WarDog's Tank Thread : Episodic Trial And Error

[WarDog]

Well, tank is 6 months old.

Summer heat is killing me, but the tank has levelled out at 80*C. Decent.

Tank has been fish free for almost a month, NO3 dropped to zero, what a surprise. The Doc's Eco Matter seems to have worked wonders, pods and bugs everywhere, also finally getting some coralline here and there.

Started to get some decent encrusting happening, so I figured its time to start mounting.



Followed the Bblinks method of mounting and just started plopping plugs everywhere, lol. Still a few left to do, ran out of putty.

Also need to create a Monti island on the bottom right.



Had a slight problem with the ro/di. After filling the ato, the unit shut itself off and water proceeded to spill out all over the kitchen floor. Traced the water back to the high pressure switch.



Got in touch with Jeff at J&L and he spoke to the local Vertex rep. She suspects too much pressure after the booster pump. House pressure is about 40 psi and the gauge after the booster pump reads around 105 psi. Part will take a few days to come in and then I will swap it out, measuring pressure after, and make adjustments if need be.

J&L are amazing!



Drip, drip, drip. Happy reefing!

[Ram3500]

Looking good Warren that should fill in nicely. What are you dossing to keep those corals fed while your tank is fishless ??

[WarDog]

Thanks Ian. Just dosing BRS alk, mag and Ca. Still just using Zeo start, Bak, sponge power and 2 drops of ZeoFood weekly. Haven't got around to getting any amino acids or the such yet. Which is too bad, as the Zeo sale ends tomorrow. The wife would kill me if I dropped a few hundred on supliments right now, lol.

[WarDog]

Oh, and I still feed Tims Pacifica Plankton twice a week.

[WarDog]

Time for a small update.

After mounting all the frags, the only thing left on the frag rack were the Rastas, which were quickly getting out of hand...



... they were even growing on the stem of the plug.



Then, one evening, the RBTA was looking a bit weird. After a couple of hours, it split...



... and decided to go for a little walk. No harm done, whew!



Most folks seem to hate coralline, but I am welcoming it. Now it just needs to start growing more on the rocks.



Went to Cancun for a week and came home to a messy tank.



PO4 dropped from .03 to .006. Manually removed as much algae as I could, and added a sock to the sump.



Spent the last 2 days cleaning and doing a w/c. More work planned for the next couple days as well.

Not quite sure how to safely remove the algae from the snails.



Got these weird bubbly things everywhere (dead centre of pic). At first I thought it was bubble algae, but they are more tear drop shaped, and not dark green like bubble algae. Perhaps Trochus snail eggs?



Picked up an Emerald, but he's not interested in them. #freeloader. I actually think the SOB is flipping me the bird in this pic.



8 months running my first salt tank and I think I'm doing ok. Already wanting to upgrade (Rich... not one word from you!)!



Thanks for looking.

[Howie]

Lol for my snails I picked them out and placed them in a plastic container with tank water in it. Then I floated the container in my tank with multiple snails in it. Lol they cleaned each other off

[WarDog]

Originally Posted by Howie

Lol for my snails I picked them out and placed them in a plastic container with tank water in it. Then I floated the container in my tank with multiple snails in it. Lol they cleaned each other off

Lol, good idea! I see them hitchhiking all the time, but not for very long.

[Bblinks]

Time to upgrade! : multi:

[WarDog]

Originally Posted by Bblinks

Time to upgrade!

Every day I think about an upgrade!

Lots of additions to report. My fallow period ended the first week of August and I had a pair of clowns in the 20 for a few weeks of observation. Once I was happy that they were relatively healthy, I moved them over.



Then Rich and I headed out to Ryanericksons for one of our little coral adventures and shopping spree's.

Tri-coloured Nana



Blue/green Cyphastria



Sunset Monti



In the above pic you can see the RR Wolverine at the top. Encrustation is good, however I have been having a hard time getting all the corals to colour up.
Knowing that I needed to start dosing Amino's, I thought I'd start with the cheapest products, so I picked up some RedSea Energy and dosed for a couple weeks.
Didn't really notice any change. In the end, once the bottles ran out, I bought some Zeo AA.
Under the AA you can see my fancy dosing schedule. Still a huge learning curve for me. Considering adding some T5's.



Picked up a wicked Rainbow Monti from CanuckGod604.



Once again, cell photos do no justice. I'll finish off with a side FTS.



Thanks for looking.