Bpb

First clam. Purchased from petco of all places. Was opened a lot wider in their tank, real confidence booster! Granted it went from a single 24" t8 tube to a metal halide. 45 min temp and salinity acclimation, never hit air. Cradled in rubble on the sand. Opened about 1/2" for a few hours but closed back up. Gonna take it a while to photo acclimate? Watching it like a hawk. Hope it makes it First fungia. Recovering. 4 visible mouths on this one piece but they're all connected. Very pretty. Stole the role of brightest coral in the tank. Previous title holders were kryptonite candy cane and montipora setosa. This fungia is wicked bright Trying my hand at blastos again. Had bad luck with them previously but ready to try again. Not sure where to put them yet. Tank is getting crowded. Several new additions over the past week. 5 acros from Sam, plus a nice undata. Those aren't real photogenic yet, but they've been glued to their forever homes. I'm officially in "frag and sell to make room for other stuff" mode

Saw full polyp extension on my Hawkins yesterday for the first time ever. Very exciting. That is all

Meq / L and dKH are the same thing. It is just a different unit of measurement to express the same parameter. Most people seem to favor using DKH though. What does it mean? Well if you are going by textbook balance numbers, your alkalinity is a touch on the low side for a calcium reading as high as you got. But if your livestock looks happy and healthy, it's more important to have stable parameters then wide adjustments chasing some magic number.

What about clownfish. Don't they eat aiptasia.

Perhaps onto the other common methods. If you've already got them I wouldn't push my luck lol. What about a copperband butterfly, or peppermint shrimp?

I personally haven't, but some friends of mine on marsh have/do, and I know I've read of one or two people on here who have/do, and read hundreds of accounts on RC and other forums. I know they tend to go after corals eventually. Friend of mine had one keeping aiptasia down in his 120 gallon very packed mixed reef for years and it never nipped. He recently added a new one to another tank and it went to town immediately on some acropora polyps and zoas. They appear to be luck of the draw much like dwarf angels.

Saw that you transferred a lot of corals as well. I was going to say, maybe let a filefish go to town for a month before adding coral, then remove and sell. Or...if you have the refugium space, put the aiptasia rock in there and let a filefish go nom nom. For me, it's hard to say. I think it was about at the 2-3 week period that I noticed the STN starting. And it wasn't all at once. Seemed like one coral at a time. My Oregon tort hung in there and looked great until like the 2 month mark, then died suddenly over a couple days. Read theories about STN possibly being related to an autoimmune dysfunction that can trigger related corals to follow suit, even if nothing is wrong. Just a theory... At any rate. Removing all filtration, letting algae grow, and dirtying up the water a lot helped to stop it and reverse the trend, Everything got really brown and ugly, but I'll take brown and growing over dead any day. I'd guess it was around the 4 month mark that I noticed growth rather than necrosis. Hope that helps!

I think all of our problems were related to acropora specificially and it was likely due to a large volume of water added, a lot of new rocks and fluctuation of alkalinity, salinity, and overall micro fauna levels. I lost 2 years and probably $500-1000 worth of acropa value within a month of transferring, Ty lost even more plus a couple fish due to bacterial blooms. Not sure about ole aggies troubles. At any rate it seemed to be limited to acropora. All zoas, softies, montipora, and Lps actually flourished just fine. Wouldn't sweat it too much for anything but acros. If you have acros, I'd recommend rehoming them for 4-5 months. I think RSW recently did a big tank change and had no problems.

Lol can definitely do worse. EVERYTHING could die. Not just acros. Hope the transfer goes smoothly

Following for updates

Beautiful craftsmanship on the sand and canopy. Came together so well. I'm a big fan of the sort of aged painted finish look. Following along to see how the build progresses

Couple pics for fun. Palau nepthelia is growing astoundingly well. This was a 1" 2-3 branch nub when I set the tank up in June. I may sell the whole colony though as to reduce leather toxin issues. Any ID on this chalice? Looks best completely shaded where only the LEDs and light reflected from the glass hit it. The daylights are fully shaded by my purple cap. Green montipora stellata is growing super well but it's at the apex height of the tank. Wonder what kinda par it's getting. I really think it's impossible to bleach it. The more light I give it, the better it looks. And lastly an led alone pic from a distance. Love the way it looks. Phone can't do it justice. These BML strips are so bright for how little wattage they use.

