Talh's Office Reef

[talh]

Oh and I also added 1x peppermint shrimp but I’m 99% sure he committed suicide into a powerhead already.

I acclimated it and added into tank. It was moving around exploring for an hour or so. I turned to go back to work and heard a “zzzzz” noise from the tank. Turned around and there wasn’t chunks of shrimp or anything in water but I haven’t seen the shrimp since.

Okay, well, as soon as I posted this I found the little bugger. He is behind the rock work on the back of the tank. He's a pretty small peppermint shrimp; he's in a crevice that I do not think he'll fit in once he's grown.

Tried to get a photo but the lights make it so I cannot get any good photos of the tank. I ordered an orange lens for my iPhone to hopefully alleviate that issue.

 

[talh]

Last update for today. I have these corals coming in tomorrow!

ARC Master Yoda

TCK Glow Forge

RRC Marvin the Martian

TCK Pikachu

And an LPS mystery frag! Can't wait to see what the mystery frag is and to see these in my tank. Probably will just place on my frag rack and think about where I will place them after viewing them in person.

 

[talh]

Decided on my plan for filter changes since my nitrates keep creeping up.

Going to test it for a month and see how it goes:
C1: Filter floss and bio balls
C2: Refugium. Miracle mud in a bag at bottom, chaeto and a mangrove (have a fuge light that will be directly over C2)
C3: Return pump, heater, ATO sensor

Hoping I can do a 5-10% water change, change out filter floss, and (if necessary) remove some chaeto once a week as the maintenance plan.

 

[talh]

Tank is looking ROUGH this week. Changed my filtration as described in my last post. I kept some live rock in C2, but removed probably 75% of it when I added in the filter floss, marinepure ceramic bio balls, chaeto and mangrove.

Think I may have lost the TCK pikachu and the other frags I added are not looking great either. Had a bit of an algae explosion and cyanobacteria explosion.

Here are the tank parameters tonight before a 10gal water change I have prepared for tomorrow:
Nitrate 12.0
Phosphate 0.10
Alkalinity 5.8

 

[talh]

Today’s phytoplankton harvest.. fed the copepod cultures (on the right) as well.

Going to refill phytoplankton cultures with some water and fertilizer.

 

[talh]

Refilled and back to growing.