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90 gallon budget reef

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Just starting this for myself mostly, as a place to document my progress and hopefully watch the reef come alive. Keep in mind all but one photo was taken under white led's only, my iPhone hates blue leds. Equipment would be a reef octo bh2000 hob skimmer, small pump going through 2 reactors, carbon and gfo, reef breeders photon 48, jebao rw-8 and wp-40, tune ato, two drews dosers for alk and calc, one brs dose for vodka dosing.

Full tank shot as of today.


Full tank shot with blue leds


And my fancy equipment setup (don't mind the wires, i got a nice used apex, i'm in the process of making everything as neat as i can get it down there, and putting some doors on the cabinet).


And now onto the corals, first up my ORA Borealis


Strawberry shortcake (rescue coral from another tank, i took it home and fragged any good pics, bunched them up and just waiting for them to grow into each other.


Red planet on the left of the rock, purple bonsai on the same right to the right, in the back to the right hydnophora, to the left of that a green stag that took a bit of a turn but is getting it's color back now and doing well again.


Next one i'm not positive what it is, I picked it up under the assumption it was a Vivid aquariums type strawberry shortcake, but i don't think i've seen its full coloring yet, and looks to be more of a tabling type acro so far just from the growth i've got.


Christmas Favia and in the back another type of green acro, looks brown in the photos, but has green corallites and when put in high light (he's a bit too low in my tank) the stem becomes a light color, blue greenish, and has blue growth tips.


Orange Digi


Duncan, there's a ponape birds nest above, color washed out and is starting to come back.


Deresa Clam, some darth maul play's to the right, setosa up top along with the long polyp leather


Maxima Clam


Birds of paradise and green cap


ORA Ice tort


Blue Sunset Milli


Pearlberry


ORA Hawkins
 

kschweer

Administrator
Staff member
Officer Emeritus
Moderator
Looking good man! Nice meeting you the other day.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Looks like a great start. What is the highest level you run the photon on?

At it's peak i believe around 78% blue, 38% white. I'm trying to creep the whites up a bit to get some other colors to start popping out.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
At it's peak i believe around 78% blue, 38% white. I'm trying to creep the whites up a bit to get some other colors to start popping out.

I should also mention the lights are 17 inches above the tank, 90 degree optics. The extra space means i don't bang my elbow and head on it like i did when it was only 10 or so inches above while doing maintenance.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Almost forgot, the unknown acro frag, i have no idea what it is yet, it's a pastel purple and bright green corallite tips.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Heres a better shot of my dosing setup under the tank, not too pretty, but gets the job done.


And a little toy i picked up in anticipation of what will be arriving this week.
 
nice start! make sure the maxima has something for it's foot to grab onto. they are not normally on the sand type clams in the wild.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
He's been in there for a year now through all the various mistakes I've made and still good, there's a rock under the sand he attached to. New toy came in yesterday, all hooked up, just having a few issues with a new ph probe, getting more calibration fluid so I'll see how that goes. So many things left to do with it, lol.

 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Well, its getting a bit more manageable and tidy underneath, i just need to make a couple doors now and i'll be set for a while with the stand.





 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
I really need something a bit prettier than a 5g bucket for top off but it'll do for now. Also need to do some cord management at this point, gotta get to lowes and pick up some stuff.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Well, after calibrating, getting new solution, recalibrating the ph probe, i found out my tank has been running at 7.63 ph during the day and 7.5 during the night, never thought to check it until i got an apex. i've got an air line running out my window now, hoping this will help. So far it's gone up .02 in the last half hour or so, sitting at 7.69. Something did always seem a bit off with the tank, i was getting decent growth but not great, and things seemed to be a bit stunted. might also be why my birds nest hate my tank, i guess i'll find out.
 

redfishbluefish

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
It's hard to believe your pH is that low.....unless you have a severe CO2 problem.

What salt are you using and do you do anything to maintain alk, calc and magnesium levels?
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Well, it's downstairs in a bilevel, which is pretty much a finished basement with not much air circulation down here so there probably is a air quality issue down there. All is at 9dkh right now, actually just turned off the dosers for now and letting it go back down then I'm going to adjust the dose, I like to keep it around 8. Calc is at 440, mag is high right now, not positive on the number but over 1500, it's coming down from a Kent tech m mag overdose to kill off the bryopsis. I use brs soda ash and calcium carbonate for dosing, I don't have to dose mag normally.
 

art13

Officer Emeritus
Officer Emeritus
Well, at 7.8 now and counting, i think the best decision i made was to get the apex light off of Brando instead of going with the JR, without it i would have never bought the probe and wouldn't have known i had a ph issue.
 
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