tjm80's 75 gallon build thread

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Also, the Kole isn't "covered" like pictures you see when you do a google image search, but I'd say he has about 20-25 spots over his body.
 
An update on the Kole - I've been soaking his food in some minced garlic for the past few days, and haven't seen any ich spots in the past few days. I know this doesn't mean I'm in the clear, but for now I feel like I can breathe a sigh of relief.

I also bought a koralia magnum 5 (1650 gph) powerhead and placed it in the corner of the tank, blowing up and towards the front glass. It's the smallest of their magnum powerheads, but that joker is huge. Kind of wish I'd gone with 2 smaller ones instead. But there seems to be plenty of water movement.

Also, the DIY live rock has been curing for the past few weeks, with daily (or near daily) water changes and the film on top of the water is no longer showing up. I will test the pH when I get home. Hopefully it has come down some. I need more rock in my tank!
 
lol I need to quit getting optimistic about it. A few spots showed back up tonight. Both tangs, and one clown have been seen "flashing" today. Only visible spots are on the Kole.
 
Wouldn't you know it? Everything appears back to normal, coloration and behavior is great on all fish. The diatoms are killing me though!

Anyway, I wanted to update you on the "build" of the reef. I have a small frag of zoas and a small bit of frogspawn drip acclimating as we speak! Will post pictures probably Sunday or later.
 
The **** ich kept coming back, gradually getting worse. I've seen both tangs, and one clown flashing. Also the Kole and flashing clown had some pretty rough marks where they'd been flashing a lot more than I'd seen. So last night I set up a 20 gallon hospital tank, threw in some PVC joints and elbows, a powerhead, heater, and airstone. I thought I had .5" PVC to make a sponge filter, but alas, I need to run to the hardware store at lunch and get some.

I treated the hospital tank with coppersafe, and checked all fish this morning and the YWG tried to jump out! Thankfully I have it covered! All fish appear to be doing well, except the Royal Gramma that wouldn't come out of his hole in the LR last night when I took the tank apart to catch them all. Planned on getting him out today, which I did. Unfortunately he didn't run from me at all! :( Dead fish don't run. I guess stirring up the sand bed and moving all the rocks caused a spike and he didn't last.

But it's probably a good thing that I've got them in the hospital tank anyway, because I have 30 more lbs of base rock on its way from reefcleaners.org. I probably would have lost more than the gramma had I left them in when I rearranged the tank.

My question though is how long do I need to leave the tank fallow? I know the ich will be gone from the hospital tank long before it's gone in the DT due to the copper treatment.
 
Leave the display tank fallow for 30-45 days so the Ich will run through their life cycle. Without fish hosts, they will starve.

You'll find a lot of opinions on this topic on the web. I like to find the commonality between them and make my own conclusions. I would say that timeline is the consensus.

As for the fish, it's 30 days after the last Ich spot drops off.
 
By the way, your clowns look like percs to me. Percs usually have thicker black lines outlining their white stripes, like yours have. Just my opinion, I could be wrong.
 
They were sold to me as percula, and honestly that's what I hope they are. I was told they are tank raised. But I really dont care if they are occ. or perc.
 
Yeah, I have a very young ocellaris, and it's a beautiful fish. I had 2, but lost one yesterday. :( Clowns have always been my favorite fish, and IMO true and false percs are the best looking fish around.
 
All fish are still doing well in the hospital tank, except the yellow tang. Friday at lunch he was eating, swimming around normally. Everything seemed to be going ok. Friday night I noticed he seemed very disoriented and was swimming on his side. I checked him a few hours later and he was laying on his side. I started worrying that there was ammonia in the tank, so I did a 50% PWC and moved the yellow tang to the DT temporarily. He seemed to improve almost immediately, rather than laying on his side he was up swimming - still disoriented but swimming rather than laying on his side.

Got up Saturday morning and he had died. No clue what happened, as all the other fish in the hospital tank are still ok and doing fine.

I have stopped the copper treatment for now. Will start it again if I see anymore signs of ich. I've read that tangs are very sensitive to copper, and that could be the cause of the yellow tang's death. But the kole tang is still doing fine, no spots for about 3 or 4 days.
 
I ordered 30 lbs of base rock from reefcleaners.org a few days before I decided to set up the hospital tank. Probably a good thing the fish are out of the DT anyway because of the stress redoing my rock would have caused. Haha. Anyway, I got the rocks redone. My tank is starting to come together (now to get rid of this d@mn ich!!)

So here are the pics of the new corals, along with a full tank shot. The water is still a bit cloudy from rearranging the rocks.

Frogspawn Frag:


Mushrooms - Complements of my dad - he bought them for me :) :
[url=http://www.flickr.com/photos/57895967@N02/5611157521/]
They aren't fully open since I redid the rock, they're normally fully open and really colorful.

And the newly redesigned tank!:
 
Looks great, like your little frogspawn you got there. It's always awesome when someone else buys you something for the tank isn't? Lol good job to dad, now if I could only get that idea through my wife's head!
 
Haha, yeah it was pretty cool of him. I took him to the LFS that's going out of business and I showed him the other mushrooms and explained that I was either going to buy the zoanthids or mushrooms a few days before and went with the zoas. He offered to buy them for me. Thought it was pretty cool.

Finally got the frogspawn glued down... The frag plug was huge on it and I couldn't wedge it anywhere, so I took it off and glued it to one of the new rocks.

For the record, I highly recommend the base rock from reefcleaners.org. If I had it to do over again I'd have skipped out on most of my fiji live rock and just got a piece of it or two and went with 80% reefcleaners rock. As you can see my fiji is the "base" and the "base rock" is on top. lol
 
I think it is because he said he just finished rearranging the rocks. Glad you had good results from the reefcleaners rock, I've never used them before.
 
10-4 on the recently disturbed sandbed causing the cloud. Prior to that it was clearer water than I've ever seen. It's crazy how much faster a cycled tank's sandstorms clear up. I'll go snap another picture. It's cleared up a bunch.
 
Less cloudy tank:



Nassarius snail laying eggs:



Frogspawn has opened more since the last pic:



New zoas that were closed earlier. I can't get them to open as full as they were in the store. Also the larger colony isn't opening as much anymore either.


Lastly, a rather large q-tip/pineapple sponge that showed up. I have several of these things:

 
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