Pedro

Hi everyone, Tank has Coraline everywhere, still getting some slow tissue necrosis on the frags. The tissue is getting darker on most frags, i physically lowered the lights a bit to see if i could get them more light. Here are my parameters Salinity: 35.7 Temp: 77.8 F Alk: 9.0 Cal: 444 PO4: 0.03 NO3: 0.0 I have been increasing the feeding a little. Still running zeovit. Dosing some aminos too. Has grown a little but the stn is getting to it and has darken up a bit. Polyp extension Growth is there sorry for the clouded image this was after cleaning the tank a bit. Here's before the cleaning. I don't believe the wrasse has shown up in the build yet. Got him a month or two back. He is doing great. He's in there with a tomoni Tang and two cardinals, a bunch of astra snails and blue leg hermits. I put some gorgonians in, they have been a canary in the coal mine for me in the past. If i see them closed i know something is up.

I'm excited to see how you fill this tank up!

Beautiful tank

It's time for the croc sump!

Did he learn his lesson or is he still moving around?

Show a picture of the tank!

Trying!

This was about half the frag. The other half was lanky do it easy glued to the back so that it had space to sprawl out as needed.

Here is a picture today. Pictures up some corals recently. Was very pleasantly surprised with the free green slimmer "frag"! Thank you WAMAS.

Here is a picture from when the last post posted. Wanted to take a less blue picture but did not get around to it before I left for the holidays.

Hi Everyone, I have fallen off from updating you all on every detail, things were not working out for a while and I just needed to figure out why. I know the community is there to help but I didn't want to just ask and wanted to learn things the hard way! I am back and open to any and all suggestions (for the time being!). Thank you. I will post pictures soon, nothing crazy going on with the tank, but it is looking cleaner than before. So, after those weird phosphate readings, still not sure what was going on there. Is there a phosphate cycle for new tanks? Or was I just not cleaning the vials before hand and getting a misread? My phosphates leveled out to 0 after that last crazy reading. I put in another test coral (another green slimmer frag) and it too died. I was not sure what was going on, all the levels I was testing for were coming in fine. Three major cleanings, full toothbrush rock scrubs and all, the algae kept on taking over even with, the parameters I was checking looking fine. I left for vacation and the fish I had in there started dieing off little by little and when the last one moved on I didn't know what else to do. I asked a WAMAS member with a good record of keeping pestless nice looking tanks for a larger rock, to see if I could seed the tank with beneficial bacteria. That rock came with a bunch bristle stars amphipods and other critters. I didn't care at that point. Slowly they too died off though. During that time another WAMAS member recommended I reduce my photo period to just 6 hrs, so I did. This curbed the algae growth a little but did not stop it by any means. Ammonia was not detectable at all at this point. I decide to send out some ICP tests. I had 3 laying around from my birthday 2 years ago. I used them all. My 75g wasn't looking too good either(it is still not looking that great, thankfully all the fish are fine though). I sent out samples of the 40g sps system, the 75g, and my RO. The two reef tanks came back with high lithium, tin, and Sulfur, and Barium. RO came back fine as it should have. Since there was nothing "alive" left in there I purchased new salt (went with tropic marin) and did 3x 50+% water changes as quick as I could make the water up (I believe this was the turning point, I hope things stay on an uptrend). A few weeks past and I finally started seeing life in the tank (aside from the crazy algae growing all over the display), there were actually pods (amphipods and copepods) I went ahead and added another container of pods to the tank. I kept on seeing life, so I added in a sixline and lawnmower blenny. Then I purchased a clean up crew from reeftopia, the astra snails(also purchased some peppermint shrimp and blue leg hermits and an urchin) devoured all the algae in the tank. I thought I had done a great job with the 3 algae scrubs I carried out in the tank but they put me to shame. During that time I did one 50% water change to the 75g and started putting the excess snails into that tank, they are sadly not doing very well in that tank. I have increased my photo period in the 40g system back to 12 hrs to promote algae growth and food for the algae eaters. I have continued to add fish into the system, they are doing well thankfully (a tomini tang, and some bangaii cardinals). And the parameters I am checking are at: Salinity: 34.9 Temp: 79.9 deg F Alk: 8.6 dkH Cal: 414 ppm PO4: 0 ppm NO3: 2.4 ppm I've been keeping up with the zeovit dosing, and have started feeding a good amount more, trying to get the nitrates and phosphates to detectable levels, and have some algae for the clean up crew. ( I know that the zeovit system will pull lots of the nutrients out)

I'm glad it's doing well, even with the loving it is getting.

