Oelyk

I had a ton of fun! Thanks for hosting Brittany! Your tank is amazing! The tour was super special as well!

Where did you pick it up? It looks nice! I really enjoy blastos, but I cant seem to dissuade the hermits from treating them like a feeding bowl.

I'll be in Fort Worth visiting friends, in addition to seeing the eclipse! I didn't get to see totality because I was traveling in norther Washington in 2017, so I'm excited for this one!

I've confirmed I'm able to be there and am super hyped! I'm looking forward to it!

Hi all, My last post was when I first introduced a single clownfish back in October, and a lot has happened since then! I've recently come upon a dilemma that I would like a more experienced opinion on, and I figured I could give an update at the same time. First off, I got corals! I want to thank @Blue Z Reef for getting me started with some gorgeous corals! The frogspawn has split and is currently my mom's favorite in the tank. I also partook in Cuttlefish and Coral's mystery boxes and got some amazing LPS and softies! My favorite coral has to be Justin's green goniopora, provided by @Lexinverts in the last club meeting! Thank you again! Something about seeing the long polyps sway in the flow is so hypnotizing and relaxing! I also got some tankmates for my sole clown around mid-January! A second clown and a court jester goby, both from Seahorse. The former being where my problem pertains to unfortunately, but I'll save that for the end. There is also supposed to be a peppermimt shrimp, as I have managed to pick up aptasia somehow, but I have not seen it since I added it to the tank. Hoping it is just hiding! Unless anything unfortunate happens, this is my stopping point for fish in the little 11 gallon nano. My struggles with water parameters does make me wish I started with a larger tank, but I don't really have the room to fit anything much larger with my current living situation. I will say it's been super tempting looking at all the amazing tanks in the classified forums! I've been trying to pedal some of those to my coworkers/family to get them into reef keeping, with little success unfortunately. Back to water parameters, I have had problems from the get-go with low nitrates and that hasn't gone away. More fish have been added as previously mentioned and I have been feeding more frozen foods in an attempt to raise nitrates with minimal success. I'm hoping as the tank matures this issue goes away. I know I added coral a little ambitiously, so it might be like Target on Black Friday for loose nitrates. All the other water chemistry issues stemmed from my mistake when I left the ATO on during a waterchange and only realized half-way through. I won't soon make that mistake again, live and learn. I immediately performed a second larger water change until the salinity returned to 1.025 approximately. Alas, the damage was done and I was going to struggle for weeks from a 2 minute lapse in attemtion. Luckily it wasn't fatal to any of the corals! Since then I struggled with low magnesium and calcium and have been manually dosing to get those back to healthy levels, which only recently have been quite robust. I was using All for Reef initially, which I thought would be a good idea as I was lacking in the big three, but it blew up my alkalinity to 12 dKH(without nitrates in supply) without raising calcium and magnesium. This upset the pink goni and it wouldn't open for a couple of weeks. I have then switched to Seachem magnesium and calcium and have found success with those. Another issue that arose around the time of the ATO fiasco was that my phosphates blew up. I had started adding reefroids twice a week for the pink goni and I believe that was the initial cause of the explosion. I was measuring 0.02-0.04 ppm and now I've been consistently testing 0.13-0.19 ppm range using the Hanna ULR kit. The goni wasn't having a good reaction to the food, so I've since stopped adding it. My alternative is I started adding an amino and trace element solution and the pink goni reacts very well! Often opening up even in the evening when the light is down low just to feed! Despite stopping the reef roids, the phosphate levels stayed elevated, even when I have been perpetually running Chemipure Blue in my filtration. High phosphates in combination with low nitrates meant my tank became overgrown with blue-green cyanobacteria. It matted over the sandbed and I'm still struggling with it today. I experimented with dosing hydrogen peroxide(with little success), and am now trying Seachem Phosgaurd to try and pull the reins in on my runaway phosphates, hoping to make other bacteria competitive. So currently parameters looks good except for nitrates and phosphates, and despite my mistakes the corals have beeing growing very consistently, I can see baby polyps on all the LPS, the Zoas have taken off, and even the mushrooms are growing larger and some are splitting! My current issue lies in the smaller clown, who I thought was getting along with the larger initial clown but is now showing some white spots on its body. See images below. The larger clown is the dominant clown and shows some aggresion, but from what I can tell nothing beyond play biting and competing at feeding time. I also saw them bite the green goni as I wrote this, and I'm none too pleased. Regarding the white spot developement, I don't know if this is Ich or Brook, or just small bites. The gills and eyes are clear which is why I hesitate. I have a 5 gallon tank I can use for QT but I need more equipment before setting that up and wanted advice before launching my weekend reef project. Any opinions and advice are appreciated!

Looks amazing! What kind of camera do you use to get that level of quality?

I am a Supporting Member.

The tank cycled rather quickly using live rock/sand plus quickstart/ammonia, so I've added my first friend! I apologize for the image quality, I'lI need to research what apps to use to get better pictures. Hoping he'll help keep the bacterial filter growing as I try to find a PAR meter to rent. I ended up following the recommendations here and got the Smatfarm 95w, it's very nice! If anyone knows a good app on android for taking photos, I would love to hear about it!

I'm excited to be there!

Does smatfarm have good lights? I was actually looking at the new 60W G3 that looked perfect but I couldn't find any real reviews. What kind of filtration would you recommend? the AOI comes with a sock, which I was told you can clean ever 1-2 days, but I also wasn't planning to have many fish.

That would be amazing, I'll be sure to contact you once my tank is coral ready!

I'm a complete newbie to the hobby but I finally decided to pull the trigger and create my own reef tank! I'm not totally sure what I'm doing but I'm learning new things every day. It's just been a ton of fun talking to the LFS's and attending the event at Cuttlefish and Coral last month(I didn't win any raffles unfortunately). I decided to go with a 15 Gallon AOI by Innovative marine and hope to fill it with bright and vibrant corals someday. I'm still looking for some components(If you got a used AI Prime or similar you're willing to part with, I'm looking to buy one!) but I'm super excited to set the tank up and start learning!

I sent a pm. I forgot to include contact information, but let me know of this is still available!