**Brian and Stacy's Reef Experience**

[brikeibur]

Ok, so after looking through some other reef stories in this forum I decided I needed one of my own. This is not our first endeavor into the saltwater world, but it is our first endeavor into a 'reef' system. A few years ago we owned a nice 100G saltwater 'fish-only' aquarium. It was filled with mostly aggressive fish, but it was a fun and exciting tank. We had a zebra moray, very large stars and stripes puffer, a porcupine puffer, a leopard grouper, a lionfish, several blue damsels, perhaps even some domino damsels at some point, and I think some other ones that I just can't remember. Anyway, to make a long story short, one day we came home to a smoke filled home......literally 'SMOKE_FILLED'. Our surge protector underneath our tank had shorted out (due to old wiring in a very old house) and caught the back of the wooden base of the tank on fire, which then caused the carpet underneath to catch fire as well as the wall up the back of the tank. Needless to say I think our little 'kids' were probably cooked in the tank. It's not entirely sad though......luckily (in the long run) the tank overheated and burst and the 100 gallons of water ran out and put out the fire. We ended up with a really messy room with ruined walls and flooring....LOTS of smoke damage over the entire house, but luckily our cat and dog were unharmed, and we did not lose a house full of our belongings!!! Was sort of a blessing in disguise I guess (in a sad and depressing kind of way). After that we took a break for a while.

Now we are back, so we decided to start small, and go for more color and interesting life, hence the 'reef' tank!!! We are in a new home and ready to start fresh!

I will break this down into a few posts in order to get everyone up to date on my current system.

Our new tank is a 24G Aquapod with a metal halide. We purchased the tank in mid June, I believe. We started it out by getting water from our LFS and adding live sand and one gorgeous piece of liverock (heehee)!!!

 

[brikeibur]

We added Nitromax to assist in the cycling of the tank, which I will say did quite well. What Nitromax is designed to do is to have your tank cycled in about 2 weeks I believe, instead of the normal time (about a month I think). It adds some very beneficial bacteria to your tank to help it move along in the process.

After about two to three weeks we went out and bought a Master Reef Tester kit and tested everything that it would test. All seemed to be doing well, so to make sure, we brought water samples to our LFS and had them retest it....same verdict...everything looked great!! So we got two green chromis to give us something to watch, and our LFS gave us a really good deal on a nice colony of Zoas and a few hermits to assist in clean-up duties!!! We were VERY excited to be able to stare at something other than that ONE rock!!!

The next week we rechecked our levels and all looked well, so we purchased a cute little pygmy cherub angel and a nice little feather duster!! Here are pics with all of the new stuff added.

 

[brikeibur]

We started noticing algae all over the back of our tank (we were told that was a good sign) and little white dots on the back and on our LR. We were later told that the dots were calcerous tube worms (I think thats what they are called). Kind of like mini feather dusters from what I hear, but no feathers, or at least none I have seen so far....

Here are the dots up close and personal....

 

[InLimbo87]

Sorry to hear about what happened to your old tank. Glad that it didn't cause too much damage, and that you're back on the horse!

As for this tank, what are you using for biological filtration? Did you leave the bioballs in the back chambers to assist that? Either way, I would suggest finding some well cured rock and slowly adding it to the tank.

Nice start, though. Looking forward to more pics as it progresses.

 

[brikeibur]

No bioballs, we took them out along with the ceramic. We now have much more LR in the tank to help out with that.....I'll try and finish catching you guys up, I was just to lazy to finish it last night!! hehee....

 

[Dentoid]

Nice start to your chronicle! Looking forward to the growth and development of your reef! It's looking smashing!

 

[brikeibur]

Ok, to catch you guys up....

Here's where we messed up....I know you are supposed to take it slowly. We did a little bit, but not enough, but you learn from your mistakes.

The folks at our LFS told us the next time we went in that it would be ok to add a purple pseudochromi to the tank.:bugout: Not good. They also told us chromis did better in groups, so now we had 3 chromis (too many fish for our tank). The psuedochromi was a gorgeous fish and all but SOO aggressive to the others. We were told that he would only be aggressive to other fish similar to him in body shape. NOT TRUE. The truth is unless your fish are larger than him, he is aggressive to everyone (I'm sure he is aggressive to fish that look like him as well, but the chromis and my angel are not shaped like him at all.....and he was a JERK to them)!! Well, anyway here are photos of that endeavor (oh, we also added some LR to the tank at this time as well).

...and here's a close-up of our bully:

 

[brikeibur]

OK, from the last addition of the additional LR, the pseudo, and the extra chromi we started to have problems. First of all we noticed the purple pseudo chasing everyone!! We hoped this would stop if given a little time (we thought perhaps he was just adjusting). After a couple of days however we noticed the other chromis fins were torn and Ralphie (our pygmy cherub angel) was hanging out at the top and his fins were a little ragged as wel (he had a nice little hollow dug out under the larger piece of rock in the back, but the pseudo wouldn't let any of them anywhere near the rocks and stuff). Perhaps our tank is just not large enough to have a pseudochromi...dunno. But anyways, so we decided Ralphie the angel wasn't looking good, and we REALLY liked him, so we decided to take the pseudo back first thing Monday morning, problem was it was Saturday afternoon (the store was closed already)and we wanted to do something sooner than 2 days later. So here's what we did.

