Mrpontiac80 ‘s 180 gallon build

[Gumbies R Us]

Released the hippo from the acclimation box tonight. He holds his own against the purple tang. They have already chilled out a ton.

Glad the hippo is doing well!

 

[mrpontiac80]

Sunday I dosed chemiclean because I was tired of cyano. Tuesday I did a 20% (40 gal) water change and brought the skimmer and carbon reactor back online. Today, the tank is looking pretty great overall. Tomorrow may be a different story so I decided to take a bunch of photos and dump them here for posterity sake!
Oh yeah, the yellow belly hippo brought a nice blue to the tank!

 

[mrpontiac80]

I recently sent off an icp test through ATI and I was low on several elements such as iodine, iron and a few others. So I decided to buy the Red Sea trace test kit and additives. After testing tonight, the results matched up with the ATI results. So I went ahead and dosed the additives as suggested. Hopefully I’ll see positive results or at the very least, nothing negative!

 

[mrpontiac80]

Gotta test the trace elements tomorrow and adjust. Meanwhile I went ahead and removed the clarisea filter roller from the tank. I did this because I sometimes feel it works too well, the replacement rolls of fleece are sometimes sold out, and lastly I may attempt in the future running no filter at all. Just the skimmer.

For now though I installed a hanging filter sock holder and 7” sock.

The hippo likes to hide and sleep in this coral…

 

[mrpontiac80]

Nothing really different with the tank but I do have some fish on order at The Fish Hotel. 5 green chromis and 3 lyretail anthias all fully quarantined.

 

[mrpontiac80]

Just a photo dump from this evening..

 

[mrpontiac80]

My gyres blow sand away from the front of the glass, so I bought some Marco rock’s pieces and broke them up to cover the glass. Hopefully I’ll like it.

Meanwhile I just left my friend @SeaCo Nico after hanging out at his shop talking corals and came home with a really nice clam. The waters a little cloudy from the new rock but this clam is amazing. Check out seaco corals. He has some nice stuff!

 

[mrpontiac80]

Update.. i have been working with Jeff (Dierks) at Fish Hotel on the Humblefish forum. As a group we the forum community have been voting on where to order tranship fish from every month. With all orders such as that you’re never guaranteed to get what you want so my last request didn’t work out. This past month we decided on Africa/Red Sea. And although I did not get the quantity requested, I did receive 3 lyretail anthias and 4 blue/green chromis.

Fish Hotel quarantined them and I received them today. Got all 7 fish into the tank…. 3 chromis are all together and 1 is a loner. All 3 lyretail anthias bolted to caves in the rocks. Maybe before too long they’ll get comfortable.
It’s very refreshing to get fish and not go through a qt process here at home.

 

[mrpontiac80]

The anthias decided to come out and explore

 

[mrpontiac80]

Just an update of the tank this morning in photos before the whites come on.

 

[mrpontiac80]

Just received what I hope is a game changer.. the Avast Plank auto feeder. Since adding chromis and anthias to the tank I feel they can benefit from multiple feedings when I am working. Also my kid is always requiring travel for football and this will help relieve my stress.

 

[rc8t6353]

Just read thru the whole thread. Absolutely beautiful tank!! Following along!

 

[mrpontiac80]

Just read thru the whole thread. Absolutely beautiful tank!! Following along!

Thank you! It’s a constant work in progress for sure. I think my next addition is going to be a avast kalk stirrer. I like using the all for reef, but as corals mature it’s using more and more. I’d like to keep my dose the same and add kalk and use them together.

 

[mrpontiac80]

I think I’ve figured out my hydros program for the plank. According to avast, reef jerky has to run about 3 minutes to equal 1 cube of frozen. Since I have been feeding once per day I tend to feed a mix of stuff equal to around 4 cubes plus nori.

I’m thinking I can run the plank 5x per day for 45 seconds which should equal about 2.5 frozen cubes. Feedings would occur between 10:30 am and 4:30 pm spaced a hour and half apart. Then after work I can feed a little less frozen.

 

[Dierks]

Found Ya!! I think I plan to poke my head into R2R more often and stumbled into your thread. Hope you don't mind me following along buddy.

 

[mrpontiac80]

Found Ya!! I think I plan to poke my head into R2R more often and stumbled into your thread. Hope you don't mind me following along buddy.

Welcome aboard! Glad to see you over here also!

 

[mrpontiac80]

So I’ve experienced a couple of things over the last month or two. I suspect chemiclean treatment is where things turned. Don’t get me wrong, it did the job I wanted it to do but I believe the bacterias and such were changed in the process. I mean if I use something that can wipe out cyano, it has to affect something else right?

So very shortly after treatment I noticed some zoas melting. These were the nirvanas or Mohawks… both of which I wish I’d never placed into my reef. So I didn’t really worry about it. But a couple weeks later I had 3 or 4 acros brown out. Then I lost a torch and then another one. Out of the 3, I lost the hellfire and 24k… the $30 green torch is still well and good of course!

I think things are starting to settle back into a normal rhythm though. That is until next week, cause I’ve decided to try kalkwasser in addition to my current All For Reef.

I’m going to start slow and low and see what happens since I’ve never used it before. But I have high hopes.

 

[mrpontiac80]

Just a little update. About a week ago we had major storms roll through producing 7 tornadoes. I was extremely fortunate and made it through without a scratch but neighbors a couple miles in all directions did not. Rogers AR is the next town east and you may have seen it on the news that they were hit pretty hard.
So during this storm, we lost power. Mine was out for 6 hrs. Some were out for a week. My battery backup kicked in on the tank so that was good. My WiFi went down for a few days also and although hydros was keeping things working, some items like my lights were about 12 hrs off schedule. And my dosing pump for all for reef went down unknowingly to me.

All in all everything is back to normal in my household and the tank is doing well. I had a few acros brown out and one bleached. I also just started kalkwasser at a very low dose to supplement AFR. It’s been a crazy week.

Here’s a few pics I took this evening though

 

[Dierks]

Glad you are okay buddy.

 

[leepink23]

Glad you are ok. Our area in Mississippi is very tornado prone. We have a built in storm shelter and I have a large inverter generator, glad you had a backup power plan and the tank is doing good.