Asylumdown's 275 Tank build

[asylumdown]

Well, for the first time since August 15th (or maybe it was the 18th?) My tank has fish in it. My display tank is now the happy home to a juvenile Australian Harlequin tusk (it still has it's false eye spots), and a very young doliatus rabbitfish. To be honest, if I wasn't going out of town for 5 days tomorrow, I would have probably done a full tank transfer protocol on them, but since I didn't want them to spend 1 second in a copper free tank that could have encysted tomonts waiting to hatch, it was either leave them in full strength copper for a 4th week, or get them out of copper and in to a sterile tank that had no filtration. The tuskfish was starting to lose his appetite, and it looks like he's developing fin rot, so I didn't think the extra week in copper was a good idea.

These two have now been through a three week cupramine treatment at between 0.5 and 0.6ppm, then a tank transfer to a sterile, guaranteed ich free tank for 3 days. The fin rot worries me a little, so I put them both in a paraguard bath for an hour before transferring them to the main tank. Hopefully with perfect water quality and good nutrition the tusk's fins will recover. Everything I know about the biology of crypt tells me that there's no way these fish should be carrying unseen parasites, and my system has been fallow since... late September I think (mid August if you count the days there was no fish in the display, but in the sump, though ich was clearly present in the sump in that time). I've even been neurotic about new invertebrates going in to the display, not a single drop of water from another system has entered mine, and anything with a dead skeleton or shell has been carefully rinsed with fresh water, then brushed with a toothbrush dipped in full strength bleach before being quarantined for at least a week, in which time the water in the 5 gallon QT tank was 100% replaced at least 3 times. All sps colonies and frags have been broken off the rocks or plugs they came on, and re-glued to new, sterile bases before being QT'd for at least a week. If I have any say in the matter, I'm going to have an ich free tank.

[asylumdown]

Picture time!

First, some FTS:
Front:

Back:


South Front:

South Back:


North front:

North Back:


And some growth shots:
Sept. 10, 2012

Dec. 28, 2012


June 21, 2012

Sept. 10, 2012

Dec. 28, 2012

[asylumdown]

July 11:

Sept. 10

Dec. 28


Oct. 18

Dec. 28


Oct. 18

Dec. 28


Oct. 18

Dec. 28

[asylumdown]

And the birds nest I have isn't doing so hot, so I'm going to replace it with one of these guys when they come out of quarantine:


And these are the guys I have downstairs going through the tank transfer protocol:

I have a swiss basslet in there too, but he's too shy to get a picture of him.

I also appear to have conquered ich, the rabbitfish and tuskfish in the display are in perfect health, not a speck on them since they went in!

[asylumdown]

Time for an update!

tank has had a mild case of the dinos for the past month or so. It's not severe enough that anyone but me would notice it, though it did 'bloom' a little the first week of february. I had a mild heart attack at that, since I left on February 8th for 17 days for my wedding in California, but sometimes the best action is no action. My roommates took incredible care of my tank while I was gone, and while there are still dines there if you look hard enough, a change in Phos media and a thorough cleaning of the skimmer cup when I got home seems to be knocking them out altogether now. I looked at the dinos under my new microscope; I posted this in the main room, but for posterities sake, here's the pics:

1


4


While I was away, this guy (the tusk fish):


Attacked this guy (the flame wrasse):
and killed him. My roommate fed a frozen clam as a treat and the tusk and the wrasse got in a fight over it. The tusk won. I'm going to go to a bait shop this weekend to pick up some barbless hooks and see if I can't fish the tusk out of the tank. He's spent every day since I got home chasing all the other fish. I'm going to need to think hard on what I want to replace them with.

I went back and found all my FTS since I put the tank together, and I thought it would be cool to see them in one spot together. I think I've probably posted some before, but it's a cool progression

March 30, 2012 - before water:


APril 15, 2012 - Cycling


June 21, 2012 - first fish (may they RIP) and first corals. Also first signs of algae problems


August 25th -All fish removed from tank due to ich outbreak. The capture required a total break down of rock and re-scaping. Never-will-I-ever not QT fish again. One of my radions also died (hence the dark spot)


September 10 - With the fish getting hypo in the sump and the plumbing diverted away from the display, no nutrient export of any kind happened in the display tank for 5 full weeks. This was the start of something awful.


October 30, 2012 - Right around the time hypo failed (the ich came back) and I moved the fish out of the sump to a separate QT tank, something I should have done in the first place. This is what 5 weeks of no nutrient export, no algae grazing, and continued feeding will do to a tank. Coral growth utterly shut down at this point.

[asylumdown]

November 6, 2012 - With the skimmer, BP reactor and phosphate absorbing media now plumbed back inline with the display tank, and with a renewed ability to do water changes, I started attacking the algae aggressively. 16 Mexican turbo snails, mass manual removal, and dosing with Algae-fix marine made pretty short work of it. This pic is deceiving though, there was way more of it in there than you would think based on this pic at this time.


December 28, 2012 - coral growth started to seriously take off in the low nutrient environment. I also ended up losing all my fish from before the ich outbreak on November 8th, so the tusk you see there was the first time the tank had had fish in it since August. He won't be in there much longer.


January 15, 2013 - Sigh, RIP flame wrasse, you were beautiful, but you didn't have big enough teeth.


And today, Feb. 28, 2013 - The corals are growing like gangbusters, the dinos are going away, and the tank is almost exactly where I want it. I just need some more fuzzy sticks to fill in the holes, and the corals I do have to fill out a bit more. I had to majorly bump up the amount of calcium and alk I'm dosing when I got home from my wedding, so that's got to be a good sign. I took this pic while the feed mode (shuts down the return pump) was on, hence the low water level.

[Aquattro]

You meant 2013 on the last 2, right? I fixed it for you

[asylumdown]

ph, and one more thing, I ran a power meter on my radions for 24 hours to see how much energy they're using. My 8 radion are burning through 8.9kwh of electricity per day on their current settings, which at our electricity price equates to something in the neighbourhood of $22-$24 a month to run. that's way, WAY higher than I was expecting. I've currently got the power meter testing the power bar that runs my pump and skimmer, and tomorrow I'll have it test the bar that runs my heaters and vortechs. This tank is a bigger portion of our electric bill than I was expecting.