65 gallon log

Been testing each day for Alk/Ca/Mg. Parameters now that alk is consistent everything else dropping faster. The changes to the tank i imagine will change consumption/dose but dont mind testing/manual dosing as much now, just do it while my food thaws. once the changes stop ill get automated. Monti/hard corals are growing faster. My tiny birdsnest frag from an old colony i had is showing growth tips. Been the same size for over a year. Purple Monti and neon green monti thing are pickin up.

(natural sunlight)
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my scribbles:
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Finishing up the changes to the scape. Filled in around the main rock structure with small and shelf rock. Always weird seeing the white rock but corals will fill in soon enough. Took out the hammer and flat head to chip off some chunks that stuck out, and to split the rock my nems were on. Half the rock was covered in the green/blue paly that im clearing my tank of. Got 6 rbta and one green nemk now, the big one split into 3, dont think it liked all the changes

Photos from construction:
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Picked up cespilaria from Aros, stuff is looking good. Already have a small frag piece attached to some rock. Plan to let this take over the far right side of the tank, flows really nice in the current.

(natural Sunlight)
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Other big change was trading in my galaxea & a few frags for a good size all purple frogspawn. The sweepers on galaxea were getting everywhere and took up to much space. Another reason for the change is ive been trying to cut down on the green, most my corals are GREEN! The piece could be in better condition, but color is nice and it likely will brighten a bit after a few weeks, polyps should fill out quickly too. Its similar to how i got one of my other frogspawn thats doing great.

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shot from earlier this week:
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They are for display, pretty sure Aros took those with lights off so the polyps aren’t as extended/colorful or the camera flash makes em look different. They look good even with the lights off!


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Awesome to know. I'll have to get some once my tank is setup. I have no room for anything in the nano or frag tank at the moment...
 
Things have been settling well. No more major changes to the scape or coral placement. Only other big change is redesigning the sump, want to change sump chamber design a bit.

Been messing with one Duncan colony to get light to all the heads, don’t need any more Duncan frags! Anemones are mostly healed up from the splits.

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The new purple frog spawn is doing good, filling in well. The Cespitularia is growing/spreading quickly. The runner piece is growing polyps and the mat is spreading from the frag and the mother has another runner. Clams continuing to color up more and more.

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Been testing Alk/Ca/mg everyday and manual dosing. Alk/Ca daily Mg occasionally. Flushed the doser with vinegar then DI so it’s clean and ready to go....just gotta set it up! Growth is unsurprisingly better with dosing.

Duncan Frag that was getting shadowed:
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Left side of tank
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Full shot
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So after a few weeks with no more additions/changes Alk I’m dosing 1/4 Cup, Ca = 2tablespoons and Mg is one tablespoon every 2-3 days.

So with that info I setup my jebao auto doser tonight. Drilled holes in the new dosing containers and feed in the lines. The containers are labware my girlfriend grabbed from work, guess they come with a filter and usually get tossed with no use.

I am Watching the dosing line tips to see if there is any deposits/build up over time. Never tried dosing straight supplements, use to dilute with RO.

1/4 cup Alk = ~60mls
2 tablespoon = ~30mls

Alk dose:12 doses a day @ 5mls
Ca dose: 6 doses a day @ 5mls
MG dose when needed, Still dialing in.

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Added possibly my last fish to the tank. Grabbed an AC Orchid dottyback, is pretty small compared to my other fish. Was reading the orchids are one of the more peaceful dottybacks even more so when aquacultured.

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First few days the hogfish and coral beauty keep him in a rock hole. But he’s been out more and more today and yesterday, eating plenty, no aggression anymore. Love the purple color and active swimmer.

Will let the tank adjust and settle for a few months before considering another fish. Only other I’d be looking to add is another clownfish to make a pair. But want to see how bioload is handled when the dottyback gets bigger before deciding on another clown.

Random shot:
Bubble coral after lights out tonight
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Last edited:
Dosing has been going good. Lowered initial Alk dose from 12x5ml to 12x3ml and seems to be holding at ~9.8dkh. With The initial dose, Alk crept up to 10.8 and I had to stop for a few days till it lowered.

Ca has been maintaining at 400-410 and mg about 1400. Think Ca is 6x3ml a day and Mg I haven’t really dosed consistently, maybe once a week.

