tribbitt's '25 budget build

June update:

Tester acro frag has not died, but isn't thriving either. I put it in just for curiosity sake. Somehow birdsnest is unhappy though - I think it's overlit

Corals added:
Blastomussa colony - bought 2 colonies long long ago for $60, this is a grown out chunk of one of them. I can add for $30?
Tequila sunrise - DBTC
Micro alveopora - Added another piece, moved from main tank for space reasons. Frags available in dbtc if anyone wants some
Koji wada - from swap
Pavona - from different, old swap
Rainbow yuma - from differenter, older swap. Super available within the club, super robust and nice colors

Plopped in frag rack from my display since it has some dove snail eggs. Not sure if they're viable, since I've seen many eggs but no babies, but we will see


And the star of this update: baby clown from @Kensington Reefer. Jokingly called "kensington headphone" morph. Little guy has paired up with the black storm

This is when they were separated while they meet each other
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And when they paired up in the fox coral
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Late july update


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Not much new to report. Put in some DBTC things, and a few frags from the main tank that spilled over

Clownfish having relationship issues, male is sleeping on the zoas and not allowed in the fox coral for the time being. Both are eating and very healthy

Hammer has been pale but growing, wonder if there’s a hotspot of light
 
tribbitt said:
Late july update


View attachment 71780

Not much new to report. Put in some DBTC things, and a few frags from the main tank that spilled over

Clownfish having relationship issues, male is sleeping on the zoas and not allowed in the fox coral for the time being. Both are eating and very healthy

Hammer has been pale but growing, wonder if there’s a hotspot of light
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More like early August
 
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It has been a long while since I’ve updated this thread

Black Storm clown in jail while the headphones clown gets used to having space. Will be reintroduced after some time

Blastomussa colony moved into main tank (-30)
Alveopora colony moved into this tank (+30) - it got bullied in the 20g by my overzealous clowns
Added a frag of frogspawn
Added a frag of peach hammer
Added colony of pocillopora from swap
Added a bunch of frags of overflowing sunkist bounce from main tank since they just won't fit
Added the chopped-off base of my branching cyphastrea from main tank

Ignore all the misc frags in front, those are there temporarily. Won't be that messy for long.

I want to add sand to this aquarium... I think it'd be a huge help towards more stable parameters.
 
I've started wondering about a possible college tank. Maybe I'll do a small magnifica tank with a pair of clownfish - simple and no calcifying organisms. Or something else... who knows
 
Chucked in a gold hammer to fill upper rock. It was a trade for some frags of zoas from this tank. Added a torch, manila spy, and some rock flowers from frag swap.

Clowns still arguing. Seems to be no torn fins, nothing physically wrong but they dart at each other every so often. I'm thinking about separating them permanently or rehoming one. They've been battling near the fox coral, which seems to have irritated it, so I've moved it to a spot in my other tank. Hopefully, it recovers.

Haven't spent money on this tank recently, but here's what's gone in and out of it (off the top of my head)
+ war coral (thank you popper!)
+ 2x rock flower (swap)
+ manila spy (swap)
+ hammer (trade)
+ torch (swap)
+ cloudberries chalice: moved from main tank, also originally from swap
+ some tiny carpet anemones from main tank
- fox coral (to main tank)

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derek_SR said:
Cloudberry looks nice, I think I cooked mine. How much PAR is going in there?
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It was in my main tank for quite a while before going in here a couple months ago. I've got no clue what kind of light it's been receiving. I know at one point it was receiving 400 par, and at another point it was under a ledge. It's never really changed color for me: never rainbowy but never super bland either.
 
Darkxerox said:
@tribbitt what's your maintenance schedule? Manual top off too? Everything looks great!
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Hardly maintaining anything. Water change with water from main tank, manual top off, no dosing

I think relying on water changes for mineral replenishment is reaching the limit of what can be kept. Growth in this tank is quite slow, and I think this is due to low Ca and alkalinity especially since I added more stony coral
 
Final update

Total Cost: $75

Overall, this was an interesting experience. I think given some more attention, this could have become a nice tank, but I ended up getting only mediocre growth, and only really succeeded at keeping things alive instead of thriving. In my opinion, this comes down to the mineral demands of the stony corals I put in this tank, and the fact that I never set up an automatic dosing system.

On the other hand, this gives me more data in my recommendations to beginners: my main tank took an unreasonable amount of work that is harder to relate to someone who wants "low-maintenance", whereas this one I mostly let go. Even being pretty careless, things did surprisingly well.


Issues I encountered:
- I had few herbivores to handle algae, so it accumulates faster than the main tank. I do have to clean it occasionally.
- I did not install extra flow. Some corals enjoyed that, other corals definitely are stunted due to it.
- Coral growth is very limited: both mineral demands and flow requirements were not always met, and corals across the board grew, but not much (between 1/3 - 2/3 of the monthly % growth in my 20, approximated by eye).
- Equipment was a little fiddly, light was slightly underpowered. It does fine, but could do with more oomph
- some brown planarians

Surprising positives I encountered:
- Corals really didn't care about much. I had large salinity swings from when I forgot to top up, or added mineral supplements "in bulk" and the corals did not seem to notice. I'm sure it didn't encourage rapid growth, but they were resilient!
- Extremely low maintenance. I tested the water 0 times in total, and after a year the tank is still standing.
- Very low cost
- It kind of ended up as a frag tank, with all the corals I couldn't fit in the main tank being moved over.
- Some SPS survived: Jake's Manila Spy M. carinata is trucking along, as well as some other montis, a blue ridge coral, and a C. decadia. Plenty of LPS did pretty well too

Things I could have done better:
- Added sand
- Some kind of automated dosing
- Add flow
- Maybe go for a more unique style, a small biotope-style tank to utilize the small tank size in order to highlight a cool ecological interaction, instead of "reef tank but small".


Sorry about crummy photos! Just wanted to snap some pics to update.

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