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[Stock] WarEagleNR88


WarEagleNR88

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Looking good!

 

I love those barnacle blennies. I've been seriously considering a few for my nano. My LFS had some in a few months ago but my tank wasn't ready then. Haven't seen them back in since...maybe I'll have to order some.

 

Have you tried feeding them frozen, brine or cyclopeze?

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nice!
Thanks!
looking good!

 

i'm not suggesting iodine dosing but if you start to expand your algae to include more reds and browns, it may be something you'll need to look into unless you are very regular with your waterchanges.

 

so far it looks great in layout and species choice though.

Thanks for the nice comments tiny, I think I've just about reached the limit on algaes I want in this tank. I've also noticed some bryopsis and valonia that have popped up here and there so I'm thinking I may be missing some important nutrient or (s). What it is I have no clue.

 

I wonder if the algaes have already used up the Iron and all of Nitrate that I added last Monday. I've been adding the KNO3 once a week and I'll do the same with the iron, but if thats so then the micro algae growth should also be dwindling. But I dont know if macro and micro algae benefit from different nutrients or not. Ah, this algae growing and nutrient control is weird. Tomorrow is monday and I'll give it a good dose of calcium, NO3 and Fe. I have some mono potassium phosphate (KH2PO4) that I may add 0.25 - 0.50 ppm and see if it helps.

 

Why the concern with iodine dosing? I use Instant Ocean salt and have been doing about 2 gal water change a week--a departure from my projected 50% water change volume but I digress--so the "essential" elements should be up to par if not over. That reminds me, I do have a bottle of Kent's Essential elements... I wonder if a mL or two of that would help?

 

I also started a 2.5G sun-reef with a penguin mini filter (no Bio wheel though). It has no other lighting than the small amount of sun it gets. It only has about 1/2" of sand with some LR rubble that I let dry out a long time ago. It faces a western window of my house so it only gets sunlight from 1pm to about 5:30pm... do you think that is enough? I threw some pieces of caulerpa in there but no progress yet.

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Why the concern with iodine dosing? I use Instant Ocean salt and have been doing about 2 gal water change a week--a departure from my projected 50% water change volume but I digress--so the "essential" elements should be up to par if not over. That reminds me, I do have a bottle of Kent's Essential elements... I wonder if a mL or two of that would help?
the reds and browns take up a lot of iodine. they're very rich sources for iodine in diets. so if you start growing them, chances are in a closed system they will deplete iodine fairly quickly (or it may become a biolimiter).

 

I also started a 2.5G sun-reef with a penguin mini filter (no Bio wheel though). It has no other lighting than the small amount of sun it gets. It only has about 1/2" of sand with some LR rubble that I let dry out a long time ago. It faces a western window of my house so it only gets sunlight from 1pm to about 5:30pm... do you think that is enough? I threw some pieces of caulerpa in there but no progress yet.
that might be enough as it probably gets amibient light for a lot longer(?). direct exposure will be more beneficial, of course. it's banging algae in my sunlit pico. :lol:
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So true! And depending on livestock and setup, that will probably not be that hard. Your tank is amazing. Tagging along.
Have you also noticed the amount of marine planted tanks popping up on the scene lately? To me it seems like a "revolution of aquaria" that is nothing more than a "whisper on the wave" right now, but I think it is quickly building. The fight against phosphorus and nitrates is coming to an end. The fusion of the colors and variety of saltwater plants and animals with the serenity and calmness of a planted freshwater tank is very appealling.
Looking good!

 

I love those barnacle blennies. I've been seriously considering a few for my nano. My LFS had some in a few months ago but my tank wasn't ready then. Haven't seen them back in since...maybe I'll have to order some.

 

Have you tried feeding them frozen, brine or cyclopeze?

Actually, I haven't fed them anything until today. They've been eating pods whenever one gets too close to their perch or hole. But today I fed some Sweetwater Zooplankton "World's Finest Fish Food" with 60% protein. The two blennies were going mad eating it. They were zipping and zooming around the tank grabbing it out of the water. I put some extra into the tank for the 5 new shrimps and the randall's goby. I haven't seen the candy stripe shrimp today, but I think he's back underneath the rock digging as I see little puffs of dust coming out from under the pieces of LR.

 

They are just so tiny, it's hard to consider them fish. I highly recommend them for a 10G tank.

