75 gallon-The beginning

Here is a picture of the scrubber. I had to redo my original one due to needing to move the sump around and switch which compartment the skimmer would be in. It hangs from the top of the stand with plastic coated flexible wire. The lights are some LED grow lights I got off ebay. Unlike most similar designs I have the pump split with a tee and water comes in both sides of the scrubber tube. I found this worked best at equalizing pressure and making sure water was evenly distributed across the screen.

 

So the algae scrubber is working better than expected thus far. I had a day or two of brown slime and now I have green hair exploding on the screen. Running it on a 12 hour light cycle for the time being.

 

Tank has been cycling 2 1/2 weeks. Ammonia is .001 or 0 from the original spike of around 3ppm. Nitrites have gone down from over 1ppm to 0.2ppm and Nitrates have gone from over 50ppm to 15ppm. Swapping out a shrimp every 3 days or so to keep ammonia trickling in until all the levels are stable in a couple weeks. Phosphates are reading at .02 and have gone down steadily from the beginning readings of .07. Still havent decided on initial livestock, which is probably good as it avoids impatience.

 

One concern I have is the PH is hovering around 8.04 to 8.07. Hoping that once the cycle is complete I can do a 20% water change and get this back in the 8.2 area it was when I first filled the tank.

 

Cleanup crew has been at it for a few days. Water parameters have been really good after the initial cycle. Ammonia and Nitrite at 0, Nitrates originally at 40 and now at 15 and going down with biweekly 10 gallon water changes. Phosphates at 0. Green hair algae is the only nuisance thus far and it is being depleted by the snails and scarlet hermits. Picked up a Starry Blenny as the first fish and only fish for the next couple weeks. He seems to be doing well and is checking out his new home cautiously. If everything keeps improving I plan on adding a few banggai cardinals in a couple weeks. After that my stock list is open and I havent decided but I think it will be a 7 fish maximum in this tank as I want to focus on corals.

 

Some crappy phone pics of my orchid dottyback, starry blenny, and yellow eye kole tang above. The tang is a little shy still and won't eat any seaweed yet but picks every now and then at some algae in the tank. Parameters are all good. Tank has been up for about 5 weeks now. GHA in tank is receding and not growing back after I pull the longer stuff out. Phosphates reading 000 on my Hanna Checker, Ammonia .001 or less, Nitrites 0, Nitrates 2-3ppm. PH swings from 8.15-8.22 but staying in that range. Keeping salinity at 1.024-1.025. Thinking of adding my first coral this weekend. Not sure what yet, though I plan this to be a some LPS, mostly SPS tank. Dosing pump is arriving sometime today so that will be the next thing to work on.

 

The first coral and a full tank shot.I picked up a Jebao doser as well and so far it is calibrated and working well adding small amounts of Mg and Alk. Calcium is fine at the moment but my Alk is around 8 and Mg 1100 so I want to raise those a little bit first.

 

Thought I'd post a picture of what my Seneye mobile monitoring looks like in case anyone was curious about trying it.

 

A new internet celebrity? Grumpy fish? I think he looks like an Angry Bird.

 

Picked up a Foxface from Landlocked Aquatics, cowdust9s new place. He is doing great and has destroyed the remaining GHA in my tank and readily eats nori and herbivore pellets.

 

I should also add I had a salinity drop a couple weeks ago due to not calibrating my refractometer as often as I should and using a different temperature CFL bulb to test the calibration fluid vs the tank water. The salinity fell to 1.018 with me thinking it was at 1.025. I lost my yellow eye kole tang and starry blenny due to this. So the lesson is test often and calibrate.

 

A short video of my oldest member of the tank thus far, my Pom Pom crab that was formerly in my retired pico tank.

 

Some recent additions to my tank. Anyone know what the tan blotches on the clam might be from? He was closed up pretty tight in the bag I drove from CR to Des Moines, so my best guess is it is irritation from being shut and transport. Seems to be doing really well.

 

So I've added the Maxspect Gyre. I guess I'll see how things react. I've got it set on a 5 second pulse at 20% and it is creating great flow pushing to the opposite wall and an undertow along the sandbed moving back towards the pump. It cleared a lot of detritus off of the rock. It's definitely overkill for the 75 gallon I think as I'd say 20-30% is the max it can be without harming anything. I wanted the 150 model however because of its length, the sheets of water are almost equal to the width of the tank which was my goal. The less powerful model is going to be a few inches smaller and I fear the flow too narrow for the tank.