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

[fishoholic]

Your efforts seem to have payed off, your tank is looking good

[muck]

Glad to see the tank is looking up for you Mindy. From the FTS you would never know you were having issues recently.

[Myka]

Muck, you have no idea how close it was to crashing. It was trying real hard for about 3 days. It bounced back though, and the colors are better than they have ever been on the SPS, the LPS are taking a bit longer to perk up.

Thanks Laurie, it was stressful for a few days that's for sure. That's what I get for staring at it in annoyance instead of doing waterchanges.

Leah, he's a close up of the Melanurus:

[Leah]

Beautiful fish Mindy! Can't believe you could get such a good shot of him.

[Myka]

Soooo...I refilled my alkalinity doser yesterday around noon, and plugged it into the wall instead of the timer to refill the dosing tubes (I let i run dry...oops). I set a timer for 10 minutes so I wouldn't forget. I remember to timer going off, but apparently I didn't go unplug the doser! WTF?!!! Anyway, this morning I walk by the tank and I usually glance at the doser vessels in habit to check if one needs refilling and the alkalinity is HALF EMPTY! I left it on for 20 hours! I tested calcium at 430 ppm and alkalinity at 17 dKH. I have no idea why calcium is so high as the high alkalinity should have yanked the calcium down...maybe the high alkalinity is preventing the inhabitants from utilizing calcium and alkalinity. Anyway...I added a bunch of calcium hopefully bumping it up to 500 ppm which will help draw the alkalinity down a bit and also help to balance it a bit better. Of course I ran out of one of the liquids for the calcium kit (it didn't feel that empty rrrg!). I just did a waterchange yesterday so I didn't have new water mixed up yet, but I have it mixing now. Everyone looks happy, so I won't bother doing a waterchange unless someone shows stress. They are tough. I hope...

Some other changes in the tank...added a 200 micron filter sock to this tank. I bought a doser and some Kalk to start adding Kalk, but had a brain fart and ordered a slow doser instead of a fast doser, so that project is on hold. Kalk should help a bit while the rocks are still leeching nutrients. I bought everything to modify the sump for a Chaeto filter as well. Back to basics!

The "Melanurus Wrasse" is actually a Grey Head Wrasse! He is almost done changing into a male now...He has changed a bit since the last pic. I was looking at him a couple weeks ago thinking, "He just doesn't quite look like a Melanurus, and he's getting sooo big!" So I did some searching around and found out he is a Grey Head which I'm not familiar with! Thankfully the Grey Head is essentially the same personality as a Melanurus, but I can expect him to get another 1 1/2" on the Melanurus! The female Melanurus and female Grey Head look very similar and I guess he was mislabeled right from the wholesaler because I special ordered him. I didn't notice the difference...actually I didn't know there was a similar looking wrasse in existence! So...long story short...he has turned into one big @$$ wrasse!

[Delphinus]

Ouch, good luck with the Alk thing.

Interesting about the wrasse. Man they look pretty similar. At least the size difference is only 1.5" and not something more profound!

[Myka]

Oh, no kidding Tony! Could you imagine if he got 15" like a Red Coris? That would suck. It's bad enough he will get 6"...with just a 90 gallon tank there isn't a lot of wiggle room. He seems to be very similar in habits to the Melanurus...hunts bristleworms like they are the devil. Constantly picking at rocks, and picking at the inside of SPS colonies (not hurting them). He hasn't hurt the Peppermint shrimp that's in there. There have been a few empty snail shells in the last few months, although I haven't actually seen him picking at them so I don't know if he has anything to do with that or not. I'm going to add a Yellow Wrasse (H chrysus) as soon as I find one, so that will be a good test to see how much of a jerk he's going to be. I took all the other fish out of the reef, and am going to concentrate on making it a wrasse dominated tank. Should be interesting...

[fishoholic]

Yikes! Glad to hear everything seems ok.

[Myka]

Thanks Laurie.

So far so good. Adding the calcium did exactly what I was hoping it would do; it precipitated a bunch of calcium and alkalinity out of the water column. Precipitate all over...powerheads are white. I will test later, and see how much progress there is. Corals still look fine.

[fishoholic]

Originally Posted by Myka

Thanks Laurie.

So far so good. Adding the calcium did exactly what I was hoping it would do; it precipitated a bunch of calcium and alkalinity out of the water column. Precipitate all over...powerheads are white. I will test later, and see how much progress there is. Corals still look fine.

That must be a bit of a relief