sublunary's RSR 250

[sublunary]

Starting a tank thread on a 6 month old tank feels weird. But here goes...

Me: Started reefing in 2009 with a 12 gallon AIO. (Had a login back then, locked myself out. shrug.) Fast forward through a lot of ups and downs, a couple of moves, a couple years with a 16 gallon, to late 2018, when I bought a house and a tank upgrade! Then fast forward again to Feb 2020, when I finally put something in that tank...

The Tank: Red Sea Reefer 250.
I found it so intimidating at first. There's so much water! There's plumbing! Every time I turn the return pump on or off, it sounds like a water fall and gives me a heart attack! But I've gotten used to it, and am over all enjoying the tank.


The Equipment: There's a lot of new things for me here. I'm running a skimmer for the first time. (Reef Octopus is good stuff.) I am using an Apex EL, and loving the controller life, even though I know I'm not using it to its full ability yet. I have a doser to set up, but I'm still building the courage...
Lights are AI Primes (I don't remember if the are 16 or HD or what). A PAR meter rental taught me I'm getting way less light that I thought, but I mostly want low to mid-light corals anyway, so that's fine.
Flow in the display comes from 2 IceCap gyres (1k and 2k with controller). I'm still not thrilled with my programming for them, partially because the Hydros app is less functional than the 1k controller box was. I need to tweak.


The Livestock: Ok, I admit it, the main plan for this tank is a pair of Biota mandarins. But we aren't even close to that yet...
I love small peaceful fish and shy inverts, so my goal is a peaceful community tank. I love gobies, (my prior tanks were only gobies and the occasional blenny), but I'm trying to branch out a bit this tank. My main rules are fish must be peaceful, and cannot get more than 3" long. And they must be available... fish shopping during pandemic is not easy.
For corals, I'm focused on mostly softies, gorgonians and LPS. I desperately want some montis, but have never been able to keep them, so that might never work out. Luckily I don't have much interest in SPS beyond them, because I'm sure I'd kill those too...

Pictures in next few posts...

 

[sublunary]

So my scape is a little weird. I started out wanting to do some cool tonga branch scape, but tonga is expensive and I ended up buying Caribsea belize branch rock, which is dense as all heck and HEAVY. So a lot of puzzle piecing with the marco rocks and stax ricks and shelf rocks I had collected got me here.

This is the end of March 2020. Cycle finished, corals from teh old Nuvo 16 moved over. The gorgonians I've had since 2017, the leather since 2015. There are 2 hermits in there that I think were also 2017.


Mid April. I added the expensive-but-awesome ClearView lid.


Late May. Added lock line and RFG nozzles to try and get some dead spots.


Late June


And a couple days ago in July

 

[sublunary]

Meet the fishes!

This is Jerkface, the Yellow Rose Goby, my only named fish.


Jerkface got their name because I originally had 2 shrimp gobies. Inspired by some other tanks I'd seen, I planned on a YRG and Yasha hase, each with its own pistol shrimp. I was hoping they'd set up at opposite ends, but since Yashas tend to co-exist really well with other shrimp gobies, chances were good it would be fine either way. Well, the store forgot to ship me the second pistol. The fish got along great for a couple of months. Then Jerkface disappeared for 2 days and returned, doing a complete Jekyll and Hyde. The Yasha got evicted from the burrow, and ended up jumping out, through the net. This was my first loss to jumping, and it's still upsetting.


My ORA Yellow Assessor is nearly impossible to get photos of. It is fast and hates the camera. It completely lives up to the assessor reputation as a sideways swimmer, which is fun to watch.


These cuties are Panamic Barnacle Blennies. I feel pretty great that they feel relaxed enough that they only use their barnacles to sleep or wait out tank maintenance.


My last fish are my first-ever Divers Den purchase - a bonded pair of Biota Whitespotted Pygmy Filefish. I can't find anything on how to sex them, but I think this is the female, because it is smaller. She's got a deformed dorsal spine, which makes it easy to tell them apart.


This is the presumptive male. He was very grumpy during the adjustment period - he'd keep charging the female and chasing her. Now, he will occasionally sidle up to her and shimmy, but mostly leaves her alone.

