The budget SPS tank

[NeoReef]

Just an update:

Sg- 1.024

Ca- 430

Alk- 7dkh 

NO3- undetectable (im not sure why is it so low , maybe its because i cycled the rocks in the tub prior? Or it might be due to me dosing nopox last week)

PO4- 135 ppb ( anyone have a solution to bring down PO4 without running GFO? I was thinking of dosing nitrates to bring it down together with carbon dosing)

 

Over the course of the week i added a few new tank inhibitants :

1 blue tang

1 japanese swallow tail angelfish (my favourite)

1 coral beauty angel

1 diamond goby

1 electric blue hermit

4 astrea snails

 

I am thinking of adding a copperband ,purple tang , pyramid butterfly fish as well as a bristle tooth tang and a few anthias to the community

 

 

 

[NeoReef]

I also added some frags to the tank , so far no casualties , some are doing well but some are not showing good polyp extensions.

Favourite here got to be the fibre optic pocci ! 

I will try to get nicer pictures in the future with a dslr . 

[NeoReef]

Slowly adding more frags next week , and keeping a watch on alk and ca to tune my CA reactor , if you have some nice frags to let go pls drop me a message  

[Nick Liu]

Just an update:
Sg- 1.024
Ca- 430
Alk- 7dkh 
NO3- undetectable (im not sure why is it so low , maybe its because i cycled the rocks in the tub prior? Or it might be due to me dosing nopox last week)
PO4- 135 ppb ( anyone have a solution to bring down PO4 without running GFO? I was thinking of dosing nitrates to bring it down together with carbon dosing)
 
Over the course of the week i added a few new tank inhibitants :
1 blue tang
1 japanese swallow tail angelfish (my favourite)
1 coral beauty angel
1 diamond goby
1 electric blue hermit
4 astrea snails
 
I am thinking of adding a copperband ,purple tang , pyramid butterfly fish as well as a bristle tooth tang and a few anthias to the community
 
 
 

My no3 was undetactable. Bt wen i add corals plus feeding .. ha ha ha.

Sent from Singapore Reef Club mobile app

[NeoReef]

3 hours ago, Nick Liu said:

My no3 was undetactable. Bt wen i add corals plus feeding .. ha ha ha.

Sent from Singapore Reef Club mobile app
 

Surprising though , i have been feeding 1 cube a day for about 1 week still no no3 but po4 is high

[NeoReef]

Just an update for this week:

Sg- 1.025

Ca- 440 (-10)

Alk- 6.4 (-0.3)

NO3 undetectable 

PO4- 112ppb (-38) 

mg- 1110

Trying to understand and tweak my system and get it to stablize at my ideal parameters.

Currently having a imbalance between phosphates and nitrates , but it seems that it is slowly dropping from 155ppb to 113ppb over the course of 5 days without a change in feeding schedule through using nopox. I an thinking of implementing a diy cheato reactor as well as a refugium to rectify the po4 issue and to buffer my pH levels especially when my Ca rx comes online. Bought a black box led grow light from shoppee for 60 bux , hope it will grow my cheatonwell!! 

Also , im facing a slight issue of magnesium being too low at 1110, i guess it might be the salt that im using that has low Mg content . Thinking of using Madpetz MgCl / mg sulfate to rectify the low mg issue however im aware that theres risk of impurities as they are only of food grade quality . Another altnerativw would be aquaforest magnesium. Has anyone used these products before and can testify for them? 

Lastly , theres a little bleaching on 2 of my frags thats starting from the base . Not sure whats causing it , research online but theres many things that may have caused it . 1 may be due to my lower alk of ~6.4 and high PO4 of 0.3~ ppm , 2 might be due to a slight over dosage of nopox a few days back which caused white slime to appear everywhere in my sump . The rest seems to be fine tho. Would like to hear you guy’s input on this!

 

So while im learning and tweaking my tank , here are some pics of my relatively empty tank !!! Hopefully these frags can survive , color up and outgrow this tank in a few months time!!

[NeoReef]

Also , i got myself a handsome copperband from ahbeng last week during the national day breaks. Fortunately for me , this copperband seems to love mysis  

hope ill be able to keep him fat healthy and happy in my tank

[Admiraltian]

Nice pyramid butterfly!!  The mysis u fed to ur Copperband is it live or frozen?

