Matt's Waterbox 230.6 Reef Build

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Well no socks, no fish and still feeding the fallow tank twice a day has my nitrates at 2ppm and phosphates at .02ppm. Have had the fuge light on every other night. Probably going to keep this routine once the fish go in. I am hoping the levels stay there or slightly higher and I can dial in the fuge running time to keep it steady. Need to check my alk again. Only fell from like 8.5 ish to 8.2 over a few week span. I dont really have alot of hard corals in the tank so I am not surprised it hasn't fallen to much. The tank is like a pod a palooza. Its insane. I have had pods in my previous two systems rocks for a while but never really alot. I thought I had diatoms on the glass buts its just pods everywhere.... if the fish returning in a month doesnt dent their population(i don't have any pod eaters but they are piggies so who knows) I may strongly consider a mandarin or leopard wrasse. Its insane in there. Grosses out the girlfriend. The fish are all doing well in the copper. Havent checked the level of copper in a week but it was .5ppm and I havent changed water or anything so I am sure its still at that level. But I will before they enter their last 10 days or so of the treatment. 

 

Funny side story. 

When I broke down the tank real quick to catch everything i put all the rocks in buckets/44g brutes. I have quite a few crabs and didnt really pay attention to where they went as I knew they were holding onto the rocks. I placed all the rocks back in and just did a small water change while I was at it. I had about 5g in one brute and carried it upstairs to dump it. (Theres a drain at the end of our driveway). I dump the brute a few feet from it and start wheeling it back in. I faintly here a "click" "click" "click". Lo and behold the water was kind of murky from the rocks being in there so I couldn't see well and there was my strawberry crab! Just sitting there on my driveway in the summer heat clicking away at me with his claws. Pretty sure I panicked and said oh s*** a crab and my neighbor who was working on his car was real confused. I used a rock from the flowerbed real quick and scooped him up and ran downstairs. Dropped him in the tank. He stared me down the whole time he sank to the bottom. Went under a rock. That was about a month ago. Its mostly nocturnal but will emerge like the starfish for easy food at feedings but I didnt see it since then. And today after feeding it appeared! I felt so bad the bucket it was in I dumped like a good amount of super salty water. (Longer story) and it sat in there while I worked in my cold basement. Who knows what the salinty and temp were. I felt so awful and thought for sure I killed it but marine life has proved to me time and time again its quite resilient especially if you have a healthy specimen to start. Picture is faint but its in there. 

 

Side note. Tuxedo urchin found a coral frag that I never knew existed? Maybe was on a rock I picked up from someone. It started off totally white but now it has polyps on it.... completely intend to leave it as its hat. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Everything goes well. I did a 75% water change in the hospital and qt tanks. I got a Quoys parrotfish yesterday and added him after the water change. So far he is just chilling in a corner. Doesn't seem to be doing badly. Just kind of hiding behind a pvc tube. Breathing is normal and hes alert so I am just going to assume hes getting used to his surroundings. The PBT is an absolute fool and was trying to show a fish 2x its size its the tank boss and the parrotfish was having none of it. Hopefully he makes it through he did well at Reefescape for 3 weeks so I am hoping he is just stressed. The copper in the ht should be like .10 ppm or less by now from the cuprasorb and water changes. The display tank goes well in its fallow stage. Soft corals are growing at plague status even though there are hardly any nutrients. I have a little bit of cyano as a result so I am going to feed more. The lps are happy but only the hammers and blastos are growing. Sps are hit or miss but I chalk that up to them taking longer to adjust on growth. Knock on wood the only coral that didnt do well was half of a monti frag that got bulldozed by an urchin onto a Lobo. The logo won in like 5 hours. Still waiting on someone with a ton of zoas. My berghia culture is going they must have eaten the first wave of aiptasia i put in there. There is no aiptasia left and unless hermit crabs are the secret weapon Id say so far so good. Gona add like 15-20 more aips. Only seen 2 of the 14 berghia but they are nocturnal. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Well after 9 weeks of no fish in the display and 10 weeks since seeing the ich the fish have returned to their better home. Crossing my fingers for success because if the fallow period didnt kill it I see ich management in my future. Now everything thats wet gets to live in a qt for 4-6 weeks before it goes in the dt. If no ich reappears in a week or two I will get the next batch of fish into QT. 

