Christys 90gal Reef

ok so I'm thinking I probably should start a tank journal even though its likely you guys have seen it before (and besides I've already made like 4 posts and none of them have anything to do with reefs )

Ok to get you to today....

90 gallon eurobraced tank with corner overflow, 30 gallon sump, mag 12 return on a 3/4" seaswirl, tunze wavebox, tunze 6060, euroreef CS6-2, filter sock in sump, phosban reactor, carbon reactor, 2x250W Ushio MH in lumenarc mini A3 reflectors supplemented by about 40% of 110W URI actinics (poor math/measuring on my part) Aquatronica dosing pump (Ca, Mg and Alk) everything run by an Aquatronica controller.

Current inhabitants include a regal tang, powder blue tang, scopas tang, tailspot wrasse, midas blenny, royal gramma and candy hogfish as well as some evil critter that keeps laying waste to my snail population

The tank has been set up for about I dunno, 5 years or so. Been moved a few times. Had a major crash in july due to a move to a new house and a very cold floor. Basically the livestock sat on said cold floor for too long before going into the tank and a chain reaction of RTN occurred and wiped out about 80% of my SPS. LPS survived, even flourished while ammonia levels went through the roof and my skimmer skimmed out something even more disgusting than regular skimmate. A bottle of prime, 160g in waterchanges and my eventual indifference eventually saved the day (if you can call it that).

And that brings us to today, the tank is rebounding nicely and those sps that are left are coloring up from many lovely shades of brown. Supplemented by new frags its just a matter of time before the tank is "full" looking again and hopefully by next year it will be back to its former grandeur.

Of course this thread is worthless without pics so...

Sept 26/09

Wow, very nice, your corals look nice and healthy. I like the pocilloporas!

Very nice!

Very very nice tank Christy!!!!!

Nice Tank Christy sorry to hear about your tank crash.

Great looking tank, I am sure you will have it back to normal in no time. Do you have any clams now?

For those of you that don't know I remember the old setup Christy had was a tank of the month on another forum.

my clams are living at the LFS, I had some issues with my fish discovering that clam mantle is tasty. one of my sps fell on a clam and the mantle tore a little. ever since then they've just gone to town on them. I suspected either the scopas tang or the regal. after they healed I did try to reintroduce the clams to the tank again but after about 2 days the same thing happened. I tried putting a clear produce container (like the ones that hold 2lbs of blueberries) overtop and it worked really well but it also grew algae like crazy. After the crash I hauled them out immediately and took them back to the LFS as I wasn't sure if they would survive the high ammonia levels. They're having a great old time at the LFS, putting on new shell etc. Not sure what I'm going to do for the future though, I'm hoping to set up a 180 soon (that seems to be my lament, come December the damned thing will have been sitting in my basement for a year) and I was hoping that with a major shakeup they might all be able to live peacefully (weirdest thing, the fish have lived with clams for like 4 years then suddenly they want to eat them) either that or I'm thinking one or both of the fish will be taking a trip to the LFS. I just don't think I can have a tank without clams.

Nice job Christy, be proud Girl!!!

I'll tell ya what, you get a boat ride over here and bring the clams with you and I will keep them for ya...

Do you have any shrimp in the tank? I recently had issues with my Peppermint shrimp eating my clams.

Hey sure thing! Theres a ton of stuff I'd love to bring back with me

Nope no shrimp. My tailspot wrasse makes short work of them. I've never been successful with peppermints anyways, they just hide and then disappear. Expensive offerings to the reef gods IMO

Its the fish, if I sit on the floor in a dark room (ie. the fish can't see me) I can see the regal divebombing the clams. They're not exactly the tiniest nips either, they're large regal mouth shaped chunks. At first they were just little bits (ie scopas mouth sized) and later on when I figured out that they always seemed to know when I was watching, I could see who was doing what. I really don't want to part with them but man, I really REALLY love clams. *sigh*

I know how that go's, there are some very beautiful dwarf Angels I would love to have but I have had too many bad experiences in the past with them.

Man i want them rics !!!

Looks great Christy, and

christy,you say your tangs are biting your clams? I almost bought a scopas last week to clean up some hair algae Is that a blue hippo in the pic? Do you have any plans for a calcium reactor?

Originally Posted by roadking1

christy,you say your tangs are biting your clams? I almost bought a scopas last week to clean up some hair algae Is that a blue hippo in the pic? Do you have any plans for a calcium reactor?

Yep, two tangs eating the clam mantles. I'm not sure whats up with that, I don't know if I've ever heard of that before. They lived with clams for about 4 years previously before I even had a problem so it seems pretty weird to me.

Yep its a blue hippo in the photo.

No, I have no plans to add a calcium reactor. I have used them before. Previously I had a deltec style reactor that used the fine ARM media and then switched to a schuran jetstream pico that used the larger media. I had troubles maintaining magnesium levels even with the addition of zeomag and was going through media like it was going out of style. A friend was having great success with a dosing pump and buying dry media to mix up in gallon jugs for dosing. I've done the same and couldn't be happier. No more taking my co2 tank to be filled every month. I just mix up a new jug of solution and the dosing pump does all the work

What dosing pump do you use?

its an aquatronica 3 head dosing pump that has to be hooked up to the aquatronica controller. profilux sells a standalone dosing pump that has gotten great reviews though if you're not in the market for a controller setup

Whew its been awhile since I've updated this. So there have been various goings on in my tank. One of which was green slime algae which finally got the best of me and I used erythromycin to nuke it. I have no sandbed so I had no issues with using this as I didn't have near the biological disaster that can sometimes be associated with sandbed die-off. A few diatoms and my tank was back on track.

Christy 1 Cooties 0

There was sufficient browning of various yellow and blue corals. That was to be expected, I've treated with erythro before and the same thing happened. With time, the colors will return.


Then less than a month later, I added a raccoon butterfly to my tank. The majano/aiptasia populations were getting out of control. Kalk wasn't getting it done, nor joes juice or TA aiptasia destroyer (which is pretty much just kalk). After a few days of hiding under my wavebox eating all my fugly brown zoos and hydroids, the little guy survived my powder blue tang and made it to the other side of the tank. That was when I discovered he had skin flukes. A little shopping trip and I came home with a bottle of Prazipro. Reef safe? Why yes! Ahh don't worry that your tank is just rebounding from an erythromycin treatment! Bye bye skin flukes!


Christy 2 Cooties 0

So the raccoon recovered nicely, waterchange and carbon removed the prazipro and we're off to the races. The raccoon finished off the fugly zoos ate all of the aiptasia and most of the majanos.

Christy 3 Cooties 0

And then he started in on my blastomussa.

Christy 3 Cooties 0 Raccon 1

So as I've started work on a new tank I'm impatiently waiting for new rock (LFS is getting a shipment any day now and as I've prepaid and got a sweet deal I'm tied to waiting). The raccoon will be finding a new home. He's a cool fish and all but I love my blastos more. I just hope they can survive until I can get him out of there. Little bastard is too cunning for a fish trap it would seem.

Anyway, with the help of lots of water changes, coral snow and pohls coral vitalizer I'm almost to the colors I was in September (why so quickly to brown and so slowly back to color??).

Pic from November 7th

Tank looks great, good luck on getting the fish out, with out a fish trap that he wants to go into gonna be tough getting him out.

Tank is looking awesome as always Christy. Glad to hear the cooties lost too.