JimmyReefer
New Member
I apologize up front for the big read. Some may find it interesting, others will sleep. The purpose here is for me to personally document what I have done this time around and how my past experiences have pushed me in these directions. 17 years ago I attempted to keep a mixed reef with varying levels of success and quite a few failures. I've always liked the look of mixed reefs, so that is what I wanted to again attempt, with an eventual lean towards SPS dominant.
Before I start, some of you are going to think of me as a gadget happy newbie that has thrown away a huge pile of money. While at least some of that may be true
, there are some circumstances that I need to work around, and I'm hoping that my initial venture into this hobby from 2002 until 2007 taught me some lessons. That disclaimer out of the way, on to the build and some of the rationale.
I work one week at a time away from home in a camp, and my wife will FEED but not maintain the tank, therefore monitoring, automation and control were important. When I did this 17 years ago my tank kind of evolved into a beastly contraption that prevented me from really being able to be away from it for any length of time, so until I started reading about some of the automation now available, keeping a reef tank was only a pipe dream. Back then I was using an X-10 controller that I cannot recall the name of, my skimmer had to be emptied every 3rd day, Phosban was brand new, most of us were using deep sand beds, my lights were metal halides with CF actinics that I had put into a DIY hood that had a temp controller that vented outside to try and get 2 gallons a day to evaporate so I could rely on my 7 gallon top off reservoir to feed enough kalk daily to keep everything happy. Testing was done once a week for calcium which alone was expensive... I could go on and never get to the present build! Suffice it to say, I wanted to mitigate any of the failures I had experienced in the past with my new build.
I really liked the Red Sea products I saw, but was aghast at how much a new system cost, so I started to look on MarketPlace and actually bought a XL300 G2 that I wanted to set up in our small place. I had almost been ready to add rock and sand when a place came up that we couldn't turn down, so I changed course, as the new place would allow me to actually put up a slightly larger tank and do a full automation without it looking like a Frankentank. The new place afforded me a "fish room" right behind the tank under the stairs that had incoming water and a drain in the floor. This would allow me to pretty much add anything I wanted to allow for making proper fresh water and do automated water changes, which was one thing I was really looking forward to after hauling endless buckets of water from my laundry room to the tank across the house all those years ago! I pondered for a little while and settled on a nice Red Sea XL425V3. While I would always like to have a bigger tank, and that may yet happen, I'm also married to my wonderful wife and wanted to stay that way.
I set up the tank in front of a stair well closet that used to have hot water tanks in it that was converted to an on-demand system. This gave me enough power and provided incoming water with a drain in the floor. A small but usable “fish room”. I cut a hole in the wall behind the tank to run the plumbing and wiring through, and mounted all the controllers and as much of the electronics as I could fit in the fish room.
My fish room also houses my chiller, (that will likely never kick on but I went for redundancy everywhere I could see a potential disaster), quarantine tank and a small UPS for shorter power outages. Years ago I had a 4 day outage that pretty much decimated my tank, so before I even put water in this one I made sure I had a generator and everything I needed – we recently had an 18 hour outage and I was able to get through without the tank skipping a beat.
Starting with top quality water is of course a priority, my whole system is fed with an AquaFX 100gpd RO/DI unit that I have plumbed to 2 Apex controlled solenoids and a manual tap for when I just want to make a gallon or two of RODI water – I added a second carbon filter and split the DI into anion, cation and mixed bed to effectively make it a 7 stage filter. My ATO reservoir is a 20 gallon tote that I modified with float switches so that it fills itself automatically. My saltwater mix station is a 55 gallon plastic drum that has a mixing pump, transfer pump with a hose and is also plumbed into the RODI unit when I need it filled. This is plumbed in through the DOS QD and I currently do 1.5% automatic water changes daily – no more hauling sloshing buckets! The unit has the RO membrane back flush option and my TDS is always at 0 monitored with 2 TDS meters.
As monitoring and controlling was going to be my responsibility and from out of town nonetheless, I researched and chose to go the Neptune Apex route. I know there are other choices but the Apex kind of had it all for what I was looking to do. I ended up getting the A3 Pro for future expandability and am I glad I did! My current setup has that with 2 EB832's, 2 DOS pumps, 1 DOS QD, an older Neptune 4 outlet power bar, a GRO, Neptune ATO with PMUP, 4 leak detectors and a level sensor. I wanted ALL of my gear to be controlled and monitored by the Apex, so for lighting I grabbed a great deal on a pair of Radion XR30 Pro's and picked up a couple AI Blade Grows to fully blanket the aquascape. I went with a COR20 return pump, (would have liked two but not enough room in the sump - I keep a second one to swap out for cleaning and for a backup).
