Desert Reef - 180g Reefer-S 850 G2

[ctopherl]

Coral QT is up and running!

20g long tank from petsmart, hygger heater with inkbird, cheap submersible filter for flow, Kessil H80 from my old tank’s fuge with blue setting. The tank also came with a stock (very white) light. Seeded with rocks from my DT sump.

30 corals in the first batch, starting with easy corals. Mostly zoas, clove polyps, cyphastrea and some mushrooms. Miscellaneous include toadstool, GSP and an Alveopora to test the waters. I’d love an Alveopora/goniopora garden but my limited experience has not gone well so we will see. These were all purchased from Top Shelf Aquatics and Worldwide Corals.

Weekly ~5g water changes, including rinsing out the filter and blowing detritus off the corals. I may occasionally dose small amounts of aminos and reef roids. Maintaining 80 degrees with goal of 8 weeks.

After this batch of corals I plan to do a batch of nems!

 

[ctopherl]

My lid is from ClearviewLids and I’ve had it for almost a year now. They had good customer service and the lid seems good quality. The one odd thing I wasn’t a huge fan of is that they really left me to do all the measuring myself and report back to the hundredth of an inch, which I did not trust myself to do properly but I didn’t have a choice. Luckily I got it close enough, I have to snap them down into place but they fit. Even though it is a net style, I’m surprised at how much evaporation reduced once I added it. I think my ATO container lasted about 6 days before and now it lasts about 10 days. Overall I’m happy with the result and would order from them again.

 

[ctopherl]

We have our tank in an interesting spot in the house because there is this pass-through window behind the tank that opens up into the foyer/front door area. To make the inside of the tank visible from this side, I peeled off the black background "wrap" on the back of the tank and planned my scape in a way that some corals will be visible from that side-I am thinking either rock flower nem garden or goniopora garden if I can actually keep them alive. Below is the view from that side.

We did this with the last tank too. The LFS installed both tanks for me and, kid you not, when they came to install the new tank they said, "so YOU'RE the guy who peeled off the background! We heard about you!". Apparently I'm the talk of the LFS. It's basically glorified tape ‍

Also, not pictured since it would be a boring picture, but I did have an electrician come install a dedicated 20A circuit to support this tank. Our house is wired weirdly in that this room and the kitchen are on the same circuit, which is where we use most of our power, so I didn't want to risk it or worry about it. Possibly overkill but now I can plug in whatever I want without concerns. Whoever moves into this house after us will be very confused.

 

[ctopherl]

I’m now wondering if maybe the “ich” on my tang is actually sand. That would be a pleasant surprise. I’ve noticed he kicks up sand as he eats food off of it. It’s a bit hard to see but you can kind of see some puffs of sand shoot up against the black background here. Around the fish against the background you can see the white specks. The sand is CaribSea Oolite and it is suuuuper fine powder.

 

[ctopherl]

I’m going to miss dosing peroxide, it makes the tank so incredibly clear. I have a feeling it will get a bit cloudier once I stop.

 

[ctopherl]

my coral QT exploded with hair algae! I turned off the white light for now, hopefully that helps but I am a bit worried about having enough light now. We’ll see.

Did a deeper clean with this water change including some algae scraping. Definitely missed some spots and there is some floating around but much better than it was. I will do a follow up water change in a couple of days and try to get more of it. Picture below is post-cleaning.

I also dipped a few of the corals in peroxide, TBD if it helped because they are all closed up and agitated. One GSP frag was particularly overwhelmed with algae.

Lesson learned: get CuC with your corals if you are going to QT. I will get some for the next batch whenever that is but just going to ride this batch out with lots of scraping.

I also noticed water is evaporating much faster than I expected. Salinity climbed to 1.028sg. Oops! I will have to stay more on top of top offs.

 

[ctopherl]

I beefed up my aquascape with some more rocks (@LPS Bum !). I’ve had these rocks sitting in my sump since the tank was set up for extra bio filtration when cycling initially and kept them in case I wanted to update the scape a bit.

I think the fish needed a few more hiding spots and swim throughs. I realized clumping a few rocks around the base of each existing focal point would add more caves while still maintaining the minimalist look I’m after.

I didn’t glue any of these new rocks down so TBD if the trigger lets me keep them there the initial ones are cemented together firmly and not budging.

