Richie's Reefer 500

[richiev]

I'm currently in post vacation blues. The good news is everything plugged along while I was out of town for about 10 days. The new tank is doing fine, the clowns and coral beauty had no issues, equipment worked great. The house sitters and neighbors did everything according to plan.

The bad news is my frag tank has a bunch of dead or dying sps. This could be from a variety of things, and likely my fault. The first cause is likely I screwed up the week before I left, and two days, almost in a row, I inadvertently unplugged my reef pi controller which led to my heaters being disabled which led to my tank dropping to around 65° overnight, a slight salinity increase, and a bunch of bubbles shot into the tank. Incredibly frustrating since that tank was doing awesome, but shockingly nothing immediately died. Sps started on a decline though.

It also could be my nutrients (phosphate=0.5, nitrate=20) but I think I'm cool with those numbers.

That's all a major bummer because it's probably from me being an idiot, and exacerbated by @H2OPlayar having just given me a bunch of great frags. I'm hoping it all stabilizes and I just end up having lost 2-3 sps.

The other annoying thing is I've decided I'm going to pull and nuke my current display's rock. The dinos I think I've solved now, but I'm realizing the rock is full of vermetid snails. I know those originally came in on snails from reef cleaners, and I was ignoring them, but now pulling things apart it's annoying. I just don't really want to start a new tank with a bunch of vermetid being transferred over even though I know many people don't care about them. They aren't super visible, but I know they're there and it just seems like now is my one and only chance to try and prevent them.

So currently I have some of my rock sitting in bleach, and later this week I'll probably pull the rest and stick it in too.

 

[richiev]

As another positive, my pod stocking strategy is seemingly a big success. On this tank and my previous one I've started by right away after cycling dumping a ton of phyto in the tank and seeding pods. I did that on this one, and seeded pods from a half a tisbe reef nutrition bottle + my cooked rock + some chaeto from my frag tank. I added enough phyto that the tank looks crappy honestly, with the water cloudy and a bit of a green tinge.

Just now looking at the tank in the dark after two weeks of running, with that and then a couple fish getting fed, the tank is full of pods. They're already crawling on the dirty parts of the glass, and if I kill the flow I can see them swimming in the water column!

 

[richiev]

Added more rock, including my mushroom rock and the main one from the previous display. I'll probably redo this at some point when the rock I nuked (bleach, dry, now cooking) is ready, but I'm pretty happy with it for what it is.

I also installed UV to get the water clear and kill the phyto storm I had intentionally created, now that the pod population is up and running.

I spent at least an hour on the main rock on my living room floor on towels and over a Rubbermaid. I flipped it every possible direction, killing every vermetid I could find, with a strong flashlight to make sure I went over the whole thing. I'm sure I missed some, but I killed a ton and at least I can say I tried.

I also gave parts of it a straight 3% H2O2 squirt and toothbrush scrub down. I wanted to get rid of any turf algae before transferring it over. Again I'm pretty sure I missed some, but hopefully it'll be small enough that the urchins will eat anything that is left.

I kept the last two anemones on the rock while doing all that. They spent a very long time out of water, and seem totally fine. I've watched videos about how we all overthink keeping coral completely immersed, and while I'm not going to go out of my way to let them sit out of the water, I'm pretty confident a lot of them don't care. I think it'd be interesting to try and create an anemone tide pool at a top of a tank.

 

[richiev]

 

[musclebenz]

Added more rock, including my mushroom rock and the main one from the previous display. I'll probably redo this at some point when the rock I nuked (bleach, dry, now cooking) is ready, but I'm pretty happy with it for what it is.

I also installed UV to get the water clear and kill the phyto storm I had intentionally created, now that the pod population is up and running.

View attachment 43701

View attachment 43702

I spent at least an hour on the main rock on my living room floor on towels and over a Rubbermaid. I flipped it every possible direction, killing every vermetid I could find, with a strong flashlight to make sure I went over the whole thing. I'm sure I missed some, but I killed a ton and at least I can say I tried.

I also gave parts of it a straight 3% H2O2 squirt and toothbrush scrub down. I wanted to get rid of any turf algae before transferring it over. Again I'm pretty sure I missed some, but hopefully it'll be small enough that the urchins will eat anything that is left.

I kept the last two anemones on the rock while doing all that. They spent a very long time out of water, and seem totally fine. I've watched videos about how we all overthink keeping coral completely immersed, and while I'm not going to go out of my way to let them sit out of the water, I'm pretty confident a lot of them don't care. I think it'd be interesting to try and create an anemone tide pool at a top of a tank.

Tank looks good!

 

[Darkxerox]

Agreed it looks great! Lots of real estate. Going to add more fish?

 

[richiev]

Agreed it looks great! Lots of real estate. Going to add more fish?

Yep! I don't have a full list planned, but definitely some tangs, eventually I'd like a Mandarin, maybe a large wrasse, and maybe a fox face at some point.

I also would really like to get some anthias again. I had them back in the day in my previous go round of reef tanks. Goal though is to trend towards low maintenance, so I'm focusing on useful fish. A couple anthias though would make me super happy.

 

[richiev]

Things are still plugging along well. By far the easiest to maintain tank I've had so far, and best growth. I'm having some bleaching on an encrusting monti colony I bought, but that may just be over-lighting adjustment. Putting a bit of netting on the top to block light in that area seems to have stopped it. I do need to get more active on testing levels and adjusting dosing. I've been reallllly lazy recently and have just been dumping AFR into the top-off at a rate of "a glug of the bottle once in awhile". My hope is to fix that problem by going down the auto-tester route, they're just really expensive. I also don't like the idea of a Trident where I'm locked into the Apex ecosystem, but the alternatives seem even more expensive. If I could find a deal on a Mastertronic or Alkatronic I'd likely pick one up once funds allow.

