Cali Kid Corals

Ayman 170 Red Sea Reef Tank

A

Ayman

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Hi All

Here to track my tank progress and get better at reefing from all friends here!
been busy lately but I made some progress since I setup my tank.
Thanks To Thomas for all the help to get me started. From all advise and meeting me at Hitide aquatics to get some clean up crew and whatever I need to get me started. Also got some corals and so far they are doing good.

Will add some photos from start to where the tank is at now!

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Cool looking tank!
Ayman said:
Also got some corals and so far they are doing good.
Click to expand...
So what kind of corals did you get? I'm trying to identify them from the pic. If you turn the lights off to avoid algae, I think your coral will suffer. Hopefully someone else with more knowledge could chime in and confirm that.
 
With corals, I wouldn’t go more than 2/3 days without light. Going without lights for a couple of days won’t magically cure the uglies though. So I agree with just keeping lights on but turn your whites down to very low or no whites, and shorten your daily light cycle. Water changes, cleanup crew, bottled bac, and copepods. As your tank starts to get out of the uglies, you can adjust your light schedule to something more in line with what you’d like longer term
 
B the Nano Reefer said:
With corals, I wouldn’t go more than 2/3 days without light. Going without lights for a couple of days won’t magically cure the uglies though. So I agree with just keeping lights on but turn your whites down to very low or no whites, and shorten your daily light cycle. Water changes, cleanup crew, bottled bac, and copepods. As your tank starts to get out of the uglies, you can adjust your light schedule to something more in line with what you’d like longer term
Click to expand...
This could make sense, but I don’t think he’s told us what his lighting is like currently?
 
Light is 80% blue and 40% white running the Red Sea 90. Acclimation mode so it does not reach the full set point.
So here is what I am planning to do no white light just blue since I have coral.
agitating surface area as much as possible for oxygen exchange.
Maybe get bottled bac and copepods.
and like many have mentioned will ride this out sticking to water changes and cleaning of filter sock/ cleaning crew.
 
Addressing your points above.

-80% intensity is too high, especially for right now. You easily could get away with 50% blues and minimal whites based on preference. (no idea what % you're actually running within the acclimation period)
-pointing one of your powerheads upwards should work well for surface agitation, one of your pictures shows it perfectly.
-if you buy a bottled bacteria, you need to consider where your ammonia source is going to be coming from since you dont yet have fish. (I'd probably skip this)
-Copepods are always good. Research which ones you need first, they're not all the same. Don't buy tigger pods like I did.
 
For background, Ayman has rock from Kenny's system and we scooped a ton of pods from his invert system plus 5 trochus, 2 nassarius, and 5 hermits. No fish yet. Things are pretty much just settling down, so my opinion is that he definitely doesn't need to add any bottled items, just give it time.

Full lights out 1 day a week will let herbivores catch up too and eat things. Agree with @Invictus that we could drop intensity 10% across the board (note his light is a ReefLED 90 which is by wattage 85% blue, ~12% white, 3% violet.)
 
Thanks, All for the input

Darkxerox for the input you explained what I have better than I did lol.

I can confirm that it is looking better day by day.

Invictus I did lower my light set points to 10% white and Blue to 50%, corlas look happier and I'm seeing less algae.
 
Tank Update:

It has been a while since I last made an update on the tank, There were a lot of changes and adds.
Borrowed the PAR meter and tested what my light is capable of which was interesting. (Still have to get to writing everything down and posting it here)
The biggest lesson was that I was using the waste line of my RO system instead of the Clean water. Currently doing weekly water changes with better TDS.

Live stock currently:

2X Clowns
1X Flam hawk
1X Bangai
1X Demsil
1X Coral Beauty

Coral:

I have been adding some corals slowly, mainly buying from people within this group and sometimes LFS.
I am bad with names but I seem to like hammers/frogspawn corals the most so far.

Sump update:

Added a skimmer Red Sea 300.
Activated carbon reactorCarbon reactor.
 

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