mattzang's IM 100 EXT

[mattyzang]

My sister was camping in bolsa Chica so I wandered down to hang out for the day annnnd figured I’d hit up Garrett’s acropolis and got some tiny booger frags from him. His outdoor setup is super cool

blue Solomon island tort and rising sun stag

tricolor stag and red slimer (I like stags 😃)

bird of paradise and then some other stylo

hoping to be done with this reef flux treatment soon and then can add a bunch of this stuff to my dt

 

[mattyzang]

http://instagr.am/p/CWcY-G5sPpD/

 

[mattyzang]

http://instagr.am/p/CWtqeoqhSt_/
lions bears game lost my interest so got to gluing a ton of stuff this morning

 

[mattyzang]

added and glued stuff in a few days ago. everything looks ok except the rising sun stag got some stn, so i had to break off a decent chunk to hopefully save it. that was a couple days ago so.. fingers crossed

i bought a salifert potassium test kit for black friday, so i gave that thing a go and it looks like my dosing corrected things right to slightly high levels, 420-440 somewhere in there. i also finished running reef flux and it totally killed off all algae. i did a small water change and added carbon, i need to do a larger water change soon, i've just been working a lot so neglecting the tank a bit. i also need to figure out how my potassium dropped so significantly. i had recently switched back to regular IO, but after blaming it for my metal issues i refuse to blame it. but when i'm not blogging tank updates i need to test my source water to see if it lacks potassium

i did send in an icp test before thanksgiving and just got the results

seems things are back to normalish. i'm apparently low on iodine, iron, and manganese according to the yellow colors. looks like this has potassium at 401, so that's good i didn't massively overdose or anything. mag 1275 is a bit low, i think i'll try to raise that up a bit

1 kamohara blenny was added without issue. only my sunburst anthias gave it a brief charge, the midas blenny didn't notice it at all. i didn't realize in qt, but he's so tiny compared to all of the other fish. i think he's even smaller than the sunset anthias. my fairy wrasses have gotten huge, especially the orangeback. i opted against adding both despite both being fine together in qt as i'd rather just go with what eatbreakfast said about meicanthus blennies not loving company long term. plus then i can add more fish..

speaking of, i hopefully have a female china wrasse on order via a qt vendor. he got two, so hopefully at least one makes it through qt and then it shall be mine, but probably not until after christmas

cyano still hangs out pretty heavily after reef flux. i'm undecided if i want to chemiclean it. i hesitate to change much right now as the tank seems to be going well except for that. coralline is popping up everywhere finally, despite my urchin army putting in work mowing it down. i hate to chemiclean and then something more nefarious than cyano decides to rear up, so i'll probably just try to syphon out and hope it matures away

 

[mattyzang]

http://instagr.am/p/CXAbdqQLvHr/

post water change and maintenance always looks so fresh and clean. plus i got some mesh and felt filter socks on black friday, trying to be a little less lazy about removing detritus

 

[Smite]

Man those orangeback fairies are hard to beat! Tank is lookin great

 

[mattyzang]

Man those orangeback fairies are hard to beat! Tank is lookin great

yeah he's a cutie, gives my tank a much needed blue and purple too lol. apparently they're known to fade a bit if they aren't the dominant cirrhilabrus, so my hope was to make him king fairy and only keep stuff less aggressive than him. so the plan ended up being flame, hooded, and pintail. but i lost my pintail after velvet and never replaced him. it's working so far, but the hooded hasn't transitioned to male, but he should be chill when he does

i'd love to keep a luteovittatis someday too, but i think they get to around 6", absolute unit status for a fairy

 