Blue cesp. spreading, growing fast!
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Orchid dottyback after feeding, he’s looks like he’s gonna pop! out in the open all the time now, gets occasionally swiped at/chased by coral beauty/ candy hogfish. He’s bottom of the pecking order but doesn’t seem to bother him to much.
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Zoa frag glued in.
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Numbers tonight after my water change :

alk- 9.9
Ca- 440
Mg- 1360

Took some pics with the SLR.
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Growth has been good on these frags since dosing, been stagnant for probably the last year:
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The new orchid dotty
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The clam:
Is it normal for the mantle edges to be hugging tight to the outside of the shell? Most pics ive seen the mantle edges seem to flair out more. Maybe because its small?
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Just a beautiful setup. Congrats on all the hard work and success.
One thing that happened to me recently - my doser started corroding because of tiny leaks in the tubing, and it was dripping rusty water. The tubing eventually fails on those things - it is simple to replace the heads, but small leaks can go undetected for a long time. I recommend that you place your dosing pump so that no rust can fall into your tank in case the same thing happens to your pump.
 
Just a beautiful setup. Congrats on all the hard work and success.
One thing that happened to me recently - my doser started corroding because of tiny leaks in the tubing, and it was dripping rusty water. The tubing eventually fails on those things - it is simple to replace the heads, but small leaks can go undetected for a long time. I recommend that you place your dosing pump so that no rust can fall into your tank in case the same thing happens to your pump.
What type of doser were you using?
 
I’m gonna take a good look at each doser head after reading about your experience. I’m using a Jebeao too, I know they are cheap Chinese equipment so failure is expected at some point haha!


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A few things have have happened since last post. figured out layout and put together most of new sump. Real simple 4 chamber design with rock & tank drain, skimmer, chaeto & rock, return and small rock. Tank is a 20g long BTW

Main reason for redesign is I didnt plan to have macro growing so bits of chaeto is getting to skimmer pump and return when I turn return off. It builds up over time and reduces the efficency. Just have makeshift grating in current setup so planned grating into the design. Grating will sit on top of the two baffles, grating is tall enough to handle pumps off without chaeto spillage. So cut grating off a cover to a cheap plastic aquarium i had collecting dust.

Taking skimmer in and out is a pain with rock jammed in with it. . First chamber flows out the bottom and into skimmer chamber hopefully to reduce buildup. 1st chamber holds rock, tank drains and dosing drains. Skimmer sits all by itself so cleaning/maintenance will be a breeze.

Last Chamber got reduced by a 1 inch, trying to give chaeto as much room as possible. Return chamber in current sump has a over/under baffle setup which doesn't do anything except waste an inch of space. Learned a lot from building my first and current sump haha. An inch less will make the water level change faster in the return but probs not by much. Looking to use the 4th channel of the auto doser to get auto top off going sometime so wont have to worry for long.



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design sketchings/rough plans
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Other happenings was my candy hogfish croaking. Not really sure what led to him dying, seemed fine and healthy. Think i had him around 2 years, not sure how old they get, small when i got him. Coral beauty was the only one to occasionally bully him but never anything to cause concern, just keeping the pecking order. Water Parameters are fine and all coral is doing great, fish had no visible wounds or parasites the day before.

Gonna let the tank sit for a bit before getting another fish see if any others die. Really liked the yellow color and behavior of the fish, always out in the open zipping around, checking out rocks for food. So thinking adding either yellow or red fish to the mix that is active. Would be nice to have a fish that would eat flake/pellets so i could automate feeding down the road, hogfish only ate frozen.

current 65g barebottom inhabitants:
- coral beauty (slightly aggressive)
- orchid dotty back (no aggression)
- lawnmower blenny (no aggression)
- Oc. Clownfish (no aggression)
-dersea clam
- urchin/ cucumber,
- no shrimp/crab/snails


Fish im lookin into/researching: (only adding on from list)
- another candy hogfish
-peppermint hogfish
- Midas blenny ( potential for blenny on blenny battling? Gets big?)
-yellow assesor (to cryptic/hides?)
- yellow coris wrasse (cant do barebottom?)
- various flasher wrasses (cant do barebottom?)
-chalk basslet (had one before that was awesome)
-swisguard basslet (cryptic?)
- Tomini tang (65g to small?)

Other yellow/red/interesting fish?
Open to hear peoples input on fish list and suggestions


rando shot, urchins monti & gsp camo haha
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The cespilaria growth is pretty interesting and cool to watch over the weeks. It grows out these mats that crawl and run off the main colony. Theres a few more runners coming off now. One runner has now crawled several inches away while still attached. The first frag from the colony has been growing fast!

runner from beginning of october:
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runner tonight
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first frag and the new runners coming out on left and right of main colony
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Monti progress pic, it will be a year next month. first pictured was when it was bleached and taken last november around the 11th:

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taken the other day:
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bubble coral stinger tenetcaled tagged this coral (forget name), did a number on it, melted it away.
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Just some phone pics before water change. Went two weeks without water change and alk/cal/mg held. Ca and Mg stayed steady but alk dipped from 10.5 to 8.4 over the two weeks, so still got to dial in dose.

Corals doing great after getting levels steady, bubble coral is growing fast, its been responding well to spot feeding. Up to 10 rbta now after all the splitting, got a breeder box and took off the rbta on the overflow, planning to pluck off a few smaller ones if they are easy to grab.

