120-SR Predator softie build

[Oredigger77]

The new load of coral still aren't 100% after shipping or at least aren't quite up to their wysiwyg photos but they seem to be settling in nicely.

I think the moonstone favia that was our freebe coral may be the most photogenic at this point. I also find it funny that our spider conch has decided to make its way up my mushroom canyon rather than staying on the sand. There certainly is a lot for it to eat in there since it's the lowest flow spot in the tank but I'm very surprised thar conch got that far off the sand.

 

[TheWB]

I actually just added a couple of limpets in the last cuc order but most of them went in our other tank I only added 3 to this one because that was all I could get off the shell they packaged them with. I'd like to get an abalone but I don't think I've ever seen one for sale but for now we'll see how the clean up crew does and if they need more help so far the rocks are pretty clean it's just the sand that needs some work.

I guess it was in the half of the thread that has been moved to another thread but we ended up dropping the tusk from the stocking list since it was looking like we had too many large fish and not a lot of smaller ones. Right now the plan looks like:

2 x CB regal angle fish
1 x Gold lined rabbit fish
1x Pintail wrasse
1 x Rhomboid wrasse
1 x Exquisite wrasse
2 x Maroon Clowns
1 x Melanurus wrasse
1 x Purple tang
1 x White tail tang

My youngest daughter is obsessed with a porcupine puffer at our LFS and while I know it won't fit in the tank long term it's really hard to keep telling her no. Her and "her puffer friend" are very cute playing through the glass together.

Big mistake, now you have to start a FOWLR tank for her so she can have “her puffer friend”. Where will you put it?

 

[Oredigger77]

Big mistake, now you have to start a FOWLR tank for her so she can have “her puffer friend”. Where will you put it?

I thought she'd forgotten, she's 3, and maybe a month later I told her I was taking her to the fish store and she ran and found her uncle to tell him she was going to see her puffer friend and then she scoured the tanks looking for him. Luckily he'd been sold but the dog face and the blue spot weren't "her puffer friend". If one of her trips coincides with them having an interactive porcupine I'll definitely be making another build thread.

 

[TheWB]

I thought she'd forgotten, she's 3, and maybe a month later I told her I was taking her to the fish store and she ran and found her uncle to tell him she was going to see her puffer friend and then she scoured the tanks looking for him. Luckily he'd been sold but the dog face and the blue spot weren't "her puffer friend". If one of her trips coincides with them having an interactive porcupine I'll definitely be making another build thread.

Best to keep her out of the LFS unless money is no longer of any importance to you, lol.

 

[Oredigger77]

Has any one had a spider conch before? I was expecting just a different shell shape but thus thing is like 3/4 monkey. Yesterday it spent the day climbing around my mushroom canyon.

Now today it has made it almost to the top of my rockwork and is on the pectinia garden.

Am I going to need to rescue this little Billy goat?

That picture was hard to take because one of my urchins has decided that today is glass day and seems to be quite enjoying its self.

 

[Oredigger77]

In the latest weird news from my tank. Tonight I was checking out the tank about two hours after lights off and saw this

That is an urchin about half way up one of my gorgonians. Neither of them have been looking good this week and for the other gorg I thought that it was because the pectinia was stinging it. I didn't have a good reason for this one but I'd also seen a bit more polyp extention on it.

Is this normal behavior? Do I just have to give up keeping gorgonians along with tuxedo urchins?

 

[TheWB]

In the latest weird news from my tank. Tonight I was checking out the tank about two hours after lights off and saw this

That is an urchin about half way up one of my gorgonians. Neither of them have been looking good this week and for the other gorg I thought that it was because the pectinia was stinging it. I didn't have a good reason for this one but I'd also seen a bit more polyp extention on it.

Is this normal behavior? Do I just have to give up keeping gorgonians along with tuxedo urchins?

Never seen that before. I know urchins are great at keeping the algae in check but I’ve always been afraid of them bulldozing my corals so I’ve never owned one.

 

[Oredigger77]

This weekend was busy and I had to make new salt water so I didn't get my 10 gallon water change done until this evening and I still haven't tested the tank aside from salinity which is still at 1.027 and I'll need to add in some ro to my water change next week.

I did get a nice picture of my rabbit fish tonight after feeding frozen mysis for the first time. He absolutely went nuts chasing down the food.

