Neptune Aquatics

Thesassyindian's 13.5 gallon m̶o̶n̶e̶y̶ ̶p̶i̶t̶ nano mixed reef

Alright folks! Verbose post alert!
Lots of things changed this past week :)

TL;DR: Got a RBTA, made an anemone guard and a frag rack.

First, my long wait for a BTA finally paid off! Both @toutou2469 and I got small splits from @Yuk SUm ! Thank you!
Here it is during the drip acclimation:
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After adding it to the tank, it turned into whatever this is:
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Freaked me out, but eventually, it settled in :)
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It has since moved tot he leeward side of the tank - uggh!

Next, I had to remove my Jebao SOW-4 wavemaker from my tank because i had read horror stories of anemones getting minced into anemone juice and crashing entire tanks.

To solve this, I designed a guard for my wavemaker in SolidWorks:
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And Boom! Took it out of the printer this morning, and added the wavemaker back to my tank this evening. Quite pleased with the results:
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This week will bring more changes to my tank. I'll be picking up two frags from @Solitaryensis and @Mike Yasin in the next few days.

To acclimatize and grow these frags, I needed a frag rack. After some Amazon-fu, i decided that the COTS versions were a little too expensive for what they were.

Well, luckily, I have access to a full industrial machine shop (same place i printed the anemone guard above).
Took a few minutes to stay back after work for some personal projects, which my workplace very kindly encourages.

Found out that our laser cutter was damaged and non-functional. Our trusty manual mill stepped up to the task!

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About 15 minutes later, I had a functional frag rack!
Here it is, in my tank, catering to a green birdsnest from @Corallus , that isn't doing too well:
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Now, im all set for the new frags coming in this week! Woohoo!
 
That frag rack is awesome. I can’t tell if the frag has a plug in one of the spots on the rack or not, if it doesn’t be careful since a snail can bullishly knock it off and down to the sand
 
PS: I really, really hope the anemone guard works. I don’t want a nem juice induced crash.

Also, special props to my mag float for holding my frag rack up!
 
That frag rack is awesome. I can’t tell if the frag has a plug in one of the spots on the rack or not, if it doesn’t be careful since a snail can bullishly knock it off and down to the sand
Good eye! @max_nano , it doesn’t have the plug.
I chopped it off since I wanted to keep it on the sand bed. It was just resting on the rack in that picture.

I have now glued the plug bottom back to it and placed it securely in one of the slots.
 
Nice job with the powerhead guard, thanks again @thesassyindian for helping me picking up the RBTA.
Mine hasn't move much, hopefully it doesn't become Nem juice.
I don't have a guard for it.

Sent from my ONEPLUS A6013 using Tapatalk
 
You’re going to put the birds nest on the sand?
Only during the acclimation phase.
It was high up on my rocks, about 4in below the water surface, for the first couple of days.

I thought it was bleaching due to my light, so moved It to the sand for a few days. Still pretty pale. Any pointers?
 
Only during the acclimation phase.
It was high up on my rocks, about 4in below the water surface, for the first couple of days.

I thought it was bleaching due to my light, so moved It to the sand for a few days. Still pretty pale. Any pointers?
What light are you using?
What light did it come from?
Try to match where it came from.
 
Your alk being 9.5 is also likely higher than the tank it came from so that may have had an impact, but I’m not sure how much of an impact it would be.
 
I’ve actually been running halides since the beginning of the year. Prior to that, led-t5. I wonder - my NO3 tends to run around 25, so fairly high by most standards. Maybe it’s getting used to your clean water?
 
I’ve actually been running halides since the beginning of the year. Prior to that, led-t5. I wonder - my NO3 tends to run around 25, so fairly high by most standards. Maybe it’s getting used to your clean water?

That could be it - my nitrates are between 8-12 (Red Sea). I've moved it half way up my tank yesterday - hopefully it will recover soon.
 
This week's update!

The RBTA has settled in facing the front of the tank after spending a few days looking out of the leeward side. Phew!
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Also, thanks to @Mike Yasin for his generosity, I added a pink tip frogspawn to the tank, that seems to have taken very well to the water params in my tank :)
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Also, these pictures are courtesy of an an awesome coral photo filter clip from @Rostato. They do get rid of a lot of the blue hue.
Here are a few more.
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Oh! And given the state of the air quality in the Bay Area right now, and we are huge fans of keeping our windows open, I added a new alert system to my Temperature monitor.
It now monitors the AQI, and sends me an alert on my phone and sounds an audible beep at home to remind us to close the windows, when it goes above 50.

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I'll post a better picture soon :)

Lastly, I did a water change last evening, and I thought the tank looked nice this morning.
Its not a particularly big tank, but its mine, and I'm proud of it :)
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