ERIC'S REEFING ADVENTURE

[erics210]

Yes. That was a huge day of raffles.

Won one of Ray's anemone, the duncan colony, a Battle Coral Seasons Greetings, a small Jason Fox burning banana, OH and one of Marcus' Corky Gorgonia. While they havent grown as awesome as his are in his tank, They have attached to the rockwork and are part of the scape now...
Had issues in the anemone tank so all are gone but the original I have had for a couple years in the top left of my display. Only thing I killed outright was the extra large blue hydrphora(but he kept stinging everyone anyway, so maybe not the worst thing to lose.

 

[deepblue68]

I enjoyed the chronicle of your past aquarium setups ! You had some cool tanks.how is the new system going?

 

[erics210]

I enjoyed the chronicle of your past aquarium setups ! You had some cool tanks.how is the new system going?

Man. It was a project to find pics and document the older setups to get me caught up. This will be a line in the sand for the current tank.
Summary I have had my ups and downs with the current tank.
October/November lost a bunch of coral due to a escalated ALk. But had an enlightenment Thanksgiving Week.
Changed Salts.
Got my parameters dialed in, been showing since then and keeping a steady 9.0alk, 440 calcium and mag tested weekly at 1250.

Will be posting some updates shortly.

 

[erics210]

So my Red Sea was picked up on November 10, 2019.
So 2 years 3 months!
Havent updated in a year and was a year behind on the Red Sea s500 to begin with!

 

[erics210]

I got a cool rimless frag tank from SumpNFishy. Initially I had it as a stand along tank next to the Red Sea s500, but decided to tie them together.
Here are some pictures of the frag tank. It became an extension of the display in reality.

 

[erics210]

Looking back to November 2019, I had a huge Green Pavano (Potato Chip coral) It was dying. just a few little lingering specs of life.

This is that same Pavano this week.

 

[erics210]

As far as the main display, I havent taken a super recent full tank shot.
This one isnt too long ago, but definately have some changes since this shot.
Will add some new shots very soon.

 

[erics210]

Newest battle is that of Phosphates/Nitrates.

I had posted this in an SPS question NJTaxMan brought up.

I have a red sea s500 max tied in with a 35 gallon frag tank.
They both go into the stock sump under the red sea.
I have BRS 5 stage RODI and maintain the filters religiously. March 1st is my next scheduled change of all filters but membrane. I do 20-30 gallon water changes just about every week. Sometimes stuff happens and gets pushed back a few days.
Tested phosphates in my fresh salt bin that I have NOT cleaned the past couple salt mixes. Usually I rinse out and start fresh with the rinsed out cleaned bin.
Phosphates tested at 0.02.

I have a reef octopus skimmer skimming constantly. May wanna start running more wet as takes week and a half to fill most of the way.
Small amount of cheato added recently. Haven't been able to grow cheato on a few recent tries. Zero algae in the tank!
COULD be from the tangs cleaning it up.

I am pretty good about the filter socks, usually 4-5 days, worst case when I do the water change.
No sand...so not a ton of place for detritus in the main display.
The frag tank does have a much lesser flow so get some in there. Suck in out during water changes.

Feed mixed pellets 2x a day, nori once, frozen maybe 2-3 to eat a week.

Do not currently run GFO/Carbon.

Run
1.025
8dkh
450
1350
And was using instant ocean r/c for like 4 years, switched to tropic Marin Pro, then couldn't find it, so went with fritz blue and instant ocean combination till I use the last of IO. Then will stay with fritz blue.

Soooo.
I THINK I figured out where my phosphates came from.
I have always had a couple small tanks without sumps across the room from my main display. They get a bit neglected compared to the main tank.
So one day about 2 years ago I had a bright idea to drain the water from the small tank down from the tank on the stand, into a filter sock in my main tanks sump. And I would run a small pump from the sump back to the small tank. While doing this I would wipe the glass, suck up any loose algaes and any detritus build up into the filter socks. Most of the time I had 2 small All in Mones I would do this for.
The smaller tank was happier because I would physically clean it up and as it basically got a mineral transfusion to sustain its life!

