My first Reef tank

[pulpfiction1]

nice.............

 

[yveterinarian]

Thanks, I'm definitely taking my time but it's fun watching little frags begin to grow.

 

[yveterinarian]

My Reef tank has now been running for 8 months.  I don't know where the time went!  Currently, I have 3 PJ Cardinals, 3 Blue Green Chromis, 1 Copperband butterfly, 1 Green spotted Garden Eel, 1 6 Line Wrasse, 1 Mandarin, 1 Yellow watchman Goby/Pistol Shrimp pair, 3 Peppermint shrimp, 1 flame scallop who likes to keep moving perches, along with numerous snails and stomatellas.  I have slowly purchased small frags (soe have only been one or two polyps big) and have been enjoying watching them grow.  I also found out that my unknown orange coral is an Orange Tree Leather.  Here are a few pictures around the tank now. (The bright orange tube worm is a fake, put in for color until some of the other things grow bigger)

The last 8 months have been such a voyage of discovery and looking back at the older pictures, I can definitely see an improvement.  I can't wait to see what the next 8 month brings 

 

[davesolo29]

looks great.  8 more months and it should really start to fill in.

 

[Giglio324]

Tank looks great. Good job!

 

[unibob]

Looks good. Keep up the awesome work.

 

[spyd]

Everything looks great! Just a couple suggestions on placement of some items that will save you headaches in the long run. Those brown / green polyps will spread like the plague so place them on it's own rock that is not touching any other rockwork in your tank. The same goes with your green star polyps and xenia. These corals / polyps are extremely evasive and will kill other corals they come in contact with over time.

Just a heads up because I have had it happen in the past with green star polyps. Lesson learned the hard way... I love the setup though and the look of the 2 tanks together is amazing! It looks like you have everything growing nicely for you!

 

[yveterinarian]

looks great.  8 more months and it should really start to fill in.

Tank looks great. Good job!

Looks good. Keep up the awesome work.

Thanks all.  I have been taking it really slow as you can all see and haven't bought a lot all at once.  I'm enjoying seeing it all fill in.

Everything looks great! Just a couple suggestions on placement of some items that will save you headaches in the long run. Those brown / green polyps will spread like the plague so place them on it's own rock that is not touching any other rockwork in your tank. The same goes with your green star polyps and xenia. These corals / polyps are extremely evasive and will kill other corals they come in contact with over time.

Just a heads up because I have had it happen in the past with green star polyps. Lesson learned the hard way... I love the setup though and the look of the 2 tanks together is amazing! It looks like you have everything growing nicely for you!

Thanks for the Heads up.  By the Green polyps, do you mean the Palys?  I have noticed that they spread like mad and luckily, they are on their own rock popping up in the centre of the tank.  They are quite a way from the other rock.  Do they spread across sand at all?  The xenia is separate but the green star polyps are on the main rocks as you can see.  I don't mind the one spreading on the top rock as I can't seem to get anything that likes to grow up there (I think the LED might be a bit bright) but the one lower down isn't growing very well and hasn't spread yet onto the rock.  I've been trying to decide what to do with it.  I have one rock on the side of the tank that has nothing on it.  Maybe I'll move it over there.  For the one growing on the top rock, can I scrape off any that gets too close to my leather that's near it?  I was thinking I might control it with an exacto knife to scrape off the tendrils from the rock.  Would that work?

 

[yveterinarian]

Picked up some new frags on Saturday so I decided to take some top down pictures of them.

Candy Cane coral

Kryptonite Candy Cane

Thanks to Sealife Central for the candy canes 

I'm guessing this is some kind of Acans but don't know the name.  The color is a little washed out on the picture but the blue near the bottom of the picture is the true color of all the centres

Thanks to Aquariums by Design for that one 

While I was at it I took a few more pictures from around the tank so I thought I'd share

I have slow but steady growth and things are looking good at present. 

 

[sunnykita]

Great job Yvette ! I loved seeing the tanks on Saturday, and so enjoyed the conversation, thanks again, I am just gaga over those seahorses !
Sherry

 

[yveterinarian]

HeHe, me too!  ;D

 

[yveterinarian]

I was looking at my reef tank today and decided it was time to take some updated pictures of it. After taking them I found this thread of my reef tank beginnings and thought it would be interesting to post the new pictures here even though I have changed the tank from the 90 gallon corner tank to a 65 gallon bow front. Many of the corals are the same but have grown. I read back from the beginning and quite enjoyed noticing the changes in my corals. My last post in this thread is almost two years ago so I can see quite a few changes.

This one started as two heads when I got it and the original picture is in the post just prior to this one almost two years ago. It now has approximately 12 heads.

An updated picture of Penny. She first made her appearance in our tank on July 1, 2012 and is still happy and healthy.

This one began as three heads and has grown like a weed.

The pajama cardinal and blue chromis also were added to my tank in July of 2012 and have gotten much bigger.

My bubble coral that I added last year sometime. I absolutely love this one. I wish it came in a bright red color. I would definitely get one.