For in tank flow I went with 2 AI Orbit 4's and 2 AI Nero 5's and a double venturi variable flow fitting for the return. At height of tank, I am realizing 685 gph by the readings I am getting from my Apex flow meters.
For filtration I may have gone totally overboard but again I wanted everything scalable, and to have the ability to put in controls for various issues as needed. I built a custom manifold to future proof my setup and probably went overboard, but did not want to have to rip the system apart to upgrade in the future. I have 2 – 1 inch and 2 – ½ inch flow meters installed to regulate flow to my chiller, 2 UV sterilizers, (one for algae, one for parasites), with a spare for a fluidized bed reactor or calcium reactor should I need in the future. Filtration is accomplished with a Red Sea Reefermat 500, Reef Octopus SSS 200 Internal skimmer and some rock, biobricks, and chaeto in the sump.
I really debated and struggled with whether or not to go with and sand bed or not. Some of the most stunning tanks I have seen have been bare bottom, and I knew sand would be more maintenance in the long run, but I ultimately decided to go with a 1” coarse sand bed because, 1. I like the look, 2. I like the potential biodiversity sand can offer, and 3. I wanted to skip the extra time that would be required for the bare bottom to stabilize with regards to bacterial diversity. I also wanted to stock heavily with fish and I feel that the surface area of the sand bed gives me much more filtration capacity. I really wanted to try and reduce or eliminate as much of the “ugly stage” as I could.
To round out the build, I added a Trident, and Hanna checkers for Ca, Alk, Mag, Phosphate ULR, Nitrate HR. In addition to the Apex salinity probe I have a refractometer and a hydrometer to keep an eye on salinity. Testing 17 years ago was expensive and time consuming. It didn’t get done often enough and helped contribute to the instability of my systems all those years back.
Let me say this - I do not rely 100% on the Apex for exact numbers for my water parameters, I have Hanna checkers and Salifert kits for all major parameters and run them periodically to compare against the Apex and Trident. “Don’t chase numbers” is a bit of a paradox, because back then we kind of did, but without the real time control we have now. Testing daily vs weekly allows us to make more smaller adjustments and promote that stability we couldn’t have years ago. At least with the big three water chemistry parameters. I let the Trident somewhat control my dosing, but I monitor continually so that I can make adjustments if I see a trend.
While I don’t chase numbers per se, I’m able to keep all of the most important parameters within a nice healthy range without too much effort. I have 2 DOS pumps delivering All For Reef, Soda Ash, Magnesium and Calcium separately. I primarily dose All For Reef as I like the trace element supplementation and the zero effect on salinity. I use the other 3 to get things back in range if the numbers fall out of balance using just All For Reef. That I can monitor and control all this 200 miles away from home without having to involve my wife is amazing! I’m able to keep my Alk between 8-8.5 dKH, calcium between 440 and 480 ppm and Mag at 1320-1400 ppm without any sudden changes. I’m not chasing numbers, rather stability.
Nutrients are a little trickier, but I have it under control for the most part. As I added livestock and nutrients, I’ve made adjustments to the skimming and also have GFO that I can control with the Apex. After the initial nitrate spike after cycling my highest nitrate reading has been under 10 ppm with an average of 5-6, which I am good with. Phosphate ranges between .03 and .10 which I keep in check with a phosban reactor that I run twice daily between 2 and 8 hours depending on where the trend is moving. Years ago with aggressive skimming AND running a sulphur reactor, deep sand bed refugium and regular water changes, I was lucky to keep nitrates between 20 and 30ppm, although who really knows with the inaccuracy of testing back then, and phosphates were completely out of control as I'm pretty sure my rock back then was completely saturated.
