28 Gal Reef tank; First Tank

[chunkeylover59]

Hello everyone! I'm pretty new to the hobby and started building my first tank about a year ago.
I've been taking very slow steps forward in the hopes that I wont mess anything up , but nevertheless here is my current tank set up. It's a far cry from most of the other systems I've seen here, but I guess you gotta start somewhere

I'll be making some new posts in the other threads looking for advice/solutions to some issues I'm having with my system, so please keep an eye out for those if you'd like to try and help

I would love to hear any thoughts, suggestions, or feedback you're willing to give

Here are the current details of my tank, please let me know if there's any other information I should include!
A few details about my tank:
- 28 Gal
- 1 Mocha Clownfish and Black Storm Clownfish
- 1 Tuxedo Urchin + cowboy hat
- 1 Cleaner Shrimp
- 1 Blood Shrimp
- 1 Fighting Conch
- 2 Nassarius snails
- a handful of Mushrooms
- 3 Dwarf red hermit crabs
- 1 Honeycomb Leptastrea Frag

The below were added two days ago, and will hopefully all become new members of the tank!

- 2 Acan Frags
- 1 Acan Colony with tissue damage (it was heavily discounted, hoping it will pull through)
- 1 Slytherin Mushroom
- 3 Zoa Frags
- 1 Favia frag
- 1 Kenya Tree frag (had some Pulsing Xenia hitch hiking as well)

Here's the Oldest photo I have of my tank Back from June 2024 (please ignore the dead birdsnest):

Here's the current state of the tank (Oct 25th 2024), along with some close ups of the life in the tank:

 

[Should I]

been in the hobby since 2020 for the life of me cnt keep a coral alive haha

following along

 

[chunkeylover59]

O

been in the hobby since 2020 for the life of me cnt keep a coral alive haha

following along

Oh no! Not sure I'll be able to do any better haha. If you figure out the trick please let me know!

 

[Should I]

O

Oh no! Not sure I'll be able to do any better haha. If you figure out the trick please let me know!

i don't currently have a tank atm setting another 1 up some time next year going to go with a predator tank the only thing i know thats going in it so far is a banana eel

 

[chunkeylover59]

i don't currently have a tank atm setting another 1 up some time next year going to go with a predator tank the only thing i know thats going in it so far is a banana eel

That's pretty cool, I didn't even know you could do that. I'll need to look into predator tanks some more, I'm very curious now.

Please start a thread when you begin so I can follow along

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Following along!

 

[chunkeylover59]

Following along!

Glad to have you here!

 

[chunkeylover59]

It's been a few weeks, so I figured it's time for an update! (Photos of every thing at bottom of post)

Let's start with the good:

My partner and I took another trip to the LFS yesterday and picked up a few more things for the tank!
- Frogspawn
- Purple grape monticap
- Purple Clove Polyp
- Cyan Trumpet coral (forgot this at the store, so I have to go back and pick it up )
- a pom pom crab (super excited about this one)
- also got a few more pieces of rock to do some more aqua scaping.

Coral Update
Nearly all the corals I got a few weeks ago seem to be doing great! They all seem puffy and have most of the colour seen in the store. The Acan Colony with tissue damage not only seems to be surviving, but thriving! It seems the be growing new heads/tissue in areas that were previously dead.

Tank parameters
When I started this thread a few weeks ago my parameters were a bit out of wack. I had a sudden salinity spike, somewhat low alk, and been battling very high Pa for months with no budge.
- Our Alk seems to have risen to a solid 10.7 (I'll need to keep an eye on this though, it raised faster than expected).
- Salinity has stayed much more in check hovering between 1.025 and 1.026
- Phosphates are still very high, but have finally started dropping after adding some chemipure to my filter. Went from .5+ to between .25 and .5 (just my best guess based on my salifert test)

Now for the bad:
- I thought I was rid of that Spiondid worm, but I just noticed it back yesterday! It looks much smaller, so maybe it's starved or a different worm. Either way, it'll be getting glued shut as soon as I can pick up some more super glue.
- all three Zoa frags haven't really been opening, despite where I placed them in the tank. After doing some research I decided it was probably best to give them a peroxide bath yesterday. Just hoping for the best now.
- The Monticap and Purple Clove coral, are in quarantine because I noticed some orange slimey stuff on the clove coral. I'm worries it was flatworm eggs, so I did my best to scrape it off. Unfortunately I don't have a proper light for my quarantine tank, so I have to figure out what the plan is so they don't die. (Would love any advice on this if someone has wisdom to share)