LbulletM's Foray into Fish

[LbulletM]

Man, I suck. 3 weeks since my last update! I'm going to keep it short and sweet with lots of eye candy.

I have lost 4 corals total. The bubble that came in looking pretty sad and was too far gone to recover, a neon hammer that brown jellied within a couple days of being in the tank, a splatter hammer from my last post that brown jellied within a couple days of being in the tank, and a replacement splatter hammer that brown jellied within a couple days of being in the tank. Not sure what's going on with the hammers since all of my other Euphyllia look super happy including other hammers. It seems at this point that it's just the brightly colored hammers that I'm having trouble with. Realized my NO3 was around 40ppm and quickly fixed that, so maybe that had something to do with it?

Anyways, everything else in the tank is looking great and growing quickly!

Naturally, I needed to get my replacement splatter hammer from WWC (so that I could kill it again....

) so I picked up a few things from their live sale, ebay, and post sale!

I guess I never uploaded pictures of all of them. Here are the stock photos.

Blastomussa Merletti



Hawaiian Ding Dang Zoas

Superman Chalice (my wife has wanted this one ever since we saw it at the World Wide Corals store in Orlando)

WWC Infrareds Zoas

And what someone affectionately referred to as my cancer shroom during the live sale.

So I picked out all of these corals very specifically figuring I'd be pretty stocked and could move on to saving money, pristine husbandry, and a nice grow out phase.

BUT then I won a $500 box of corals from the World Wide Corals giveaway contest. THEY SENT ME 18 CORALS.

1) Peach Frogspawn (already had one of these from them, unfortunately. It was the only duplicate they sent.)
2) Green Frogspawn
3) Purple Torch (Have one, but my existing one has a green mouth.)

(You can see the cancer shroom still acclimating in this picture)

4) Lakers Zoa
5) Some dark red zoa with a dark blue skirt?
6) Marley Zoa
7) Mambo Jambo Zoa
8) Cat Eye Zoa
9) Purple Monster Zoa
10) Rainbow Platygyra?
11) Bubble Gum Cyphastrea?

12) Ultra Micromussa (Acan Lord)
13) Ultra Micromussa (Acan Lord)
14) Ultra Micromussa (Acan Lord)
15) Ultra Micromussa (Acan Lord)

16) Ahhmazing Acan Echinata (Scared to death of this thing, but it's gorgeous, so I'll have to figure out a spot for it where it won't DESTROY everything.)

17) Some Favia?

18) Duncan

Anddddd here's a photo dump of some other random pictures of everything.

This is only my second attempt ever at editing pictures, so I may be over representing some of these, but I don't think by much. I tried to get them as close to real life as possible and didn't even touch saturation on most of them. Here are a couple of unedited pictures straight from my camera phone.

Once again, WWC brought the fire.

I had to pick up a frag rack in the mean time since I didn't think I'd have enough sand bed for everything. There will be a lot of super glue in my future....

 

[revhtree]

Very nice!

 

[LbulletM]

Potter's Angel is starting to confuse the Platy for food... Might have to say good bye to the Potter's soon if he delves into the buffet that is currently my tank.

I wonder if anyone has tried acclimation?

I'd like to get one of these: http://octoaquatics.com/octo-pen/

 

[LbulletM]

Tried catching the Potter's the other night. Didn't go so well, but I might have scared him out of nipping? Kidding, but I haven't seen him nip recently. Will have to watch him tonight and see if he needs removed. If he does, I'm thinking of cutting a plastic divider to trap him on the left side of my tank where I can easily remove that rock. I could have caught the stupid clowns like 6 times each - I even got them to eat food out of the Tupperware turned prison.

Also had another coral loss :-(

The Rainbow Mille from my botched ASD delivery was JUST starting to color up at the same time that necrosis set in. I was too busy night before last to do anything about it, but it had been very slowly progressing, so I thought I could frag it last night to at least save something. Wrong. I should have slept 5 hours instead of 6.

Fortunately there's a frag swap for my club in a couple of weeks, so I'll be able to pick up a replacement! Much to the chagrin of my understanding wife.

