ReefGrammie's 90-Gallon Reboot

Ron Reefman · Jan 29, 2020

Rhonda, you are an tower of inspiration and a well of experience and wisdom. I bet in 4 years you and I will be sharing photos of our tanks and they will both look stunning!

ReefGrammie · Jan 29, 2020

Ron Reefman said:
Rhonda, you are an tower of inspiration and a well of experience and wisdom. I bet in 4 years you and I will be sharing photos of our tanks and they will both look stunning!

You are too kind!! I look forward to following OUR progress! ;Joyful

ReefGrammie · Jan 30, 2020

Coral has arrived! Everything has been acclimated and dipped and glued to a piece of rubble on the bottom. I will put up pictures when everything opens up and isn't mad at me. I can already tell the neon green ricordea is going to be stunning!

ReefGrammie · Jan 30, 2020

Ok, I can't stand it. Can you tell I haven't received any corals in a while? New pictures of corals who don't look like they hate me (sorry about the dip). I can't wait to see them during "glowy time" tonight!

So it isn't a coral, but I have a thing for these scarlet hermits!

Blue ricordea and Stardust zoanthid.

Goblins on Fire zoanthid:

The green ricordea I'm having a fit over:

Obviously not a coral, but this little guy got a new bottle of pods last night!

Ron Reefman · Jan 30, 2020

Love the Goblins on Fire zoa. Maybe I'll find some at the Frag Swap in Lakeland, FL on Feb 8th?

ReefGrammie · Feb 16, 2020

Tank is doing well, looking much, much better. I'm paranoid that the GHA monster outbreak finally being mostly gone is going to lead to another outbreak of something, but I'm just watching everything. Picked up a few nice ricordeas recently!

ReefGrammie · Feb 28, 2020

I'm happy to report that the tank continues to improve. The dreaded hair algae is gone. I started having some diatoms or maybe dinos (brown stringy stuff with bubbles on the end), but bumped my alkalinity up slightly and it went away. I'm still dosing Vibrant at 10 ml about every 10 days, and plan to continue with that. I have had a very slight outbreak of a different green algae, which definitely isn't hair algae. Maybe turf algae? It's in very small patches and I'm just keeping an eye on it.

I definitely think I need to run my tank slightly "dirtier." In my quest to get rid of the GHA, my phosphates dropped to 0 and nitrates to 0. From what I've been reading on the forum, running very slight phosphates and very slight nitrates can be beneficial for coral growth. I'm glad to just have status quo right now and not be ripping my hair or my hair algae out in big chunks!

I do need to stay away from the live sales for a while. I really did some damage the last few weeks! Time to put on the brakes and just let everything grow a bit. Of course, I'll keep moving stuff around and redecorating.

In the far right corner, I'm creating a zoa rock. I love zoanthids, but they can take over the rock pretty quickly and I want to keep them under control. I will have a few colonies on the live rock, such as the WWC AOI and Illuminati, or possibly Goblins and/or Rastas. I haven't decided for sure. I'll try to get more pictures in the evening.

ReefGrammie · Mar 7, 2020

Picture time!! I'm really getting excited about my tank again!

New blastos:

I was trying to take a picture of the duncan, but my Ruby dragonet photobombed and became the focal point!

Now the duncan:

Dendro I received yesterday. I had one before and LOVE those things!!

FTS: The lighting was terrible, but I just had to show the pop of color...instead of UGLY hair algae!

ReefGrammie · Apr 21, 2020

Color is improving! I lied to myself about slowing down the live sales

...

ReefGrammie · Apr 25, 2020

I caught the dynamic duo out today!

ReefGrammie · Apr 26, 2020

My zoanthid rock...a work in progress! Red serpent star photobombing...

Kristopher Conlin · Apr 26, 2020

ReefGrammie said:
My zoanthid rock...a work in progress! Red serpent star photobombing...

Cool! i see some i think goblins fire in the back? those are some of my favorite.

ReefGrammie · Apr 26, 2020

Kristopher Conlin said:
Cool! i see some i think goblins fire in the back? those are some of my favorite.

Thank you! Goblins in the back and the front (I obviously like them, too)! WWC Illuminati on the right side.

ReefGrammie · May 3, 2020

More maintenance today. All of the nasty algae is GONE. I'm still dosing Vibrant at 10 ml about every 10 days. I may eventually back up to every two weeks, but I really see no reason to stop it altogether. The corals don't seem to mind it at all. I trickle it in slowly in front of a powerhead. I have another coral shipment coming this Thursday, but I'm finally slowing down on the live sales...I sure enjoy them, though! They help pass the time while we're all stuck in quarantine!

ReefGrammie · May 12, 2020

The tank is coming along nicely! I'm almost done buying coral...for now. I need to add a few more fish, but I have to wait because my LFS is completely out because of the virus situation. I have one more shipment of coral coming in this week, so will acclimate those on the bottom and move a few of the bottom pieces up a bit. It's almost time to sit back and just let everything grow. I'm also still messing with my light programming...very slowly. I want to bump the blues up a bit more and maybe up the white a little bit in the afternoon. I am seeing some nice coral growth. A few pieces have overgrown the plug and have spread onto the rock! At least the nasty algae seems to finally be history. I'm still dosing Vibrant about every 10 days, but I think I'm going to back that up to the recommended dose for a clean tank every two weeks...since my tank finally looks clean! Otherwise, I'm continuing with frozen food and a dose of Reef-Roids about once a week.