It does look like we're going to lose one of our corals from tidal gardens. The acan didn't have a full skeleton under it and I haven't found a place with low enough flow for it to recover.

One last shot of how well everything is looking. I need to try and get a FTS if I can get the glass cleaned after I get the testing done.

 

[Oredigger77]

Ok, this is getting ridiculous . . .

Even the limpets are going for gorgonian rides.

 

[Oredigger77]

Since my salinity was creeping up I added some RO to my water change water this week. It brought my salinity down a bit too much but I'm sure it'll creep back up over then next several months.

SG 1.025
pH 8.0
Nitrate 8 ppm
Dhk 7.6
Phos .11 ppm
Calc 375 ppm

I've tried feeding less and I think it's showing in the nitrates slightly declining. This is the lowest I've seen the Alkalinity and I'm thinking of dosing a bit of two part to get it back up. I've seen a bit if growth on the new corals so they may be uptaking a bit, then again it's probably due to the ro in the water change

First time in caught my nem pooping so I think it's selling in.

We just picked up a princess peach and a fox flame acro at today's TSA sale along with a couple of others. I'll be curious to see how the sps does I've never had much luck with them but we never got our nutrients this low in our other tank.

 

[Oredigger77]

Since it's been a while and I just grabbed a FTS here is the latest and greatest.

 

[TheWB]

Since it's been a while and I just grabbed a FTS here is the latest and greatest.

Looking good. How are those Regals doing?

 

[Oredigger77]

Looking good. How are those Regals doing?

Thanks.

The brave regal has grown a ton and is easily 1.5" he's not as big and brave as the rabbit fish but he's always out and eating. The scared regal has colored up nicely but since she isn't out grazing constantly she really hasn't gotten much bigger. She's thickend up and I'm not worried about her starving but I don't think there is any doubt at this point which will be the male and the female.

 

[Oredigger77]

I got another batch of coral in today. For maybe the first time in the almost two years that I've been buying coral online I'm surprised by how large the coral frags are so thanks @TopShelfAquatics.

Well, except for the princess peach my wife wanted, which was the size I've come to expect. Speaking of SPS, in this batch were trying some for the first time so we'll see if they do OK in the tank. The tank is on the young side but we got good deals on both the princess peach and the fox flame so it's not like we'll be throwing much away. All of the corals still look pretty rough since they just came out of the dip.

Fox Flame

Sugar High Monti - almost 3"

Rock flower Nem

Rainbow micromusa lord - this is a replacement for the acan we got from the tidal gardens sale. The old one was missing part of its skeleton and the current ate it up even when I tried to put it in very low flow. The bowerbanki is having a similar problem so I'm a little bothered buy the tidal gardens cutting for a cans.

Princess Peach

Rainbow Monti

 

[Oredigger77]

I ended up doing a 15 gallon water change on Friday to do all of the dipping of the coral. I decided not to dose last week but I'm coming closer to beginning to dose especially with the new batch of corals but it looks like my parameters are generally steady.

This week's test results:
SG 1.025
pH 8.0
7.5 dkh
Ca 355 ppm
Phos 0.11 ppm
Nitrate 3 ppm

My nitrates are dropping out hard so I need to start worrying about that. I'm going to start broadcast feeding the corals twice a week when I feed mysis.

 

[TheWB]

I ended up doing a 15 gallon water change on Friday to do all of the dipping of the coral. I decided not to dose last week but I'm coming closer to beginning to dose especially with the new batch of corals but it looks like my parameters are generally steady.

This week's test results:
SG 1.025
pH 8.0
7.5 dkh
Ca 355 ppm
Phos 0.11 ppm
Nitrate 3 ppm

My nitrates are dropping out hard so I need to start worrying about that. I'm going to start broadcast feeding the corals twice a week when I feed mysis.

Do you have a magnesium test kit? Mag might be low too based on Alk and Cal. Have you had a lot of coralline growth? What’s using up Cal and Alk in your tank? I know you just bought more but you don’t have that many sps/lps in there right? If your test kits are accurate everything looks a little low except PO4. If you are broadcast feeding with something like reef roids for the coral that’s going to increase your PO4. Might be better off dosing nitrates and target feeding the coral until that balances itself out.

