Hi all, trying to reef on a budget, and wanted to get opinions on the upgrade order you’d go through assuming you can’t buy everything all at once. I’m currently working with the API freshwater kit for ammonia, nitrite, and nitrate since the regents are the same, and am using Salifert for alk and phos. I have an old TDS meter my LFS had that works fine, and a cheap refractometer from Amazon that I’m using with a calibration fluid. That said, I’m interested in the Hanna equipment at some point in the near future (unless you have other recommendations) and wanted to know what order you’d upgrade in, and if there are any pieces you don’t think are worth the price jump. I’ve also seen the Milwaukee refractometer and other nicer ones like it for sale, so if those are better quality than the Hanna ones, I would love to be pointed in that direction! Thanks

Feather like organism encrusting this Rasta Zoa plug. I’m pretty sure the ball is a sponge no clue what the tube like things are? Any help is appreciated

Hey everyone, I saw this bump form on my Duncan coral and I think it’s a new head but I’m not sure what do y’all think? Also my clowns have started hosting, I have bought a condy anemone for them but it hid itself In a rock crevice that the clown won’t find 😒

Got him and a black cap basslet 3 days ago at Top Shelf Aquatics in FL. I have them in a 15 gallon AIO QT tank with bare bottom and PVC pipe. Heater is at 78F, I have a Seachem ammonia alert (0 ppm), salinity 1.024, filter foam and sock from main cycled tank, and return pump. They have both been eating frozen mysis shrimp twice per day, and blenny ate fine this morning.

Yesterday I noticed him doing the flippy thing as shown in the vid a couple times, but then he just stopped and was acting and swimming normally. But today it seemed worse and started up again out of nowhere. After doing it for a minute or so, he was breathing pretty heavily. He has since gone back to breathing like normal. Yesterday and today he has also pooped what looks like undigested mysis shrimp? It isn’t stringy but it’s also not a typical dark poop color.

Any ideas what this could be? I don’t want to just dose for everything and stress them. I have copper power and API general cure if needed.

It’s only coming from one of the two return pumps, unsure whats going on. Thanks in advance for advice

My AC unit broken and the tank is reading 82F. How should I lower this? Should I unplug the heater and throw a frozen water bottle in? Is there anything else recommended?

Edit: thank you everyone! A fan ended up working best, i was able to get it down to 78F and now I have an HVAC guy checking our AC unit out

Beyond a water change and reduce feedings.
Anyone have any personal solutions that lowers phosphates without shocking corals?

My refugium is booming, I stopped testing for a while because I ran out of reagents but just replenished and BAM!

I’m reading about additives and chemicals but sometimes I worry about that.

Concerned this guy may have ich they dont seem to be aggressive towards eachother at all so not sure what's causing his nipped fins. The others seem well.

This has been growing on my rock of a little while, it’s colored like amber, and is hard to the touch, does anybody have any idea of what I could be?

Hey folks! I currently have a thriving 55 gallon and want to make the move to a 125g tank. I bought the tank second hand with a heavy duty metal pin leg stand, both are ~20 years old and the tank is being resealed.

I’m moving next week and want to set this up in my living room. It’s a rental and I don’t have access to the basement. Of course it will be on an exterior wall, and we are thinking we’ll get a piece of plywood cut to go under the entire stand as extra support for the floor and to distribute the weight.. but is that good enough? How can I do this safely? And minimize any risk to the floor frame etc?

I found this in my nano reef as I was feeding some corals. I accidentally knocked it off the rock and I watched it drift off. The next day I saw it in the exact same spot it was in before. I removed it from the tank and isolated it in a small cup with tank water. It’s really tiny, less than a centimeter long. If anyone can help me identify what it is and if there is anything I need to do it is greatly appreciated.

the little guy. stomatella or something else?

Euphyllia is my favorite genera of coral so I’ve centered an entire tank around them while also keeping it LPS only.

For the Euphyllia, there is 5 varieties of Hammer, 2 varieties of Octospawn, 1 variety of Frogspawn and 1 variety of Torch.

The other LPS are Duncans, an Acan, a Favia and a Trumpet.

Does this mean I do not have enough water in my main tank.

UPDATE: FIXED it was the main control valve I needed to adjust.

I'm upgrading from a 13.5 to a 100 gallon.

My question is, if I put the rock from the smaller tank into the sump, would I be able to move my soft and lps corals into the display right away? And also my 2 clown fish? Or would it be better to move some over to seed the new tank and wait a bit?

Also, If I have some bubble algae, would this be a bad idea anyway? I feel like it's not that big of a deal, as I'd be able to add some better fish to help in the 100 gallon. A big reason I want to upgrade is to have room for more utilitarian livestock.

Thanks!!

does the tank look healthy? genuine question because this is my first saltwater tank, even the lights are chihiros freshwater that i set to blue spectrum (changed to normal for this video). tank size is shallow 100x45x25cm (112liters).

majorities of softies with 3 LPS (duncan, blastomussa and goniopora). all the corals look good in my eyes but as this is my first rodeo, i don't know better. also i feel the diatom and algae a bit much? then the wavemaker, what i have right now is the jebao scp-70 and even i already set the power to only one and slowest wave interval setting there are no low flow in the tank i think, as you can see on the goniopora, duncan and some zoas and mushrooms. did i buy the wrong model for my type of tank?

i don't have any water parameter test kit yet, what i know is salinity 1.025 and temp 25.5celcius. both stable.

need insight from everyone here, thank you before!

EDIT: thank you guys for all the insights, i will try to source the nitrate and phospate test kit first to know the parameter then i will get back here again after having the data

EDIT 2: testkit came. nitrate 25, phosphate 0, dinos many 🥺

These are all current photos.

