40 Breeder SPS Reef

Made a few upgrades/improvements/changes to my system.

Last summer I scored this 20 high drilled tank for free. Pretty, it ain't, but it holds water and thats all I need it to do.
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I plumbed it into my system with 30 lbs of new live rock. It will be like a 20 gallon refugium (no macroalgae) for my 40 gallon tank. Wanted to do this basically to re-introduce the little critters, which seem to have died off or gotten eaten by something.
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I also got this cool powerstrip/wavemaker thing that let me put one rw8 on each side of the tank on 'else' mode, and it switches back and forth between them every couple minutes. It seems to help me get better and more random flow.

I want to add some more fish, so I made this screen top in case I get a 'jumper.'
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Some pics:
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Newest addition: Pink Lemonade
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In this picture you can see my Garf Bonsai. If you look close you can see the darker purple color coming back on the tips and around the outside of the base. You can also see the Red Dragon in the foreground -- both of these corals are getting better color.
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I also started dosing some potassium nitrate to the tank in an effort to keep a nitrate reading around 5ppm. So far it is working well -- I read a TON about this before pulling the trigger, so we will see how it goes.
 
9.5 dKh, 440 Ca, 2.5 Nitrate
Keeping my alk a liiiiiitle higher and seems to be working well. Red Dragon looks as red as the day I brought it home. My Miyagi Tort is the slowest to color back up but it is happening, I see some green glow on the base where its encrusted the rock. This keeping nitrate thing is working for me very well. I think I'm gonna have to deal with algae by adding a bunch more clean up crew, prob get some from Reefcleaners.org I have wanted to try them for a while.

I got my Diamond Watchman Goby last night from Seven Seas. I still want to add a Lawnmower Blenny next

Currently running 1/4 cup ROX carbon and 1 TBSP GFO in a bag in the sump

Also using 4 teaspoons Kalk in ATO now
 
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I finally broke down and picked up a magnesium test kit (Salifert) and sure glad I did. :) First time I ever measured my Mag and got 1110. Going to raise it up 100 or so points a day.

Thinking this might help with my algae issue as well and could be the cause. I have read about raising mag to 1500-1600 temporarily to combat hair algae. We will see.

I'm using Randy's recipe which is just epsom salts. Waiting for 4 cups to dissolve in 1/2 gallon of RO now. I'll dose 1/4 cup and check again.

Other params: Alk 9.8, Cal 420, Nitrate 5-10

Everything looks good in the tank
 
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200th post!

Well its been a hot minute since I updated this.

THE GOOD
I decided to raise my tank nitrates a couple months back and it has done wonders for both color and growth of all my corals (I have mostly SPS now). In fact my colors I think are right up there with some of the sweetest tanks I have seen, and even though we all do a lot of educated guessing in this hobby, I personally think keeping nitrates up is a HUGE help. But of course there is another side to every coin....

THE BAD AND THE UGLY
Nitrates encourage algae growth, everyone knows that. But it took me a long time to figure out that my algae was the dreaded BRYOPSIS :( This stuff can really make your tank look like crap, and nothing eats it, but I was happy when I finally found out what it was, because then I can attack the problem. I have been using Kent Tech M to raise my magnesium up to 1880 and finally the stuff is dying off. I will hold here for as long as it takes to completely die (1-2 weeks I think) but I am confident that it will. Once I'm byopsis free I will make a new thread with more details and before/after pictures for anyone interested.

Here is a pic of my Miyagi Tort, which if you can look past the algae you can see its doing really good. For me this was the most difficult coral to get and keep color.

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The tank got away from me a little bit. I ended up raising the Magnesium up to 2000 with Kent Tech M, and I was keeping the alk stable for most of the way up but must have forgot to check on the calcium. I had a few acros start to STN on me from the tips. I did a 25% WC the other day and then tested my calcium which was 360! Who knows how low it actually got. I have all my params back in check now and only lost 1 coral so I can definitely live with that. It was a crappy looking $5 acro frag that I removed from the tank-maybe it would have pulled through but oh well.

Since I got my water back on point the corals have grown back over the exposed skeleton parts so I think I am out of the woods now. Polyp extension is coming back out too -- it was one of my clues that something was wrong.

Pretty sure I got all the bryopsis cleared out but I still have some damn algae. I have bunch of snails from Reef Cleaners that just arrived so I hope that helps. I'm going to throw some more emeralds and hermits in there too.

Edit: almost forgot -- there was one more acro looking bad. I figured it would die anyways so I thought I would try to save it by super glueing over the exposed parts. I'm not sure yet it if will make it and grow back over the super glue blobs on the coral, but it looks OK and still have polyp extension so we will see
 
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I just finished a super massive deep clean of my tank! Went nuclear against my algae by scrubbing off every rock with a toothbrush which took hours. I filled up a ten gallon tank with tank water for a dunking/cleaning/scrubbing station and the water was black when I was done, it was crazy! Only broke a few small tips of corals off. Hoping my bulked up cleanup crew will keep things under control going forward -- I also need to be better about blowing off the rocks regularly with baster or powerhead. I put a small amount of GFO in a bag in the sump also, to hopefully prevent the algae getting a hold again.

I took the opportunity to re-do my whole aquascape too which I have been wanting to do for a while. Very happy with it now -- I have some caves, and created a bunch more space for corals. Picking up a sweet one tomorrow so I'll get some new pics up pretty soon
 
Changed the name of my thread because this hasn't been a "mixed" reef in a long time. To mark the occasion I'm posting a pic of a red montipora capricornis that has done really well for me. I got this coral as a 1 inch frag and now its the size of my hand.

I also finally figured out (I think) how to use photobucket -- so hopefully my pictures overall will be a lot better and not sideways!

 
I really like the stair-stepping formation on that Monti. You may want to put a showpiece coral at the top. Given the way it leads the eye.

Good contrast with the Oregon Tort. But, you need to bonsai trim it for a denser looking growth. (And, then sell me the frag.. wink..wink..)
 
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I moved short notice recently- so I had to tackle moving my reef tank. Never did that before so I wanted to snap a few pics of my tank before breaking it down and moving it into the new apartment, which was luckily only one block away. I never mastered getting good photos with my blue lights but oh well. This tank ran for almost 3 years!

I reused my sand and only broke one branch off an acropora- all the other corals and fish seem to be doing great so I'm very happy. I will post pics of the new tank soon (just the same one actually but different scape) and I'm planning on getting into a bigger one soon.
 
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