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thanks marc, I am very excited about the purchase. I did not yet get the reeflink but it is on my list. probably wait for a few paychecks haha.

Congratulations, you'll love them. Did you get the Reeflink to go with them?

Never. Not in over 10 years.

too late, i bought two gen3 xr30w pro radions

Sounds like a cute pairing. Let us know if it continues to be a match made in... your tank.

I should state that the lawnmower blenny i have spotted on the burrow of the pistol shrimp while the shrimp uses the opportunity to excavated, even moving underneath the blenny. The blenny will move it's fins out of the way of the shrimp paying it no apparent attention.

Thanks for the update. I use some of Rod's Coral Food in my reef. When I do that, I turn off the return pump and pour it in the display, letting the Vortechs blow it around the reef. 30 minutes later I'll restart the return pump.

thanks for the input Melev. the coloration made me think bonsai and I hope it actually is because most people seem to have it listed as an easy coral to care for which hopefully can help out with my lack of success with these types of corals.

Just finished a small water change and on the 13th I will be dosing for the second time prodibio products.

The first coral is probably Acropora nana. Also referred to as a Bonsai acro.

The second one appears (the fuzzy side) to be A. tenuis.

Good luck! You deserve some.

Do you typically have to cut cubes into smaller portions?

right now the only shrimp i have in the tank is a coral banded which is very timid and not an aggressive eater in my tank right now so I imagine that will help increase my chances of successfully feeding them with no damage coming to the corals.

The part that frustrates me is that I had 4 that died in the sand bed, they had tissue loss and bleached and the longest any of those 4 survived was maybe 4 weeks. I really don't want to give up as being successful with those corals is my ultimate goal. Then again if I didn't want a challenge I would have done freshwater or just not gotten into the hobby at all.

It could be your shrimp are destroying the coral to get to the food. Mini mysis and cyclop eeze are good foods for acans. But you have to defend the coral if the shrimp try to steal. I've observed a shrimp come up to a closed up coral, reach deep into the mouth of the coral and pull the food back out. It's very annoying. I have two peppermints in my 60g and they are destructive. If I were to move them to the 400g, my wrasses will eat them. What to do...

All new SPS should be placed on the sandbed for the first week or two. Then you can move them up about six inches for another couple of weeks. By then you'll be able to place them where you like. Don't give up, they are gorgeous corals.

thanks for the input melev. what do you feed your acans? in the past when I have tried acans I tried to feed them small portions of fish food such as mysis at night but the cleaner shrimp i had back then was a grade "A" scavenger haha.

I have only started to believe that my water may be lacking something that sps like because after a week or two they always retract there polyps and no longer show them. Not longer after polyp retraction they start bleaching at the base and once bleaching and tissue loss begins they are dead within a few days. I have tried them in all levels of the tank, changing flow rates, changing lights, with and without biobellets, and changing salts after each failure all with the same end result. My tank is older and more stable temperature wise then it has been in the past so I will give it another try after i see how these latest corals do.

I have noticed though that since adding the chiller I have less evaporation now. It's amazing the difference that just 2-3 degrees makes

Thanks to updating us about your tank and sharing your thoughts. SPS do like pristine water, and yours may be ideal for them. You probably need to buy some frags from some local hobbyists to see that they aren't quite as hard as you've believed. The key is dipping to avoid introducing pests. Water quality is already being well cared for, and you've got the temperature locked in too. Perfect timing if you ask me.

Feeding your acans once or twice a week and they will do well. The acans in my reef are doing very well, but the frags on the backside are merely holding their own with little growth. I need to make more of an effort to feed those and offer food from the backside of the reef a couple of times a week. That is probably going to help.

It's so weird how LEDs create a disco effect on the sand.

I have a lawnmower blenny and a ton of snails but they won't touch the stuff for me if it is more than a short thread of HA. I pulled out a gallon worth of HA yesterday mostly off the sand bed and then I tested my PO4 again and still didn't get any kind of reading on it at all. I was using the Elos test kit and then I realized that I should be getting some color just to read zero for marine water. I checked the back of the box and found that the test had expired.....and it had been expired since I first ordered it online so this entire time when I thought my PO4 was good I actually have had no idea. I am hoping that my new checker shows up next week and in the meantime I am still dosing vodka and I also have some Phosphate Rx on the way.