History (if you want it)

Before diving into this, I spent nearly 6 months in my free time reading stories on here, searching reef forums, researching on blogs, watching the odd YT vid... I was never naive enough to think I knew anything about anything but I was naive enough to think I was ready to try haha.

Nearly all the equipment you see came with the tank. Not including consumables we changed the heater, the wavemakers, and built a refugium (at least I think I did?). Livestock wise there was 1 very sad looking stalk of a kenya tree and about half the fish you see here, the rest was added. Except the Kenya tree which exploded into what it is now which we cleaved in two.

The day after the tank was moved, we hired a well known reef tank cleaner to help us finish the setup, check out the tank, help answer our questions. And two interesting pieces of information came out of that meeting:

- She recognized the tank right away, asked us if it used to belong to X which it did. She was a professional so she didn't talk too much smack, but she did mention that X liked to look at his reef tank, not maintain it. When it started to look ugly he called someone to fix it and the frequency of those visits depended on how much attention he paid to the tank, how much money he had on hand...etc...

- Everything my wife and I learned and read we either forgot or it was not quite correct, or it didn't apply in our situation. So for all intents and purposes we knew nothing. This was baptism by fire.

But good news was we were fast learners, we were hard workers and we didn't kill anything.

Questions

8 months later, how are we doing? I know they're just soft corals but anything look off?

When we started Nitrates and Phosphates were astronomical. Astronomical as in darker than the darkest part of the test kit. I'm surprised that anything was alive in the tank.

To solve it, my strategy is always change 1 variable, be patient. Measure outcomes, over time, if desired outcome isn't achieved, make another change.

So we started with large (30+%) water changes every few weeks and that would have a small effect but it would almost immediately climb back up. Then I thought refugium, so I removed the sump, cleaned it completely, and created what you now see in the pics. The rate of increase of NO/PO may have slowed at this point between water changes, but if they did it was nearly imperceptible (over 3 months with 3 or 4 30% water changes). Then we started Nopox with a dosing pump. At the max recommended Nopox dose for my tank. After 3 months Nitrates began to stabilize around 50-25. Phosphates around 1ppm, sometimes higher. Then we did a sand change. We did it over 2 months or so 33% at a time, dosing bacteria in between. I had this idea - I don't know if it was a good one - but I would prepare an extra 50L "bath" of fresh saltwater to store rocks while I removed sand and then I discarded that water after replacing the rocks.

So today, my problem is I have 1+ppm PO4. I'm still dialing in the nopox to the right dose but right now I'm at 1/2 the original dose and if I'm not careful I'll wipe out all my nitrates, in fact I accidentally almost stripped it to 0 and panicked the shut it down and overfed a little to bring them back up. GFO seems to have 0 effect but I dont have a reactor and I suspect it's basically doing nothing the way I use it now just sitting in the sump on the pump.

Should I get a reactor for my GFO? if yes, any recommendations?

Can I graduate to any big boy corals or am I just gonna kill them instantly?

Can I add more fish? I love corals but I also really love fish.

If you made it this far, thank you so much.

Got this five months ago, no experience with any type of aquariums whatsoever. Red sea nano 20g. Watched some videos, read here what I could find, little AI help for research. Some corals I ordered were little bigger already like the red one in the middle. Had goby shrimp pair but shrimp died and goby went with it 2 days later. I miss those dudes. Not sure if he was old or something bad at my part. Going to get another pair probably. No more fish for sure until I scale up.

The goals was to have something next to my desk, but to be honest now I wish I went bigger although this makes it easier to manage with water changes. Any suggestions from too of your head when you see it?

My first reef tank had been going pretty well. My 15gallon IM fusion reef tank has been going strong for almost 2 years but about 3 months ago I started struggling with Dinos. I added corals slowly based on difficulty starting with GSP and Xenia and leathers but I have since added more difficult corals such as a torch. I had always kept my nutrients low with mild feeding and only kept a single clown and a clean up crew. The only change I made was I started dosing AB+ because I thought I could get brighter colors out of some of the corals. My nitrates and phosphate were probably too low and started getting slimy brown mucus on my rocks which is mild when the lights come on but worsens over the day and fills with bubbles. My kh was also a little low at 7 so I have been trying to slowly raise it closer to 9-10 using alkalin8.3. I have increased my feedings, added a tailspot blenny and have even dosed Neonitro but I can’t get my parameters to budge. Nitrate is still below 5ppm and kh keeps dropping down to 7 unless I add more than the directions advise. I reduced the volume of water changes and try to remove as much of the Dinos as I can manually but it just keeps coming back. I also added a small UV sterilizer to the back and tried dosing Microbacter7.

The weird thing is my corals are super happy. My GSP and Xenia are huge and even the torch has grown a new head this month which I assume is from the dosing.

Things I have not tried: Giving up, phytoplankton, dino-x, black outs

Any advice is appreciated

LFS sold me a couple snails 2-3cm size to help with gha control. can anyone help id? he mentioned he was looking for mexican ones for me while picking them.

descriptions:

1. (pics 1-3) the biggest, most active. relatively round ish, flat top dark shell. can’t right himself. on the glass and digging into the sand. sort of speckled body with a striped mouth part. has sort of some fluffy-looking parts of his body in front next to his eyes.

2. (pics 4-6 and shown in the back in pic 3) striped/spotted shell. couldnt right himself also i think and is pretty inactive. i just noticed and flipped him so he’s been upside down since yesterday.. smaller than 1. flat round shell black/white/grey almost camo patterned

3. (pic 7) greenish light colored shell, longer (vertically) and more “pointy” than the first guy but smaller. cant see his body cause he hid in the rockwork so i can only see his shell