Wills Red Sea reefer 250

[Xj reefing]

Here is a full tank pic. Sorry for it being a bit Blurry 

[Xj reefing]

Tank is getting some more green hair algae and diatom issues on the sand bed again. Nothing to serious but still is unsightly. I have ordered some astrea snails online and will get them on Saturday. I am sort of getting bored with my reef tank as its just cruising along with the odd issue every so often so I have started to entertain my self by looking at converting my goldfish tank in to a Australian native biotope tank. I will be going to some local creeks hopefully this weekend to try and find some pacific blue eyes and crimson spot rainbow fish. 

[Xj reefing]

A small and disappointing update today. The 6 snails I picked up last Saturday have come down to 2 remaining- 1 healthy and 1 I am not sure if it will die in the next couple of days. When doing a water change today I picked them up to see if they were ok and 2 of them completely fell out of their shell and one just did not respond to me pocking it’s little blue cover. The other one died on Monday. They stunk like crazy. When I got them out so I would recommend to get them out early rather than waiting to see if they are actually dead. I would rather loose 50 dollars of snails than over a thousand dollars of livestock.

[Murphs_Reef]

Yeah for sure. That's a shame man. Wonder what caused that, just a bad batch of snails?

[Xj reefing]

1 minute ago, Murphych said:

Yeah for sure. That's a shame man. Wonder what caused that, just a bad batch of snails?

They were all alive in the bag and when I placed them in. Could they have just not acclimated well enough. I dripped them for around a hour.

[Xj reefing]

Been a while since my last update. Things in the tank are going pretty shit but I could have it so much worse like @Snow_Phoenix does. The phosphates are up around 0.6-0.7 and there have been a few coral losses so far. In my goldfish tank my female got stuck in a corner and was harassed by her two other male tank mates as she was laying eggs. When I got her out of the corner she went to the top and started floating and sadly died a few hours later. I think this was because of stress but she was 2.5 years old when I rescued her from a 5 gallon tank.

[Xj reefing]

Yesterday went snorkeling in the Great Barrier Reef. Some of the highlights from the trip was a giant manga ray swimming right beneath me, a pair of orange spot file fish, a black tip reef shark and seeing my dream fish a blond naso tang. The corals were pretty good as well and there were some massive Goni colonies and a few really nice clams. I don’t have any pictures at the moment but I am hoping to download them off my underwater camera soon

[Xj reefing]

These are the best images I captured and also my favourite 

[Xj reefing]

Slowly getting the tank back to healthy. Still a few corals not doing so well and I expect I will loose some more due to the stress. I also expect that it will be a few months before I see any major improvements. Now all my water parameters are fairly close to being in the acceptable range so I just need to focus on keeping them stable. Picked up 3 new corals over the last 2 days. A bleeding apple scoly, some sort of leather and a Goni. 

[Xj reefing]

Still having coral losses. Picked up another icp test a n doc test today as well as some phytoplankton. Hopefully will see if there is any issues with my water as to why corals are dying or if it’s something not water related. All so thinking of setting up a phytoplankton culture

[Xj reefing]

I now don’t have any hammers in the tank. I am pleased to say that everything except for the remaining half of a hammer in the tank is looking really good. All sign of hair algae seems to be gone because of the scopas tang and I don’t see many bristle worms these days either. Nothing came up as bad with the icp test but the n-doc still has not comeback. 

[Murphs_Reef]

Glad things are not getting worse.. to be honest I'm focusing more on zoas and softies for now... LPS and SPS are off the cards for me right now..

[Xj reefing]

I am hoping the corals do not continue to die as the parameters are now staying really stable. Since I last posted not much has changed other than some new corals and a couple that have been not looking good through out the problems dying. Only badish news is that my bleeding apple scoly shows some skeleton when closed up, other than that it looks really good. The scopas tang has now doubled in size and I am wondering how I know when he is to big for the tank. My cabbage coral is growing more stems from the bottom and the Monti has now grown around a 1cm out wards and all so onto the rock so stuff must not be so bad.

[Xj reefing]

Corals are still all doing really well for the most part. My purple hammer lost half of its flesh during the mass die out and I am now pretty confident that the remaining half will live as it is extending out a lot these days. My scoly is still showing skeleton on one side of it when retracted so if anyone has any advice on that issue feel free to comment. I have got some more corals over the last couple of Days my 2 primary lfs where having sales. The tank is now looking pretty full with room for maybe only 2 or 3 more corals and then I will watch it grow out. On the freshwater side of the hobby I have been having some troubles with guppy’s dying, a beta fish refusing his usual food and 1 pregnant Cory cat. I am at a loss of what do do with my guppy’s as I have had a female suddenly die yesterday and today a sick male guppy died. I suspect the female got bullied by the other females and the male had dropsy or bloat as his stomach was really large. I have another male guppy that was in the final stages of dropsy (pine cone scales, not eating and bloated) that is in qt and is now eating and is not as bloated, he still has slight pine cone fins though. My beta fish Picasso does not want anything to do with his usual food (vibra bites) but instead has decided he only likes daphnia and community fish flakes. And finally my albino Cory cat seems to have a ton of eggs in her but she isn’t laying any. Sorry if this update seemed more like a rant and it was more geared towards freshwater. If anyone has any experience with the mentioned problems I am facing at the moment please comment.