I purchased my second filter sock today, changed it out, hosed it off, and currently have it soaking in a bleach water solution. I also cleaned and removed all the detritus from my sump so and put in some saltwater that I had been making since yesterday to replace that water. I also cleaned and emptied my skimmer cup for the second time this week and added new, well rinsed carbon to the sump as well. I will be taking my vortechs apart between today and tomorrow to clean them up and I am going to relocate my MP40w slightly to try and get a little better random flow I feel that my MP10w is fine where it is currently located for now.

I used Marco Rocks in the past and in my personal experience I always had hair algae issues. In my opinion its takes forever to cycle properly and become full live rock. What about your clean up crew? Any snails or maybe a sea hair they do wonders for hair algae.

I rinse GAC with RO water. Several times. That way I clean it off, but don't "waste" it with the stuff tap water contains.

Phosphate Rx turns the phosphate into a solid, to be trapped in a fine micron filter sock or exported via protein skimmer.

Public aquariums blast their filter socks with a garden hose. Hobbyists sometimes soak them in 10:1 bleachwater solution, then rinse them well in dechlorinator and air them out to dry.

I have a 75 gallon tank.

Equipment:

Reef Octopus skimmer and biopellet reactor when I get the replacement part in (they sent the wrong part to me, apologized and did not charge me and have another one on the way)

48 3watt cree LEDs running over my tank from Rapid LED

Reefkeeper elite

30 gallon sump with refugium full of chaeto that I prune frequently

I did a tank restart in january and so all the rock and sand that is in it has been in there since then (50lbs of marco rock and probably 75lbs of reef flake sand it's about a 2 1/2" sand bed.

My PO4 is currently reading 0 with all the drop test kits that I have but I imagine that the hair algae is sucking it all up and distorting my reading. They were back ordered on my hanna checker so it may not be here until next week but in the meantime I have started dosing very small amounts of vodka nightly and it seems to be having a positive effect on the algae while improving the growth and color of my 3 corals that are alive.

On Monday I got an alarm that my tank temperature had exceeded 83 degrees which was weird since it wasn't that hot outside even. so I turned down my allowed temperature on my reefkeeper, turned down the thermostat temperature on my heater and went to hook up my chiller that I acquired by trading my old T5 light setup for. Well long story short one of the feed line fittings broke so I also am waiting for one of those in the mail as well.

If I use any tap water what so ever I will use seachem's prime. Melev do you just rinse your carbon off in RO water or do you have another recomendation?

With the phosphate Rx how does it remove the phosphate IE is it something that ends up getting skimmed out or is it mostly biological?

since adding the additional filtration to the tank though I am starting to notice a difference and I will purchase another filter this weekend sometime so I can rotate and thoroughly clean the one currently in the sump. For any type of filter sock what can I use to clean it effectively without damaging the material itself or adding anything harmful to the tank?

Sorry to hear about the series of issues you've encountered.

In regards to your algae woes, it will come to down to phosphate, light bulb age, removal of detritus in the rockwork, and how many snails are in the tank.

I'd immediately run fresh (well-rinsed) carbon, and add Seachem's Prime to the tank. That will lock up ammonia, chlorine and chloramines, especially since you used tap water in the emergency.

If PO4 is up as you suspect, use Phosphate Rx to get that back under control. http://melevsreef.biz/catalog/blue-l...a-phosphate-rx

Get a bunch of new hungry snails. Pull out all the nuisance algae you can by hand. When did you last replace your light bulbs?

Do you have more specific information about your aquarium and the equipment you have that I can review?

melev- I hadn't been cleaning them with any type of solution I had been just wiping them out every 1-2 months what vinegar to water ratio do you recommend? and do I need to soak the buckets or just spray and wipe them down?

I read that last week actually very good write up and read. I have been refraining from dosing carbon so I actually just started doing it again last night after testing for stray voltage. Have you heard of any bad salt batches by Kent? I am halfway through this bucket but I don't think I could say comfortably that I wasn't seeing some dwindling problems before I started this one to blame a salt batch.

I have two different alk test kits that I test with that are both within the same ballpark figure my Elos reads a more specific 8.5 and API reads 9. Salinity is a little low at 1.022-1.023 which I test with a refractometer that I re calibrate every few weeks with a 35 ppt solution

Switched to new LEDs from HO T5s about 3-4 months ago. Corals had been bleaching in the same pattern as a RTN case but very slowly in comparison so after doing some research I assumed that it was due to lack of lighting (though they didn't SEEM to brown) and gradually turned the lighting up from about 40% to about 75% which I just completed about 2 weeks ago. My sps had already bleached and gone by this point.

My monti cap is still encouraging me as it is one of my favorite corals of all time so any growth and progress is currently all revolving around that. There are NO soft corals in my tank.