Beautiful tank. Give the blotched a few months to settle in and he will be the show stopper in the tank and come out all the time. Love these fish.
Rick's 80 Gallon SCA (+40b)
- Thread starter skrappy
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That’s amazing growth!
Congrats on your 1yr mark. Looking like those corals can only growth faster and faster as it’s growing larger. Full tank shots?!
Edit: I scrolled up and sow the FTS. Looks like it’s just waiting game now. Lol. Please keep it going. Looking good!
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Congrats on your 1yr mark. Looking like those corals can only growth faster and faster as it’s growing larger. Full tank shots?!
Edit: I scrolled up and sow the FTS. Looks like it’s just waiting game now. Lol. Please keep it going. Looking good!
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
I got busy and a little bit of LARS for a while, and I let aiptasia take over the tank. Just a week ago you couldn't see any of the rockwork, it was all covered in aiptasia. The F-Aiptasia didn't work for me and only seemed to make the population explode, I got rid of my filefish because it stopped eating them, and I didn't want to try another copper-banded butterfly and risk all my other fish's health. So two months ago I decided to put 20 berghia nudibranchs in the tank to try and eradicate the quickly growing population. I was worried my Wrasse would eat them all before they could breed and do their job; I didn't see a single berghia after I put them in, until a week ago. I ordered 18 medium from Reeftown, and 2 of their egg clusters since I was worried about the wrasse. They showed up and I thought the egg clusters were going to be on a sheet of plastic or something so they could be placed somewhere, but they were just in the Jar, and there were actually 5 clusters all stuck to the walls, the berghia were apparently laying eggs in the container on transit; if I had to order again I wouldn't pay for egg clusters. Week 2 after putting them in, I noticed about half the ammount of aiptasia on the rock where I introduced them. Because I didn't want to disturb the freshly laid eggs, I actually left the container in the tank, you can see it in the photos still. Week 3 it seemed like the aiptasia were getting way worse and had now taken over the right side of the tank and were even attached all over my clam's shell and covering over it's mantel. Week 4 they were still getting worse, and the amount of aiptasia on the left where I introduced the berghia now seemed to be staying the same, no less and no more. I was thinking about placing a second order, but the price was scaring me off; I decided to wait longer because one of the biggest aiptasia in the tank, that had been in there the longest, all the sudden disappeared. Week 5 and 6 seemed to also be a stalemate, and just before giving up hope, week 7 I go to do pump maintenance and notice there are no more aiptasia around my clam. A few other areas around the bases of some acros where there had been a lot of die off, no more aiptasia. I didn't want to mess with a good thing and disturb it, so I skip pump cleaning, but now I'm getting excited. Friday night I go in and turn the living room light on after light out and see berghia of all sizes everywhere! For the past week, every day I have gotten up and seen half the amount of aiptasia as the previous day, at this rate they will be completely gone in 2 more days. And I can see egg clusters all over the place, so even the baby aiptasia wont stand a chance! I should have ordered these guys first, I didn't understand their effectiveness and thought it would be a flop with my wrasse and let the price scare me off. As far as I can tell, my wrasse has only started eating them in the past 3 days. I will forever now recommend berghia as the only solution for aiptasia.
I have been playing with the idea of setting up a display refugium for the life of this tank, but hadn't had the space or conviction to do it. I set up my first reef tank when living in Colorado, and I remember seeing the CSB nems at Ki's and Elite, but at the time I was on a $10 per frag budget so getting my own CSB was out of the question. Well, the other week I was buying some frags and got my eyes on a CSB and the price was perfect, so I instantly became hellbent on finally getting a Colorado Sunburst. So I moved the couch, ignored the looks and comments from my wife, and plumbed up a second tank. I had originally planned to use an old biocube I had in the garage, I drilled out the holes perfectly for the overflow, and then when washing it out I was sloshing water around in it not thinking about it and I was holding the tank by the back that I just drilled, hear the crack and knew exactly what I did. I cussed a little, then laughed at myself for being an idiot, and found a 10 gallon tank in the garage. Figured I had nothing to loose and crossed my fingers it wasn't tempered. In the end I got the 10 gallon drilled and plumbed. Somehow I managed to drill the holes crooked though, so yeah, the overflow box is crooked, lol. I also spent a solid day rearranging my sump to accommodate a pump for the refugium tank, and plumbed the return into the other side of my reefmat. Took the opportunity to clean up some of the rats nest of wires and tucked the apex and all the goodies into the old biocube stand. I feel a lot better about the apex and powerbars being tucked away inside a cabinet rather than just off to the side on the wall, but the cabinet is kind of warm and heat is the other killer of electronics, so at some point I'll install a little vent, maybe even with a small fan. Can't have a refugium without a light, so I moved one of the 3 kessils off my display to put over the refugium, and replaced it with an XR30 pro. A reefer near me and myself have been trading corals lately, and he came over to grab a few pieces and I told him the main reason I set up the refugium was to go buy this CSB, and he casually tells me he will give me one! This past weekend one of my longest running coral dreams has become a reality and I'm happy as can be. Thank you again trade buddy! Since the nem is in such a small tank, I won't be moving my clowns over, they can stay in the hammer garden. Instead I've ordered a few sexy shrimp and I'm going to see how they do with it, they should be here this week along with some small snails for the refugium and some more emeralds and snails for my main display. I've never kept sexy shrimp before, but I figure a 10 gallon with lower flow, no fish, and a bunch of macros, would probably be about the best home for them.