See picture comparing day one to today to see the difference. I am potentially going to build up some more rocks to connect the right pillar of the arch with the center "mound" as well, especially as the trigger and sailfin get bigger.

 

[ctopherl]

Through multiple water changes and some serious toothbrush scrubbing I finally got ahead of the algae situation in the coral QT. I gave a couple corals a light peroxide dip to help as well. I have shut off the white light now and am only using blue and that seems to be keeping the algae at bay. For my next batch of corals I will get some snails to help but don’t want to reset the QT clock right now on this batch.

Keeping up with the water evaporation has been easy now that I know it’s going rather quickly. The duct tape on the side of the tank helps check quickly!

 

[ctopherl]

Did some light maintenance in the controller cabinet.

* I re-attached some of the controllers with new Velcro strips as a couple have been falling off. I think my mistake was not separating, pressing one half to each side and then connecting the Velcro. Instead I left the Velcro connected, pushed onto the controller and then pushed the controller onto the wall. We’ll see if they hold up better now.
* Cleaned off the bottom of the cabinet-lots of fallen pellets and unidentified powders
* Moved the heater cord from a generic power outlet to my controller power bar now that I got another one and have some extra outlets. I am still relying on the heater’s controller to flip the heater on/off, but being able to turn it off remotely from my phone now gives me peace of mind.
* Attached some simple command hooks to hang some of my tools.

Unrelated, also caught my puffer half puffed up? He went back to normal within a few seconds. Never seen that before!

 

[ctopherl]

I live in the desert (Scottsdale, AZ) so sterilizing equipment is as simple as leaving it outside for a couple of days in the summer sun. Nothing is surviving that ~115 degree heat, not to mention everything is bone dry when done.

I have an existing 4 stage RODI unit that I’m using for this tank. I had it hard plumbed to the laundry room sink for my old tank. Our house has a water softener as well. I hit 0TDS consistently no problem. Changing these stupid RO filters is one of my least favorite parts about this hobby. I use a 32g brute trash can to mix water for water changes.

 

[ctopherl]

In other news I think Leah the leopard wrasse has officially become Leo! I got this wrasse from Ocean Devotion and other than a bit of initial stress trying to get her to eat, s/he has been a happy and healthy fish. It is a blue star and I prefer the female colorations but my wife prefers the male colorations, oh well! He sleeps from about 11pm-1pm daily

Also, I am getting going on my next tank project-side cabinet to hold all my dosing stuff for when the corals go in. I realized I will be dosing more stuff than I initially thought and the space under the tank won’t cut it. I will be using the BRS Pharma 2 part balling method which is actually 4 part, and potentially carbon dosing on top of that if needed to control nitrates/phosphates. On my old tank, I used the BRS 2 part without the trace elements but I had very poor/slow coral growth. I’m hoping adding the balling components and regular amino dosing will help with this.

 

[ctopherl]

A couple of my corals in QT are struggling, Alveopora and cyphastrea. I tried dipping the cyphastrea in Melafix and moving to lower flow/light but tissue is still receding. Alveopora is slowly losing polyps so I just moved it to lower flow and light as well, we’ll see if that helps. The other 28 frags are doing great (including 4 other cyphastrea-go figure). I really want Alveopora and goniopora to succeed because they’re beautiful but not sure it’s going to happen

I have been doing occasional small doses of coral aminos and reef roids.

I also wired up my new duetto to the coral QT. It ain’t pretty but it’s just a QT so it does the job! I will be testing it out over the next 3 weeks before we go out of town. I’m shocked at how small the form factor is for this ATO!

I also placed an order for some nems to come in 2 weeks since these corals will hit their 8 weeks in QT

 

[ctopherl]

We are having some of our floors replaced in the main area of our house this week. Currently there is tile that will be demo’d so I’m a bit worried about dust and debris getting into the tank. We are going to tape off the room the tank is in, I will cover the top with a towel for demo days and I added some fresh carbon and extra fine (50micron) filter floss. Hopefully no issues.

We are going to stay at my in laws for the week so it’s almost like a “vacation away” except I will stop by nightly to feed the fish. I got an extra auto feeder to handle the bigger algae pellets for the tang and also got a cheap indoor security camera off Amazon for prime day to keep an eye on the tank while away.

Here is a shot of the tank from the camera view!

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Great looking build!

 

[ctopherl]

Floors are in and house is all moved back to normal! Fish and tank look fine.

