Myka's 90 gallon build & 3 province move (Pics Feb 6)

[Myka]

Originally Posted by BlueTang<3

I think it looks cleaner now with out all that grass, but either way your tank looks sweet.

I agree. Every time I look at it I think...gee it looks cleaner/tidier. I can't say I miss it, although it did look nice. I saved some for myself that I plan to make a gorgonian island in the tank where I can put all my photo gorgs and use the gsp as grass on the island. Hehehe...probably won't look as cool as I am imagining.

[reefermadness]

so nice and clean......looks great.

[muck]

I agree... looks much better now.

[Myka]

Heh, thanks! Here I thought the GSP looked cool.

The polyp extension is definitely more than usual, so that's a good sign. I bought some Brightwell Aquatics Microbacter7 and BioFuel to try out. So far, I've never been able to find a probiotic type system that I have been completely satisfied with. Time to experiment...again.

Oh, a couple weeks ago I chucked some Chaeto in the sump with a light on 18 hr reverse photoperiod. Still fighting nutrients...I'm almost ready to rip the tank apart and take the rock out to cook it. I'm replacing 300 mL of GFO every 4 weeks. Ridiculous...

[Myka]

EDIT (while I can): Oops...wrong thread. LOL

[Myka]

I'm doing a Brightwell Aquatics NeoZeo Method Experiment in the Product Review forum. It has a rundown of the trials and tribulations of the 33 months the tank has been running.

I added some critters in the last while, current fish list: Grey Head Wrasse, 3x McCosker's Fairy Wrasse, Yellow Coris Wrasse, Lubbock's Fairy Wrasse, Bangaii Cardinal, Tomato clown. I have ordered another Tomato clown and 3 Yellow Tail Damsels (hey I like them!).

Some future additions I am considering (not all of them obviously): Blotchy Anthias, Hooded Wrasse, Helfrich's or Purple Firefish, Orange Back Wrasse, Orchid Dottyback.

[es355lucille]

Wow! Nice tank!

[Myka]

Long story short, in early April I decided to pull the GFO and try vodka and Microbacter7 dosing. I dosed for about 6 weeks. I built up slowly, and followed the "famous dosing schedule" and I managed to slowly brown out all my SPS by about 99% and near the end of the 6 weeks I lost half a dozen small pieces. I was quite stubborn about making it work. When I started losing pieces in early May I quit dosing the vodka and MB7, and went back to the trusty GFO and Prodibio dosing in mid-May. I've had good luck with Prodibio before. So, now I'm starting to get some color back, but the tank still looks like poop. So much for experiments. Argh.

When I did the vodka dosing, most of the SPS went brown, but some of them bleached out. The ones that I lost were ones that bleached. Two of my favourite colonies were two of the pieces that bleached and when they started to RTN at the base that's when I threw in the towel on the vodka + MB7. I found a pic I took of the one colonies:




This is what it looks like in its prime:




Also, in the beginning of March I moved most of my LPS out of the 90 and into the new 50. In the process I basically pilfered the 90 and it looked a bit barren. Unfortunately, I don't have a picture of how bad it looked. Between the tank looking awful, and me killing my main camera in Hawaii in May I haven't taken many pics since.

Here it was halfway browned out, partway through the vodka dosing. When I pilfered the corals out, I took almost all the rock out of the right hand side of the tank, so it was quite bare looking.




So, Canada Day weekend I moved the last of the LPS and Gorgonians out of the 90 and put about 40 lbs of live rock into the 90 to fluff it back up. Finally, after 18 months of putting it off, the tank doesn't have a million corals on the sand! It still needs A LOT more color to develop back again, but here is how it looked shortly after the re-aquascaping on June 30th...

[reefwars]

looks like you did some fragging as well, so is this going to be sps only now??

[Myka]

Yeah, I chomped down the large birdnest on the left, and the birdnest on the right is not in the new pic because it was in the sump when I took the pic. I forgot it in the sump for a week, but is now back up in the display, and is a cool white color (lol)...it is starting to get color back. I think everything else is still in there. It is amazing how much more room there was when I took out all the LPS. This tank is now 98% SPS. It would be 100% SPS if I could peel the Meteor Shower Cyphastrea off the rocks and that is not very possible...