We got in contact with a different LFS (VERY nice guy!!). We were asking him what to do about a sick angel. We told him we were on our way to Petco (which we NEVER use for fish) to see about getting a small tank for a hospital to put Ralphie the angel in. He told us it was a good idea to seperate him, because being bullied would only worsen his condition if he was sick and further stress him out. Then he told us he would come back to work in order to open up and sell us some treatment (how nice is that????)!!! We met him up there at the store, and ended up getting some medicine for fin rot (his fins had a ripped appereance....we read this is usually caused from stress, bullies, or poor water conditions so we this was a very likely problem). We also ended up buying an 8G Nano tank to make into a hospital (gave us a good deal....a $150 tank for $75)!! It came with all the lighting and filtration we needed (tanks with filters and such cost that at Petco and aren't nearly as good...no good lighting..etc..)

We got home took out about 6G of water out of our 24G and added it to the 8G. We then topped it off with water from the store and refilled our 24G with more store water (like doing a water change to both). We tested the waters.....both the water in the nano and in our main had small traces of ammonia. NOT good for our little angel. We changed out a little more water in the Nano to bring the ammonia down and put in the angel with the treatment (still had a small amount of ammonia, but so did our main).

Sad to say, angel died later that night.....poor Ralphie! I loved that cute little guy!!!:tears: Here are some pics to remember him by:

Here's looking at you kid!!!

 

[brikeibur]

OK, so Monday morning rolled around and we bagged up the largest of our chromis (we caught him nip at the fins of the smaller chromi) and the pseudo and took them back to the original LFS where we had bought them. We had enough of fin nippers and bullies...so out they went!! We also found out that our larger piece of LR had die-off. Not because our tank wasn't cycled (tank was great) but because it was laying wrong. We learned that every piece of LR has 2 sides. On top of ours there was some coralline and other stuff, on bottom, there was other little things growing on it (this is how it grows, one type on top and one on bottom). All this died and had to regrow because we had the rock upside down (who woulda thought :bugout: )!! I liked it better the new way and it already had die-off so we let it do its thing (this is a big reason for our ammonia spike we had previously had).

We tested the water after several days and all was back to normal (the rock had now had time to get rid of all the die-off and the reduction in fish poo helped to get our levels back to normal). We didn't have enough LR to support that many fish anyway, but now we know. Thanks to experience and the help of folks on this site!!

 

[brikeibur]

After our levels had got back to looking great, we decided to go ahead and finish buying all of our LR (we only had 2 green chromis at this point) and this was probably the best time to add it, that way if there were any spikes in anything it wouldn't be so devastating.

We bought a bunch of LR from the new LFS (the one with the guy who helped us out) and put it all in the tank. We arranged it and several days later we were noticing all kinds of cool little hitchhikers and such....
We had a mushroom, a pink bubbly thing (which is in another thread under the hitchhiker forum trying to be identified), some mini starfish, mini featherdusters, and more.... It was so exciting!! Here is a picture of the setup after the LR and the hitchhikers...

Here's some pics of our little shroom hitchhiker:

and here is the bubbly hitchhiker (I call him squishy):

 

[brikeibur]

Ok, so we are almost all caught up now...
We waited a couple of weeks and tested our water (it was great) we also took a sample to our LFS (they tested it and it was GREAT they said), so we purchased a small 3-head frogspawn they had!! It is sooo cool!!!

Here it is:

 

[brikeibur]

Looks like this post will catch us all up.....It is now July 29th we went out and ate yesterday with our families for Brian's Bday!!! Yay! My mom bought him a new little addition to our tank, Squishy Cheeks, a very small and adorable false percula clownfish!! She also bought us a small frag of some Pulsing Xenia. The Xenia was growing out of two empty shells. Our stupid little hermits kept messing with it yesterday though, turning it over and looking at the shells. We didn't want to keep moving it, because it looked stressed, but we moved it from up front in the substrate to the top of the rocks. The small piece of tissue holding the two seperate shells together snapped though, so now there are two shells with some xenia on them. We finally got them in two spots the crabs seem to leave them alone in. They don't look very well though. Not really pulsing anymore and very drawn up, I hope they pull through....they were so pretty! Any suggestions on what would help them would be great. We hear a good pH helps, but that is like the ONE thing we don't have a tester for, so Monday we are going to get that and see what our pH is like. I have read that at like 8.3 they quit pulsing and at under 8 they look really bad... Hopefully they were just scared and will come out in a day or so, if it's our pH though we will have to slowly dose it and get it up a little higher. We are currently adding Purple Up to our tank daily so that helps keep iodine at a good level which I hear is good for corals as well. EVERYTHING else in our tank is perfect (just not sure on the pH yet).

