow it in the first place 

There's always a brighter side to reefing. Thanks T!

 

 

[dferrari13]

Why do things always malfunction when we are on vacation....go figure....glad to see it bounce back