 

[LbulletM]

So, the frag swap was this past weekend, and that same understanding wife from the last post picked out this beauty for the tank!

I also picked up these two stunners:

(best picture I could get due to its current position behind a torch. Dang parallax....)

Those second two pictures are just minutes after being placed in the tank. They look a lot happier now.

Also, to help with my continuing nitrate issues, I picked up a Tunze 9001 this weekend. It seems to be breaking in well and I'm already getting the characteristic "ice tea", so we'll see where it goes from here.

Aaaaaaaand I just pulled the trigger on a Jebao doser this morning, should be here Friday! I'm thinking definitely Alk and Cal. Maybe Magnesium? And then I might start doing vodka/vinegar dosing if the skimmer doesn't get me the results I'm looking for.

I'll try to have a big tank update next week!

 

[LbulletM]

Alrightttt. Work has been crazy (11+ hour days ;Dead). Anywayssss....

Jebao doser arrived, but I haven't set it up, yet. Started doing a few different things to start.

Thursday before last, I started dosing vinegar to help control my nitrates/phosphates. My last test on the 27th had me at 40 NO3, 0.2 PO4. I'll be testing again today. I started at 2ml for a few days, bumped up to 3ml for a few more days, and then doubled it to 6ml the last couple of days. I'll be bumping a little more depending on what my test shows today before I do a big 10 gallon change to cut into the high number. Once I get to a maintenance dosage, that will be one of the channels on my doser.

The middle of this week, I added 2 tbsp of pickling lime to my 5 gallon top of reservoir to help increase/maintain Alkalinity and calcium. kh is up to 7.7 (it was pretty steady at 7 before) and calcium was about in line with where it usually is (420). After a lot of reading, I think my alkalinity was in a great spot for a normal tank, but low considering the amount of NO3/PO4 I've been dealing with recently. Hopefully the combo of a new skimmer and carbon dosing gets me where I want to be!

I've somehow killed both of my unkillable Rose Corals that came on my live rock and survived 3 days of shipping during November. I'm really sad about it, but I'll get more someday when I upgrade my tank! I'm currently planning a 150 gallon When I lost the first one, I figured it could have eventually been pinched badly enough by the bivalve right under it. With the second death, I think my Potter's Angel is going to have to find a new home. I never see him nip anymore while watching, but I've seen him do it in the past.

And my last new toy. I finally received my $3 red LED flashlight from eBay that was shipped from China. I spent literally an hour at 1am Friday night just staring at my tank. I found out that I have tonssss of tiny bristle worms (I'll be wearing gloves pretty much anytime I'm in the sand or rocks now), a couple of large bristle worms, a big brittle star, and a few more tiny ones! It's like a whole new world at night!

 

[LbulletM]

I've been gone for a while. Dealt with a quasi-crash that I halted with copious water changes. Main suspects: bottoming out phosphates with GFO (was out of test reagents, so no idea), light turning back on while I was asleep after an hour off giving something like 23 hours of light a day, my Potter's Angel that started nipping :-(

After the AcanLord live sale, I noticed the Potter's nipping at one of the new corals. He is in a bucket right now, going to the LFS tonight for credit. AND MY CORALS HAVE NEVER LOOKED BETTER.

I think he was just very good at hiding it after he started. But it must have been within the last couple of months. Sad to see him go.... but not really, now.

 

[LbulletM]

Well, here's the last photo of the Potter's:

Took him to the LFS that promptly gave me store value for less than half of the $90 (?!?!?!?!) that they listed him for.

Picked up a BEAUTIFUL dot dash wrasse that my wife picked out, but didn't look great after getting him home (spoiler, I took his carcass out of the tank last night) and this little guy:

 

[Maritimer]

Watchmen are a delight - ever curious, and always grumpy!

~Bruce, saddened by the loss of your wrasse

 

[LbulletM]

Everything in my tank is going well! Unfortunately, so are the newly found medusae hydroids.....

Here, have a picture of the new Wellso being a fatty.

 

[LbulletM]

Oh, hi there build thread. Nice to see you again....