The clowns are loving it!

Thanks!

Awesome looking tank. So how did you transition it from the 2018 tank to the 2019 tank?

Nice!

What if you kept your current sump and plumbed sump to sump? Would that just over complicate things, or allow you for a larger safer drain to the big sump?

Tank is looking good, can't wait to see it with fish and corals!

Chewy chicken! Back to your dream, what would you have in this sump? Sounds like a great idea.

I thought you were going with a mangrove lagoon with a saltwater crocodile

That was me just trying to keep track of the corals through pictures, but the tank is not ready yet. The second green slimmer is quickly losing tissue from the base. The other ones are looking okay. Both the phosphates and the calcium where high, and alkalinity has been stable and nitrates are at zero. Salinity: 34.6 (brought this down a little on purpose) Temp: 77.6 F Alk: 7.8 Cal: 521 PO4: 1.77 (through the roof, tested rodi at 0, has to be the food, the salt, or overdosing of zeofood, or all three.) NO3: 0.0 (not great either) Did a 20% water change, and will be reducing the zeofood a bit.

Update: tank is doing well. I'll take water parameters tomorrow, but alkalinity had been stable around 8 dkh, with little to no coral, no surprise here. It did go through it's first ugly stage, Took some filter floss and a toothbrush and put some filter floss in the sump cleaned as much as I could until I could not see through the water. Left the filter floss in the sump for a few hours after that. Also switched the protein skimmer to not turn off when the Zeovit reactor had flow through it. Stopped dosing for a zeofood and start for a few day, and reduced the dose after that. After doing this the green slimmer quickly lost its tissue. A few days later added some mollies and a sixline to the tank, everyone is doing well and out and about. After that picked up test frags of sps from a fellow wamas member, frags are looking good still. I'll post more pics soon.

Hopefully it works. I'm sure someone has tried something similar.

There is a method, i am deviating a little. I have tried setting up bare bottoms in the past and it just takes so long to get things going, trying to see if I could set up a pest free system, by purchasing micro fauna from reputable sources. Testing out the frag to see if this works.

Charles's suggestion was a good one, that I have not done yet, but will eventually get it done when I get tired of taking the skimmer cup off to get into the sump area. I'm going to leave it like this for now because it might make me clean out the skimmer cup more often. Skimmer and calc reactor have been placed in the Middle section of the sump towards the back. A hole has been cut out for the skimmer cup to come out through, and another for it's airline. The zeovit reactor pulls water from the first section and exhausts water in the third section. The reactor had to be re-sealed and a three day cure and now it's holding water! During that time. The tank was stated and run for a few days with no rock, i did connect a media reactor with carbon and floated some filter floss. Some aquamesh was used between the skimmer section and the front to compartmentalize things but allow for water flow. Aquamesh was also used in the buble trap to keep larger items from getting to the return pump section. Rock rubble was placed in a bucket and run with microbacter xlm for two weeks before getting placed into the first and middle section of the sump. The rubble in the first section was placed into a chum bag for easier removal and cleaning when necessary. The rubble is just for added biological filtration surface area. Added some ammonia to the tank, enough to get the system to 0.025 ppm. Started the zeovit system, by manually dosing zeobac, Zeo food and zeostart, as recommended. Ammonia levels dropped to un detectable. The pump to the zeovit reactor is on a 3hr cycle, getting shaken up twice a day. The skimmer turns off when water goes through the Zeovit reactor, and 10min after the reactor stops the skimmer turns back on. Things are being controlled using an apex. The image below shows the need for one of my next tasks, cable management. . The rock structure was not added until the ammonia levels went back down. Rock rubble from aquabiomics was also added at that point, along with rotifers and copepods, to seed the tank with micro fauna. The skimmer was turned off during these additions and they were stepped accordingly. Started with bacteria gave it some time, added lights, then rotifers and phytoplankton, then pods. Still dosing phyto. Starting to see stuff grow on the glass. Flow in the display needed some umph, so I added a nanostream to help out with that. Checked water parameters. Salinity: 35.6 Temp: 77.8 F Alk: 7.7 Cal: 476 PO4: 0.05 NO3: 0.3 Added test coral, a green slimmer frag. Still looking good a few days after adding. Now we wait, make sure parameters are kept steady and that we could keep the green slimmer alive.