Happy to follow up the previous report that things are indeed improving still. I've been steadily increasing my led intensity by 5% a week and will get to 100% eventually. I don't know that they're helping much with growth but I do like the blue illumination of shadows and they really give vibrancy to the softies and Lps. The effect is more pronounced at higher intensity as well. As in even during dawn/dusk ramp up and ramp down, the colors of fluorescence are more impressive at higher intensity. I may or may not have posted this bit of lighting modification as well, but as we know, window screening has been a staple in metal halide par control and acclimation. I had intended to build some window. Screen panels that fit the tank rim to use for bulb changing and what not, but after moving a mind trick montipora frag up too high too fast and bleaching it, I went ahead and got that going a month or two ago. At Home Depot they had prefabricated window screens that fit my tank rim perfectly, so I purchased two and stacked them both for a month, then removed one. The look of the tank got significantly dimmer and the montipora as well as other species started to darken their colors a good amount. As of last weekend the mind trick which I had presumed as dead, turned a corner and has developed a bold deep lavender color and the polyps are darkening to their ideal red. When the LEDs alone are on, the center starts to glow green so it's definitely on the mend. I removed the final screen so the lights are at full intensity. Noticeable growth spurt of sps in the last week. Next step is to buy some S hooks and start lowering the halides closer to the water. I'm trying to get everything slowly acclimated to higher par levels because my next immediate goal is a bulb change. Some of you may know, most probably don't, but my wife and I are expecting a baby girl this December. Won't be long now. That's important because I know I will be very very busy to say the least. I have two jobs, we have one son who is in high school, my wife is in nursing school and not working, so with all that plus a newborn, my funds and ability to do a lot of tank playing are about to be cut dramatically. My goal now is to grow the tank out as quickly as I can. To do that, I'm honestly willing to sacrifice the "Radium look" in order to speed up growth. My growth is decent, but frankly I want better. I've decided to give XM10K bulbs a try and I'll be using my m80 ballasts. They're gonna over drive the bulbs heavily, putting upwards of 380 watts through each bulb and over 180 ppfd. This bulb/ballast combo is the second highest par combination of the 250 watt class, second only to the iwasaki 6500k, and only by a hair. After lots of advice on reef central, and thinking it over, I'm gonna give it a go. I expect probably 6-9 months of useable life from the bulbs but all other parameters the same, the consensus I'm getting is that they'll smoke the radiums on growing power and I should be surprised at how well they work for that. I'll switch back to a more 20k look eventually after I get some growth filled in I have a lot of nice acros coming my way in the next two weeks courtesy of manny/Sam and some friends on marsh-reef in Houston. Enough that I'll need to sell some birdsnest colonies and digis to make room. Ideally I'd like to have a comfy stock of pretty new sticks and new lights burning by December, because after that, tank purchases will be on hold for the next 6 months to a year. STN of my acros has officially stopped entirely. What died, died, but what remains has began growing. Under the blue LEDs I can see where coral tissue starts to kill the red turf algae as it grows, because the red turf will fluoresce bright orange for a couple days as it dies and the coral encrusting spreads. I've been witnessing this with all species and much to my pleasant surprise I saw this happening near the Hawkins frag which is a positive sign that it's starting to grow again. Woohoo! As mentioned I've taken this as my tanks open invitation to go acro crazy and do this thread the justice I promised so many months ago. Next issue is this...I purchased an avast marine kalkwasser stirrer months ago. Never used it. Just go a gallon of kalk in the mail. Hmmm. So now that the tank is finally doing well, I'm debating on using it. My plan was to stop 2 part, run the kalkwasser reactor until it wasn't enough, then bring two part back online as needed. With a 90 gallon that ought to be sufficient. I could go calcium reactor but with my water volume, even a packed acro dominant tank should be manageable through 2 part. Problem is...I have no way of knowing if 1 gallon a day of fully saturated kalk will be more or less ca/alk supplementation that the 50ml or so I'm dosing a day on ca and alk via 2 part. I don't want to put the kalk rx online and have an alk spike or drop and totally muck up all the good fortune I've recently had with tank health. Ideas? Try it and hope it will be similar to what I'm supplying already? Sell it and just keep with two part alone? Sell the two part and kalk rx and buy a carx instead with the profits? Please let me know what you sps types think

Tell you what this thread was becoming misleading with all the bare rocks and softies. Hasn't been much of an sps dominated affair as advertised. Not for lack of trying

