Christy's 180 build

christyf5 · #1 01-07-2014, 02:13 AM

Tank took a big hit last year. Fall of 2012 saw some hair algae move in after using a phosphate reducer that wiped out some corals. I suspect the stuff slowly leached out of the rock or something. Where it came from I have no idea, I haven't had hair algae problems since I started in the hobby. It started out as a small patch that I wasn't worried about as the fish picked at it and I thought they'd take care of it. I didn't pay much attention and then the next thing I knew it was everywhere. By february the tank looked like this:

I went on the hunt for a seahare and ended up sharing one with another local reefer, her tank was smaller so she took him first. By the time I got him into my tank though, I was already losing corals as I couldn't get the algae pruned and scrubbed fast enough. The seahare finally went in and cleaned every last bit of algae from the tank over the next few months, and I mean EVERY last bit, even the turf algae and various other algaes I've had for ages. It was like I had started out with new rock. Crazy awesome. However I didn't have very many corals left. By then I had a new baby to deal with and tank maintenance was chucking some food at the fish nightly (if I remembered) and it wasn't long before the cyano set in and the last of the SPS were on their way out. I have 2 colonies left and a few LPS. The tank was looking pretty bare and it was pretty depressing. I finally decided to give it another go. The fish are sticking around so might as well have the tank looking decent

So heres the tank as it looks tonight. I added a bunch of frags courtesy of Brad on Sunday night and I will be working on getting the last of the cyano out of there. Turkey basting and waterchanges etc. Fun stuff.

Man that is a crappy photo. Looks ok on my phone LOL! Anyways you get the idea

Aquattro · #2 01-07-2014, 02:52 AM

Looks great, won't be long and it'll be back to what it was!

gregzz4 · #3 01-07-2014, 02:54 AM

Holee molee, from here it looked like your tank was being over-run by GSP

Glad to see you had some time to deal with stuff and hope it turns around for you (baby aside)

kien · #4 01-07-2014, 03:25 PM

ooh, looks sparkly clean ! And so much real estate potential :-)

Delphinus · #5 01-07-2014, 03:33 PM

Nice to see a bit of the purple Dory

Good luck with the new frags!

PO4 is the bane of a reefers existence (I'm sure it's not alone but it's certainly up there.) There are times I wish I could afford my own seacan of gfo and then I could not feel misery doting it out half-cup by half-cup each week

christyf5 · #6 01-06-2015, 10:51 PM

Ok reef-wise the last couple years have sucked. Big time. After the clearing of the GSP things were okay for awhile but having a couple kids really takes time away from the tank. It did okay for awhile but eventually I lost pretty much all of the SPS (save a couple pieces) and about half the LPS due to various issues, none of which I can seem to recall due to severe baby brain.

Anyhoo, its been awhile and I'm doing the yearly "kickstart the interest in my tank" so here we go.

I've restocked the tank a couple times without success. The ricordea and mushrooms have attempted to have their way with the tank. I've attempted to tame the mushroom population but pretty much left the ricordea alone. I used to have about 5 different colors of ricordea but the orange ones have outcompeted almost everyone at this point and there are only a handful of the other colors left. The two yellow acropora colonies are the sole survivors of the hair algae outbreak of 2012 (which is slowly returning on the right hand side of the tank).

All of the fish are doing well, at some point I lost the filefish. No idea when that happened and no carcass was found. I lost the royal gramma as well. There was no indication that they weren't doing well. They were there and then they just weren't. Currently, the regal tang is going through some sort of issue. I'm not sure if its old age or what (he's almost 12) but he appeared about 3 weeks ago as skin and bones and unenthusiastic about live in general. Upon feeding the tank the usual pellet food, he was only moderately interested so I broke out the big guns: frozen mysis. That seemed to do the trick and in his usual way he has convinced me that I need to feed mysis at least 3 times a day to keep him happy. He has since turned around and is starting to slowly regain weight and look half decent. I say only half because he's a pretty battered looking fish and has lost a lot of the darker coloring around his face over the years. He's no cutesy Disney Dory thats for sure (although he certainly fits that character).

Ugh, I can't upload the rest of the photos. I wish we had a "save post" function. More later

lastlight · #7 01-06-2015, 11:20 PM

it's just good to get an update at all welcome back to your journal lol. sorry to hear about your regal but hopefully things continue to improve. 12 years is crazy awesome!

gregzz4 · #8 01-07-2015, 01:37 AM

Sucks to hear about your losses but glad to hear about the 'kickstart'
I've run across fish boredom with pellets before. In my case it's usually an indicator to buy a fresh container as I can't even use up a pair of 125 gram ones in a year - too many other foods
I keep it in the fridge but it doesn't last forever, and I feel it gets stale in the autofeeder

christyf5 · #9 01-07-2015, 02:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lastlight

it's just good to get an update at all welcome back to your journal lol. sorry to hear about your regal but hopefully things continue to improve. 12 years is crazy awesome!

thanks! I think so too, I thought maybe he was just advancing towards his "golden years" but it would appear theres some life in him yet!