The 210 tank build

[mnat]

3G Mummy Eye:

Scoly:

Scoly two:

Master Scoly:

Aquaculuted Goni that is doing really really well for us. Better than any other we have ever tried:

Gods of war:

WWC Yellow eyed lepto, Very similiar to the fox piece. I have that as well but did not get a good pic:

Big Baby's breath favia:

Cat's Eyes:

Stawberry Shortcake from Jim:

 

[mnat]

Ponape birds nest:

Jason Fox Purple polyp scroll

One of our older acros that has been growing and coloring up amazing:

Tierra Del Fuego:

Rainbow Stylo:

Chalice:

WWC League of Legends:

Stawberry shortcake:

Convict Style. These are finicky and do better under low lights and flow:

Chalice:

 

[mnat]

ASD Ghost Rider, a really stunning piece:

CC Granulosa:

Acro:

Acros:

Birdsnest:

Sunny Ds:

Candy Apple Reds:

Pink Hippos:

Acans:

Acros:

 

[mnat]

The last photo, for the old school acro heads, True Oregon Blue Tort. Almost lost this piece but he is growing back very well. Bluer than anything else in the tank and no green on him at all like the Cali Tort:

That is all for me for now.

 

[kschweer]

Nice update guys. Things seem to be coming along very nicely. Best of luck battling the AEFW. Also I'm pretty jealous of the borbonius pair. I have been eyeing up a pair for a while. Hopefully ill be able to get them one if these days. Keep up the good work and don't make us wait so long for future updates...lol

 

[Sunny]

Now that is an update. Who was demanding pics again ??

Looking great Mike

and Nikki

 

[iTzJu]

That is just beautiful! great pics and your frag tank is definitely a treasure box!

 

[downbeach]

Looks beautiful Mike and Nikki, you can really tell all your hard work is paying off.

 

[ahvrivera]

Looks beautiful Mike and Nikki, you can really tell all your hard work is paying off.

Beautiful collection!

 

[mnat]

Thank you everyone. Even with the fish room and trying to simplify things we do put some work in. Before the photo shoot we were in the basement for like 2.5 hours as Nikki said earlier going over the frags and whatnot to make sure they were algae and pest free. Having a fish room makes changing Rowa and Carbon easier but it still has to be done. Also, the frag tank is really the first true bare bottom tank we have ever had so clearing out the detritus in it has become an event that has to happen. We also have to do this with the recirc tank for now as we have the two borbonius anthias in there. Once they are big enough to move we can clean that tank out and let it just sit the way it is supposed to. I will say water changes are much easier now that we have the pumps and table in place. Plug in one pump, empty recirc tank, plug in second pump and in goes 65g of water.

 

[NikkiT]

So once again we spent hours in the basement working on the tank yesterday. We did a second round of Revive dips for all of the acros, continued to wage our war on bubble algae, and did some testing and other needed maintenance.
The war on AEF continues, we are ahead this week. I did not see a single adult flatworm after the dips. I did see one small frag with fresh bite marks, but all of the others appear to be healing well. Hopefully the dip will have gotten the juveniles that hatched this week. Our plan is to continue to treat this way, until after we stop seeing (1) AEF and (2) AEF Eggs. The good news is that most of the acros are doing better, we are still at a total of four that look cruddy.

Our long term plan:
1. Continue with the Zeo Flatworm Stop & other additives
2. Continue with weekly dips and inspection of the corals for eggs.
3. Once the flatwoms and the eggs stop appearing, and we are free of all evidence of bite marks, then we will consider cutting frags for the display tank. Nothing with a base or dead tissue will go into the DT. Our plan is to cut healthy branches, dip them, and then introduce them into the DT. This means that some of our corals won't make the transition upstairs for quite a long time (there is a group of frags in the 1/4" - 1" range) but we don't want to take the risk of introducing AEF into the DT.

One question- has anyone tried to remove the eggs manually? What did you use to scrape them off?

 

[redfishbluefish]

Have you considered Bayer Advanced Insecticide? I think it's more effective than Revive. Some say it kills eggs as well. Although I've only been using it a year of so, I've never had a problem with a coral.

 

[dnov99]

Nicole, have you considered just cutting off the bases of the frags and re mounting them? The eggs will only be on dead tissue below the base of the Acro. They cannot lay the eggs on live tissue.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[NikkiT]

Nicole, have you considered just cutting off the bases of the frags and re mounting them? The eggs will only be on dead tissue below the base of the Acro. They cannot lay the eggs on live tissue.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Yes, I have. Unfortunately, there are several corals that are quite tiny, 1/4"-1" in total size. If I try to cut them, I am likely to lose at least some of them. One of them is my sole remaining piece of hitchiker acro, a piece about 1/3". Since I have no idea what the coral actually is, and we got it from someone who is out of the hobby, I can't replace it if I lose it.
On the other side of the coin, some are very expensive frags, and when I look at what I can cut (things like pink lemonade and red planet and miami orchid) and things I can't cut (yellow dragon for example), I just don't want to do that at the moment.

