Hello WAMAS!
After a lot of back and forth with my brother and nephew, who is VERY enthusiastic about getting into reef keeping, I thought I'd get him a WAMAS membership for Christmas and figured I'd jump in as well and learn more from the community. While I've always been passionate about marine science (actually got a degree in Marine Bio a few decades ago) and I've always enjoyed aquariums, I got out of the hobby early after poor home-wiring resulted in my first reef tank starting a house fire about 15 years ago. Tank was a total loss and life and other hobbies kept me occupied. After the birth of my daughter 4 years ago my wife and I couldn't go on dive trips any more, so we wanted to bring the reef home with us and we acquired a 90g FOWLR setup with 2 fish (Clown and Niger Trigger) from craigslist and I've worked off and on the last 3 years converting it to a reef tank. It was in a really good place about a year ago when a thermometer and heater issue caused it to run hot for about 2 months. By the time I resolved the issue we'd lost a lot of coral, so I've been upgrading and automating what I can and we'll be getting back to restocking our lost corals in January.
I'm pretty plugged into the online community for my "main" hobby and over the last decade I've learned a TON from those folks, so I figured joining up here and soliciting input from the community would help me up my reef-keeping game. I am NOT an expert and I'd love input/thoughts/suggestions. I'm not looking to build an award winning tank... just something with healthy corals and fish that doesn't require a ton of labor to maintain.
Setup:
Marineland 90g Corner Flow w/ stand and hood
Aqueon Proflex Model 3 Sump (came w/ tank)
Reef Octopus VarioS-6 Return Pump
Reef Octopus Regal 150 SSS Skimmer
Tunze Osmolator w/ Crystal ATO 10 Gallon Reservoir
BRS Dual Media Reactor (GFO & Carbon)
Jebao DP-3 Auto Dosing Pump (Ca, KH, Mg)
Neptune Apex (monitoring and control)
Neptune DOS (Automated water changes, 2GPD)
Circulation: 1 MP40 w/ battery backup, 1 Turbelle Nanostream, 1 Jecod FS8000
Lighting - 2 Current Orbit Marine 48" LEDs, 2 Coralife HO 48" T5 (2 bulb)
Plan is to upgrade lighting after the holidays.
Day we bought the tank back in August 2017
Moved into our house and upgrades started, about September 2017
Replaced liverock and new aquascape late 2017
December of 2018: Making progress. This is just a few months before the heater/thermostat issue that killed a lot of the coral.
From last week. Toadstool leather and Sinularia MUCH larger, some zoas rebounded, and the pipe organ coral grew so tall it would be damaged every time I cleaned the tank. Anemone split and I want to get rid of one if I can catch one on the move. I have some changes to the layout planned.
Latest upgrade... The DOS setup for automatic water changes. The lines run in an insulated pipe through my crawlspace and up through the wall, exiting behind the aquarium. Brute trashcan holds NSW and has a circulation pump to keep it from settling. Right now I'm exchanging 2 gallons / day and tweaking my two-part dosing.
So that is where our tank sits today. A few challenges I'm facing:
We have a large female clownfish that hosts in both of the anemones. I do want to remove one of them no matter what, but she is VERY aggressive and has killed several fish over the years. I'm hoping to catch her and isolate her before I rework the aquascape and then reintroduce her afterward to see if that has any effect. I've never tried anything like this though and If there are suggestions for how best to proceed I'd love to hear them
Suggestions for extricating the anemone? Thinking I'll point a powerhead at it and wait for it to get pissed off and try to catch it on the move but again, open to suggestions.
Lighting - I'd like to get away from the 4 sets of strip lights and I'm looking at a pair of Viparspectra 165W LED fixtures. Would be an easy install and would make working on in the tank a LOT easier. Thoughts/input on these? I know there are fancier and pricier options out there but I've heard that these lower cost LEDs have come a long way.
That's it for now. Interested to hear suggestions. Thanks all!