[mattyzang]

http://instagr.am/p/CXpCl-aP6aV/

i glued in most of the acros i have, things seem to be going well on that front. i waver between using the sandwich epoxy method or just straight glue, seems like it can go poorly either way if my urchins come a cruisin'

on the non acro front i just can't seem to keep them. my stellar stylo rtned out of nowhere. and my green stylo started looking all unhappy, so i removed it and a couple montis back to coral qt where they seem to enjoy life. i did see my heniochus butterfly picking at the stylo, he's supposed to be a reef safe butterfly planktivore like pyramid butterflies, but it's so hard to tell h. diphreutes and h. acuminatus apart so who knows. and it may have just been a tasty slime the coral was producing while dying and not the cause of death, but who knows. i added a small frag of anacropora and bird of paradise birdsnest to see how they do for awhile, idk what the issue is other than some sort of biological problem in the tank for them? they seem to retract polyps and just kinda die off slowly, weird stuff. purple stylo seems good to go, but maybe it's so established it just perseveres

my plan for reef safe with caution fish was i'd just try to do sps corals and if acros were just too annoyed by the picking i could always fall back on just making the tank a monti/stylo/birdsnest tank. woops luckily the acros seem to be doing ok

 

[mattyzang]

my turf algae decided to make a comeback, grumble. probably gonna do reef flux again and then maybe i'll give brightwell razor a whirl to see if that keeps the bad algae away. coralline growth is pretty good so hopefully that'll fill in spots instead of bad green algaes. nobody seems to want to eat it either, i see the foxface and angels pick at the rocks, but i don't think they're eating that

my nutrients are pretty absurd, no3 59 po4 0.72 lol, but tbh the tank looks better than it has in a long time so i'm not gonna sweat it too much. just try to steer the ship back towards not insane levels is the plan. i added brightwell nitrate remover resin in a bag, so we'll see how that does. i think i'm gonna swap out the ATS for a proper fuge too, just need to see if my skimmer fits in the fuge section. i also bought a used nyos reactor which will hopefully be more effective than just a bag in a filter sock

that being said, the train doesn't stop as i ordered 2 new fish one is pre qt'ed and the other is not so i'll have to dust off the qt stuff. i think i'll just do hybrid ttm tho as it's a butterfly which seem to take tank transfers just fine

 

[mattyzang]

http://instagr.am/p/CYGA2oyLsNo/

 

[mattyzang]

new fish

no hating on my dirty ass glass

pre qt'ed and eating from premier reefs

 

[BST310]

That Heniochus steals the show for me.

Always jealous of all the fish wish I had room for a bigger tank! Looks great man.

 

[mattyzang]

That Heniochus steals the show for me.

Always jealous of all the fish wish I had room for a bigger tank! Looks great man.

lol yeah he's a cutie. i wish the tank were a bit bigger for him.. damn fish grew so fast

 

[BST310]

Time for an upgrade.

 

[mattyzang]

Time for an upgrade.

lol i won't lie i've thought about it.. there's a 5 foot wall pretty close to where the tank is. would be pretty perfect.. the innovative marine 170 or maybe a custom tank in the 60x30+x24 range would be friggin sweet

but i really want to grow this one in rather than do the upgrade every couple years thing

but i also wish i just had another foot of space in both directions , maybe a bit more height too. then it wouldn't just be one contiguous rock wall and i could have some open sandbed area plus space for the heniochus to get some sprints in

 

[mattyzang]

http://instagr.am/p/CYiDhPoLfpr/

 

[mattyzang]

http://instagr.am/p/CYpV1uwPkiE/
got me a battlebox

i scored the rona so i was just hanging at home and when life gives u the rona u order up a box

one arrived in mega rough shape and i lost it, the dear devil nasuta. i probably should've done a cipro or iodine bath on it, but oh well. he sent 2 extras and some are way nicer than i thought i'd get so zero complaints from me

 

[Poochaku]

http://instagr.am/p/CYpV1uwPkiE/
got me a battlebox

i scored the rona so i was just hanging at home and when life gives u the rona u order up a box

one arrived in mega rough shape and i lost it, the dear devil nasuta. i probably should've done a cipro or iodine bath on it, but oh well. he sent 2 extras and some are way nicer than i thought i'd get so zero complaints from me

battleboxes are life

 

[mattyzang]

Definitely a nice experience dealing with Adam too, dude is cool

also I obviously didn’t qt it so fingers crossed but I’ve heard his systems should be pretty parasite free 🤞

 

[mattyzang]