 

[sublunary]

A sampling of corals. My main photography goal is to figure out how to get the colors more accurate.

Toadstool leather


Gorgonian


Grape cristata


Duncans


Fox corals are my favorite


Neon green torch (looking less than neon)


Green tipped purple torch

 

[diana a]

Well hi there! Love the tank and look forward to more updates. Don't disappoint now!

 

[Sponge]

Love your tale. Great pics. Well done. You should definitely contribute more in the forum you have a knack for explaining in detail with humor and clarity. Look forward to more posts.

 

[sublunary]

Thank you for the warm welcome! It took me a few days to get past the "ahh! people noticed me! must run away!" phase, and into the 'MUST TAKE NEW PICTURES SO THEY LIKE ME" phase. Of course, every picture I've taken since then has been the blurriest, bluest piece of trash I've ever seen. It's like the camera has decided I've skated too long on it's abilities and now I have to go actually learn how to use settings and things. Ugh.

Luckily for me, I still have a backlog of less-blur-tastic pictures. So today I introduce to you, some inverts!

Cleaner shrimp were a must have for this tank. I love watching them poke everything in sight like it's their job. And I love the fact that they provide free fish food every couple of weeks. I'm pretty sure I can see the eyeballs of the larvae in this one.


The shrimp have been surprisingly accommodating in using the shrimp shelf as intended.

My other shrimp is much shyer, but he has the bigger fan club on facebook. It's like having a built-in weapon gives you extra cool points or something.


This is my first time having a feather duster. I tried with my first tank, and after two were DOA, I gave up. So far so good with this one.


The rock I placed him by is the only real live rock piece in the tank. It came with this neat black colonial tunicate, that I could not get enough of.


Sadly the tunicate faded away after a couple months. But it did leave me with this sweet peanut worm, which is pretty high on my list of favorite worms. I'm less thrilled about the bubble algae, which is pretty high on my list of least favorite algaes.


I have two pom pom crabs, who only like to come out at dusk. They're the shyest pom pom crabs I've had, but also the smallest and in the biggest tank, so I guess that tracks. At least it looks like they like each other.


And lastly, conchs are adorably weird. Mine has been over every inch of the glass and only recently taken up residence in the sand like it's supposed to. I really want to take that picture that all the conch owners have, with just the one eye stalk poking out of the sand, but so far it has no interest in posing. Someday...

 

[Rossim2i2]

Very nice!

 

[sublunary]

Thank you!

A couple of pre-maintenance FTSs

All of teh blue:


All of teh white:


Because I can't stop messing around with stuff, I have added a couple more pieces of dry rock, rearranged the peak of cyano mountain, and moved a bunch of frags around. I didn't like how hard one of the torches was getting hit with flow in it's new spot, so I moved the 2k gyre from the left side to the back wall. I'm not sure if I like the flow patterns I'm getting now, of if I want to move the 1k to the back too.

Tomorrow I'll clean those powerheads, since they've both decided to take on side jobs as algae scrubbers, and see how everything is doing with the new arrangement. Hopefully it will all be happy, and I can avoid spending another evening splashing water on the carpet and making other questionable life choices.

 

[amado]

The build looks great. I like cleaner shrimp as well. I have a few tangs so it’s always fun to watch them go to the cleaner shrimp for service.

 

[sublunary]

Thanks! That is one downside of my fish preferences - tiny fish don't tend to want to be cleaned! I don't think they're even on the shrimps' radar as potential customers.

 

[DEL]

nice setup!! they also have some nice colored cardinals if you want a small peaceful fish. real easy beginner fish too.

 

[sublunary]

nice setup!! they also have some nice colored cardinals if you want a small peaceful fish. real easy beginner fish too.

Thanks! I always thought cardinals were hideous, but when I was active before it seemed like banggai and pajamas were all that was around. The other varieties I'm seeing available now are more appealing. I actually really like the look of flame cardinals, but they get bigger and more evil than I want. Maybe in a future set up.

If I add a splash of color fish, it will probably be a McCosker's or Carpenter's wrasse, but I'm not in any hurry to add one yet. I'm pretty happy with the collection of personalities I have now.

 

[sublunary]

I am overdue for a picture drop.