Big change is my wife de-glossy-white-box'ified the stand, using some stick on paper (effectively wallpaper) to change the style of the stand. I think it turned out really well, and looks far better in our house than a big white glossy box.

I also got a label maker for Christmas, which has given me faaaarrr too much joy. Every time I see this it makes me happy:

 

[Darkxerox]

Ok I really like that wallpaper idea! The label maker will save you so many headaches down the line too and make it so much easier for other people to troubleshoot when you're out of town.

 

[richiev]

Ok I really like that wallpaper idea! The label maker will save you so many headaches down the line too and make it so much easier for other people to troubleshoot when you're out of town.

They really are shockingly wonderful. I put a label on every outlet, another on every power cord, and I synched the outlet name up with my smart devices. A plug has a "return" tag on it, the outlet it plugs into has a "return" label, and in Kasa/Google it's labeled "return". Took a bit of setup, but removed so much confusion for me. Also made it really easy to unplug things and get it all back to where I wanted.

 

[Arvin R]

I'm hoping to setup my KH Gaurdian today. I'll keep you in the loop on my experience with it. By far the cheapest automated alk monitoring solution from what I found.

 

[PizzaOven]

Love the wallpaper wrapped stand! I think it looks great.

 

[richiev]

Continues to be the easiest tank I've ever had. I don't know what of the things I did set this up for success, but it's shockingly hands free and everything is growing well.

All the rock is super clean, likely from the urchins. The one downside is they're preventing coraline from taking hold. There's a lot of changing coraline on crevices they can't get at, but the rock is clear. I'm ok with that though. I am not overly fixated on purple rock.

My nitrates are a bit low (N=2, P=0.2). That's with some seachem phosguard in a bag in the sump. I think my rock absorbed a lot of phosphate when I cooked it. Lesson learned. I'll replace the phosguard with my phosphate reactor once I bother setting it up.

 

[Don.Julio91]

I can see less is more in your tank!! Looks brilliant, awesome tank. Can’t wait to see coral growth over time.

 

[richiev]

A couple new pics from just now. I think the tree in the background is throwing off the camera, because I can't get a non blurry picture. Oh well.

Had ups and downs, but currently on an up.

Recent changes include adding a second ap9x that I bought awhile ago used but hadn't put on it. I also ditched the steel support bar I was using and instead hung the lights from the ceiling.

I hung the lights with monofilament fishing line and it looks wonderful actually. I don't know why I didn't think of this before, and I don't know why this isn't the norm. It's a bit of a pita to get it pretty level and straight, and any bump of the cord is liable to make me need to readjust, but aesthetically it's great. Right now at night it looks like the lights are just floating.

I'm also tapped out fish wise, having added a small magnificent foxface. I was afraid he was going to get bullied, so I first fattened him up for a month in a separate tank, but there wasn't no aggression issues at all. I'm hoping he's going to take out the bubble algae I have. I had him eating it in the other tank, but not sure in here yet.

Pics taken with a Pixel 7, with no intentional software filters, but I did use an orange lens.

One weird thing is all my RBTAs have shrunk shrunk shrunk to almost nothing. The only thing I can guess is it's the shrooms creating chemical hell. I keep meaning to remove some, but it's a pita and don't want to bother. I'm also not super sold on the anemones anyway, so I figure it's fine. Running carbon in a reactor though.

Also I need to transfer a bunch of coral from my frag tank, but I'm lazy. At some point I'll probably rip out the GSP rock and put in this nice big rock I have, and go sps on that side, but I really like the GSP, so maybe I won't.

 

[Darkxerox]

Which orange lens are you using for your Pixel? I still haven't figured out the best way to do it with the row of cameras.

 

[richiev]

Been awhile. Here's a shot from this morning. White balance but no other changes.

Still in prep mode for leaving the area for a couple weeks. Trying to get everything ready.

This tank is very hands off at the moment, so I'm hopefully everything will survive without me around. I'm not counting on it though.

Most recent additions:
* An EcoFlow battery backup setup. I think around 2kW. Should be able to run the most essentials for a good part of a day. That should be more than enough for someone to connect an extension cord to my EV to the ecoflows, which should give me backup for nearly a week including lights and heater
* Some quarantined anthias to round out my school of them. Fixed an issue where my school was an accidental mixmash of two different types
* Awhile ago I added a Magnificent Foxface which I love. They're so good at eating algae.

I use a cheap auto feeder from Amazon with a mix of TDO small and medium. Also feed mysis and/or nori; not daily, but frequently.

Water changes maybe every other week. 2-part and All-for-reef are the dosing elements.

Equipment control is mostly smart home stuff at this point. Kasa strips + some diy esp32 sensors and ESPhome / Home Assistant.

My skimmer I have running but I have the drain dump straight back into the sump, so it's just aeration. Sump has a fuge with a ton of Xenia and macro. Still running a carbon + gfo reactor.

 

[richiev]

Today's shot post cleanup:

 

[richiev]

Some updated pics from today. Things are again growing very well. No known pests, unless you count a small amount of asterina starfish. I do have an ongoing issue with algae on the sand bed, possibly due to low flow on the far side. However I'm unwilling to add powerheads and cords on the far side, so I'm generally living with occasionally sucking out the top layer of sand.

Only other recent change is I added more live rock on the back wall, to allow me to add more SPS higher and closer to the light.

Currently is a very low maintenance tank.

Pictures with a pixel 9 pro with a manual white balance adjustment in the camera settings, and no other changes besides cropping.

Video version:

 

[finalphaze987]

Tank looks great! How are those gyres on the end holding up for you?