The top down panorama I tried to take with my phone didn't turn out so hot, but it was funny enough I figured I would include it.
The top down panorama I tried to take with my phone didn't turn out so hot, but it was funny enough I figured I would include it.
The CSB macro tank is doing great and I'm super happy with it, but it could use some more green. The sexy shrimp are fun to watch hop around and dance. I am however tired of having a frag rack in my tank, it is completely full and snails keep throwing frags on top of each other. So I picked up a 40b and stand from another member yesterday and poked some holes in it to take the place of the 10 gal. I'll be dedicating about a foot of the 40b to still be a planted macro tank; going to put in a 5" baffle to hold sand and then the rest of the tank will be there for me to get the frags out of my main display, and it will also give me more room for more trachy's. I nearly pulled the trigger on one of the IM 200EXT tanks but talked myself out of it, I know I'll have to move in 2 years so I think its best to not have a 200 gallon tank full of livestock to move. I'll go bigger when one falls in my lap or when we buy a house.
Look great! Nice work!
I know who to call when I need holes drilled. Great job!
Thank you.
Thanks. After successfully drilling these big holes in the 10 gallon tank I lost all fear of putting holes in glass; it's moving the tank with the holes in it that is the scary part for me now, lol. Still kicking myself for carelessly braking that biocube after putting perfect holes in it.
Made the swap from the 10 gallon refugium tank to the 40b. Got the sand and algae in it 12/17, and then played wire management for the next 3 days, sorting out the rats nests that I crated swapping the tanks. Getting the frag rack out of the main tank has made me so much more happy with the tank. Now I can really look at swapping some of my slower growing less desirable corals for ones I've been hoarding on the frag rack.
I added 4 types of sea grass today; I've read that this stuff is incredibly hard to care for in a home tank that isn't dedicated to it, so fingers crossed. I've been wanting to try sea grasses for a long time so in preparation I went with the old trusty Miracle Mud on the bottom and capped it off with sand. I also expect it will greatly help my mangroves; in the short time they have been in the mud one of them has already sprouted 4 new leaves for a total of 6, and 2 new ones on the other. I'm looking forward to trying to bonsai the mangroves in the coming year, assuming they keep growing.
I did have the problem of my nutrients dropping in one week from 50/0.1 to 2/0, I expected them to fall(maybe not that fast) so I tested a week in and caught it pretty quick, that being said I did loose a tiny bit of orange color on the BC aquatic man and a little bit of purple/pink loss on the WD. I started feeding excessively with powdered foods, even the odd free sample packs I've gotten, just trying to get the po4 back to something detectible. I had to dose some phosphorus for a couple days on top of the massive amounts of food, but now I am showing about .04 po4 each morning and I haven't added any phosphorus for a few days. I would like to allow my macros and sea grass to all turn into a lush garden, and I'm not comfortable long term with getting all my nutrients from overfeeding. I would like to solve the problem by adding more fish, but I have determined that because of how short my tank is there just isn't enough territory so the purple tang I have would never let me add anything else. I'm starting to look into dosing ammonium, figure if I can't add more fish maybe I can still add more of their waste, I've got a lot of homework to do though, there are tons of different types of ammonium salts and I want to be sure I'm picking the right one for my situation.
Bought my wife a camera and some lenses for her to take pictures of cakes and other deserts she decorates, including some yellow and orange filters and a macro lens I'm still getting it figured out, I've never used a fancy camera like this before and boy are there a lot of settings. I've always let my phone camera do all the hard work for me but I'm looking forward to figuring it out now. Here are a few I took under white lights, most the colors seem to have turned out pretty spot on. My wife wanted to watch a movie with me this evening so I didn't get time to take any under blue lighting, I'll see if I can find some time to get some good shots of the corals under blues tomorrow.
I added 4 types of sea grass today; I've read that this stuff is incredibly hard to care for in a home tank that isn't dedicated to it, so fingers crossed. I've been wanting to try sea grasses for a long time so in preparation I went with the old trusty Miracle Mud on the bottom and capped it off with sand. I also expect it will greatly help my mangroves; in the short time they have been in the mud one of them has already sprouted 4 new leaves for a total of 6, and 2 new ones on the other. I'm looking forward to trying to bonsai the mangroves in the coming year, assuming they keep growing.
