Macca's Budget 180gal Upgrade

[revhtree]

Nice job!

 

[Stylo328]

Great updates. Really digging the way the equipment looks in the stand. Very clean, especially considering how much you got in there.

 

[R_C]

Very nice. Well done!

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Great looking setup!

WOW! The tank/setup looks great!

Nice job!

Great updates. Really digging the way the equipment looks in the stand. Very clean, especially considering how much you got in there.

Very nice. Well done!

Thanks all

Under the stand is quite cramped but eventually I plan to trim the ATS down as I initially designed it to be way longer than I needed it to be. Now that I have figured out how far away from the screen the lights work best I plan to trim the excess acrylic off (will probably take at least a good 10cm off each side).

I also removed the skimmer stand made out of egg crate. It was too flimsy and I realised that the egg crate boxes I made to hold the 3kg of ceramic filter media rings were the perfect height to hold up the skimmer.

 

[MaccaPopEye]

I still need to get all my levels for the big 3 right and figure out my new dosing amounts (that will be done tonight), build the water mixing station and add some black sand (and clean up the house ).

But in the mean time I am at work and thought I would post up a stock list and wish list.

I am quite bad with guessing sizes but here is the current stocking with rough sizes listed:
2x Perc clowns (approx. 4cm each)
1x Yellow tail damsel (approx. 4cm)
1x Shadow goby (approx. 12cm)
1x Whitespotted blenny (approx. 5cm)
1x Darwin glow fairy wrasse (approx. 5cm)
1x Yellow tang (approx. 8cm)
1x Blue tang (approx. 6cm)
1x Bristletooth tang (approx. 10cm)
1x G. chiragra mantis shrimp (approx. 6cm)
A bunch of trochus snails

The fish in red are now gone unfortunately. First I noticed the white spot blenny disappeared, then my yellow tang died and I thought it was the mantis (I had seen him have a go at fish when he was hungry, but only when I forgot to feed him). So the mantis went to a new home (a local reefer was actually looking for one). But then my bristletooth tang also died - after the mantis had left.

This does make me doubt if the mantis had a part in the other deaths but keeping him in a community was always going to be risky anyway.

If it wasn't the mantis (which is the case for the bristletooth) then the only other thing I could think of was starvation. Both the yellow and bristletooth tangs were very, very thin when I pulled them out. As I had been having some bad algae issues I had been advised to not feed nori so the tangs wouldn't be lazy and would eat the algae on the rocks. I can't think of anything else obvious that it could have been as there was no marks from the mantis on either fish.

The blue tang is nice and fat and picks at the rocks all day, but the other two didn't seem to eat as much off of the rocks.

The shadow goby is also highlighted in blue as it is currently in the sump before I get rid of it because it's a very aggressive fish and would steal food from the mantis, anemone and other fish.

So that leaves my current stocking as:
2x Perc clowns (approx. 4cm each)
1x Yellow tail damsel (approx. 4cm)
1x Darwin glow fairy wrasse (approx. 5cm)
1x Blue tang (approx. 6cm)
A bunch of trochus snails

 

[Ljaus]

Really like the aquascape mate, the sunken ship fits in nicely.

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Onto the wishlist:

With the 6x2x2 some of the fish I would like to eventually add are:
1x Sailfin tang (hopefully a desjardini?)
1x Blue lined rabbitfish
1x Magnificent foxface (do these get along with other rabbit fish?)
1x Engineer goby (I have heard these do better in pairs though so maybe 2?)
1x Britsletooth tang
1x Yellow tang

I would also like to add a few more wrasses but I am not sure which ones - so open to suggestions . I couldn't care if they eat snails etc as I can get decent sized trochus (approx. 2.5cm diameter) for free whenever I want.
I was thinking:
A couple of types of flasher
Leopard
Melanurus
Any suggestions?

I would also like the add the following but I am not sure if it will be ok:

2x Black and white Darwin clowns - On the large "is a fish right for your tank" thread I was told in a 180 4 clowns should be fine as they will find separate territories.

1x Blonde naso tang. This one I am really not sure about. Live aquaria and the Tang sizes list thread here on reef2reef both say 180gal is recommended, which is the same as the sailfin and blue tang and is what I will have. But I have also heard that they grow to be very big fish and I wont be able to upgrade again for a long time. Would it be ok in a 180? In the "is a fish right for your tank" thread I was told it would be ok for a few years but not forever. In that case it is a no.

Any suggestions?

 

[Ljaus]

@eatbreakfast any suggestions or advice for the above stocking list.

 

[MaccaPopEye]

@eatbreakfast any suggestions or advice for the above stocking list.