So here's the latest FTS. I am liking how cyano mountain ended up. The indo gold torch seems pretty happy in the middle of it, which I like.


I still need to learn how to do this without the sandbed looking so blown out...

Pistol shrimp making a rare appearance


The filefish have been refusing to stay still for pictures. I think the assessor is a bad influence.


Derp


Cleaner shrimp, doing cleaner shrimp things.


Walking dendros are my favorite.


One of my blennies nearly gave me a heart attack today. This is why they normally look like:


Tonight, one of them changed color - head near completely black - red accents where there were no red accents before. And it was wiggling in a weird jerky way that looked very distressed. I was so convinced my fish was choking on something and was going to die right in front of me. Not ok.


Thanks to google and ancient forum posts, I know I'm not the first person to see this. The internet thinks it's either a dominance or mating display. So here's hoping they're shacking up, and I'll have to find something else to panic about.

 

[sublunary]

It's a rough day on the reef for me.


Yesterday, my lemon drop cristata turned to mush. I think I might have underestimated the space it needed away from the torch, and over estimated its ability to deal with contact.




Or... it could have been brown jelly...

This morning both my duncans looked a little off, and by the time I was done with work, well...





I siphoned out as much of the goo as I could. It smelled nasty, so fits the brown jelly profile. All but one of the polyps siphoned off like they weren't even attached.


I know it's a risk, but I decided to try and save the remaining head. There are a ton of theories online about how to treat it, but I didn't find anything definitive, so I went with things I'd seen recommended that I had on hand anyway. I fragged off the dead skeleton, rinsed the hell out of it in freshwater, gave it some (perhaps overly) strong iodine dips, and put it in a corner far away from everything else. So far it looks pissed, but not disintegrating.


I'm so sad. I love duncans and, and they are supposed to be so easy, but I've now had three frags die on me in this tank. I'm checking everything else frequently for the littlest sign of a problem. So far so good. But ugggh. This is my first experience with brown jelly and I really hope it's my last.

I also can't help but blame myself; I made a few changes in a pretty short period of time. I didn't see any bad signs after any individual change, but it's definitely possible some combination caused enough stress to throw things out of balance. Sigh.

Cross your fingers for me. Luckily I'm working from home the next two days, so I'll be around to immediately jump into action if anything else starts to go south...

 

[Sponge]

That’s terrible. So sorry to hear. But I love that you are attacking head on and not giving up. You tend to see a lot of people quit when adversity hits. But adversity in reefing is about when. Not if. Just hang in there. You can and will beat this. And be that much better off when you do.

 

[Rossim2i2]

I echo what Sponge stated. I'm questioning some things I've done recently as well as things are not going perfectly in my tank either. Take it all in a learning experiences and try not to make the same mistakes twice. Even with all the precaution, you are likely to run into the same thing again (possibly due to other reasons) or some other form adversity. It sucks but it seems like you are taking care of it the right way. Do the research, attack it head on.

 

[sublunary]

Thank you for the encouragement. The remaining duncan pulled through for one day, then turned to clear jelly. So while I lost it, I'm hoping I got the worst of the contagion off. Everything else looks ok.

I drowned my sorrows in youtube tutorials, and had another go at fish pictures today.

 

[Sponge]

Great photos

 

[sublunary]

Guys, guys, guys, I'm excited enough to post terrible indecipherable pictures.

I was spending my typical hour few minutes checking the tank with a flashlight after dark last night. It was pom pom crab larvae release night, so I turned off all the pumps to watch the little crablings float towards the light, when I saw something that was decidedly not a crabling. It was longer, and had big eyes, and was decidedly mini-fish-like! And there were at least a couple dozen of them bouncing their way towards the light.

It's official; the weird blenny color change was definitely a mating thing, and my tiny water muppets are now proud parents.

So terrible cell phone picture. The white blur in the center is the fish larvae.


And terrible usb microscope picture. The body is totally clear, and pretty hard to see unless you were very good at Magic Eye back when that was a thing. But the eyes show pretty well, in among the sand.


Sadly for me, my partner is annoyed enough at my phyto/copepod cultures taking over the laundry room, that building a fish raising setup is a complete nonstarter right now. Maybe some day....