[Jeebusai]

Nice rock scape bro.  Why I see so many tanks NO3 0. I’m still having 10. And my algae in the sump is....

[NeoReef]

1 hour ago, Admiraltian said:

Nice pyramid butterfly!!  The mysis u fed to ur Copperband is it live or frozen?

Frozen hahah !!! but his food always kena stolen by the other tangs

[NeoReef]

1 hour ago, Jeebusai said:

Nice rock scape bro.  Why I see so many tanks NO3 0. I’m still having 10. And my algae in the sump is....

Not sure if faulty test or what , highly likely due to nopox and skimming inthink

[Jeebusai]

40 minutes ago, NeoReef said:

Not sure if faulty test or what , highly likely due to nopox and skimming inthink

Seriously considering using nopox or probio s. Lol. More pics from u soon. 

[NeoReef]

Hello guys it's been awhile since the last update! Much has happened since then and i received quite a few hits while I was on an overseas excercise . For starters , when I was in Brunei , a majority of fishes passed on from ich and caused a spike in my nitrates and phosphates level . As if confirming Murphy's law , my skimer overflowed onto the floor , causing my auto top off to dump the tank with excess kalk water causing pH and salinity swings .  Luckily , caperplus gave me sufficient time to  act (called home to off the pump) and things we're quickly rectified by doing daily water changes when I was back . Here's a picture of the tank that welcomed me when I was back 

[NeoReef]

This was how the tank looked after a series of water changes and increase in dosage of nopox(sorry for the poor photo quality I was using an iPhone 6s) 

[NeoReef]

Fast forward to 31st October , went for another overseas excercise for two weeks , and as many of you have guessed , yes things started to go wrong again . For some reason , my salinity dropped from 1.025 to 1.022 , my best guess is due to the fluctuations in the overflow box (I'm using a Herbie overflow system ) and there were some pH swings due to kalkwater that I had in the auto top off. Also , I must blame this upon myself for not dipping frags I receive from fellow reefers ... Because of this mistake I introduced aefw into my system , causing some of my sps to stop showing it's polyps and most to lose it's color . 

[NeoReef]

Did a couple of water changes and my parameters are in set for now ... Waiting for the tank to recover and get it's colors back ! Not all went bad though , my rainbow natasuta and lavender short cake is showing signs of recovery and growth on my sps is pretty decent if you can tell from the pictures . So here's my latest FTS , and some par readings that I got with the help of bro Leon ! (Added and changed the rockscape) 

[NeoReef]

Recently just jumped over to pixel phones and I must say that Google phones have a much better cameras compared to Apple ! Here's some pictures of my 'control panel' and ugly sump that i failed to keep tidy (got really lazy) just got my calcium reactor up and running yesterday night , I swapped over to a bubble magus one instead of the skimz 157 as there are many issues with the 157 like poor recirculation capabilities due to the lack of a dedicated recirculatory pump , poor efflue t stability (effluents needs to be almost gushing for it to continue to run) and it just gave me many headaches . The bubble magus on the other hand , is priced at only 280 and so far it looks pretty promising (keeping fingers crossed) . I also added a refugium to help me cope with algae issues and double as a safe haven for little be beneficial critters.

[NeoReef]

As of now , my greatest concern would be rectifying my aefw problem . I'm dreading the idea of dipping my corals every week and checking diligently for pest but it seems that's the best way to go about things (anyone have other suggestions? T.T any reviews on purge/flatworm exit?) I thought maybe instead of eradicating it , I should just control it's population size with a group of predators like wrasses and mandarins but we shall see how things goes

[SubzeroLT]

Nice catching up with you yesterday. 

Since there aren't too many corals at the moment, my suggestion would be to set up some egg crates in the tank to place your SPS frags (instead of gluing them down onto the rocks) and take them out to dip every week for the next 3-4 weeks to get rid of the aefw.  And get some wrasses as well.

 

 

 

 

 

[NeoReef]

latest FTS as of 9 Dec 2018 , color has been coming back after increasing feeding and reducing nopox after taking advice from fellow reefers . not the best it can be yet though