Haha he helped me in the other thread. Good suggestions, just thought I would get as many opinions as I can

 

[Ljaus]

Well seems I'm a bit behind then lol

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Nah it's ok it was in another thread before I got the tank set up. It was even back before I lost the yellow and bristletooth tangs.

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Now that the tank is set up I can sit back, enjoy, monitor and recover for a couple of weeks It seems everything is established, nitrate peaked at 2.5ppm before coming back down to 1ppm (probably the algae scrubber kicking in).

I still have to add sand, trim down the scrubber and build the water mixing station but there is no rush for any of that

Here is a FTS from this morning using my phone.

And I also got the point and shoot camera out to try and take some half decent pics. I'm really no good at photography but here is a few decent ones. All are under a white/blue mix, some have the flash and some don't haha I was just playing around and after deleting 90% of them ended up with this handful.

Any algae in these pics is on one of the 3 rocks i brought across from my old tank. The algae has begun to go away surprisingly fast in the new tank.

Maxima clams. 2 close up shots of my large one and a full shot of the smaller one.

Acans and my only trachy (for now)

Some zoas

Mushrooms

Close ups of some hammers

All of my fish shied away form the camera today but I managed to get a decent pic of one of the clowns

 

[Ljaus]

Very very nice! Really like the aquascape

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Being "remote" there is 3 ways to get coral or fish where I live:

1) Contact a LFS down south that has good experience with direct airport shipping, ask for pictures of stock, get prices of stock, organise cost of airplane ticket for items (faint at the price), contact local fisheries and organise an import permit, tell LFS down south to book the items onto the plane and then meet it at the airport after the plane lands to pick it up (after chucking a sickie as it is during business hours of course).

2) We are very lucky to have a coral collector who ships amazing local stock world wide based in our area. These guys are awesome and allow locals to come and buy a few bits from them as they know we don't have anywhere to buy from up here.

3) We have some weird fisheries laws here. We cannot sell any livestock without a very expensive license (not even frags of our own coral or fish we breed ourselves) and if we do very heavy penalties apply, we can only give livestock away for free. However hobbyists are allowed to collect from local waters for display aquariums only. This allows collection of coral and reef fish as long as it is not in a marine park.

I have ordered fish using method #1 once and while easy enough is very expensive with airport to airport shipping (our "overnight" shipping is 3-5 days). I have gotten 90% of my coral via method #2 as the quality of stock really just cant compare to anything else. However if I have a day off during a king low tide I like to have a look out on one of the local reefs, I usually come back with some coral but most of all I just like having a look.

So here is my "LFS"

Tides in my area range from 0.1m - 8m. This is a massive variance and while those are on the extreme end of the scale the "king low tides" occur usually once a month. For most of the year they are at night time, but the last few months of the year they usually fall around lunch time. These low tides leave a few reefs exposed. Most of the coral ends up sitting for 2-3 hours in shallow tide pools (where the temperature sits around 30+ degrees Celsius) but a surprising amount of coral is fully exposed in direct sun and heat for an hour or so.

I really like having a look around these reefs at low tide and have seen some truly impressive things. 99% of the coral is either brown or green and really isn't worth talking about at all. It is different almost every time I go out but some highlights are:
Epaulette sharks, fully out of the water and hiding under coral structures
A carpet ameone that was well over 0.5m diameter closed up (must have been huge when open)
Clown fish, damsels, butterfly fish, angel fish, gobies, blennies, eels etc
Tongue fungia coral the size of my fore arm and plate fungia coral bigger than dinner plates

This most recent trip (just over a week ago) was fairly uneventful however I found a couple of bits of coral I decided to bring home. They are really terrible photos but they will do for now, when they are all settled and I mount them in place I will try to get better photos.

I got a small bit of what I think is a green encrusting Montipora (right) as I wanted to see how it went in my tank, unfortunately it bleached entirely in a couple of days. On the left is a piece of what I think is some kind of green branching Montipora, I haven't mounted it to the rock yet but is still alive and should be mounted tomorrow.

Next is a favia that had some interesting splotching on it. It is a fairly dull aqua and the splotches are all brown or rust colored however I liked the pattern and I am interested to see if I can get it to colour up at all.

I also picked up a small lobo, I got one of these about a year ago which has now gotten a really nice colour on it so I am keen to see how this one goes too.

There is quite a bit of brown chalice coral out there but I found this green one with some brown/red patches on it. It has started getting a bit of tissue recession around the rim so I will be mounting it tomorrow and hopefully I can put it in a place where it can recover and thrive.

Last I found 2 Moseleya latistellata "Moon coral". One is more brown but looks very red under sunlight so I am also hoping it colours up well and the other is just a nice green. I had 2 of these corals (both green and both collected from the same spot) before that were doing well but unfortunately both got overrun with algae and died.

