• Dane's Mixed Reef Cube •

[Alemoki]

Did some maintenance today on my lights. Decided it was a good time to clean the fans on my hydra 26 lights as I am preparing to add another to the setup when the frag system is plumbed into it. So off came the lights and the paint brush.

Here is the setup being disassembled

And the fan and fan cover before cleaning

Here is the light after cleaning

And all assembled and then put back over the tank

Tomorrow I will hopefully receive my frame back from powder coating and then I can begin plumbing.

Hopefully I have all the plumbing pieces necessary to finish the job.

Will be dry fitting everything and then painting all piping purple. Once painted and dried I will glue everything into place. Hopefully this frag setup will be up and running by this coming Saturday.

 

[WiscoFishNut]

Beautiful tank man!

 

[Alemoki]

Beautiful tank man!

Thanks a bunch

 

[WiscoFishNut]

The beer display is legit too [emoji482][emoji41]

 

[Alemoki]

The beer display is legit too [emoji482][emoji41]

My dad and I love our home brews

 

[Alemoki]

Got a fair chunk done today!!

Collected the newly powder coated stand and decided to set it all in place.

I realised it would be a much better idea to sort out the electronics before attempting to plumb everything so I did the bulk of that today.

Here is the start

Halfway through ( huge mess)

The final product from today

Still need to fit all cable trunking but it's soon to completion.

 

[Alemoki]

Frag tank is finally completed and is plumbed into the system. Only had a tiny drip leak around the one bulkhead which I quickly sorted out so it's been up and running overnight with some frags and a Bangaii that was being bullied. May have to add a bigger heater now as I don't think the current heaters are handling the low temps too well but I will have to see on that.

Here are the plumbing pipes after being painted

And then the setup all completed with cable trunking and cables ties to neaten things up a bit

And yes I will be making a small box to hold that little electronic contraption which is my ATO
its all DC so can't shock but yes it needs to be covered up

 

[Alemoki]

So the frag tank is in full swing and I spent the afternoon doing a bit of gardening.

Removed the chunk of birds nest I bought off a fellow reefer about a month or so ago and chopped it up as it was dying on the underside and was looking very unnatural.

Then fragged a piece off of some of my zoas and GSP to begin a bit of grow out.

Also mounted a few new corals in the main tank to fill up some new open spaces.

Finally received my Duncan coral which has been sitting at a mates place for close to 3 months and also got a piece of mind trick Monti, Elkhorn and an unnamed acro

Very happy with everything.
Tank seems to be happy too. Slowly trying to raise my calcium as it's been sitting consistently low. I believe it is due to me dosing the extra strong dosage of the RHF alkalinity buffer as I have been attempting to raise pH. It may have been causing the calcium to precipitate out of solution so will be watching closely from here forward. I have now switched back to the standard strength ALK buffer and went ahead and mixed 10 litres of dosing liquids to last me the next few months lol

Parameters as of today
Alk 8.7
Cal 335
Mag 1390
Salinity 1.027
pH 7.9

 

[Alemoki]

Finally have been able to start exporting nutrients in my system. Grabbed some chaeto from a fellow reefer 3 weeks back and have been pulling a decent chunk out weekly.

Hopefully this helps to clear up the cyano I'm getting on the sand bed.

Been doing weekly water changes sucking the sand to try keep it clean.

Also basically finished my RODI station so that is going to help a lot with having water on hand whenever I need

 

[Alemoki]

Update time!

So I have added a sunburst anthia to my setup and it's finally began swimming around and eating as of last night. Was a very stressful two weeks.

Also added two new micro lord mini colonies to my setup and a bit of a rescape. Also added to my zoa collection.

Will post pics of the anthia when I can get a good picture

 

[bigdeeezyyyy]

looking good!

 

[Alemoki]

looking good!

Thanks buddy!

 

[Alemoki]

Quick photo I got of the Sunburst yesterday, he still needs to fatten up but hopefully in time he will.

I had to remove my Azure Damsel to the frag tank as it was starting to cause trouble with my other fish. Was a mission and I made a frag or two in the process. But I have figured out a new method to catch the buggers.

 

[Alemoki]

Added two small Acro frags to my system this weekend. Got a shipment of acros and acans arriving this week Thursday as well and I'm excited to get them in the system!!

Been selling as many frags off as possible to make space for the new additions

 

[Alemoki]

So the shipment was a bit of a mess around and we ended up not getting any acans. However we got some decent Acro colonies.

I dipped them for 5 minutes in Brightwell frag recover into a tub with tank water and then they went straight onto frag tiles and into the frag tank. Will monitor them for the next few days and hopefully in a few weeks they will colour up some.

Will be running carbon for a day or so to ensure that if there is any die off I won't kill of anything else.

On a sad note, my sunburst anthia seems to have perished. Really demotivated in the fish department these days as I always struggle to get the more finicky fish to eat and stay healthy. At least my corals are doing okay.

Some extra shots of the main display

 

[Alemoki]

Decided yesterday that it was time to rescape my tank a bit. Due to me finally moving towards keeping more SPS I needed to open up space in the upper half of the tank.

I needed to remove my hydnophora from the rock above as it is a very aggressive coral and it had begun encrusting over quite a large area. This resulted in me now having a large amount of hydnophora frags.

Placed my two new acros I received last week on the scape as well to begin testing out light levels.

And finally a full tank shot of the display and all its brown sand lol.

Will perform a WC this Sunday to remove the algae

 

[Alemoki]

So the bad for the last two weeks:

Lost my sunburst anthia about 2 weeks ago, and lost the acropora nasuta colony to RTN over a single day on Monday. Not a nice feeling but we learn and move on.

Struggling with brown algae on the sand still and now I'm struggling with flow so I messed around with my two power heads today to redirect flow upwards a bit to avoid blowing all my sand over my acans.

Also a bit worried about my elegance coral which seems to have something going on with it's tentacles on the one edge. Will post a picture tomorrow.

Here is the new flow in the tank

 

[Alemoki]

Double post

 

[Alemoki]

Got a gold Millepora colony in the frag tank now and busy healing it up so I can frag it with a buddy of mine in a few weeks/months.

Tanks been on the backburner the last few weeks as I finish of the final tasks and exams of my degree, but will be back at it hard after 16 November!

 

[Alemoki]

Finally had a chance to do some serious work on the tank today.

Cleaned flow pumps, scraped frag tank glass and main display glass, vacuumed the sump and cleaned the skimmer, removed about half of the substrate in the main tank as I believe it was too thick, and did a 15% WC.

Tank looking all sparkly again !!


Some coral pics as usual....

Open brain

Button scoly I believe

Acan Echinata

Micro lords

Also finally got myself a tunze nano care magnet which is gonna make scraping the glass near the sand bed much easier and less risky with regards to scratches!