[Xj reefing]

One of the corals I got from the lfs was a trachy and a couple days ago it receded very suddenly. I have done multiple dips on it in seachem revive and it is still hanging on but not really getting better. All so my large Goni has been getting signs of bjd so it been getting dips as well. I all so dipped my scoly and it doesn’t show nearly as much skeleton as it used to. 

[Xj reefing]

Small update on this tank. The trachy is still hanging in there and my purple hammer I have had since my 20 gallon finally died. All the other corals are looking really great and my sps are encrusting. This morning my grandmother gave me a hexagonal container that she thought i could make into a terrarium. I all so picked up some type of plant that looks to be a variety of elephant ear or something related. I can’t decide whether I want to make it into a terrarium or a riparium and I would like someone on here to help me decide what to do. Please feel free to comment which type of set up I should do.

[Xj reefing]

Just looked back on this thread and it’s been nearly 5 months since what I am calling the mass die out event. Things are still cruising in the tank. The trachy has finally died which is a shame as it was a nice one for the 3 days I had it open. The scoly is still showing skeleton at night but is mostly puffy during the day. The half a hammer I thought would live died randomly from a bjd infection. The Goni that had bjd is all clear and doing good again. Lots of female guppy’s ready to have babies. Today I decided to go to a different lfs to buy water as my usual one has been scaling down its saltwater and they are usually way to busy to have a chat or look around at the corals. At the lfs I saw a nice frag of bird of paradise Seriatopora for $30. I feel like my tank has no sense of organisation and it’s just corals placed in random looking places but it still looks good in my opinion.

[Xj reefing]

Got back from school camp yesterday and was pleased to see that most of my fish were thriving. The only casualty’s was every single last one of my guppy’s suddenly dying throughout the week 😔. I won’t be getting any more guppy’s for the tank as I think being outside especially while it’s winter down here caused a bit to much temperature fluctuations. There could have all so been a disease so I will probably get either some native fish or white cloud minnows. 

[Xj reefing]

Pretty much all corals in the tank are doing really well except for a bit of die back on my devils hand leather. The tips of it are seeming to just be melting. 
 

my yellow fin flasher wrasse is being bullied by my lubboks wrasse and has been lying under a rock for most of the day. 
 

after my guppy’s died I cleaned out the tank and have just had it sitting there. Today I moved it to the other side of the deck away from the sun. When I went to my lfs today I bought some reddish coloured gravel and they gave me a light they didn’t think worked but it worked greatly when I got it home. The light is a aqua one plant glo and I will give them some money for it next week as it costs around $130 in Australia. I all so scaped the tank using some wood and rock I bought a while back. I have lots thin valisnera in my pond so I will plant some in the tank and start the cycle

[Xj reefing]

Sadly the flasher wrasse did not survive the night. I know this may sound like I don’t care about my animals but I am kind of relieved when a struggling fish passes. It puts them out of misery and it’s a big weight of my chest of having to stress over whether they will live or not. 
 

I filled up my freshwater tank yesterday day and the wood started floating even with rocks tied to them.

[Xj reefing]

I am pleased to say that all coral (with the exception of one that didn’t die during the “mass die off”) are going really good. My sps are still growing pretty well. My Monti is growing a little to well and I may have to stop it from attacking my bird of paradise birds nest by moving the Monti to the wall. My newest freshwater tank all so finished cycling this weekend so I was able to purchase 4 native crimson spot rainbow fish. I will be getting some pacific blue eyes in a few weeks.

[Xj reefing]

Been a whiles since a update. Tank is still running and doing well except for 2 sps that died randomly. I had to frag up my zoa rock as some large plays were taking over and smothering the nice zoas. I had to get a new rock a few weeks ago to put my maze coral on as it started stinging its neighbours. I replaced the maze with a wild Goni which has all so taken a liken to stinging neighbours. Some non reef news is that my bn plecos layer eggs a month ago and the baby’s hare around 2cm now. My lfs has offered to buy all 200 of them for $2 each when they reach 4cm. The plecos have just layed another lot of eggs so I need to quickly grow the first batch to clear out the grow out tank. All so my neon tetras all have neon tetra disease so I’m either going to let nature take its course on them or euthanise them and replace them. https://www.instagram.com/p/Chls2yqrpW4/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=
https://www.instagram.com/reel/CiQxrsgBoIr/?igshid=YmMyMTA2M2Y=

[Pjanssen]

Pictures!!

[Xj reefing]

Alright alright here come some pictures

[Xj52reefing]

(Will be using this account to update this thread from now on/until I remember my other accounts loggin)

 

been a while since my last update so I’ve got a lot to mention.

The tanks doing pretty good at the moment. I’ve upped my dosing game to now dosing trace elements and amino acids. I don’t think I mentioned on here in my last update that I got a pair of melanurus wrasse. My Monti has pretty much doubled in size since my last lot of photos so I’m going to have to frag it soon. I’ve now got a fromia star in the tank which is going pretty well. Starting to get a bit bored of this tank now so I’m dreaming about getting a giant custom tank.