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Progress

3 Gallon Pico

Overall the tank is doing great, it currently looks great, and that’s the point, right? There are a few things that have happened that I thought I would detail.

• Filterless to Filter – The tank was getting messy, no amount of water changes could keep it clean. I ended up giving up and getting a little nano sponge filter. It has helped dramatically. Cleaning the sponge every few weeks seems to be enough to keep everything crystal clear. I think making sure I don’t keep the light on for 4 days straight helps, too.
• The Cichlid Massacre – I picked up 6 victorian cichlids and put them into the tank. After doing a water change, I poured in the replacement water too fast and it stirred up the sandbed more than I wanted. As a result lots of detrius got pumped into the water column. All but one of them died. So there is just one tiny yellow cichlid in my tank now, but I like it like that. I think I will keep him alone for awhile.
• Scum – I still get a lot of this oil slick on the surface of the water, I cure it with water changes that include using a plastic cup and ’skimming’ the surface of the water.

12 Gallon Nano

My 12 Gallon planted tank has not been doing so well. I have this invasive (carnivorous, im told) hitchhiker plant that grows like crazy and looks nasty. Additionally, the algae growing on the glass grows at an unacceptable rate. Last night I turned off the light and plan to leave it off for a few days to help kill off the algae. Additionally, I lowered the lighting period from 12 hours to 7. Hopefully this will help.

I almost never touch this tank, and want to try to keep it this way. I am going to seriously need to figure out how to get rid of this hitchhiker. It seems to be very invasive so I am not optimistic about it. I may have to resort to ’starting over’. I am not looking forward to that.

Little picture to satisfy the fanboys.

Lately, my tank has gone untouched. Due to work being hectic I have largely neglected it, and I have let the glass algae build up longer than I should have. I scape it off about once a a week now, it makes it look all that much better when its clean.

A few weeks ago I was having a few people over and I decided to spiff up the looks of the tank by picking up a few items while on a water run. I picked up 4 green chromis, a nice little crocea clam, an a pistol shrimp and a tiny little goby.

After dissapearing for weeks, I saw the shrimp and boby paired up in the back of the tank for the first time yesterday. The goby is litterally 1/2 inch long, its really neat to watch them interact. My other pair has relocated their home out-of-sight so I only get to hear them, as opposed to see them. So I am glad that this pair ended up in a place that I can see them.

The chromis and clams are doing fine, schooling as expected.

Also, my green BTA split! One morning I woke up and there were two! On an unrelated, and slighty dissapointing note, one of the green-mojano’s in my tank split, so now I have 3. I haven’t busted out the Kalkwasser to kill them just yet, they are pretty neon green.

Until next time!

After having my halides in for a few months, all of the corals I have had have been doing very well. The LPS’s have been doing great with the exception of the Candy-Cane that kept getting buried by the gobies, I relocated him up onto the rocks but he lost a few heads.

We had a bit of a  hot day, and the tank got up to about 88F(!). Now I noticed that both my Orange Plating Monti and this other unnamed purple SPS bleached in small spots. It seems like the Moniti may be filling in that area with fresh (brown?) polyps but it is hard to say, there was definitely some damage.

I am looking on craigslist for a chiller – I have found a few JBJ models that will fit under my stand. I am hoping to get something in the 1/5th HP range to keep everything super-cool. My tank runs about constantly at 82F and I would like to take that down to 75 ideally. When I end up picking up a chiller I will also pick up a new return pump to drive it.

In other news – an acquaintance of mine was done with reef tanks and offered me her 12 Gallon stocked JBJ nano-cube. I was delighted to take everything, but I wasn’t sure about another reef tank. I ended up putting all of the livestock into my reef tank. The inventory included:

• Hawkfish
• Red-spotted Goby
• 1x Mexican Turbo Snail
• 8x Hermits
• Live sand (I put this into an old orange juice carton and put it into the sump)
• Live rock (also in sump)

I then ordered picked up some substrate and cleaned everything up. I still need to pick up some 8k bulbs and possibly a new return pump and then I can start seeding it with some plants and get it going. Thinking about bringing it to the office, we will see.

With the above stuff I also got 3 new 5-gallon buckets, bringing my count to 5. I decided to use 2 of them for RO and start topping off with RO water. I have already seen the positive benefits of this due to the total lack of cyano that use to be rampant.

So I found some cool dudes on craigslist that wanted to do some trades. I traded some nice pink pulsing Xenia for a huge two-head purple-tipped green frogspawn, and a 4-headed green candy-cane and a few mushroom frags. The guy I met had a 20k 250w DE halide that he wasn’t going to ever use. I went ahead and installed it today. I am not sure that I like the look, with the actinic supplementation the tank is VERY VERY blue! I am going to leave it in for a few days and see how the color looks then.

Over time, my little 3 gallon pico tank became overgrown. The Ritola Green was seriously taking up ALL of the space in the tank. I trimmed back about half of the growth in the tank and filled up 2 dixie cups worth of clippings. Revealing the substrate revealed an interesting suprise, there was film of detrius all over the bottom of the tank.

I wanted to get rid of this, so I took a little air-powered filter and stirred up the tank, after a few hours the tank was cleared of the detrius and had a good dosing of fresh carbon. Not having a filter in the tank for 6 months I can’t say that I am surprised at all of the detrius settling. I am going to leave the little filter on for a day, and stir everything up a few more times to get as much detritus out of the tank as possible.