For aquascaping, I went with dry rock and straight sand - no live sand. I wanted as clean a start as possible, and wanted to make an interesting scape that allowed for as much flow through and around the scape as possible. I remember 17 years ago most of us just piled rock against the back wall and allowed the nutrient sink in behind that we couldn't possible deal with efficiently. I started with the nice foundation rock and glued everything around 4 basic cave/ledge pieces with lots of places to mount corals and for the fish to have adequate cover. To round out the scaping, I found some really neat frag racks on Amazon that are magnetic and look like real rocks. I really like these actually, makes a nice looking natural place to acclimate or grow frags, and adds depth to the overall aquascape. I cycled the tank with rock and sand for 2 weeks with Microbacter Start, when ammonia and nitrites were undetectable I added pods and continued with Microbacter7 for another two weeks before I added any livestock. During my cycling I kept the lighting to a minimum, but did have it on daily as I wanted the biome to be diversified with all organisms, including photosynthetic ones. I also picked up a couple of small pieces of live rock at my LFS to add more biome and seed the system with a little bit of coraline algae. I religiously added as many strains of pods that I could find every two weeks to both the tank and refugium area in the sump for the first three months as well.
Livestock - I started with a pair of clownfish after I was sure the tank was fully cycled, and my wife wanted a pair of Pajama Cardinals. I also put in a fairly substantial clean up crew at this time, including blue legged hermits, red legged hermits, turbo and trochus snails. As I am home every other week, I started to accumulate the livestock I wished to keep slowly but steadily over the next few months, all the while keeping a keen eye on the biological load via the nutrient levels. As the inevitable various bacterial and algal bloom stages occurred, I tried to mitigate as naturally as possible, as in adding more clean up critters. I was in a bit of a hair algae stage and the CUC weren't keeping in check and I made my first impulse buy, the only tang in the store, a beautiful 2 inch Powder Blue, as what I thought would be a "start". I had previously kept a Powder Blue and was fully aware of the pitfalls, with the exception of the aggressiveness, as my previous Powder Blue was the last of the tangs I had. Once I introduced him he went to work, and within 36 hours my hair algae issue was behind me, even as I ramped up the photoperiod.
Since then I have added 2 Green Chromis, 3 Bimac Anthias, a cleaner wrasse, 3 peppermint shrimp, (to hopefully help control the inevitable eventuality of Aptasia), 2 cleaner shrimp, 2 firefish, 2 zebra dartfish, a royal gramma, 2 bicolor damsels, a blood shrimp and various additions to the clean up crew to get their total numbers to up over 100. The only real failures out of that lot was when I introduced the Bimacs - the Powder Blue decided to terrorize them until I distracted him with a mirror, but two of them succumbed over the next two weeks, probably stressed beyond repair that first night. This gave me cause for alarm as I had already ordered my last two "big" additions, a small specimen of each of a Biota captive bred yellow tang and a small purple tang. I decided I would attempt to capture the hotheaded Powder Blue and either rehome him, take him back to the LFS, or quarantine him while the other two acclimated, got strong and were eating heartily before I reintroduced him. Ya... no...LOL Maybe if I didn't have the other two fish renting a tank at my LFS and I wanted to dedicate real time to catching him, or maybe tear my tank down, but he wasn't going to be caught in the time I was home. Alternatively, I fashioned a mesh divider and decided to let them live in proximity, being able to see one another while to two new tangs, (who were less than half the size of my bully Powder Blue), acclimated and fattened up for a couple weeks. While a good plan on paper, this was accelerated by the last livestock addition that I didn't include in the previous list - the yellow headed sand sifting goby... ya... kinda reminds me of my Engineer Goby 17 years ago. I got him because during on of my few "ugly" stages I kept getting diatoms and cyano outbreaks mostly on the sand bed, so I figured he would fix that, which he did - amazingly. Better than I could have hoped for, other than he really likes to sprinkle sand all over the corals, which I have to blow off with a turkey baster every day or two - one maintenance issue replaced with another, such is reefing! ANYWAYS - back to the tangs. All was going very well during the acclimation process, and everybody was eating in sight of one another separated only by the mesh. My wife and I went out for Christmas dinner and when we returned all of the fish were on the same side of the divider! Mr. Goby, or "Gavin" as my wife likes to call him, had dug quite a trench along the bottom of the divider and the fish had all snuck through what couldn't have been more than a 3/8" gap at the bottom and had all introduced themselves! Thankfully, they seemed not much worse for wear, and the Powder Blue just didn't seem to care - crisis averted!
Corals - I started with a couple Zoa frags, Lepastrea, and built a small Euphylia garden at the bottom of the tank. I bought everything quite small with the exception of a hammer, frogspawn, green bubble, and a duncan. I spotted in a blasto and a couple favias, and a torch, not looking for "high end" designer corals, but rather whatever colour I want in a particular area of the aquascape. Once I started seeing coraline algae encrust the rocks, not have any bacterial or algae blooms and established a pattern of stability with my major parameters and nutrients, I started to add some SPS, only recently finishing with a frag pack of various Acros and Monti's. For now I'll sit back & let it grow. I counted and there are exactly 50 corals/frags, I can't wait to see how it all grows out!