I'll have to get pictures up in the near future, lots of new corals!

My project right now is figuring out how to add a sump to my tank. Just ordered a bunchhhh of stuff off of Amazon this morning!

 

[LbulletM]

So, I'm having the best time putting together this sump, but the worst luck.

Let's see... first of all, I grabbed a 20L because a 29g wasn't going to fit under my stand (it's just a built in cabinet that came with the house). Well, at 30" long, I can't get it wedged into where it belongs. I'm going to have to shave the side of the door and the center support to get it in there, I think.

Second, I figured - Hey! I already have the skimmer I bought for the 150g upgrade, might as well use it in the mean time. The beast that is the Reef Octopus 202-S juuuuuust barely fit under the cabinet and I could juuuuuuust remove the lid.... But not with the extra 1/2" or so of tank under it. After contemplating cutting down the collection cup, I broke down and bought a Reef Octopus 110SSS. Woops, this sump just got expensive! On the bright side though, I now get a larger refugium!

If anyone ever asks you, an Aqueon 20L is pretty dead on at 12" x 30". Don't believe the aquarium sizing search result that says they're a fraction over each of those measurements. And DEFINITELY don't get your baffles cut at 12" since you believed those measurements. I now have crooked baffles, but I'm not worried. I think they might even make it easier to clean - assuming that detritus will end up in the corners.

So despite a tank that won't fit, a skimmer that wouldn't fit, and baffles that don't fit, I'm at least having fun haha. Baffles are currently drying, though I'm going to have to do a lot of clean up on one side of two of them since I had to apply using my fingers (the caulk gun wouldn't fit).

Final equipment list is:
- Aqueon 20L tank; bought for $40 because Amazon has made me an impatient monster and I can't wait until the next $/g sale;
- Eshopps PF300 overflow box;
- 1" gate valve;
- Jebao return pump;
- 3 glass baffles;
- GE Silicone I;
- Reef Octopus 110S;
- a simple Mars Hydro LED light for Chaeto;
- and some various pvc (for overflow) and vinyl tubing (for return).

My Refugium is now larger than my skimmer area since I downsized my skimmer, but you get the idea. Red boxes were individual area volumes, blue box was total water volume (will be slightly less now that the largest skimmer section is shorter - whatever, more back drain capacity), grey boxes were measurements. Each box is 1/2".

The beast that is the Reef Octopus 202-S!

The newer, smaller, 110SSS.

And my messy, crooked baffles ;Dead

 

[LbulletM]

So, it's been a couple of weeks. Here goes:

First, I got my sump area all set up. Had to cut out part of the cabinet to get it wedged into there.

Then I wired up some LEDs and a magnetic switch so that the lights come on when the (left) door opens. Party sump - check.

Check out my Instagram video here for the full effect. ;Brb
https://www.instagram.com/p/BgjWhrUhroG/?taken-by=lbulletm
Seriously. Check it out. It's fun haha.

I had my new skimmer breaking in in a bucket of vinegar and water while I buttoned up the wiring and plumbing. I also took the time to put a safety drain in my overflow box as well as a gurgle buster.

And then I put everything in the stand and started tuning!

I stayed up until 1:00am that night making sure nothing overflowed (I wake up at 5:00 am for work).

Checked it again in the morning before heading to work and it was running perfectly! Ordered my new APEX ATK that morning to replace my smart micro since I was leaving town that weekend for Easter and also wanted to add shut off sensors at the lip of the tank and overflow.

Thennnn, I came home to this:

From what I can surmise, it looks like the temporary heater that I had in the sump out of an abundance of caution, fell down, overheated the glass, and created a hairline fracture. Fortunately it wasn't a total failure. There was still water in the tank. Glad I paid $40 to get that ATK over-nighted though!

So this past weekend, I picked up a new 20L. Glued in the baffles last night (definitely not worried about my siliconing after it took a solid HALF HOUR to remove the baffles from the old tank). It's curing now and hopefully I'll be back up and running by next weekend!

Oh yea, I also bought pods that I didn't want to waste in the display tank and now most of them are dead. RIP.