I was planning to put corals from QT into DT tomorrow but I did some tests and found my nitrates and phosphates are sky high (40ppm nitrate with salifert and over 200ppb phosphorous with Hanna). I added some RowaPhos and will dose some NOPOX over the next few days and see if that helps. I am going to almost completely cut out pellet feeding as well for now.

I also tested these levels:

* Alk 7.2
* Ca 1420
* Mg 1200

I’m going to wait to dose anything until my water change tomorrow, then I will get a new baseline. I am using Red Sea blue bucket salt-I’m surprised Mg is this low but we’ll see. I mixed up my 4 concoctions for the 2part system today and will probably dose by hand for a bit while I get the levels dialed in. Most of my corals in this batch are softies so not much should be needed.

I also got a dosing cabinet set up (IKEA EKET cabinet). I currently have 2 kamoer single head and a 2 head Red Sea doser. I have constant problems with the RS so I will replace it with either more kamoer or the 4 head simplicity-I haven’t decided yet.

 

[ctopherl]

Good news and bad news.

Bad: lost one of my bimac anthias. She has been hiding in the back corner of the tank not eating for a few days so I had a bad feeling. No signs of disease, distress or otherwise poor health, other than not eating. Looking online, it seems this is common. We only have one turning male out of the group and I haven’t seen any aggression.

Bad: tank exploded with algae, presumably due to sky high phosphates. Going to have to try and scrape it off with water changes over time. Based on the NOPOX reviews it may die off with continued use? TBD. I may try an urchin at some point but obviously have concerns with trigger and puffer in there.

Good: got my phosphates down. Originally they were off the charts (> 200ppb phosphorous which is about .3ppm) but got them down to about 30ppb phosphorous which is about .1ppm phosphates. GFO worked wonders. Having trouble keeping them down but I am getting the carbon dosing going so hopefully that will help. I may need to get a skimmer.

Good: got the corals in the tank. Their 8 weeks in QT ended today. The Alveopora even bounced back and is making a full comeback!!!

Good: got notice that my nems shipped, arriving tomorrow! Assortment of rock flowers, and 2 bubble tips

Good: water has stayed clear even though I stopped dosing peroxide now

 

[ctopherl]

Got some nems in today - mostly rock flowers and two bubble tips - from Top Shelf Aquatics and Aqua SD. Great experience and quality from both! 16 day QT countdown begins.

 

[Gumbies R Us]

Good news and bad news.

Bad: lost one of my bimac anthias. She has been hiding in the back corner of the tank not eating for a few days so I had a bad feeling. No signs of disease, distress or otherwise poor health, other than not eating. Looking online, it seems this is common. We only have one turning male out of the group and I haven’t seen any aggression.

Bad: tank exploded with algae, presumably due to sky high phosphates. Going to have to try and scrape it off with water changes over time. Based on the NOPOX reviews it may die off with continued use? TBD. I may try an urchin at some point but obviously have concerns with trigger and puffer in there.

Good: got my phosphates down. Originally they were off the charts (> 200ppb phosphorous which is about .3ppm) but got them down to about 30ppb phosphorous which is about .1ppm phosphates. GFO worked wonders. Having trouble keeping them down but I am getting the carbon dosing going so hopefully that will help. I may need to get a skimmer.

Good: got the corals in the tank. Their 8 weeks in QT ended today. The Alveopora even bounced back and is making a full comeback!!!

Good: got notice that my nems shipped, arriving tomorrow! Assortment of rock flowers, and 2 bubble tips

Good: water has stayed clear even though I stopped dosing peroxide now

Glad you got the corals in your tank!

 

[ctopherl]

I found the fastest way to rid your tank of nuisance algae-replace the rocks I put some new rock work in to get more hiding spots for the fish and they are loving it (before/after below). I got the nems in the tank and started gluing some of the corals down. More corals, some snails for QT and an urchin are coming Wednesday!

 

[ctopherl]

Got the next batch of corals in QT. Torches, hammers, gonis, chalices, Kenya tree and Duncan. All from TSM Aquatics and Vivid Aquariums. Also got an urchin in the DT and some snails for the QT. Finally, I glued the last of the first batch of corals to rocks after scraping off most of the algae by hand with toothbrushes! I am not happy with how the zoas look to be honest, they are just not colorful. I think it’s because I keep my lights whiter.