Some observations from this build - while I may seem to have accelerated the process, having only started in March and filling with water in June, I have made every move deliberately and with as much information as possible - including some wonderful anecdotal information from here and other places online in the reefing community. I purposely loaded up my biome in the beginning and mitigated much of the "uglies" with natural solutions. When I was in this hobby previously I had a hard time getting consistent coraline algae growth - this time my rocks have gone from white to purple/pink COMPLETELY in 6 months! I did not add any livestock or corals without running 2-4 weeks between and watching stability. Major parameters have been very easy to keep stable with the assistance of the Apex and Trident, and testing biological parameters religiously have allowed for me to be able to make subtle adjustments with feeding and dosing, running media, filter rolls etc. to keep as much in range as possible - I shoot for <.1ppm Phosphate and <10ppm Nitrate, which I have managed to stay at without bottoming out, except for nitrates. If anything, I've had to overfeed and periodically remove the reefmat media to keep nitrates detectable, a far cry from what used to be! The other thing I have done is adjust the photoperiod and intensity from around 15-20% for 6 hours a day up to a maximum of 50% and a 10 hour photoperiod. Now that I have added the SPS I will keep slowly amping it up using the par meter, (yes i bought that for the Apex too). I've also been adjusting the flow and flow variation along with the lighting making sure to increase it with the intensity. I DO have Aptasia - I anticipated it all along and have added Berghia nudis and have a CopperBand Butterfly coming - we'll see if the natural approach will keep them at bay or if I will have to physically intervene.
Overall I am pleased with what I have been able to accomplish in a relatively short period. Not perfect but good steady forward progress. Pretty much all of the corals are encrusting/spreading. I'm able to feed 3-4 times a day with a variety of foods keeping all the livestock happy without growing a bunch of nuisance algae. 17 years ago this is not something that could have been maintained 200 miles away. The last thing I've done is built a mixing/dosing station to dose trace elements, aminos, phytoplankton and iodine, (that I test for), so all my wife has to do is truly only feed frozen food daily which she enjoys. Thank you for reading if you made it this far! Merry Reefing everyone! I'll post more pictures when I get the SPS all placed.
Before I start, some of you are going to think of me as a gadget happy newbie that has thrown away a huge pile of money. While at least some of that may be true
, there are some circumstances that I need to work around, and I'm hoping that my initial venture into this hobby from 2002 until 2007 taught me some lessons. That disclaimer out of the way, on to the build and some of the rationale.I work one week at a time away from home in a camp, and my wife will FEED but not maintain the tank, therefore monitoring, automation and control were important. When I did this 17 years ago my tank kind of evolved into a beastly contraption that prevented me from really being able to be away from it for any length of time, so until I started reading about some of the automation now available, keeping a reef tank was only a pipe dream. Back then I was using an X-10 controller that I cannot recall the name of, my skimmer had to be emptied every 3rd day, Phosban was brand new, most of us were using deep sand beds, my lights were metal halides with CF actinics that I had put into a DIY hood that had a temp controller that vented outside to try and get 2 gallons a day to evaporate so I could rely on my 7 gallon top off reservoir to feed enough kalk daily to keep everything happy. Testing was done once a week for calcium which alone was expensive... I could go on and never get to the present build! Suffice it to say, I wanted to mitigate any of the failures I had experienced in the past with my new build.
I really liked the Red Sea products I saw, but was aghast at how much a new system cost, so I started to look on MarketPlace and actually bought a XL300 G2 that I wanted to set up in our small place. I had almost been ready to add rock and sand when a place came up that we couldn't turn down, so I changed course, as the new place would allow me to actually put up a slightly larger tank and do a full automation without it looking like a Frankentank. The new place afforded me a "fish room" right behind the tank under the stairs that had incoming water and a drain in the floor. This would allow me to pretty much add anything I wanted to allow for making proper fresh water and do automated water changes, which was one thing I was really looking forward to after hauling endless buckets of water from my laundry room to the tank across the house all those years ago! I pondered for a little while and settled on a nice Red Sea XL425V3. While I would always like to have a bigger tank, and that may yet happen, I'm also married to my wonderful wife and wanted to stay that way.