 

[Oredigger77]

Do you have a magnesium test kit? Mag might be low too based on Alk and Cal. Have you had a lot of coralline growth? What’s using up Cal and Alk in your tank? I know you just bought more but you don’t have that many sps/lps in there right? If your test kits are accurate everything looks a little low except PO4. If you are broadcast feeding with something like reef roids for the coral that’s going to increase your PO4. Might be better off dosing nitrates and target feeding the coral until that balances itself out.

I do have a mag kit but I hate doing that titration. I'm sure it's low as well since we've been constantly low since I started testing.

I don't think anything is using up my alk and cal. My alk at 7.5 is basically the same as the 7.6 it was last week. The cal had a drop but I think that was more likely testing error going from 375 to 355 particularly without a change in alk or pH. I have seen some growth on my corals but we're still well within the range of my 10% water change being able to keep up.

As for why my parameters are low I think some of it was my drop in salinity two weeks ago. We'd crept up from 1.026 to 1.027 so I did a water change with half the amount being RODI even though I'd calculated needed 4.77 gallons of rodi and 5.23 gallons of nsw. That dropped my sg to 1.025 and it was reflected in my alk dropping from 8.2 to 7.6 but we've been steady for the next two weeks.

My phosphates have been steady at 0.1-0.11 over the last 4 weeks. My nitrates have dropped from 30 ppm to 3 over that same time period. I'd rather feed heavy than dose if possible but I don't want my Phosphates climbing too.

 

[TheWB]

I do have a mag kit but I hate doing that titration. I'm sure it's low as well since we've been constantly low since I started testing.

I don't think anything is using up my alk and cal. My alk at 7.5 is basically the same as the 7.6 it was last week. The cal had a drop but I think that was more likely testing error going from 375 to 355 particularly without a change in alk or pH. I have seen some growth on my corals but we're still well within the range of my 10% water change being able to keep up.

As for why my parameters are low I think some of it was my drop in salinity two weeks ago. We'd crept up from 1.026 to 1.027 so I did a water change with half the amount being RODI even though I'd calculated needed 4.77 gallons of rodi and 5.23 gallons of nsw. That dropped my sg to 1.025 and it was reflected in my alk dropping from 8.2 to 7.6 but we've been steady for the next two weeks.

My phosphates have been steady at 0.1-0.11 over the last 4 weeks. My nitrates have dropped from 30 ppm to 3 over that same time period. I'd rather feed heavy than dose if possible but I don't want my Phosphates climbing too.

I just started texting Mag with the Salifert test. It’s pretty easy. Your tank is new enough that it’s going to go through changes anyway. I’ve been dosing nitrate lately to keep it from bottoming out because I feel like I already feed too much. My fish are fat. My phosphate is higher than I’d like but part of that is my chemipure elite needs replacement. You’ll eventually figure out what the best things to do for your tank are to keep it stable. I’m just now starting to dose AFR and my tanks been running for over three years. Water changes took care of things for a long time while I had a light coral load.

 

[Oredigger77]

You’ll eventually figure out what the best things to do for your tank are to keep it stable. I’m just now starting to dose AFR and my tanks been running for over three years. Water changes took care of things for a long time while I had a light coral load.

My second biggest concern at this point is that we are steady at a low number. If the coral start uptaking seriously it won't take long before we're too low. On the other hand if there is no uptake I don't want to dose to make up for water changes and nothing wise I'd rather the tank stabilize low and just stay there.

Having the nitrates drop so much in the last month is worrying me more. We've got from 30 ppm nitrates to 3 in a month. I have focused on feeding less but nothing else has changed and I don't feel like I'm feeding that much less. I'm concerned that the nitrates may go to 0.

 

[TheWB]

My second biggest concern at this point is that we are steady at a low number. If the coral start uptaking seriously it won't take long before we're too low. On the other hand if there is no uptake I don't want to dose to make up for water changes and nothing wise I'd rather the tank stabilize low and just stay there.

Having the nitrates drop so much in the last month is worrying me more. We've got from 30 ppm nitrates to 3 in a month. I have focused on feeding less but nothing else has changed and I don't feel like I'm feeding that much less. I'm concerned that the nitrates may go to 0.

Always good to have some NeoNitro or equivalent handy to dose up when needed. I may have asked this already but I don’t remember, what salt mix are you using and does it mix up to your preferred parameters? That’s a good place to start. If it mixes up more towards the natural seawater parameters then you’ll either need to dose to supplement or switch to a higher Alk mix.