Jester's Progress On His 90 Gallon Reef Tank Upgrade

Here is my progress on my 90 gallon reef tank upgrade. If the video freezes up, then let me know. For some odd reason I have had some issues with Youtube uploads in the last 36 hours.

Here is the lighting portion as well:

And the latest update with my Rail Mounted AI Hydra 26 HD lights and the addition of my Pajama Cardinalfish.

Growth on the Pajama Cardinal and the addition of a newer and larger Diamond Watchman Goby:

 

Noticed today that my Diamond Watchman Goby periodically perches on my rock. My previous one never did that:

Feeding Time!!!!!!!!!!

A general channel update:

BC R

I posted it in the corals forum, but for continuity it is probably worth posting here as well:

And the two new fishes in quarantine:

Cleaner Shrimp molted last night:

 

Your tank looks so great! This is really making me want to start up my own Saltwater tank

 

Well if you can be content with a smaller tank and just a few fish you can set one up that will be fairly easy to maintain and not super expensive. Nart has a guide on here and I have a cost breakdown of setting up a 20 Long FOWLR (Fish Only With Live Rock). The only 2 things I forgot in the vid were $10-$20 for 10-20lbs of sand and a $7 Digital thermometer.

 

My Yellow Tang and Coral Beauty are currently in acclimation. . . .in my super fancy dollar store acclimation boxes:

 

New Yellow Tang and Coral Beauty Feeding with the other fish:

 

New Yellow Tang and Coral Beauty Feeding with the other fish:

They look awesome!

 

Had to remove the Yellow Tang due to aggression towards the coral beauty (took a chunk out of it's lower fin tip) and was hitting the CB with it's scalpel (not good). I do currently have a Pyramid Butterflyfish in QT and will post a vid once it is added. A small upgrade, but I did add a black back to the aquarium:

 

New Leopard Wrasse in QT:

 

The Pyramid Butterflyfish fell though (died as the supplier delayed shipping to the LFS) and finding another one has proven to be a bear, so I opted for a One Spot Foxface instead. It is now in QT:

 

Okay, they are in:

 

Species Spotlight on the Coral Beauty:

 

Species Spotlight: The Blue Star Leopard Wrasse. A comment on how to select one to ensure your best chances for success for a fish that is a notoriously poor shipper and picky eater:

 

Adding two more spotlights today. The First is the One Spot Foxface:

 

The Melanurus Wrasse:

 

The Pajama Cardinalfish:

 

According to best info, Wrasses are Carnivores and don't care for seaweed. Apparently neither my Melanurus or Blue Star Leopard Wrasses got the Memo:

 

Sounds like a case of... If I sees others eat it, I eatz it too!

How the heck is it that I'm just finding this thread?

 

Decided I needed to add some additional biological filtration to my tank. Add some chaeto and a nice new and purdy CF Grow LED to my sump:

 

Growth update on the Melanurus Wrasse as it is transitioning from juvie to adult:

 

Went to my LFS on Black Friday for a 50% off sale looking for a lawnmower blenny. They didn't have any in so, I ended up being talked into adding a few more coral frags to my tank. This was the result:

 

Awesome update Jester! The new corals look great. That unhappy, unidentified euphyllia... well, tough to say at this point but it surely looks like it'll be of the torch or 'spawn variety. I hope it's an octospawn!! Anyhow, I've found some euphyllias to be moodier than others. For me, it was the frogspawn. That little dude took weeks to fully extend after coming home and has been fine since, but still is a bit more touchy than others.

I am so stoked that you got a Darth Maul. Yeah, I don't put a lot of credit into the names, nor will I ever pay some crazy price like $100 per polyp for zoas, but names are still a good identifier, and Darth Mauls are awesome! I also had terrible luck with zoas in the beginning, and a couple of those losses still hurt, (Rastas ), but another generous reefer talked me in to trying again, much like your LFS did for you. 3 varieties are now all doing very well for me. Idk what the deal is, because apparently some have good luck with zoas in a young tank, but I did not. After the first year was up though, zoas started thriving for me. Hope the same holds true for you. I'm thinking my bad luck may have been due to low biodiversity, which in turn was due to no live rock ever entering my tank... but, who knows? I'm just glad not to worry about it anymore because zoas are fun.