I would THEN do a 20-30 gallon water change on the Main Display and joined frag tank.
Down side, because I was using API test kits until this Thanksgiving. When I tested phosphates and Nitrates, the stuff would ready very low. Nitrates were actually reading zero. So was dosing NeoNitro prior to getting my Hanna test kits.

I first bought the Hanna Phosphates ULR tester.
Tested. Got an error. Tested again, Same thing.
Gave my friend who stopped by a sample of my water, he also got an error. Said my phosphates were probably higher that the 0.10

Ordered the Hanna HR Phosphates tester a week later.
SURPRISE!!!
1.63

Been trying several options to bring them down. And my battle continues. I have had hugh phosphates for suck a long time I do not want to do anything too drastic as they have gotten acclimated to these higher levels. But slowly bringing them down with various methods of attack.
Last tested at 1.19

The 2 Cubes I have are both at 2.50, but no more draining to the main display. they get their own fresh water changes to focus on their nutrients reduction.
Hanna phosphates.

Morning of 2/15 8:00am....1.12 phosphates. Slow and steady.

 

[erics210]

Today was a fun one.
I usually fill my 30 gallon brute, and do 20 gallon change on main system and 5 on each smaller tank.
Today I decided all 30 of the main tank.
Generally just drain the sump for water changes (about 20 gallons), and refill sump and hit pump on.
As the sump ws draining with the phython...I preparred the hose for the refill. Put in place in the sump, but did not turn on that pump.

While the sump drained I removed 5 gallons into a jug from both the main display and attached frag tank as I siphoned some debris.
All done, I dumped that 10 gallons down the toilet and removed the python drain line. but still was hearing water.
Hmmmm.

Damn fresh salt mix had created a siphon on its own and was draining directly intop the sump. The sump I was DRAINING!!!

So, I go to turn on the fill pump and I lost about 10 gallons of the planned 30 gallon water change.
I pulled the water fromt he ATO to make up most of the difference, but as it was filling I had to turn the frag return pump on and off a few times. BOOM. Blew the motor. DEAD! So I get in there to replace the dead motor, and of course, knock my damn refugium light into the sump.
Recovered it quickly, BUT even with all my efforts- DEAD!

I am just hoping I wake up tomorrow and do not see any live stok dead after all this. Was a waterchange day from hell I tell you.

 

[erics210]

sooo. things seemed fine yesterday, but today, have a seasons greetings browing a little, a chalice getting lighter in color and a few other SPS more faded colors that normal. I had added carbon yesterday,

could THAT have made the water clearer and result in more instense lighting?
should I turn the lights off?

I removed the carbon.

Parameters
78 degrees, 1.025 salinity
Alk-8.3
Calcium 460
Maginesim 1360
phosphates 0.88
Nitrates 25

will grab pics of the corals at lunch.

 

[erics210]

My SPS as well as some LPS have taken a hit. I am holding off on giving a final verdict until the attack on my system is resolved. In Day 6 of full tank Cipro treatment.
Probably going to have to go to day 10 as I thought I was out of the woods yesterday when my torches were hit and BJD.

No Frag Farmers Market for me this weekend.

So sad right now.

Even my cool Corky Gorgonia took a hit. @Trio91 they had a good run.

 

[erics210]

Finally found this post. Will be bookmarking and updating soon.

 

[erics210]

I have lots of stuff to post since this last update. And I know I tell the story of my perfect storm and the resulting tank crash. Glad I documented it real time!!!
It did crash. Lost everything almost coral wise. No fish affected.
Lost huge Hollywood stunner and red cap colonies, many many different cool montipora like beach bum king Pao, rising phoenix, slow burn, season greetings, mystic sunset, and a few others I can’t think of at the moment. Lost 140 heads of Euphyllia including Several awesome torches -Gold Dragon souls-NYMnicks, 50 frogspawn heads, all kinds of cool Octospawn and variations of colors and. And at one point had 150 different zoas. Now I have like 4 or 5.