First new Acro since the death wave of 2014. It's appropriate too because it is the base of my first Acro ever from my original tank. Looks nothing like I remember. It's seen about every type of lighting there is and been passed from tank to tank. It's not currently STN'ing like it appears. That's very old death it's growing back onto. I'll be excited to see what kind of colors I get with it this time around. It used to be pastel blue. Now it's got a dark almost cobalt blue/gray base and metallic green tips. Tough to focus where I wanted. But a good sign none the less. Last bits left of purple meridiana looking healthy and actually encrusting now. Hard to see but definitely starting to cover the super glue. Same deal here. Healthy portion of tricolor Valida I clipped a week ago. Encrusting over the glue rather quickly. Safe to say that STN is no longer systemic as based on these frags Also acquired some very large fire and ice zoas. They're easily dime sized polyps which is huge for zoas. In the back are some fairy dust plays as well that are new. Common easy stuff but looks killer under actinics. Super bright. Foxface is oozing with confidence now. Easily backs down the tang with threats of stab wounds and venom. Parameters as of last test. 1.025 salinity 400 ppm calcium (Red Sea pro) 9.5 dkh (red sea pro) 1550 ppm mg (Red Sea pro) Nitrate < 1 ppm (undetectable) (Elos) Phosphate 0.015 ppm (5 ppb Hanna Ulr ppb meter) 78.8 degrees F (apex right this second) 8.16 ph (apex right this second) I'm guessing 4-6 months without gfo now, one month without activated carbon, 2-3 months without bio pellets, skimmer set to lowest setting (zero skimmate production for 2 weeks), no water changes for one month.

Negative. Yours were green starburst PE

Pink zippers I believe.

Acans gone unfortunately. Can't nail down what was happening. STN has stopped on Acropora thank goodness. Time to start trying to hunt down a few new pieces before the baby arrives. Won't be doing much coral hunting for a little while when she is born. Acans started rapidly receding and after about 30 heads died I wised up and sold them off to someone more acan savvy. Surrounding Lps all Look fine. Also got a couple new zoos the other day.

I can now confirm with my own two eyes that the One Spot Foxface (Siganus unimaculatus) does in fact readily eat cladophora algae. This species has been labeled on RC and other forums as largely inedible and to not count on anything consuming it as a form of control. I've noticed it starting to disappear the past few days in my tank and just now was watching the new foxface very closely biting off bits and strands of it and consuming them (not spitting them back out). Even the several inch long ones, he will start at the end and nibble off about 1/2 cm at a time. Good stuff. Seeing some bald patches on the rock here and there where he has cleaned up red turf algae. This guy is a much harder worker than the tomini tang has been at algae eating. Also have caught (visually) a rogue emerald crab starting to work on my pocillopora colony as well. After being evicted from a birdsnest colony this gal has taken to eating the neighboring pocillopora. Next time the lights are out and remember to, I'll relocate her to the refugium where there is plenty of algae and detritus to munch on. Not worried about her cleaning out the pods because emeralds are slower than Christmas and I think any pods consumed will be entirely by accident

Ah yessir! I hate developing the reputation of a flake. My timeframes in town are tough to predict. Ty can verify I'm a real person. Not a bot or automaton lol. I'll definitely try to hit you up Bigsby next time I visit town. Trying to line up a trip some time in October so I'll let you know

Thank you sir! This has taught me a new level of patience. I won't be able to make it in town for the swap. If manny goes though I'll send him with a few bucks most likely

OOPS and a FTS

more Montipora cap garden Got this from the late Tim as a Miami orchid, but it doesnt look like it. Looks more like cali tort, Used to be a full colony. This bit remains but is very happy and I cant tell if its starting to grow back in Northern lights nasuta STN has slowed to a crawl and growth is out pacing it. I've fragged this colony no less than 10 times since I set this tank up, trying to save it. Red planet colony nearly gone acropora graveyard in the back right corner. Pod haven now with frogspawn likely becoming illegal in the near future I had to pick some up. 8 heads of the bicolor. Seems to be happy where it's at, though I've killed 3 of these in the past. I hate knowing i've contributed to its struggle as a species on earth Stunner chalice has taken off and doing well Miami Hurricane chalice is very pretty, and growing, but this thing moves along slower than christmas. Wish it would speed up That's all for now

more Ricordea splitting almost complete New kid on the block. He's already been working hard at algae grazing. harder than the stupid tang who keeps bullying him anyway. He's a little rough now but readily eats all forms of food I feed and is gaining his confidence. Been wanting a Foxface for a while. This guy arrives courtesy of Vividaquariums. Happy with the purchase, though I wish I had opted for a bigger one for a few bucks more. Mandarin getting fat Green Montipora Stellata growing well This guy is growing tremendously well. Tripled in size in about 6 weeks. Some bleaching going on on the back side though where the light hits it hardest Cali tort hanging on. Color has morphed alot since I got it back. Was deep blue and now it's more of a lavender purple Hawkins stil not dead Picked up these rainbow acans on a gamble. They were nearly dead when I got them, but have some healthy tissue left. They're clearly rainbow colored and sport everything from blue, to orange, to yellow, to green, to red, so hopefully this will be a nice score