The pink palys that I picked up from curiousphil yesterday. Almost all of the heads have opened now. I haven't quite decided where to put it in the tank yet so for now it is on the sand.

The sea apple has remained in the spot it has chosen and beside it to the right are the two ?plate? type corals that grew as a hitch hiker and started as the size of a pin head.
I couldn't get a picture of my Garden Eel today as he has currently taken up residence in the back of the tank. Every few months he moves burrows and I think he has died then he pops up somewhere else. I'm hoping he will come back to the front of the tank again soon.
So far I have not been able to keep pulsing xenia alive in my tank and I'm not sure why. The GSP also died off despite other things flourishing. Unfortunately, I have an outbreak of red bubble algae right now and am trying to eradicate it. Any suggestions are welcome.

 

[yveterinarian]

Finally managed to get some carbon today after waiting a month for some Rox08 that was recommended in my post about difficulty keeping zoanthids. For some reason the Rox08 is not as easy to come by as I was led to believe. Over the next few days I will be testing the water parameters to see how the carbon affects them. I am in the process of finding my "sweet spot" for Vodka dosing but it is a slow process. I'm still hoping to see some improvement in the zoas that I have in the tank but nothing noticeable yet. So many of the corals in the tank have lost color that the tank just looks brown. I'm hoping to see some improvement soon. The only beautiful spot of color is my Sea apple and my Bubble coral. The sea apple seems happy sitting right in front of the power head where I placed it and is feeding almost constantly now.

Today I am travelling to get some more powerheads to help with flow in the tank since I had to move one of them to cover the sea apple almost exclusively. My Duncan isn't too happy that the flow changed a bit so more powerheads to the rescue!

My clean up crew was getting a bit sparse so yesterday I added some more Nassarius, Ceriths, Nerites and an Emerald crab. I'm hoping the Emerald crab will help with the outbreak of Red bubble algae I have in the tank. All went in the tank last night after acclimating for an hour so I wasn't able to get a picture of the crab. I'm hoping to take one soon of him eating bubble algae. (Fingers crossed) I'm going to do a "before" and "after" pic of the pesky bubble algae to be able to compare.

 

[EricTMah]

The carbon will help with reducing some of the dissolved organics in the system. Imo, you can use a lower grade carbon than the Rox08. You would just need to change it more often. That's what I do on my system.

Are you running any cheato in your fuge?

When you do end up testing your water, report back here with your results.

Sent from my Z30 using Tapatalk

 

[barebottomcouple]

love that apple and I do love my emeralds also

 

[saltyair]

What dose are you at with vodka dosing? Browning is usually a sign of overdose.
Where is your no3 at? What are you feeding?


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[barebottomcouple]

don't know if you need it but there is a doesing info on this page half way down
http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/

 

[yveterinarian]

What dose are you at with vodka dosing? Browning is usually a sign of overdose.
Where is your no3 at? What are you feeding?

The browning of my corals began long before I started vodka dosing and my parameters have been high for a long time, a circumstance for which I attributed my poor coral performance. My tank is a 65 gallon with a 20 gallon clownfish tank sharing a 25 gallon sump. I used the Vodka dosing chart that Barebottom has posted and began with 0.28 ml of vodka. At that time my NO3 was 50ppm and my PO4 was 1. I started vodka dosing in October and am now up to 7 ml/day. I am using RO water. The parameters today were NO3 25ppm and the PO4 was still 1 but a slightly lighter shade so probably between 0.5 and 1 somewhere. Alkalinity today was 202 ppm and Calcium was 445 ppm.
Currently I am feeding Hikari Mysis to the fish, Phytomax to the sea apple 2x/day and Reefroids 2x/week.

I am running LED lights on this tank and today I noticed that the clear plastic that was covering the lights had burn marks in it and was yellow everywhere else. I decided to remove the plastic and it is incredible the difference in light and in color of the corals. I am now seeing oranges, blues, greens and pinks - colors I haven't seen for a long time!

This is my "Before" picture of the bubble algae:

I don't have cheato but do have some Caulerpa and some Gracillaria in my 20 gallon clownfish tank. As you can see in the picture there is also a red macroalgae that is taking over. It is very small and not like the macro in my other tank at all except for the color. I'm not sure if it has migrated from the other tank because it looks so different but I am sure that I don't want it in my DT. I'm not quite sure how to get rid of it. It is so small that it is often hard to pick off the rock. I have been manually removing it but it has gotten so invasive that it is completely out of hand. Now it is taking over where my zoanthids are located.

I am getting to the point where I feel I have to take the rock out one at a time and bleach and sterilize them. Obviously I don't want to do that because of the beneficial bacteria but I am getting frustrated. Any ideas on how to get rid of this pest?

 

[scubasteve]

i want some of that yellow finger gorgonian when it gets bigger.... i have lots of purple bush gorgonian

 

[yveterinarian]

i want some of that yellow finger gorgonian when it gets bigger.... i have lots of purple bush gorgonian

I wish I could Steve, it died a little while ago. I had it for 2.5 years and it was doing so well...