I did have the problem of my nutrients dropping in one week from 50/0.1 to 2/0, I expected them to fall(maybe not that fast) so I tested a week in and caught it pretty quick, that being said I did loose a tiny bit of orange color on the BC aquatic man and a little bit of purple/pink loss on the WD. I started feeding excessively with powdered foods, even the odd free sample packs I've gotten, just trying to get the po4 back to something detectible. I had to dose some phosphorus for a couple days on top of the massive amounts of food, but now I am showing about .04 po4 each morning and I haven't added any phosphorus for a few days. I would like to allow my macros and sea grass to all turn into a lush garden, and I'm not comfortable long term with getting all my nutrients from overfeeding. I would like to solve the problem by adding more fish, but I have determined that because of how short my tank is there just isn't enough territory so the purple tang I have would never let me add anything else. I'm starting to look into dosing ammonium, figure if I can't add more fish maybe I can still add more of their waste, I've got a lot of homework to do though, there are tons of different types of ammonium salts and I want to be sure I'm picking the right one for my situation.
Bought my wife a camera and some lenses for her to take pictures of cakes and other deserts she decorates, including some yellow and orange filters and a macro lens
I'm still getting it figured out, I've never used a fancy camera like this before and boy are there a lot of settings. I've always let my phone camera do all the hard work for me but I'm looking forward to figuring it out now. Here are a few I took under white lights, most the colors seem to have turned out pretty spot on. My wife wanted to watch a movie with me this evening so I didn't get time to take any under blue lighting, I'll see if I can find some time to get some good shots of the corals under blues tomorrow.
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I think you take really good micro shots compare to regular reefers. Including myself, I am so bad with photo taking and feels like it’s getting worst. Lol. Macro refugium is awesome addition to your system. I remember going out of town for a week and came back and Micro refugium thriving to realize that smoking in the condo was really killing the growth. They do look nice when they fill in. This is only photo I can find in my phone. lol. Like all I have is few photo of my old setup. Doing a moonshiners method; you shouldn’t have to worry to keep up with iron etc bing striped out?!
Take 100 photos and one of them is bound to come out ok, lol, there are a lot of photos I take that never get uploaded. They will look good on the phone but then when I go to upload them I see just how blurry they are. Practice makes perfect, so I hope to get better still. Depending on the corals, seems like everything we do slows them down. I have a rule for my wife that she can't use any aerosols in the living room, so if she wants to dust or something she has to spray it on a rag in another room, my wife is very tolerant of my BS lol. Your algae tank looked pretty lush, what of it I can see. I know the pain of only having a handful of photos of an old tank, its the number one reason I started this build thread. As for nutrients, since I am a reef moonshiner I have a lot more confidence that I will be able to keep some of these odd macro algae alive. Currently I have 14 types of intentionally introduced macro algae, 2 unintentional(pest), 2 mangroves, and now 4 types of seagrass. I've doubled my daily dosing of iron, chromium, cobalt and manganese; according to shiners handbook these are the ones most likely to be used by macros. Shipped out regularly scheduled ICP test just a couple days ago, waiting game for the results now. I'm sure it will take a couple months of slowly bringing dosing up and testing to find the right amounts. I'm guessing I'll have to increase Iron, nickel and manganese further, but 'slow and steady wins the race' when it comes to this hobby. What I could really use is for Neptune to get off their asses and make a Trident for ammonia, nitrate and phosphate. ReefFactory came out with an auto tester for phosphate but I'm not sure its available in US yet, can't find it for sale anywhere, I think I found a price for it when I heard of it being a thing and vaguely remember it being ridiculously expensive(between 400 and 600) and each one can only be set up for one type of test. I keep playing with the idea of a mastertronic, but from what I read the maintenance they require is insane, requiring regular replacement of parts and constant tinkering.
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Glad the tank is working out! I upgraded in my move to a 5 foot tank, but I really liked the form factor of that 80 gallon… I’ll have to come check it out sometime!
Absolutely! Once I buy a house I'll go 6', I've already put together a list of 52 fish for whenever the time comes. Until then I'll have to keep restraining myself whenever I see a pretty trachy.
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Im sure you find tons critters and marine lives in there. I would get tons of invertebrates to make it more interesting over time~
In the macro algae/frag tank I've got 14 different types of snails, a tiny sand dwelling clam, and 6 sexy shrimp, no fish yet. Thinking about trying to get a mix of different pipefish, but I've never kept them before so I'm kind of still on the fence with that idea. I thought about adding different crabs and such, but in the end crabs kill snails, so I figured sticking with just snails and the sexy shrimp would be the best to keep the macro algae alive. Although last night I began wondering if my snails will eat the sea grass or not, websites that sell snails may talk about macro algae, but I've never seen grasses mentioned one way or another.