I set up the tank in front of a stair well closet that used to have hot water tanks in it that was converted to an on-demand system. This gave me enough power and provided incoming water with a drain in the floor. A small but usable “fish room”. I cut a hole in the wall behind the tank to run the plumbing and wiring through, and mounted all the controllers and as much of the electronics as I could fit in the fish room.
My fish room also houses my chiller, (that will likely never kick on but I went for redundancy everywhere I could see a potential disaster), quarantine tank and a small UPS for shorter power outages. Years ago I had a 4 day outage that pretty much decimated my tank, so before I even put water in this one I made sure I had a generator and everything I needed – we recently had an 18 hour outage and I was able to get through without the tank skipping a beat.
Starting with top quality water is of course a priority, my whole system is fed with an AquaFX 100gpd RO/DI unit that I have plumbed to 2 Apex controlled solenoids and a manual tap for when I just want to make a gallon or two of RODI water – I added a second carbon filter and split the DI into anion, cation and mixed bed to effectively make it a 7 stage filter. My ATO reservoir is a 20 gallon tote that I modified with float switches so that it fills itself automatically. My saltwater mix station is a 55 gallon plastic drum that has a mixing pump, transfer pump with a hose and is also plumbed into the RODI unit when I need it filled. This is plumbed in through the DOS QD and I currently do 1.5% automatic water changes daily – no more hauling sloshing buckets! The unit has the RO membrane back flush option and my TDS is always at 0 monitored with 2 TDS meters.
As monitoring and controlling was going to be my responsibility and from out of town nonetheless, I researched and chose to go the Neptune Apex route. I know there are other choices but the Apex kind of had it all for what I was looking to do. I ended up getting the A3 Pro for future expandability and am I glad I did! My current setup has that with 2 EB832's, 2 DOS pumps, 1 DOS QD, an older Neptune 4 outlet power bar, a GRO, Neptune ATO with PMUP, 4 leak detectors and a level sensor. I wanted ALL of my gear to be controlled and monitored by the Apex, so for lighting I grabbed a great deal on a pair of Radion XR30 Pro's and picked up a couple AI Blade Grows to fully blanket the aquascape. I went with a COR20 return pump, (would have liked two but not enough room in the sump - I keep a second one to swap out for cleaning and for a backup).
For in tank flow I went with 2 AI Orbit 4's and 2 AI Nero 5's and a double venturi variable flow fitting for the return. At height of tank, I am realizing 685 gph by the readings I am getting from my Apex flow meters.
For filtration I may have gone totally overboard but again I wanted everything scalable, and to have the ability to put in controls for various issues as needed. I built a custom manifold to future proof my setup and probably went overboard, but did not want to have to rip the system apart to upgrade in the future. I have 2 – 1 inch and 2 – ½ inch flow meters installed to regulate flow to my chiller, 2 UV sterilizers, (one for algae, one for parasites), with a spare for a fluidized bed reactor or calcium reactor should I need in the future. Filtration is accomplished with a Red Sea Reefermat 500, Reef Octopus SSS 200 Internal skimmer and some rock, biobricks, and chaeto in the sump.
I really debated and struggled with whether or not to go with and sand bed or not. Some of the most stunning tanks I have seen have been bare bottom, and I knew sand would be more maintenance in the long run, but I ultimately decided to go with a 1” coarse sand bed because, 1. I like the look, 2. I like the potential biodiversity sand can offer, and 3. I wanted to skip the extra time that would be required for the bare bottom to stabilize with regards to bacterial diversity. I also wanted to stock heavily with fish and I feel that the surface area of the sand bed gives me much more filtration capacity. I really wanted to try and reduce or eliminate as much of the “ugly stage” as I could.
To round out the build, I added a Trident, and Hanna checkers for Ca, Alk, Mag, Phosphate ULR, Nitrate HR. In addition to the Apex salinity probe I have a refractometer and a hydrometer to keep an eye on salinity. Testing 17 years ago was expensive and time consuming. It didn’t get done often enough and helped contribute to the instability of my systems all those years back.
Let me say this - I do not rely 100% on the Apex for exact numbers for my water parameters, I have Hanna checkers and Salifert kits for all major parameters and run them periodically to compare against the Apex and Trident. “Don’t chase numbers” is a bit of a paradox, because back then we kind of did, but without the real time control we have now. Testing daily vs weekly allows us to make more smaller adjustments and promote that stability we couldn’t have years ago. At least with the big three water chemistry parameters. I let the Trident somewhat control my dosing, but I monitor continually so that I can make adjustments if I see a trend.