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You're not going to believe what I just saw. In my 20G long reef, there was a stomatella snail standing up on this piece of rock. Seriously, it was standing! Not only was it standing, it was shooting this stuff out of it while it was standing. And not only was it standing and shooting stuff, but my small kupang damsel was eating this stuff it was shooting out. It kept shooting it out and the damsel kept eating it until the stomatella was spent.

 

Did I seriously see what I think I saw? I should have got a picture!

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You're not going to believe what I just saw. In my 20G long reef, there was a stomatella snail standing up on this piece of rock. Seriously, it was standing! Not only was it standing, it was shooting this stuff out of it while it was standing. And not only was it standing and shooting stuff, but my small kupang damsel was eating this stuff it was shooting out. It kept shooting it out and the damsel kept eating it until the stomatella was spent.

 

Did I seriously see what I think I saw? I should have got a picture!

 

 

The stomatella skeeted..or uhh...spawned. And the damsel...thats pretty gross. lol.

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You're not going to believe what I just saw. In my 20G long reef, there was a stomatella snail standing up on this piece of rock. Seriously, it was standing! Not only was it standing, it was shooting this stuff out of it while it was standing. And not only was it standing and shooting stuff, but my small kupang damsel was eating this stuff it was shooting out. It kept shooting it out and the damsel kept eating it until the stomatella was spent.

 

Did I seriously see what I think I saw? I should have got a picture!

 

Is fish porn illegal? :lol:

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...thats pretty gross. lol.
Is fish porn illegal? :lol:
I just had this unbelieving face... kinda like this :o. Very disgusting.
You know, I just noticed this, but your barnacle blenny looks like a hatching alien a la the Alien movies. Chest burster blenny!
Yeah the neon goby experienced a little bit of that tenacity today when I added him to the tank. They messed him up! His poor little tail is ragged. Immediately I fed them some of my Ocean Nutrition Formula One Small Pellet and they calmed down quite a bit. Needless to say, lights out came early tonight and I'll monitor this aggressiveness and see if it is newcomer/territorial aggression or if they are actually mean "chest burster" Blennies. The clown is its happy little self wiggling in the current--lots of it now, ~36X turnover. It happily gobbled up some of the pellets and has blackened up nicely since he's been in the tank.

 

Here's some pics I took yesterday after I picked up a tripod for my camera finally. So hopefully the picture quality will improve. The Randall's Goby!

 

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I wonder if the algaes have already used up the Iron and all of Nitrate that I added last Monday.
Ahhh, looking back at my notes tonight, I noticed I did NOT add KNO3 last Monday! The last dosing was on the 26th of October! So 11 days without NO3 addition! I can't believe I missed this for so long.

 

It's time to fix this and get on a good schedule of dosing fertilizers. I will also be testing my NO3 twice a week to see how its doing, and if NO3 or something else is the limiting nutrient. I have a new Hagen NO3 test that I'll test with. So hopefully we'll see improved growth over the next couple of weeks.

 

1 month is coming up next week!

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One particular brand of the maximum stock lighting is the Current USA 20" Satellite 40W PC lamp which includes a small white LED moonlight. The power compacts can't be safely dimmed, while the DC inverted LED can be dimmed. Since work is slowing for the 3 day weekend and I had a little extra time, I decided before I do anything, a little research is in order. So I investigated the photo period and the difference in light illumination from the moon over a month's time. This led me into some charts with lots of information to be manipulated. Being the engineer I am, I put this data to use.

 

First, where I've been and what I did with that information:

U.S. Naval Observatory's Sun or Moon Rise/Set Table for One Year

U.S. Naval Observatory's Fraction of the Moon Illuminated

 

My data interest on these pages was the period from the 5th of November 06 to the 31st of March 07. I gathered data of the moon's illumination from years 2006 and 2007 as well as the moon's rise and set times for 2006 and 2007. Since we're dealing with tropical reef animals, I picked an easy location on the earth to get moon rise/set data: 0 degrees latitude and 0 degrees longitude. Below are graphs that detail that information.

 

FullPhotoperiod.jpg

 

FullIllumination.jpg

 

The first chart is a little confusing and it took me a short time to figure it out. On the evening of the 4th of November in the tropics at N0 W0 (Day 1, X-axis), the moon rose at about 1751Z, aka Universal Time or GMT. The moon then set at 0521 Zulu the next morning, and so on. The pattern swaps over the 5 months, or 21 week period. The second chart is pretty standard. Once a month we receive maximum illumination--the full moon--while at other end of the spectrum, little to no illumination--the new moon. I then took mean values from each of the 21 weeks with an weekly illumination percentage and average weekly moon rise and set times.