Clam lost some color and newer purple frogspawn seems to have lost color/bleached. Not exactly sure why but thinking it was either lighting or nutrients. I upped light levels a week or so ago, so lowered white and blue levels by a few %. Clam seemed to lose color when I was gone for two days last weekend and didn't feed, came back and noticed color loss. Its nothing drastic but keeping an eye on both.
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Beautiful tank. I am glad I took the time to read through. Man you have done some great work on this.

I am eager to keep following along.
 
Got around to siliconing in the grating to the new sump during the week and switched over the new sump today. Cut some black foam board to block out fuge lighting over the return and skimmer. The new design gives me enough room to install an old DIY frag rack, also setup a breeder box for nem clones and frags. Already diggin the new sump! Did H2o change and gotta check levels, alk level drops over the week so gotta adjust.
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Good and Bad news,

the Good is the sump design is much better for water changes, frags and maintenance. Also got two more RBTA splits that went on the glass and plucked them off for the breeder box.

The Bad is last baffle is breaking away from the silicone, but i wedged some egg crate in the last chamber and its holding the baffle fine.
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Other Bad news is the sump changeover seemed to have cause a mini cycle. Few days after change corals were all closed up and color loss. Water got slightly cloudy one day I imagine from bacterial bloom. The glass and chaeto also got film algae growth faster than normal.

I have been doing water changes 2x a week of about 8 gals. Things seem on the up swing though since things arent getting worse haha! Corals and anemones starting to open up again.

Ended up losing the clam and purple frogspawn, both id say were not in the best condition going into this ordeal, they were the newest additions. Color and tissue loss was worst on green monti, neon green monti and octospawn. Duncan, candy cane, zoas, anemones and tree leather were pissed and closed up. Surprisingly some corals were minor if at all affected. Torch, frogspawn, bubble, gsp, cespilaria and devils hand didnt seem to mind, maybe didnt expand quite as big. All fish and inverts survived so far.

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The Corals are expanding and algae film doesnt show up as fast or thick like the last two weeks. So things have hopefully settled and leveled out. Thinking the rock I moved during the sump change was exposed too long and stirring everything up is what caused the mini cycle. Have had the tank recover from worse when i first set it up, so just gotta leave things alone now. Now done with the major changes to the tank, just gotta keep doing weekly water changes and maintenance. Likely stock another fish or two a while down the road, will update as things progress or degress haha! Gonna Leave the baffle as is with eggcrate bracing and maybe have to change the sump again if baffle gets worse.
 
Been a bit since posting, been busy with holidays and work. Not as keen to post when the tank has issues either, for some reason it harder to show pictures and update on the tank when things dont go as planned!

So changing my old DIY sump over to a newly redesigned DIY sump caused some issues as mentioned. The last baffle also came about half lose and wiggles. I wedged some acrylic in the last chamber to keep the lose baffle in place, im leaving everything alone. Id like to replace the sump agin since the baffle is messed up but its working good enough and dont want to experience another downswing with the tank.

Some corals like the bubble and most softies experienced a minor effect like slower growth rate when i changed over the sump. My torch and big frogspawn on the other hand lost some smaller heads and shrunk, leathers shrunk, monti cap turned ghost white, red zoas shrunk, nems bleached badly and split like crazy.

heres the one sad shot i took a few weeks after the worst of it around beginning of jan
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Things are for the most part steady now, recovering color, softies growing faster, nems colored back up and growing. I added a few corals and fish once everything settled back in. Picked up a talbot damsel and bicolor blenny around mid january. Everyone gets along with the occasional squabble, once adding the two new fish, all the other fish seem to be out and swimming more now.
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Got a good deal on purple anthelia and torch frag too.
Smashed off most of the monti cap i had, was extremely bleached and died back alot. Sucks what happen but It did open up a lot of prime real estate choping the monti back. Hoping for the birdsnest frags, leathers and galaxea frag i have take over the top left of my tank.

left side after the monti haircut and rearrange
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purple anthelia
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Only a few small pieces of monti left
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Leather corals still struggling, getting brown slime like algae, dinos or something covering them that i blow off.
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Seems that i aslo have to feed the tank much more now that things have settled. Reducing feeding size seemed to hamper the corals growth and nems looked worse. Interestingly enough the brown slime substance on the leather seems like it is more prevalent when i feed less as well. Id expect more green alage and such if feeding to much but have not seen any really occuring so keeping an eye out.

Left side is looking good, lots of flowing corals, softies and nems have been doing great. However my Duncan coral didnt like the sump change and closed up. My coral beauty them like pecking at the edges of the heads really doing a number. Had a few heads recover fine and had to frag and toss the main colony.

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Will take a vid when during daylight hours when everything is opened up more
 

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