While I don’t chase numbers per se, I’m able to keep all of the most important parameters within a nice healthy range without too much effort. I have 2 DOS pumps delivering All For Reef, Soda Ash, Magnesium and Calcium separately. I primarily dose All For Reef as I like the trace element supplementation and the zero effect on salinity. I use the other 3 to get things back in range if the numbers fall out of balance using just All For Reef. That I can monitor and control all this 200 miles away from home without having to involve my wife is amazing! I’m able to keep my Alk between 8-8.5 dKH, calcium between 440 and 480 ppm and Mag at 1320-1400 ppm without any sudden changes. I’m not chasing numbers, rather stability.
Nutrients are a little trickier, but I have it under control for the most part. As I added livestock and nutrients, I’ve made adjustments to the skimming and also have GFO that I can control with the Apex. After the initial nitrate spike after cycling my highest nitrate reading has been under 10 ppm with an average of 5-6, which I am good with. Phosphate ranges between .03 and .10 which I keep in check with a phosban reactor that I run twice daily between 2 and 8 hours depending on where the trend is moving. Years ago with aggressive skimming AND running a sulphur reactor, deep sand bed refugium and regular water changes, I was lucky to keep nitrates between 20 and 30ppm, although who really knows with the inaccuracy of testing back then, and phosphates were completely out of control as I'm pretty sure my rock back then was completely saturated.
For aquascaping, I went with dry rock and straight sand - no live sand. I wanted as clean a start as possible, and wanted to make an interesting scape that allowed for as much flow through and around the scape as possible. I remember 17 years ago most of us just piled rock against the back wall and allowed the nutrient sink in behind that we couldn't possible deal with efficiently. I started with the nice foundation rock and glued everything around 4 basic cave/ledge pieces with lots of places to mount corals and for the fish to have adequate cover. To round out the scaping, I found some really neat frag racks on Amazon that are magnetic and look like real rocks. I really like these actually, makes a nice looking natural place to acclimate or grow frags, and adds depth to the overall aquascape. I cycled the tank with rock and sand for 2 weeks with Microbacter Start, when ammonia and nitrites were undetectable I added pods and continued with Microbacter7 for another two weeks before I added any livestock. During my cycling I kept the lighting to a minimum, but did have it on daily as I wanted the biome to be diversified with all organisms, including photosynthetic ones. I also picked up a couple of small pieces of live rock at my LFS to add more biome and seed the system with a little bit of coraline algae. I religiously added as many strains of pods that I could find every two weeks to both the tank and refugium area in the sump for the first three months as well.
Livestock - I started with a pair of clownfish after I was sure the tank was fully cycled, and my wife wanted a pair of Pajama Cardinals. I also put in a fairly substantial clean up crew at this time, including blue legged hermits, red legged hermits, turbo and trochus snails. As I am home every other week, I started to accumulate the livestock I wished to keep slowly but steadily over the next few months, all the while keeping a keen eye on the biological load via the nutrient levels. As the inevitable various bacterial and algal bloom stages occurred, I tried to mitigate as naturally as possible, as in adding more clean up critters. I was in a bit of a hair algae stage and the CUC weren't keeping in check and I made my first impulse buy, the only tang in the store, a beautiful 2 inch Powder Blue, as what I thought would be a "start". I had previously kept a Powder Blue and was fully aware of the pitfalls, with the exception of the aggressiveness, as my previous Powder Blue was the last of the tangs I had. Once I introduced him he went to work, and within 36 hours my hair algae issue was behind me, even as I ramped up the photoperiod.
