46 to 65gal upgrade. New photos added 1/17

Thanks! I agree, not sure if I would do a whole tank with the stuff but we love the way it makes a nice centerpiece.

 

Seems like the pod population has been growing exponentially since I first spotted a couple a little while back. Seems if I look close enough I can always find them crawling all over the rockwork and even the substrate and glass.

Also seems the coralline is starting to spread as well, I can see many small patches popping up all over rockwork so I guess its just a waiting game until it forms large patches covering everything.

 

Quick update, since adding the protein skimmer I have been a little slack on my normal routine maintenance, part in because I wanted to test how well the thing would work but also just because of life getting in the way the past month.

Well after testing tonight things are doing ok, my SG climbed to 1.027 because of evaporation which I will bring back down to 1.025 through topoffs.
pH is stable at around an 8.1, not the ideal 8.3 but after dealing with low pH issues where it constantly drifted to 7.8 I will take it.
kH dropped to about a 6, back in the beginning it was constantly around a 10-12 and even higher when buffering for pH. Looks like that system is also stabilizing and the couple corals and coralline algae are using up the alk. Im not sure what I will use to raise it yet maybe try some of the seachem products.
ammonia looked to be .25 but I believe it to be a fluke, will retest tomorrow. Everything is looking great no signs of distress I did test right after doing a phytofeast and an nls pellet feeding not sure if that could skew the results. nitrites remain at 0 and nitrates seem to be about 10ppm.

I do notice that since adding the skimmer the corals do not seem to be as happy. The xenia extends much further almost as if searching for food and before that was actually closed up and looked dead for a few days. It seems to be coming back but I plan on taking off the skimmer to see if it improves the corals health. I do plan on having mostly corals that like dirtier water so maybe the skimmer was making it too clean. I do not mind doing weekly waterchanges and just watching my feeding habits to help promote good water quality.

 

I do have to ask on your tank how do you have your power-heads set up? from the past few pictures I see they are on both sides on the back pointed towards the front is that still the case?

 

There are actually 3 all of them on the back wall but none of them pointed at the front. I have 1 in each corner pointed front inwards about 45 degrees and 1 back middle pointed towards the top right of the tank. Seems to work havnt had any issues with deadspots

 

As expected the ammonia level was 0 this morning, not sure why the random .25 last night. I did remove the protein skimmer as well and will just keep up on a weekly WC and testing. If needed I can always put it back on.

Some pictures of the Ricordea, they seem to be doing well. They seem to have a system, by night they start to close up tightly and after the lights go off by morning they are partially expanded. In the morning they fully expand and their mouths remain open and then by evening they remain expanded but close their mouths and the cycle repeats. Not sure if this is normal but they look healthy, hopefully they will start splitting. The lfs also swears they are Yuma and not Florida, not sure I can really argue otherwise given my lack of experience.

 

Great looking tank.

 

Another FT shot, it is neat to see them side by side to see how things grow, the xenia colony side by sides looks to have grow tremendously over the past 2 months or so I have had it. Seems like all the original stalks have split down the middle to form 2 stalks.

 

Added 3 new frags today, a jasmine polyp and 2 acan lord frags, thanks to 2in10 and Vinny for the help with the proper IDs.




As you can see still not fully opened only been placed for less than an hour more pictures to follow. The hermit wasted no time finding the new corals though gotta get them cleaned!

 

Been a few days since adding the new corals. The jasmine has fully opened and seems to act much like the xenia, open all day and closed at night. The 2 acans are acting different at this time with the purple one opening and inflating during the day and extending the feeding tentacles at night and the multicolor one still pretty closed up for some reason. I dropped a couple NLS pellets on top of both of them today and the purple one engulfed them and looks a little different right now (digesting??) while the multicolor one didnt react and just let the scavengers eventually get the pellet. Obviously the purple one packs a punch because the hermits tried to crawl on top to steal the pellet and suddenly changed their mind and went running lol



Also noticing a lot of corraline growth which means the system is healthy right? Never did ID whatever the red semi-encrusting algae is looks like cyano in pictures but as you can see the purple corralline is growing right over the top of it as it slowly recedes

The original 1lb liverock purchases to seed the system by far has the most growth, this piece has no purple upon purchase