So, for the first time ever with my reef tank, I have measured some of the chemical parameters. I was at a local LFS and they had a Reef testing kits by Aquarium Pharmaceuticals that tests the following:

• Calcium
• Phosphates
• Nitrite
• KH

So I tested each of them and ended up with the following paramaters:

• Calcium: 400ppm
• dKH: 9
• Phosphates: 0
• Nitrites: 0

I wanted to raise the Calcium a little so I dosed some Kalkwasser top off and ended up with 460ppm calcium without effecting the dKH (still at 9).

These are very healthy parameters. I am quite pleased, I should really check the PH, though.

So I wanted to post some quick shots of the progress on my Planted tanks over the past 2 months:

3 Gallon Pico

From a few months ago

January 19th 2008

12 Gallon Nano

A few months ago

January 19th 2008

So today I had a plan. A plan to make my tank look a bit more awesome than it did yesterday. I have several main problems with my tank.

1. Lack of color (other than the PINK of the Xenia and Bubble)
2. Lack of fish population
3. I lack check valves in my return lines, which could lead to a (very bad) spill

With some goals in mind I trotted off to the 2 fish stores, and Home Depot. LFS got me two buckets of fresh Catalina seawater. This particular LFS has great big colonies, but nothing that ‘exciting’ if you know what I mean – lots of the normal sort of stuff.

I went to the second LFS, this LFS is different because it has more exotic things. I picked up a big colony of Tri-color Red/Green Zoonathids, a Niger Trigger, a Spotted Mandarin, and some live brine. In reading this, you may think I am crazy, likely for a few reasons:

1. Spotted Manadrins are Impossible to keep! – That is true enough, but happen to use a few special tricks to keep mine up and going with such a small tank. First, I had a blue striped Mandarin long ago, he was sucked into a powerhead – it was downhill from there. So when I got home I put the spotted Mandarin into a bucket and filled it up with an inch and a half of water from my tank (the begining of my water change). I put a few hundred live brine shrimp in the bucket with the Mandarin. I left the Mandarin alone in there for a good 30 minutes while he feasted on the brine, then I plopped him into the display tank. As we speak he is grazing the live rock for pods and getting one every few seconds – but I suspect he is a bit full.
2. Niger Trigger – I keep shrimp, I love shrimp – they are the most interesting things in my tank right now. So you might be thinking that I am insane for putting a known predator of these into my tank. Well, not really. First off – the Niger Trigger is the most docile of all triggers and is largely regarded as docile, especially when introduced to an established reef environment (check). Secondly, they are only dangerous to shrimp. I have 3 shrimp in my tank currently. A (big) cleaner, a (giant) camelback, and a 1″ pistol shrimp paired with a goby. The Pistol is safe for obvious reasons, as is the cleaner. The Camelback is about the same size as the Trigger (the specimen I got is only about 3″ long). I haven’t seen any quarreling yet, and I don’t expect it going forward.

After my visit to LFS #2 I went to Home Depot and I picked up 2 check valves and some misc plumbing parts. I introduced the new fish as mentioned above and I turned off the return pumps. I put in the shot of live brine shrimp, and then I took the piping apart at the unions and installed the check-valves. I let the check-valves sit for a good 30 minutes with the quick-dry PVC cement before turning the pumps back on. During that time the fish went wild for the brine, but there was WAY too much brine to go around.

I made sure that my filter sock was attached properly and turned the return pumps back on. After about an hour most of the brine had either gone down the overflow or was eaten. I tossed the filter sock into the washer with a towel I had used, cleaned out the collection cup on the protein skimmer, and wham – I have a clean tank.

I rearanged a bunch of my coral today to move some of the coral that wasn’t liking the new and improved lighting, and made room for the 150+ polyp zoonathid rock. Specifically I moved one of my leather corals up higher ( it responded nicely to the new lighting so I figured it was happy). I moved a toadstool leather coral down and to the side (it hated the new light). I also moved my torch coral from the top, to the bottom side. All of these placements seem better for each piece than the position prior.

The Clam is still doing great, I am eying another. This time I think I would go for a blue (with stripes?) Maxima. The SPS frags that I got last week are looking good, their (tiny) polyps can be seen extending at various times, which is a good sign. Hopefully they will do well. Below are a few pic’s that I took today. Enjoy!

Full Tank Shot

Red and Green Zoonathids

Purple Clam

My Bicolor Blennie has been picking at my new clam. He was banished to the fuge. I chased him into a piece of live rock an d put it into the fuge until he swam out. I additionally banished 4 of the aggressive Snails – I saw one of them crawling on the clam.

With all the new light I am getting a slight diatom bloom on the glass – to be expected. Additionally, some of the coral is a bit freaked out by all of the light. Specifically the Xenia sp. and the Toadstool leather. The new SPS and Zoo’s are doing great.

So with my new metal halide confidence I went to the LFS today on a mission, and ended up with the following:

•  5″ purple and blue Crocea Clam. This was the smallest, and best looking of the 4 Crocea clams that my LFS had. They have had them in stock for like 6 months and came out of a local tank. I am confident that it will do well under my new lighting. After being in the tank for about 10 minutes it has already opened up a bit and is moving water.
•  Tiny Green  branching Acopora frag. It doesn’t look too good but I’m told that the parent colony was bright green. We will see how it turns out.
•  Tiny purple Montipora frag. This postage stamp sized frag is alread molding over a tiny piece of rock. I selected it over a few other ‘floating’ pieces. It is bright purple, matching the Crocea.
•  5x Zoonathid Polyps frag. These polyps look great, they are green red and blue. I shoved them into a crevice in some live rock

I suppose I have to start checking my calcium levels to keep these guys moving. Although with the tiny frags, I suspect they aren’t going to be much of a load on the calcium. I want to get a realtime digital PH gauge so that I can dose more confidently with Kalkwaser to alleviate any calcium problems, and keep AK in line.