Since then I have added 2 Green Chromis, 3 Bimac Anthias, a cleaner wrasse, 3 peppermint shrimp, (to hopefully help control the inevitable eventuality of Aptasia), 2 cleaner shrimp, 2 firefish, 2 zebra dartfish, a royal gramma, 2 bicolor damsels, a blood shrimp and various additions to the clean up crew to get their total numbers to up over 100. The only real failures out of that lot was when I introduced the Bimacs - the Powder Blue decided to terrorize them until I distracted him with a mirror, but two of them succumbed over the next two weeks, probably stressed beyond repair that first night. This gave me cause for alarm as I had already ordered my last two "big" additions, a small specimen of each of a Biota captive bred yellow tang and a small purple tang. I decided I would attempt to capture the hotheaded Powder Blue and either rehome him, take him back to the LFS, or quarantine him while the other two acclimated, got strong and were eating heartily before I reintroduced him. Ya... no...LOL Maybe if I didn't have the other two fish renting a tank at my LFS and I wanted to dedicate real time to catching him, or maybe tear my tank down, but he wasn't going to be caught in the time I was home. Alternatively, I fashioned a mesh divider and decided to let them live in proximity, being able to see one another while to two new tangs, (who were less than half the size of my bully Powder Blue), acclimated and fattened up for a couple weeks. While a good plan on paper, this was accelerated by the last livestock addition that I didn't include in the previous list - the yellow headed sand sifting goby... ya... kinda reminds me of my Engineer Goby 17 years ago. I got him because during on of my few "ugly" stages I kept getting diatoms and cyano outbreaks mostly on the sand bed, so I figured he would fix that, which he did - amazingly. Better than I could have hoped for, other than he really likes to sprinkle sand all over the corals, which I have to blow off with a turkey baster every day or two - one maintenance issue replaced with another, such is reefing! ANYWAYS - back to the tangs. All was going very well during the acclimation process, and everybody was eating in sight of one another separated only by the mesh. My wife and I went out for Christmas dinner and when we returned all of the fish were on the same side of the divider! Mr. Goby, or "Gavin" as my wife likes to call him, had dug quite a trench along the bottom of the divider and the fish had all snuck through what couldn't have been more than a 3/8" gap at the bottom and had all introduced themselves! Thankfully, they seemed not much worse for wear, and the Powder Blue just didn't seem to care - crisis averted!
Corals - I started with a couple Zoa frags, Lepastrea, and built a small Euphylia garden at the bottom of the tank. I bought everything quite small with the exception of a hammer, frogspawn, green bubble, and a duncan. I spotted in a blasto and a couple favias, and a torch, not looking for "high end" designer corals, but rather whatever colour I want in a particular area of the aquascape. Once I started seeing coraline algae encrust the rocks, not have any bacterial or algae blooms and established a pattern of stability with my major parameters and nutrients, I started to add some SPS, only recently finishing with a frag pack of various Acros and Monti's. For now I'll sit back & let it grow. I counted and there are exactly 50 corals/frags, I can't wait to see how it all grows out!
Some observations from this build - while I may seem to have accelerated the process, having only started in March and filling with water in June, I have made every move deliberately and with as much information as possible - including some wonderful anecdotal information from here and other places online in the reefing community. I purposely loaded up my biome in the beginning and mitigated much of the "uglies" with natural solutions. When I was in this hobby previously I had a hard time getting consistent coraline algae growth - this time my rocks have gone from white to purple/pink COMPLETELY in 6 months! I did not add any livestock or corals without running 2-4 weeks between and watching stability. Major parameters have been very easy to keep stable with the assistance of the Apex and Trident, and testing biological parameters religiously have allowed for me to be able to make subtle adjustments with feeding and dosing, running media, filter rolls etc. to keep as much in range as possible - I shoot for <.1ppm Phosphate and <10ppm Nitrate, which I have managed to stay at without bottoming out, except for nitrates. If anything, I've had to overfeed and periodically remove the reefmat media to keep nitrates detectable, a far cry from what used to be! The other thing I have done is adjust the photoperiod and intensity from around 15-20% for 6 hours a day up to a maximum of 50% and a 10 hour photoperiod. Now that I have added the SPS I will keep slowly amping it up using the par meter, (yes i bought that for the Apex too). I've also been adjusting the flow and flow variation along with the lighting making sure to increase it with the intensity. I DO have Aptasia - I anticipated it all along and have added Berghia nudis and have a CopperBand Butterfly coming - we'll see if the natural approach will keep them at bay or if I will have to physically intervene.
Overall I am pleased with what I have been able to accomplish in a relatively short period. Not perfect but good steady forward progress. Pretty much all of the corals are encrusting/spreading. I'm able to feed 3-4 times a day with a variety of foods keeping all the livestock happy without growing a bunch of nuisance algae. 17 years ago this is not something that could have been maintained 200 miles away. The last thing I've done is built a mixing/dosing station to dose trace elements, aminos, phytoplankton and iodine, (that I test for), so all my wife has to do is truly only feed frozen food daily which she enjoys. Thank you for reading if you made it this far! Merry Reefing everyone! I'll post more pictures when I get the SPS all placed.