Tomorrow marks 7 weeks for our tank!! Yay!! We are so proud of it now...it is really starting to look nice!

Here are some pics of Cheeks and the pulsing Xenia when we first put them in yesterday...enjoy!!

....and Squishy Cheeks!!

 

[Dentoid]

I really like the aquascaping!
Sorry for the loss of your Cherub angel.:tears:
I have one and know how cute they are!
That damn bully!

 

[goldenmean]

Brian and Stacey your tank looks great.
After a lil'ruff start you guys are well on your way.

Don't worry about the xenia.

It may take a few day but it will pull around.
The hermits were probably just eating micro algae off of the shells.

 

[brikeibur]

Well, forgot to mention that one of our chromis is sick, but he has been that way for at least 2 weeks. It started around the same time as our ammonia spike and bully pseudo was in the tank, maybe a little afterwards. His eye is bulging a bit and has been for a while. I posted some pics of him up under General Reef Discussion forums but haven't had many responses, so we have just been observing him. He has done well for the past week or so, eats, swims normally and all that. Today he isn't looking as well though. He ate earlier just fine, but he doesn't seem to be quite as active and is breathing just a LITTLE heavier than usual. I checked the water in our hospital tank, but the ammonia seems to be a little high....anyone know why this might be? There hasn't been any fish in it in a few weeks (Monday we will get more water to do a water change this may help, just don't understand why it would be high to begin with).
So we haven't moved him, we still have him in the main. Any suggestions?
(oh, as a reminder our levels are great (except for maybe pH....we'll find that out on Monday)....water readings were a suggestion in one thread, but ours has been great for a few weeks now.)

Here are some pics of him: (As you can see his tail fin was BADLY mutilated from the pseudo, but it is making a full recovery, it is almost completely healed now)

 

[lcstorc]

Great thread and I am sure it will be an awesome reef.
A couple of things though.
Stop with the Purple Up. It is very easy to OD on iodine. You and your tank will be much better with a calcium test and a calcium supplement if needed. Also Purple UP is full of Phosphate which will feed algae.
Sorry about your angel but be aware that they are not reef safe. Some people say they are but most will start nipping corals as they mature.
Also be careful abou the bio-load. If you have a good skimmer and at leats 1lb of LR per gallon you will be good with 1 inch of fish per 5 gallons or water. That leaves you with a max of about 5 inches of fish. You will reach that very quickly.
Meanwhile welcome to RS and I look forward to seeing your reef progress.

 

[blue_eyes53813]

You have a very nice start. Im sorry about the loss of your FO tank. Your new tank is very cute. How much lighting is on it? .

 

[brikeibur]

Just thought I would post some pics of a few of the hitchhikers, growth, and what-not that I have in my tank....it is all very exciting!!

Here is my hitchhiker mushroom and one of about five mini feather dusters that have shown up in the tank!!

Here is a pic of Squishy Cheeks (the clownfish), one of my chromis (it's sorta dark, but he's in there), and one of about four or five mini starfish (it's so cute how small our little clownfish is)!!

This is my new Pulsing Xenia frag (the one I had to relocate about four times!!). He is all drawn up, but hopefully in time he will make a comeback (the second little frag piece was either ripped off or it fell off of the other shell, so I have it placed in a small nook in one of the rocks hoping it will take a hold and grow, but we'll see)!

This little guy just showed up one day on the back of my very first piece of LR (I don't think it is the same type of Zoa as my other colony, but I could be wrong).

A little brown shroom hitchhiker (under the Zoas) and a side angle of my large colony of Zoas!

My little emerald crab grubbing!!

.....and a couple more pics of our cute little Squishy Cheeks!

 

[brikeibur]

Ok, I don't know very much about lighting, but this is what is on it (read the box..lol). It was an Aquapod that came with everything (our version actually came with the better lighting set-up (Sunpod lights)).

Sunpod Model #1059
20" 70w HQI 24-Hour Lighting System
-has a PowerPaq 14000K HQI Metal Halide Lamp and 6 blue lunars and 6 white lunars.

I would actually like to upgrade to the 150w version of the same lamp, I hear it will add more of a blue color to my tank. I would really like to have some actinics, but there is no place for it to fit on my lighting hood, so I'm not sure how I would rig it up without it looking like crap.

Does anyone know if upgrading from the 70w to the 150w would help or better yet if it would even fit in my fixture (I know you can get a version of mine with 150w HQI, but I'm not sure if all you do is change the bulb out or if something else is needed).
Thanks!!

 

[brikeibur]

And for the final pics of the day, a look at how my tank has progressed. Full tanks shots from the first few days until now!! Enjoy!!

First shots of my new tank:

At 2-3 weeks:

4 weeks:

and 6 weeks (almost 7):