- My 280-ish gallon reef tank
has been running for, oh, about five years now
and it's never really had any major issues,
discounting things like cyanobacteria
and the various algaes that basically
every reef tank encounters those things.
I've had pretty great results overall
with both my fish and all my corals.
Everyone goes through a few fish losses early on
in a new tank, new situations, care,
but nothing has died recently in the last few years,
so I'm really great with with that
and I think most of my original loses
were due to lanthanum chloride.
Hi, guys and girls, I'm ReefMan,
and this is an update on my reef tank.
With so much SPS coral in my tank, I've been relying
on my calcium reactor quite a bit
to keep up with the demand.
You can see that I actually need to add more media here
and I end up needing to add media
about every other month or so.
I use a Hannah Alkalinity Checker to test my tank
and I have a calcium checker as well,
and as of today, I'm down around 6.5 dkh,
so I'm actually gonna go ahead
and turn up the reactor a little bit.
And of course, the DaStaCo makes that really simple.
All you have to do is turn a little dial.
And so, I'll turn it up and I'll test again in a few days
and we'll see where we're at and we'll adjust it from there.
I'd generally like to be around eight or nine or so,
but remember, never make big changes quickly in a reef tank.
Big changes, no matter what it is, is gonna be bad news.
I almost guarantee it.
Now, I mentioned that I've got
cyanobacteria in places in my tank.
And this is sort of a never-ending issue for my tank
and really, I think that it's due
to the amount of food that I put in.
Of course, like most people, I feed my fish every day,
but I also feed my corals and acropora
and montipora at least a few times each week.
And all that food results in nitrates
and phosphates in the water
that might actually surprise you as to the level.
The last reading I had on phosphate
was about .06 parts per billion,
which is kinda on the higher side
if you were to read on Reef2Reef.
I don't really worry too much about it though
and my corals don't really seem to care much.
What does care, though, is my gorgonian.
Now, I thought I would try a gorgonian two years ago
when I was at Reef-A-Palooza
and it's sort of been hanging in there,
but really not doing well and it's shrinking over time.
This thing is a cyanobacteria magnet.
It seems to grow on the gorgonian tissue
before it grows anywhere else in the tank.
And of course, when the cyano's growing there,
the polyps don't come out.
That means it doesn't get fed.
These things aren't photosynthetic,
so if it doesn't get fed, it doesn't get any nutrition.
Now, I'm really open to ideas if you have any.
I've tried high flow, low flow.
This might just be a type of coral
that's just not gonna do well in my tank.
On the other hand, I've been having incredible success
with my acroporas, montiporas.
Even my anacropora is growing like crazy.
When I started this tank, I thought, well,
these things do grow, so instead of just buying
cheap little things to start with,
let's get the best, most colorful frags that we really like
and I'll just let them grow out over time.
And as you can see, they have grown out.
Of course, this is the largest tank I've ever run,
but by far, these colonies are the largest coral colonies
that I've ever taken care of in a tank that own.
They're really just incredible.
I've got a little acropora crab in here somewhere,
but where I used to see it from time to time,
it's all but invisible these days
amongst the deep branches of my acropora colonies,
but I do think it's still in there.
And speaking of invisible things,
I did add some Berghia nudibranchs a while ago
in order to get rid of the aiptasia that's in my tank.
I bought them online.
There's no local stores for them.
I added them to my tank
and like usual, within a couple hours, they disappeared.
And I haven't seen one since then, so did they get eaten?
Maybe by bluespotted angelfish ate 'em.
I'm really not sure.
The aiptasia doesn't seem to be spreading much,
so maybe they're still in there,
but it would be nice to see them every once in a while.
I made a video a while ago featuring some footage
of my potter's angelfish spawning
and they still do that a lot of nights
right as the lights are turning off.
Just before the lights are fully off, they'll sort of spiral
and dance their way up into the water column.
It's really pretty neat to see.
One day, it'd be fun to try and capture the eggs.
All you have to do is turn off the pumps
and then, skim them off the surface.
Then, you can raise them
and captive bred pygmy angelfish
are totally possible to do as a hobbyist.
And I think it would be exciting to try them,
just like it'd be exciting to spawn and raise my acropora.
My starcki damsel fish is also doing great
and often, it sleeps right under the frag rack
in the front of the tank.
Sometimes, it also sleeps under the nearby rocks.
It's interesting to watch it excavate its little caves.
Suddenly, you'll see a poof of sand
and you know it's digging a new burrow when you see that.
And this damsel has been totally non-aggressive
and as such, I would strongly recommend the starcki damsel
to anyone looking for a small reef fish with
an interesting personality, but without much aggression.
Sometimes, it actually does seem to swim around
with my kole tang, like they're buddies or something.
They follow each other through the tank.
It's a very deliberate movement when they're doing this
and so, I'm really not sure what's going on between them.
I'll try to get a video sometime for you
if I can catch them actually doing this.
It's kind of random when they do it or not.
Now, I did manage to get a scratch on my glass
and it's not a little scratch.
I'm just glad that it happened on the small end of the tank
rather than on the front, but be careful
when you're cleaning your glass.
I use one of those magnet scrapers with the Velcro
and I think it got a little shell
or a piece of rock under it
and that's all it took to put a giant scratch in my glass.
I'm really not sure there's anything
I can do about it right now, so I'll just ignore it.
It's on the side.
I can ignore it probably,
but let me know if you have ideas on fixing it.
I'm totally ears and I'd be happy to fix it if I can.
My tank has a plethora of little tube worms everywhere
and my montipora
and acropora actually grow over them.
which looks totally weird.
I've been thinking what I can maybe do to reduce
the population of these tube worms
and so, I've been thinking about
maybe adding a copperband butterflyfish
or something like that.
I worry about my Achilles tang
or bluespotted angelfish terrorizing a new fish,
especially a fish like those, but I can always
tape the mirror back up onto my tank.
I have a video up about that
and that does work pretty well when adding
a passive fish with aggressive tank mates.
Also, I wanna point out that I've been
thinking about a copperband for a while.
It's a fish that I've always liked,
but you should never get a fish just to solve some problem
because what will happen when that problem is solved?
Your fish might starve to death
or whatever it is, it's not good
to get a fish just to solve a problem.
Get a fish when you're interested in it long-term.
These fish can live for years or even decades
and they deserve good care throughout that entire time span.
(upbeat music)
So onto the topic of moonlights.
I should try the Radion moonlight settings
and see what it's like from a brightness standpoint.
I worry that they're probably too bright,
just like almost every other commercial moonlight.
My customized Apex moonlights
are still brighter than they should be,
but I have a new idea
and I hopefully can baffle it a little bit more,
and I'll let you know if it works well.
And I've already reduced their brightness
significantly over what it was to begin with.
I've also been thinking about perhaps
doing a live stream on my channel.
I do need to make a batch of frozen fish food
and I could turn that into a stream.
If there's some interest, we could do some Q and A,
and you can make some frozen fish food with me,
so let me know what you think.
Let me know in the comments
and we'll see what we can do about that.
So that's about it for this video.
Thanks for sticking with me throughout
the whole update on my reef tank.
I hope you enjoyed it.
And as always, please subscribe if you haven't already
and I will see you next time.
Have a fantastic day.
(upbeat orchestra music)
Bye.