[smallreef]

Wow, Looks great! Love the clean lines of the WB systems. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Everything goes/grows well in my tank. Coris Wrasse and 2 banggais were added. Banggai male should be hiding his eggs from me any day now. Gona try to raise them in a separate tank if I can find the hiding spot. Got a few more fish in QT. My powder blue died. Found it about a week after adding it back to the display. I am guessing maybe lingering effects from the copper. Had no signs of anything, even cut it open to see if anything inside. (Shouldve taken pics I am a terrible coroner). Real strange. Nothing else seems/seemed phased. RIP. First fish to die on me not from carpet surfing in 2 years. Anyways. I only have 11 fish in the display. And all but one are less than 3 inches. So I got some more. Got a potters angel. He got one good eye and I have tempted him with anything from Utter chaos zoas to birdsnest. Doesn't seem to care about anything except whats in the water column. (Knowing my luck Ill add him to the tank and itll slay a zoa colony). Theres a candy hogfish, royal gramma, splendid dottyback and a juvie Lieutenant Tang. Thatll put me at like 16 with 14 being small. Then Ill be done. 

 

On the coral front I wanted to do some different things with this tank. Nothing crazy just different. I always found keeping tanks at 78 degrees as a standard to be weird. Sure things come from all over the world but the temps change. So I am trying to change my temperature with the seasons. It started at 80 and brought it up to 82-83. Now I begin the slow decent to 76-77 over a month or two and then back up in the spring. I couldn't find much about people doing this. Its gradual so I doubt I will kill anything but I am curious what it does for growth. 

 

Secondly, for the real adventure. I long had success around the 7-7.5 range of alk in mixed reefs. Softies can grow in anything they may have liked higher alk but didnt seem to care with it at 7-7.5. The SPS and certainly the LPS loved it as other aquarists have found. So I thought lets push my luck. So I dropped it over a few weeks to 5.7-5.9 ish for a month and kept it there. (Stupid I know right). My SPS were going nuts. Couldnt care less. LPS started to tolerate it but wouldn't say they were super happy. And the softies began to hate it. I am really just curious what the minimum range is in my setup for everything to be happy. I would guesd its minimum 6.5 or so. Will find out on the slow climb back up in alk. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Been trying out baking soda and kalk in my ato to see whats best for maintaining alk and ca. My alk was dropping a little faster than ca. So I was using baking soda. Current params are.. 

Salinity 1.025

Temp 80

Ca 410

Mg 1270

Nitrates 2ppm

Phosphates  .01

Alk 7.5 gona creep up to like 8.2 8.3 ish and keep it there. 

 

Current Livestock 

Quoyi Parrotfish

Hippo Tang

Vampire Tang

Potters angelfish

Flame hawkfish

Clownfish pair

Banggai cardinal 

Sapphire damsel

Royal Gramma

Splendid dottyback

Starry blenny

Candy hogfish

Yellow coris wrasse

Strawberry crab

Nem crab 

Lots of hermits all different kinds

Some snails

2 urchins 

 

Parrotfish likes to eat the algae off of the soft corals. Except he is a dope and indirectly nips the corals. I may have to move some into the frag tank. Funny enough he is an effective kenya tree remover which doesn't phase me. But he picks at a big sinularia that i like so i may move that out. Doesnt even look at sps,lps or zoas. The potters has 1 eye and is more content to zoom around between caves than graze or eat corals. Everything else is fat and healthy. I added 5 of them after 6 weeks of observation in a qt. Didn't see anything weird so they went in. 

 

Corals

Lots of jedi montis spreading like the plague 

Red robin loves my tank 

Slimer is doing slimer things

Birdsnest did not so good. But i attribute that to them being notriously weird for led light acclimation. 

Utter chaos and blue rhino zoas have gone from like 30 each to 60+ each in 5 months. 

Everything else is good. Have some slightly agitated lps that isnt fully extended. I am blaming the alk being at like 7.5 it all seemed happier in the 8s. 

 

I am making my qt a qt/frag tank. Its a 40b and if I have to medicate the fish instead of observe I have a 10g i will use. Ill post some pics of how I am setting it up this week. 

 

[DAP]

Awesome, Looks GREAT !

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Thanks @DAP its getting there! I am redoing one side a little bit with some more SPS from the meeting then Ill do another FTS. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Added some more corals. Got my qt/frag tank setup. Before I just had a 10g and 40g sitting around. I got some more corals from the 10/26 meeting. Got some awesome pieces from some great fellow reefers. SPS and zoas have been doing the best in my tank. LPS lives and is happy but I dont have to many that are growing fast. Anyways since Ive had success so far with SPS I added some more. Waiting on them all to color back up after the move. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Update on the tanks. 