 

I am still a die hard Euphyllia guy (just because I have had great luck with them), but for zero money out of pocket I will give the Zoanthid a shot. Thus far it seems to be doing pretty well (fully open and extended most of the time). Although to be fair, I attempted growing my last zoathid frags in my 36 gallon with my Aqueon Modular LED (which was just a white and blue LED light) and it's now basking under a pair of AI Hydra 26HDs. That might just have a slight bit of difference in the results. Oh and one of the last Zoanthids I got really soured my opinion of them by coming with it's very own aiptasia hitch hiker. I killed it when it was young and popped the coral frag out and threw it in the trash (it was already completely dead by that point anyways) and thankfully haven't had any since.

 

A Species overview on the fighting conch snail:

 

A Chaeto Growth Update 1 month later with the CF Grow LED Bulb:

 

A review of the Caribsea Life Rock and advantages and Disadvantages compared to Dry Rock and Live Rock:

 

Continued Growth update as my Melanurus continues the transition from juvie to adult. Tail is clearly adult pattern now and it's colorful stripes are more visible:

 

For those who are curious here is a vid on a basic sump setup and how it works:

 

Growth update on my Coral Additions:

 

4 cheap tools that I find indispensable in the hobby:

 

Further progress on the transition of my Melanurus Wrasse from Juvie to Adult. It's dorsal fin spot is almost non-existent now:

 

I know you love your Wrasses... but I love the Foxface!

 

The Foxface is such a Spaz. He's the only fish that has nearly gotten me in the face with saltwater splashing at feeding time. I will feed and watch with the feeder lid open and all of a sudden it will dart to the surface and do a quick about face causing saltwater to come flying at me (yes, I have managed to duck and dodge when he has done it). Still love the guy though. Much better than that butthead of a Yellow Tang that I have had. Funny thing though is that my Blue Star Leopard Wrasse is actually my most people friendly fish. When I have large crowds at my house and the other fish get spooked and hide or when I reach into the tank to scrub the rocks he is the only one that will hang out and will actually hang out a few inches from my hand checking out these weird white worms that keep scrubbing and slightly shifting the rocks. Very curious and fun fish. It was funny that on another forum one of the things a guy who had recently transitioned from Freshwater to Salt made the very astute observation that Saltwater fish in general have WAY MORE individual personality than Freshwater fish and after doing some thoughts and comparison I have to agree. I will see if I can find my post where I posted my individual observations of each of my fish and I will post them here.

Anways, noticed in addition to the Chaeto Growth in my Sump that my Copepod population is definitely building up in my sump. I managed to get a vid of some of them crawling around my sump last night:

 

Yeah, I am going to eat crow for this, but I am trying it anyways to help with algae removal. 2 fully saltwater acclimated mollies in my sump to test out:

 

Hope that works out for you! for some weird reason I have found that black and silver mollies are bigger work horses when it comes to algae removal IME.

 

Well I can't say for sure how it will pan out because of my dose of Flucanozole for the past month.

Here is the before dosing Flucanozole:

Here is after a month of Flucanozole with no water changes and followed by a 20 gallon water change and waiting for a week:

 

Update on my Zoanthid Freebee from my LFS, it is definitely growing and has a second almost fully formed and colored polyp and is working on a 3rd.

 

Who doesn't love free stuff but if I ever got a free zoa it would probably come with a nudI or something knowing my luck.

 

My LFS actually inherited these from a guy who tore down his long established tank and his rocks were covered with these corals. Basically they just took a single polyp from the rock, put it on the mount and gave it to me. I do find it ironic though that about a year ago, I spent $75 on 3 zoanthid frags and not a single one made it and one had an aiptasia hitchiker to boot. I get this one for free and it's thriving. Further proof that the best things in life are free.

 

Sometimes luck gets you farther in life at times I wish it could be that easy for me to be that lucky but bad luck always finds me.