I realize that means that this will be a much longer battle, but when I ran the numbers in terms of costs to replace the acros that are too small to cut, it was just cost prohibitive. Several of our favorite acros were part of frag packs, and purchasing several expensive frag packs just to attempt to get those acros back is not something that fits in the budget right now.

Regarding Prazi, we do have prazi here, and I will use it when the time comes. Right now, my goal is (1) return all acros to health (2) get them to grow, and then cut the currently uncuttable. Cutting off bases is in the future, just not in today's plan.

 

[mnat]

I don't think we have updated the fish we have in the system so I figured now would be a good time:
Display:
Joculator angel
False shepardi angel
Sunburst anthia
Aurluentus anthia
3x helfrichi firefish
Bells flasher wrasse
pair of flame wrasses
Nahackeys flasher wrasse
Gold assesor basslet
Pair of clowns (one grade b picasso and one snow ice)
Blue spot jawfish
Wheelers shrimp goby
2x Yasha gobies
6 or so barnacle blennies

Recirc tank waiting to go into the display:
Pair of Borbonius anthias
Attenuatus wrasse

Frag tank:
Purple tang
Pair of wild caught picasso/onyx clowns
Melanarus wrasse
Yellow watchman
Bangaii cardinal (Tank bred)
Green striped goby

 

[dnov99]

Apologies to Mike and Nicole for cluttering their thread. I created a new thread for the Prazi/AEFW discussion, so that we can further discover information on this in tank treatment for AEFW.

http://www.njreefers.org/showthread.php?81574-Treating-AEFW-with

 

[ThatGuy]

Blue spot jawfish

Quick Question on the jawfish. How often is it out? I was looking at these in the past and I can't bring myself to buy a fish that I might never see. Is yours out on a regular basis or is it in its hole and only comes out to eat?

 

[mnat]

Quick Question on the jawfish. How often is it out? I was looking at these in the past and I can't bring myself to buy a fish that I might never see. Is yours out on a regular basis or is it in its hole and only comes out to eat?

Our guy is out pretty consistently. The blue spots have great personalities and rarely stay hidden all the way in the burrow. Our has had a burrow up front and a little towards the back which has been nice because we can see him. He does like to come out and swim though which is nice. The only reason we got this fish now is because we have the lid on the tank that he cannot escape from. We are also running the tank around 75 degrees which is closer to their natural habitat.

 

[mnat]

Someone pmed me about what supplements we are adding to the tank for our SPS so I figured I would list it out for everyone. Again, our own personal experience on this, mileage may vary.

For calc, alk, mag:
We run the calcium reactor with carib sea course media. This has let us keep the alk pretty stable and we last tested at 8.6 on alk. It took some time to tune in, but now that we have it steady it has been wonderful.
Additives:
(KZ is korallein zucht which is the zeo process. We don't run full zeo with the stones and whatnot but we like some of their additives)
KZ Flat worm stop: As you guys know we are battling flatworms and have been using this for a while. The theory behind this is this additive just makes your corals healthier which makes is harder for the AEFW to attack them so over time it will win the war. We have been dosing at the recommended for a while now and still have flatworms but our SPS do color up better when we are dosing. So I don't think this will kill them alone but it does make a nice SPS supplement.
KZ Coral booster: To be used with the Flat worm stop, again supposed to make your corals healthier.
KZ Pohl's K's balance. This is also supposed to help with the Flat worm stop, but again is probably something nice to dose. We have a lot of blue SPS and they are really blue now. So again good for color but not a cure all.
Elos Amino Acids. Just started with this again (quite honestly I had misplaced it and found it again). This is for corals overall and is more of a coral food. I like the Elos but you can probably use KZ or Fuel by seachem and get good results.

Coming in the future: KZ coral snow again for feeding corals. Have seen other have great success with this and want to try it out.

DISCLAIMER:
My personal feeling is that having steady, balanced Alk/Calc is much much much more important than dosing anything else. You can dose all the stuff in the world but if those numbers are not balanced you are not going to help your corals. Also, low to 0 nitrates and phosphates is also going to be super important to good SPS growth and color. For other corals, this is probably not the case but in a general sense it is important. Third, after talking to some people with heavy SPS tanks, flow is very very important to growing and maintaining healthy SPS.

If you can get those three things under control, then yes I think dosing some additives that are aimed at feeding and adding elements that we might be deficient in can help your corals (especially SPS). LPS and zoas can be fed rather easily with the normal fish food we feed or with LPS specific foods. SPS needs the same type of attention and our foods may not have the type of particle or the type of food that SPS feed off of. Again, all my opinion and what I have seen with my eyes in my years in the hobby.

 

[NikkiT]

Quick Question on the jawfish. How often is it out? I was looking at these in the past and I can't bring myself to buy a fish that I might never see. Is yours out on a regular basis or is it in its hole and only comes out to eat?

As Mike said, keep in mind that temp is important with these fish. You also need a very secure cover, no holes at all, or the fish will end up on the floor. In my limited experience, blue spots are a lot more active than pearly heads, but the downside is that they also seem to me to be more delicate. We had one that we lost to blue spot disease, we had to euthanize. Do watch out pairing them with very small animals, our guy ate a pistol shrimp about a month ago.