 

180 DT Fish

 

Ich returned sometime in early November. Ive made enough posts about potentially where it came from. Ultimately through some talking to folks etc my best guess is one of the fish I added in Oct was aymptomatic even though I qted them. Only 1 fish showed signs of white spots. Hippo tang of course. Had about 15 or so spots. 0 behavior changes. Watched him and the others for many hours. No scratching at all. Didnt want to break down and treat in smaller tanks when nothing was really wrong. So the display I am fairly positive has become an ich management system. In early December some spots came back on the hippo tang but probably more in the 5-10 range. Again 0 behavior problems and still nothing on the others. So I am still in and watch and observe phase. If it gets worse Ill break down and use TTM(got a bunch of like 50g totes) to treat them as they have already been through copper a few times. But besides suspected ich all are fat and healthy. Some are super fat(looks at Starry blenny). 

 

Corals

 

Sps still growing like the plague. @gws3 corals must have something special additive in them (more likely just from long term well cared for aquacultured colonies) because they explode in my tank. Had a red robin colony from end of July that was about 4x5x3inches maybe 5x5.5x3.5 that is now at least 6x8x4. Some monti pieces from him have also grown super fast. The other SPS frags from other reefers has been cool to watch them grow out. Some took alot longer than others to start growing but have taken off. Alot of the softies I got from another reefers breakdown to start the tank have dome softie things as well. I am reducing my kenya tree population. There were over 20 that are 3+ inches that I know of and I stopped counting at 50 baby ones. Trying to get another small colony or 2 of SPS sticks to take their spots. 

 

40b Frag/QT

Lol. Well I got some corals from folks I don't know their systems well or online and into the frag tank they went. Now its a red bug(think planaria), aiptasia, bryopsis, GHA thunderdome. I had ordered a  2.5-3 inch Chocolate tang like 3 days before I got ich in my display. I didn't know where it came from and since I feared maybe cross contamination from the qt(I dont think it was but who knows) I didn't want to add the chocolate tang to that tank right away. Cue tang police here lol. Mine has alternated in TTM between a 10g and a 50g tote for a month and goes into the 40b today. Its been nice and healthy trying to fatten him up some more but I think having room to graze will do the trick. He will stay in the 40b while I watch what the ich does in the display. I plan on using some reef flux first to kill off the GHA/Bryopsis and then siphoning out the red bugs and getting someones reject 6 line wrasse. 

 

Params 

1.025 salinity 

Alk 7-7.2

Ca 400 

Nitrates 2

Phosphates .05

 

Ps No idea what this SPS is in the last picture. Got it from frag fest and its like grown 3 inches. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Haven't updated in a while. 

Everything has been doing well for the most part. Not much really gone wrong. I have still been trying to find a nice balance for dosing. The SPS can consume some serious alk and I have had it drop to the 5 dkh range a few times from 7.5 in a matter of days. Trying to reign that in still. Problem is the more alk and ca I add and stable the faster it all grows lol. And faster and faster and I have to test constantly weekly. Guess its a good problem to have. Two main issues I have encountered. One is still ich. I am becoming less and less convinced it is crypto. Still have yet to see any other fish have any signs besides the hippo tang and its spots just dont seem to last more than a day if that. Much longer post as to why I am doubting this. Really need to get a mollie and put it in there to see once and for all. 

 

Second problem is I am getting a little bit of cyano in some areas. They seem to be mostly lower flow/dead spot areas so I may add some more flow. Phosphates were 0.01 but I figure they are a little higher and nitrates were 1. Plan to siphon it out and then going to run my refugium less and phosguard more since my macro algae been growing slowly. Not nearly enough for me to consider running Chemiclean yet just a few small patches. 

 

Been doing more on the frag tank/qt because I am going to need it soon. Some of the SPS is beginning to shade other corals. In there I got a chocolate tang, a neon dottyback(probs add to display seems super chill) and a red rooster waspfish. I want to upgrade from a 40b to a like 60g or 80g frag tank. So waiting for someone to sell one. 

[YHSublime]

Sounds like you need a trident, or an alkatornic! 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

1 hour ago, YHSublime said:

Sounds like you need a trident, or an alkatornic! 

I know lol. Worst part is I work in tech and still haven't gotten anything like that for this system ?. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

April 2020 update

 

Lost my candy hogfish. Like just gone lost. Couldn't really tell how old it was from the start. Was 3 inches + and had him for like 8 months. Was fine a few days ago and just disappeared. I have a lid but I will investigate the overflow later. 

 

Everything else goes well. Need more fish. Ive lost like 3 in the past 5-6 months. The banggaii pair I got from another reefer and they were absolute units. Had to be 4-5 years old already. Biggest ones I had seen. Can't decide on which wrasse I want to do. May do leopards, maybe melanarus not sure. Still want a marine betta as well. I will probably replace the cardinal pair just because they are such a different weird fish. 

