Mav's 75 gallon reef

Mav88 · Apr 23, 2023

Been awhile since I’ve had time for the forum we had our first child a little after finishing the tank. Gone through some livestock and algae problems but now I’m just down to bubble algae and it’s slowly going away. Refugium started working well about 3 months ago, and that has helped a bunch. Going to set up my ro/di this week and start looking into getting an ATO and use mesh lids instead of the glass. Currently there’s a coral banded, shrimp pistol shrimp, yellow head sleeper goby, two spot tang, clarki, blue star leopard wrasse, and longnose hawkfish along with various CUC.

Mav88 · May 8, 2023

I was doing 10 gallon water changes bi-weekly and for the past month I’ve been doing 15 gallons weekly along with removing about a third of the bubble algae at a time and I’m slowly winning the tank back. I get a lot of chaeto growth for the first few days after the water change and the bubble algae isn’t coming back very thick like it was. Finally got my gyres running nearly silent at 75%. Hopefully I don’t have to hear that annoying hum for awhile.

Mav88 · May 15, 2023

Another water change and more bubble algae removal. Livestock is doing well and the pistol shrimp is venturing out of his cave more thinking that the sleeper goby is his buddy, but he just likes the free real estate.

Gumbies R Us · May 16, 2023

Mav88 said:
Another water change and more bubble algae removal. Livestock is doing well and the pistol shrimp is venturing out of his cave more thinking that the sleeper goby is his buddy, but he just likes the free real estate.

Glad your livestock is doing well!!

Mav88 · May 20, 2023

Replaced 2 of the t5 bulbs and adjusted the color from my primes. First picture is all lights second is just from primes. Managed to mute a lot of blues and I don’t use a filter for photos just take pictures through my sunglasses.

Mav88 · May 22, 2023

The battle with bubbly algae is almost done. The crevices that it’s still in are hard for me to pluck out, and I caught my emerald crabs actually eating the stuff. But now I have sand bed aptasia. Not a lot maybe 15 total between sand and rockwork so I’ll start murdering that stuff. Planning a diy project for feeding and got some free Xenia from my lfs they were loose clippings so I used my daughters little colorful hair ties to attach to old plugs. Im going to use anemones to try and isolate them from spreading.

Sleeping Giant · May 22, 2023

looking great, your tank really came along nicely. keep up the great work.

Mav88 · May 22, 2023

Sleeping Giant said:
looking great, your tank really came along nicely. keep up the great work.

Thanks, it’s taken awhile to get it back where I want it and the inhabitants are playing nicely now (The clarkii is a piranha). I’ve used algae fixes in a previous tank and it always caused another problem so I’ve taken a slower approach to getting this one back. I’m not using my skimmer right now and my cheato is doing great at outcompeting the bubble algae. I will add more fish and then I’ll probably have to skim again but that’s down the line. Thinking 3-5 ignitus anthias or evansis

Mav88 · Jun 5, 2023

Adjusted my flow today with my water change since I’m getting detritus build up along the front and put a gyre on the front glass vertical pushing water across the front. Getting some turf algae as well but not much and it’s localized to my frag rack and the top of my return nozzles. I am rethinking adding more fish because the clown and tang are hard on newcomers and I have to do a lot of acclimation box timeouts for them while introducing a new fish. I saw a group of 5 chromis at my lfs but they were all about the size of dimes and would probably be murdered by my fish and coral banded.

Mav88 · Nov 14, 2023

Clarkii passed away the other day. Started side swimming and swimming upside down. I tried tuxedo urchins to help control the coralline growth but they only lived a few months. Added a one spot foxface hoping to get some sort of bubble algae control.

Gumbies R Us · Nov 14, 2023

Mav88 said:
Clarkii passed away the other day. Started side swimming and swimming upside down. I tried tuxedo urchins to help control the coralline growth but they only lived a few months. Added a one spot foxface hoping to get some sort of bubble algae control.

Sorry about your loss!