It has been 3 months since my last update so here goes.
Right before I got married in July I had a sump pump fail so I decided to upgrade to a E-shopps R-200 sump/fuge and I went with a Mag9.5 pump instead of the old Mag7. Let me tell you that was a huge difference in water flow. I actually have to turn the valve because it was to much flow on some of my corals and the power heads had a hard time getting them to flow how they should. I used miracle mud and a sand combination in the fuge, 2 chambers are mud and one is sand. My copepod population is multiplying fast again in the new setup. I also picked up a MP40w/es powerhead to go with the MP20 I already had.
Most of you know that after I returned from my honeymoon I came home to some dead corals and lost 2 of my clownfish. Everything has stabled out since then and I also refreshed my CUC and got 3 new ORA snowflake clownfish one being a grade A with the blue hue(which gives them the elite status as I have read online) and two grade B and I bought a Djardin Sailfin tang They have taken to the tank very well.
I have also redid the aqua scaping due to removal of the typical problematic damsel fish
So here are some updated pictures I just took with my cell phone.
Tank looks great man! Is that a fishing bobber floating around your tank w/ some fishing line on it? LOL
What is the orange fish that kinda looks like a chromis…but orange.
[quote=“Faralon, post:123, topic:4088”]
Tank looks great man! Is that a fishing bobber floating around your tank w/ some fishing line on it? LOL
What is the orange fish that kinda looks like a chromis…but orange.[/quote]
Haha I was waiting for someone to notice the bobber. I got that idea while I was in Maine. The veggie clips I have come with a suction cup and that gets to be a pain so I tied some fishing line onto it and the bobber is actually outside the tank since I noticed the non stainless steel on it. Makes it easy to clip some food without getting my hands wet.
The orange fish is a Pseudanthias Pleurotaenia aka pink square anthias. I had a pair but the male (the one with the pink square) jumped out.
Finally upgraded to led. I got 2 AI SOL Blue units. Super easy to install and setup but I do have a few issues with them.
One is the 3up leds are supposed to no give the disco effect and these lights sure as hell have a disco lighting effect.
Second I also have noticed more shading in the tank so I will have to supplement these lights maybe with some led strips.
Third the controller knob sucks I turn it to go forward and it goes backwards. Kind of like the old Ford radios when they started going bad.
Over all I am not impressed with these units. I do like when you put them into all blues makes everything pop and just look sexy and it helps eliminate the disco effect. I am only up to W-45% B-60% RB-67%. I am about 12" off the water to try and get the most light spread.
Update-
Main tank is doing ok started battling some kind of weird algae its like a brownish stringy slime on a couple things that I have been plucking every chance I get. But it keeps coming back but only in 3 small areas of the tank. This did not start til I went to led. Most of the corals seem to be adjusting fine to leds except I did lose what was left of my pocilipora and a tiger leptastria or whatever it was called I also just lost my ORA Crocea that I have had before I even setup the 75 tank. Found a bunch of my nasarius snails inside it last night. All clams were looking healthy so I don’t have a clue what happened there. Maybe not enough food on the bottom for the little scavengers ???
My 20g tank my wife bought me a red lip blenny which is already MIA so I am hoping he is just borrowing somewhere. I moved the yellow tang into the 75 hoping it would eat better and it just got picked on so I put it in the fuge for now. I think I will try to return it since I can not seem to get it eating healthy.
And on to the good. My snowflakes seem to be budding up. The 2 that are budding up have hosted the Sebae and are showing signs that they will be mating soon. The little guy has not hosted anything yet but he still hangs out with his buddies. The sailfin I bought is looking better since I bought it YahoO.
I am planing on taking the phosban offline and putting GFO in it instead. Any takes on which brand to buy?
I will be putting my clams up for sale except the one bigger Derasa. If you are interested let me know all of them are ORA’s. The 3 for sale I bought from the DPA group buy which has been some time ago.
Purple maxima only 2-3",gold maxima 3"+, derasa 4-5"
I want to be able to clear up some of my sandbed for more zoa’s in the future once I get rid of that algae.
“weird algaes” are always the toughest to fight. If it’s staying localized to small sections of the tank you might want to adjust flow to see if you can eliminate a possible dead spot (or 3).
The snails didn’t kill your clam. Something else caused it to die and the snails simply did what snails do - eat decaying matter.
I agree with Craig on the snails.
As far as the clam death, these are often the most sensitive animals in a reef aquarium, so it could be a multitude of factors. They do need a significant amount of light.
[quote=“JustSumGuy, post:126, topic:4088”]
I am planing on taking the phosban offline and putting GFO in it instead. Any takes on which brand to buy?[/quote]
One popular brand of GFO is… Phosban. What you basically said above was that you were going to take your GFO often and put in some GFO instead. 
Granular Ferric Oxide is what GFO stands for. It is a red rust like Phosphate remover. BRS sells GFO, Brightwell has GFO under the brand name FerroxiPhos-G, and Two Little fishies sells it under the name Phosban.
One alternative media to GFO is AO or Aluminium oxide sold under the brand names Extrax Phos, PhosGuard, and many others. Perhaps you meant you were considering switching to Aluminum oxide?
Is there are particular reason you want to drop GFO or add GFO?
[quote=“Cdangel0, post:127, topic:4088”]
“weird algaes” are always the toughest to fight. If it’s staying localized to small sections of the tank you might want to adjust flow to see if you can eliminate a possible dead spot (or 3).
The snails didn’t kill your clam. Something else caused it to die and the snails simply did what snails do - eat decaying matter.[/quote]
[quote=“JustSumGuy, post:126, topic:4088”]
I am planing on taking the phosban offline and putting GFO in it instead. Any takes on which brand to buy?[/quote]
One popular brand of GFO is... Phosban. What you basically said above was that you were going to take your GFO often and put in some GFO instead. ;-)
Granular Ferric Oxide is what GFO stands for. It is a red rust like Phosphate remover. BRS sells GFO, Brightwell has GFO under the brand name FerroxiPhos-G, and Two Little fishies sells it under the name Phosban.
One alternative media to GFO is AO or Aluminium oxide sold under the brand names Extrax Phos, PhosGuard, and many others. Perhaps you meant you were considering switching to Aluminum oxide?
Is there are particular reason you want to drop GFO or add GFO?
I have heard of phosgaurd and seemed like a more popular type and thought it was a bit different from phosban. If that is a GFO then I won’t do a change. I am just used to hearing of the other names then the one I have.
As for lighting I changed from 55%white, 85%blue, 100%rb to 72/61/100 I have slowly changed this in matter of the weeks I have had the fixture but the blue I lowered that instantly.
Tank looks nice though, looks like everything likes the led’s :
:
where’s all the orange digitata? :
:
[quote=“saltcreep, post:130, topic:4088”]
Tank looks nice though, looks like everything likes the led’s ::
where’s all the orange digitata? ::[/quote]
Thank you,
Got Digi? hahaha
I have some pieces still left not much. The issues I ran into while on my honeymoon consumed most of it… I just recently put one small colony of it in my 75g and it does seem to like the leds so far.