That February 22nd 2022 ALMOST ended my Reefing journey. I did so much to save a few corals and still kept losing stuff. It was so sad. Looking back I should have made up a new tank with fresh mix and tossed all the corals into it like a hospital tank.

I basically turned the lights off for a week and stopped checking on it. It hurt soooo bad. Then a week later…. Light schedule back on but no improvement.
A few months went by with just topping off.
I had basically thrown in the towel but not even enough care to make it official. It was devistating.

I did have one other 30 gallon cube at the time but just a leather and some clowns.
And that tank would surely be sold off too
As soon as I had the courage to pull the plug.

Not sure I have pictures of the devistation. May still have a bucket of dried corpse somewhere. Or I may have tossed them.

But here are a few pics pre- crash!

 

[erics210]

But on July 24, 2022…
As luck would have it something amazing happened!
I came home and in the JBJ were a hundred little baby clownfish.
100% unexpected!

I ran upstairs googled everything I could and tried scooping them out into a hastily made holding tank.
Anyone who knows clownfish breeding knows this wasn’t gonna end well.

all dead the next morning after spending 3 hours rescuing as many as I could from their main tank.

I spent the next week leaning all I could and buying hundreds of dollars of rotifers - rotifers seives and filtration system, their food… phytoplankton, all stages of clownfish larvae and fry foods.
And within a week I was on my way to successfully raising like 10 babies to morphing! A couple weeks later 50+. Then 75, then 100. It was awesome.

That moment reinvigorated me and the wonder of the hobby.

 

[erics210]

Getting the Rotifers and phytoplankton cultures running was a challenge. Kept crashing things.
Even gave Brine Shrimp a go!
Which also resulted in crashing the rotifers and phytoplankton.

Tried making my own hatch night Vassen Trap.
While it came out GREAT! I found better methods for collecting the larvae on hatch night.

 

[erics210]

Then I began a NEW phase of
Eric’s Reefing Adventure.

CLOWNNFISH!!!

I added several more pairs to create a Clownfish STABLE of pairs.

Grabbed about 10 of his 1st Generation Darwin babies that could produce Zombie Clownfish and a couple Heterogeneous Snowflakes that will produce Snow Zombies from Robert King who is keeper of 32 year old Wild caught Darwin(block and white) clowns.
A portion of the pairs off spring are Albino and instead of black and white you can see through their layers of skin and have red eyes and a smoky orange and white.

Pictured is the shot from Roberts home page and gallery below

 

[erics210]

A few of my pairs and a rack system I have been trying to get going.
In addition to the pairs in my display tanks I have the following for my
Breeding/Bonded pairs included:
Pair of Gold Stripe Maroons
Standard Occelaris x Snowflake Ocellaris
Pair of Frostbites Clownfish
Pair of LONGFIN Frostbite Clownfish
Frostbite x Black
Single Phantom Snowflake Clownfish(lost the mate when he unknowingly jumped when startled during top off) broke my heart a little.
*** 11 Robert King Clowns***
3 PAIRS of F1 Darwin
2 PAIR OF Heterozygous Snowflakes
And a single F1 Darwin.

 

[Boehmtown]

I have 2 of his clowns. Actual angels on earth. Very well acclimatized to humans. Never bite my hand or anything in the tank and seem overall much happier than a lot of the other clowns I've gotten.

 

[ericrodriguez]

Getting the Rotifers and phytoplankton cultures running was a challenge. Kept crashing things.
Even gave Brine Shrimp a go!
Which also resulted in crashing the rotifers and phytoplankton.

Tried making my own hatch night Vassen Trap.
While it came out GREAT! I found better methods for collecting the larvae on hatch night.

Nice so you selling phyto and rotifers that’s great!!

Plus fresh and saltwater at a great price!!
You are just a plus for this hobby man

 

[erics210]

More so maintaining RODI, fresh mixed Saltwater, Phytoplankton, some macro algae, and soon Rotifers again, for myself.
I only have one person who I assist with the stuff as needed. Others if they ask.
I do have phytoplankton and rotifers posted but don’t get lots of sales online.