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Jumping in Again

MadReefer

Staff member
NJRC Member
Moderator
In true forum user fashion I asked the question first then did the research. I saw both of these as well as a few instances of people saying to sew it onto a pice of rubble (pierce the foot with a needle/thread, legit sew it on) but knowing how big a PITA mushroom can be I'm not sure how effective that is.

I have a bunch of seedling cups from my planted tank that I can put it in with some rubble and then mesh over the top. Hopefully that'll work.
Just make sure you have holes along the side of the cup for water flow.
 

Squirrel

NJRC Member
I got back from a 3 day business trip tonight and unfortunately I lost all of the heads of my bicolor hammers. It also appears that most of the other corals are less than pleased right now so first thing in the morning I will be doing a big water change and starting to set up my 40g so that I can begin to move things over.

Total bummer. I liked those.

20230908_213126.jpg
 

Squirrel

NJRC Member
I tested my water as advised and nothing was off other than the salinity being high (1.028) due to evap and not having an ATO. I did the water change and everything I had left seemed to come back nice and happy.

Fast forward to this morning and I'm watching the tank and I see the bicolor blenny swim over to my gold hammer (the only one that survived) and take a chomp right out of it! Now I think I have an idea of what might have happened to the other hammers. Before I left for my trip I saw him go over and nibble on some stuff that I assumed was just a little algae on the skeleton of the hammers, oddly one of the heads was dead when I woke up in the morning but I figured that I might have just beat it up with the flow being to intense. Now I'm thinking that I got a little jerk of a bicolor and the corals were lost primarily due to him.

I set up my Nuvo 40 today and sequestered the blenny and cleaner shrimp to the larger tank and I'm going to leave the 10g as a little coral only qt tank. I'm thinking I might look at rehoming the bicolor or taking him back to the store and swapping him out for something a little safer.

The Nuvo 40 is running an XR30 G4 and the MP10QD. I'd like to get it ready to start moving some corals over to it in the near future.

20230911_151809.jpg
 
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Squirrel

NJRC Member
Well I decided to make a few changes. I moved the corals over to the 40g and moved the blenny to the 10g and am going to run it as a small macro algae tank.

20230911_163020.jpg 20230911_161927.jpg
 

Squirrel

NJRC Member
It's been a good couple of days. I'm happy with where the two tanks are for the moment so now it's hands out for a while.

I installed an ATO on both tanks so I won't have to worry about evap issues. I think I have placement down for the corals, they all seem happy (other than the GSP which I'm pretty bummed about). I added some more live rock to the 40 and some more macro to the 10. I'm excited to see how stuff starts to grow in.

The only water quality issue I'm having current is that my Alk is at 15. Could this be because I used some old salt to set these up?

20230915_183849.jpg

The picture of the 10g tank was horribly washed out with blue so I tried to make it somewhat meh.

20230915_185047.jpg
 
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myrjon

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Raise up calcium a little like 450 and all will drop these 2 elements act as a see saw. Up and down.
 
I tested my water as advised and nothing was off other than the salinity being high (1.028) due to evap and not having an ATO. I did the water change and everything I had left seemed to come back nice and happy.

Fast forward to this morning and I'm watching the tank and I see the bicolor blenny swim over to my gold hammer (the only one that survived) and take a chomp right out of it! Now I think I have an idea of what might have happened to the other hammers. Before I left for my trip I saw him go over and nibble on some stuff that I assumed was just a little algae on the skeleton of the hammers, oddly one of the heads was dead when I woke up in the morning but I figured that I might have just beat it up with the flow being to intense. Now I'm thinking that I got a little jerk of a bicolor and the corals were lost primarily due to him.

I set up my Nuvo 40 today and sequestered the blenny and cleaner shrimp to the larger tank and I'm going to leave the 10g as a little coral only qt tank. I'm thinking I might look at rehoming the bicolor or taking him back to the store and swapping him out for something a little safer.

The Nuvo 40 is running an XR30 G4 and the MP10QD. I'd like to get it ready to start moving some corals over to it in the near future.

View attachment 52534
My bi color was killing corals for a year before I realized it was him , I ended up keeping him and just adjusting what corals and where I put them. Algae, starry and tailspot blennies are more reef safe if you're looking to trade him in.
 

Squirrel

NJRC Member
Raise up calcium a little like 450 and all will drop these 2 elements act as a see saw. Up and down.
Calcium this morning was at 360 so I started dosing reef complete. I'll continue to dose and test over the next few days to get my parameters leveled out.
My bi color was killing corals for a year before I realized it was him , I ended up keeping him and just adjusting what corals and where I put them. Algae, starry and tailspot blennies are more reef safe if you're looking to trade him in.
I decided to keep him. He's a cool little dude, just a bad taste in meals. He's now living in my 10g macro algae / soft coral tank.
 

Squirrel

NJRC Member
I got a few new corals today. The tank is doing good, my Ca is now up around 430 and Alk is at 11. There are some diatoms in the tank which I was expecting, part of the process.

I'm 99% sure this tank will stay a softy and LPS tank for the long run. I've never had any real interest in SPS (I find them kind of boring to look at. Beautiful, but boring). In a slightly different thread of events I've started playing around with planning out getting my bigger tanks set up. It'll take a while and I have to get a decent amount of equipment but if it all works out then I think it'll be pretty cool.

Time for the pictures. I really need to get one of the filters for my phone so more of the true colors can be seen.

20230921_120052.jpg 20230921_151053.jpg 20230921_151032.jpg

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20230921_151020.jpg
 

myrjon

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Ca looks good , just keep stable.
On iPhones this app works great.
 

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Mark_C

Staff member
Officer Emeritus
NJRC Member
Moderator
Lookin good. Watch the cleaner shrimp as well, he may be the culprit and the blenny may be opportunistic eating.
I was losing my hammers and couldn't figure it out. Looked in the tank one day and saw this...

<a href="
">via GIPHY</a>
 

Squirrel

NJRC Member

Lookin good. Watch the cleaner shrimp as well, he may be the culprit and the blenny may be opportunistic eating.
I was losing my hammers and couldn't figure it out. Looked in the tank one day and saw this...

<a href="
">via GIPHY</a>
Good to know. I haven't seen him mess with any of them but I will be on the lookout. He might be banished to the smaller tank too if I see anything suspect. Thanks for the heads up!
 

Squirrel

NJRC Member
I've been worried so for my own peace of mind I moved the cleaner shrimp to the 10g yesterday . He adjusted well and is currently annoying the Blenny.

On a separate note, I was given a Red Sea Reefer 350 that had split on the top half of the front seams. I joyfully took it thinking "it won't be super hard to rebuild this"... I now realize I bit off a much harder project than I bargained for.

So far I've stripped all the silicone from the glass and attempted to put it back together twice. Here is how it currently sits, again.

20230815_103615.jpg

Any advice on how to get this done a bit easier would be amazing.
 
Glass has to be super clean, and you can make wood jigs to hold the panels square, use a tiny needle for spacing. The king of diy on YouTube has done a bunch of tutorials on it. And this dude built a glass tank with pretty clear instructions if I remember correctly

 

Squirrel

NJRC Member
Glass has to be super clean, and you can make wood jigs to hold the panels square, use a tiny needle for spacing. The king of diy on YouTube has done a bunch of tutorials on it. And this dude built a glass tank with pretty clear instructions if I remember correctly
I've never seen that video before, nor any of his videos actually. Definitely pretty clear instructions and made a few suggestions I'm going to have to try. I appreciate the share.
 
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