Zach's 75G Build

Oh man we need one of those. My mom likes Publix for some reason...and enjoys watching me carry giant water bottles.

 

Yea, I was using Publix water too. I evaporate about 1.5 gallons per day. About 5 bucks per week in water, figuring in water changes. I paid $200 for the Coralife Pure-Flo II RO/DI unit that also came with the Bulk Reef supply DM-II inline TDS meter as well as pressure gauge. It will pay for itself in less than a year and no more lugging out jugs of water. Plus, it's DI with 0 TDS

 

A few updates -

I picked up a yellow polyp frag yesterday - the rock had several yellow polyps, along with some zoas and a weird anemone which I'm also posting in the ID section - it's not a Majano and definitely not aiptaisa, so I'm leaving it on for now. Rather pretty. If someone decides it's a pest I'll yank it off of there.

Also, the move must have been too much for my Decorator Crab, as he passed this last week. I'll miss him :-\ It was fun watching him - goofy crab. However, he did me a favor by clipping polyps here and there, as I found one of the Anthelia polyps that he had clipped off growing out of one of my rocks. I lost the entire mother colony but now this one polyp that survived is growing nicely - hopefully it spreads soon Pics below.

I'm bleaching 30 lbs of nicely shaped base rock I picked up for $1 per pound. Decent shaped pieces, looks nice - bleached, now they're soaking in RO-DI water, will let them dry later this week after I change out the rinse water a few times.



One that survived:



Updated FTS:





Goofy Blenny



Zoa and GSP frags:



Kenya

 

Cleanup crew supplement from Reefcleaners.org should be here Wed / Thursday - tank definitely needs it. I only have around 25 snails and 10 blue hermits now... this order will put me where I need to be

The algae already seems to be tapering off some.

2 Causes.

It was a double whammy between the untimely demise of my decorator crab (good sized crab at that), I found him rotting behind a rock. This spiked my nitrates to around 40 (I did a partial water change, which I didn't want to do as the tank is still establishing) but this lowered me back down to around 20.

Second, a timer was off. I have the actinics set to come on at 4 PM, MH at 5PM, MH off at 10:00, actinics off at 11pm. Well, I found that the timer somehow got set wrong and the actinics were coming on at 8am. So I had way too much lighting + high nitrates = algae farm. I think this is also part of what caused some cyano to start. This is still there in some spots, but at least it's not spreading.

This is now corrected and the algae is going away quickly. Coraline is starting to get very colorful again, as the move turned most of it white. Now it's brilliant purples, dark pink, and the green coraline is even coming back darker. Now it just needs to spread

 

Tank looks really good, you have some nice corals. Can't wait to see what the tank looks like with the additional rock. Keep up the good work.

 

ya zach looks awesome

 

Thanks guys

 

Stoked about my blenny!

While there's enough algae on the rocks for him to graze on (which he does constantly), he has started to eat prepared food.

He actually ate some mysis shrimp yesterday, as well as some Omega 1 marine pellets w/ garlic today. This is good as my algae is quickly tapering off and I was afraid he may starve.

 

Good news with the blenny! I'm surprised he wasn't eating frozen/prepared before. Our blenny eats like an obese mexican at free taco night. He'll eat anything, and then his stomach will look like he swallowed a marble afterwards. Keeping in mind he's only about 2 inches long...so a marble stomach is quite large on him. You might even think he's pregant, but then a few hours later the gut goes away.

Can't wait to see more pics!

 

LOL!!! That's great!

Should be able to get more pics up soon, hopefully they'll be a bit nicer as I ordered some macro lenses for my Nikon and they should be arriving later this week.