Some nice PE from some of them after they settled in.

 

[Ljaus]

How is the tank going mate?

 

[cracker]

Hello Macca, we have strict laws here in Florida but can collect a "few" differing corals and fishes. Nothing like that pic of the tidal pool ! Very nice.

 

[MaccaPopEye]

How is the tank going mate?

haha I saw you liked that pic I posted in the other thread. Not much in the way of pics but I'll give a bit of an update

I've been meaning to post an update, the tank has has a couple of issues which could have been avoided if I hadn't of gotten busy so the tank mostly been left alone since the last update but is now back on track hopefully

I made one major mistake recently which is going to take some time to come back from. When setting everything up I didn't hook up the doser right away, that she'll be right attitude led me to say "I'll just hook that up tomorrow". I started just testing and adjusting by hand for the first two weeks and then I ended up forgetting to do the doser at all.

As happens I got really busy with work and it was a few days until I noticed the edges (of the moon corals particularly) starting to loose quite a bit of tissue. So I did some testing and my Alk had plummeted to around 5dKH. I quickly added up in my head what I would have to dose to bring the Alk back up to 8 over 2 days. Well it seems like I skipped the step to halve the dose as I brought the Alk right back up to 8 in one big hit.

The "nothing good happens fast in the hobby" line gets thrown around a fair bit but it is very true.

I lost all 5 heads on my blue hammer, 1 head each of 2 separate toxic green/purple hammers (one head left on each now), tissue recession on both moon corals and the chalice increased massively, I have 4 favias that all started to show a bit of skeleton (some more than others) and weirdly a blue and red Persian rug mushroom seemed to bleach too.

Everything has been more or less stable for a week now (8dKH alk, 430ppm Cal, 1290ppm Mag) and tissue recession has stopped getting worse, hammers have stopped dropping heads like flies and I think the mushroom is getting its colour back (also moved it to a lower light spot).

I will post some pics of the damage in the new year along with hopefully some pics of improvement

The pump for the Algae turf scrubber has also popped off its tubing twice (both times while I was on a night shift) so without water and with lights on for a good 8-10 hours each time does a good job at killing the algae screen and not just killing my filter but also adds a fair bit of nutrients back to the tank. The pump is now securely clamped onto the hose and the algae has finally started to come back nice and thick.

Buuuut that caused a bit of GHA to start growing fairly fast on the platform on the top of the left hand rock structure and a tiny bit growing on the top of the right hand structure (It is only contained to the rocks that are highest in the tank and directly under each light so I might have the white channel of the lights up a bit too high). But to help deal with that while the algae scrubber gets nice and mature again I have added a long spine urchin who disappeared for a week but has now settled on the top of the worst rock and I have high hopes it will do nicely.

Here is the urchin. The algae looks a lot worse that it really is in this pic.

Here is the worst algae covered rock. The urchin has settled here and will hopefully do a good job.

I also got a new little bristle tooth tang too which is slowly coming out more.

 

[MaccaPopEye]

Hello Macca, we have strict laws here in Florida but can collect a "few" differing corals and fishes. Nothing like that pic of the tidal pool ! Very nice.

Hey man, It's actually a lot stricter than that pretty much everywhere else in Aus. Coral collecting is very strictly licensed and regulated and I think isn't allowed by hobbyists anywhere else in Aus. Fish can be collected with varying laws depending on the state. But I live in what would be considered the "backwards, middle of nowhere" territory where the laws tend to be a lot more relaxed.

I don't think it would be a bad thing if they tightened up the laws a bit to stop local collection from being abused. According to some long time resident reefers 5-10 years ago those tide pools were full of really nice coral and were a lot more diverse but the area got hit hard by a mix of people collecting, bad weather and heat spikes and just never quite recovered (although if I had to gauge the quality and quantity of coral out there I would say it has improved slightly over the last 12-24 months that I have been going).

Currently there is really only a dozen active reef keepers here (I run the local reef keeping fb page) and we all get the majority of our stock from the licensed collector, it really is just a whole other level of quality from him. But most of us still enjoy going out for a look. There is just so many cool things out there to see, and I have no issues taking one or two small pieces and having them colour up in your tank really is awesome. Hopefully the bits I collected recover from my mistake as I am already seeing some pretty bright orange stripes standing out in the red/brown moon coral.

 

[Ljaus]

Cheers for the update mate, hope all the issues resolve for you and you have no more losses.

I was going to say that collecting laws vary state to state, in the Queensland marine parks you aren't even allowed to take shells from the beach and no collection of any marine life without a permit and business isn't allowed

 

[cracker]

It's good that the Government is looking out for this wonderful resource. Also You Gents who care about protecting and taking only what You need. Thank You !