 

I decided to do some top down shots before I cleaned the tank. (I am garbage at photography). But holy crap that is how you can tell things are growing. 

[DFR]

Did your hogfish ever resurface? With so many fish disappearing, is it possible for there to be a bobbit worm hiding in your system?

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

On 5/17/2020 at 1:38 PM, DFR said:

Did your hogfish ever resurface? With so many fish disappearing, is it possible for there to be a bobbit worm hiding in your system?

Sorry I should've specified more on the cardinals. They were old and some of the biggest I had seen the reefer I got them from did a great job it seems they lived out their golden months with me. They seemed to have went from old age. They just kinda wasted away each over a day or two span. The whole lose weight slowly and then just do nothing until death. I think the hogfish is dead. I need to really really check my overflow instead of just glancing in there but I am not sure what did him in. He is the only fish I have "lost" and the only one to die from something not obvious. I dont think I will ever know.

 

May Tank update. 

 

I have gone to kalk in the ato plus manually dosing rodi mixed with baking soda to keep my alk up. I may just switch to an actual two part product. This tank is starting to suck down alk/ca more and it may finally be time for me to start checking mg as well I doubt water changes will keep that in a good place for much longer. All fish are good. My flame hawkfish jumped out(i have a lid.... he hit it and still snuck out) fortunately I heard him and ran over and threw him back in. That is 4 times he has jumped out in the past few years he is running out of lives lol. I will add a Vanderbilt chromis that has been in QT to the display soon. I got real scared that he was developing uronema as he had a white scrape like marking develop after over a month of being in there but its gone away so assuming he just had an injury as he probably wouldve developed uronema much sooner on. 

 

All corals grow well. I had to move a toadstool as it was getting huge and was getting mad because the wave maker was to close. I still may add some more rock for real estate to the right side of my tank to put some more branching acros there. Now that I have gone a year without really any SPS issues I may add a fancier colony. 

 

 

 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Been a few months so time for an update. Nothing really new in the tank. Every grows. Replaced a heater. Changed some RODI stages out. Had to move some stuff and frag some that was getting shaded. Finally getting ready to buy a larger frag tank and the other half has expressed interest in a waterbox peninsula mini to learn about the hobby...(amazing day considering she hasnt cared at all in years lol) .

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

One year between pictures some of the growth in there has been awesome. This time next year going to be alot more frags...

[epleeds]

Looking good. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Lost my Quoyi Parrotfish a week or so ago. Lasted over a year in my care. Most people seem to have them wither away out of no where after a 6 month span so I guess I was more fortunate than most. I have had ich in my display (or so my hippo tang has me convinced) for well over a year now without any issues except for a candy hogfish who disappeared. I feared that it may have gotten into the gills of the parrotfish since being a labrid his slime coat hid all external signs. But a microscope and brief autopsy showed nothing. Beautiful fish with an awesome personality but I prefer fish that last a while so I can enjoy the satisfaction of them growing up in my care so I dont think I will get another. 

 

I replaced it with a sailfin tang and a blue throat triggerfish. They are doing great. My hippo tang went wild for a day and now the hippo and sailfin are best buds. 

 

Most of my corals are growing wild and I really need to frag alot of the colonies lol. I have an interesting "issue" where my nutrients stay low. But they are getting consumed by algae in the display before the media in the sump. I added an mp10 for even more flow (2 mp40s all the way up and the return has about 600gph out of each nozzle) in the hopes the water would turn over more. Now Ive went from having more cyano growth to gha. But gha is less of an issue for me than cyano. 

 

My potters angelfish has decided after a year and a half it wants to eat my pc rainbow colony. Now interesting the pc rainbow hasn't lost much color so it seems but just has bad PE. 

 

Looking to add another small fish or two like an agile chromis and chalk basslet and then a couple fancy SPS. 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

[YHSublime]

Do you think you have phosophate issues? 

 

Corals look good, and everything is growing from what I can tell! 

[smokythemattman@gmail.com]

Well it's been a while since I have updated this. I have run this tank as a softie tank for a year and a half and its done great! Havent lost any fish or corals in almost two years since posting last. I have realized that I enjoy the easy corals that move more so than the fancy sticks. That being said.... 

 

We are building our next house and will be putting a large tank from planet aquarium in there. Should start being built any week now. It is an 8x4x4 so its a big boy at nearly 1000g. I would start a build thread but I believe this section is for tanks underway(even though that one is sort of just slowly) as I have already got the design down and most of the equipment. It should become a reality around this fall and I can't wait. I had to give up doing a big big tank(other half didn't like the 5000 gallon tank so I had to compromise).  Its just a matter of time until it becomes real and I move all my fish and corals to a much bigger home.