 

AvgPhotoperiod.jpg

 

AvgIllumination.jpg

 

The differences between the charts are actually a result of the moon's revolution which takes ~29.5 days. By going after weekly averages, you can see the result. Now all of these charts lead me to why I decided to go this route. I can set my LED timer for the rise and set times and use an inexpensive dimmer between the adapter and the timer to control the intensity--or artificial moon illumination. My main light comes on at 10:00AM and goes off at 10:00PM, whenever it's on, the LED doesn't come on except for a short 30 minute overlap at each end of the photoperiod. The intensities will be set by TLAR. Here's the schedule.

 

LightingSchedule.jpg

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the tank looks awesome!!! im really impressed. actually i'll be starting my 30g. Planted tank w/ Sepia Bandensis (Cuttlefish) soon!..

i hope my tank looks like yours

i have all those macro's too so im hopeing for it to look really nice! i have already started "planting" it

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Its weird...honestly..its not a bright tank wit corals and its not so beautiful...somthing makes me like it, i dont dont know what it is......use of microalgae perhaps?

 

- im not critizing, its a complement meaning that you make it look good without corals. =)

 

 

 

-Samoyed

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yeah...my jaw dropped when I read this.
Hopefully in a good way? If so then thanks! :D
the tank looks awesome!!! im really impressed. actually i'll be starting my 30g. Planted tank w/ Sepia Bandensis (Cuttlefish) soon!..

i hope my tank looks like yours

i have all those macro's too so im hopeing for it to look really nice! i have already started "planting" it

Very nice! We need more people to try this out, too! Reef tanks do not have to be all about corals. With placing the algae, I'm finding I just put the algae pieces in the tank somewhere and let it do its work. Plants are very similar. It seems with most aquaria both fresh and salt, the more you fool with it and try to make it into a perfect little underwater "garden" the worse it does.
Its weird...honestly..its not a bright tank wit corals and its not so beautiful...somthing makes me like it, i dont dont know what it is......use of microalgae perhaps?

 

- im not critizing, its a complement meaning that you make it look good without corals. =)

-Samoyed

Thanks for the comments! I agree wholeheartedly. When I first started it up, I was like... meh. The more I read about macro algae and its effects on a reef environment, the more interested I become. The more I just stand and watch the tank, the more interested I become. And with it growing well with an enormous zooplankton population, I am really pleased with less than 1 month of progress. That reminds me, I need to test the water. I'll post again with the results and what I'll be doing with regards to the NO3 situation.

 

What do you all think of my hypothetical moonlighting setup?

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Parameters:

Temp 78 deg ---- (Coralife digital thermometer)

Salinity ~1.025 -- (Coralife Deep Six hydrometer using Instant Ocean mix)

Ammonia 0 ------ (Red Sea Marine test kit)

NO2 0 ------------ (Red Sea Marine test kit)

NO3 <5 ppm ----- (Hagen NO3 test kit)

pH 8.3 ------------ (Red Sea Marine test kit)

KH 150 ppm ------ (Hagen GH/KH test kit)

Ca 540 ppm ------ (Hagen Ca test kit)

 

So the calcium is a little high, but this will make sure it is not a limiting factor to Halimeda growth. I also dosed another 10 drops of Micro-Vert, 30 drops of Phyto-Feast, 1/4 tsp Kent Fe & Mn, 2 tsp (5ppm) of KNO3 solution and 1 tsp (1ppm) of a KH2PO4 solution. Then I stuffed everybody's gut with some Sweetwater Zooplankton before the lights went off tonight.

 

Now if everything works out fine, tomorrow the algae should photosynthesize well all day to build up energy for some good growth during the night. Then Saturday and Sunday I should see greatly improved growth rates.

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Things are looking great for the one month mark! Comparing pictures from the previous FTSs, it is doing very well. Tune in tomorrow for new photos as I commemorate its progress.

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One Month.

 

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Now to figure out how to carefully trim down and thin all 6 Caulerpa species before they take over the tank! :D The first specs of coralline are starting to show; none on the back glass yet. No animals losses so far (knock on wood). And I was wrong on the randall's shrimp/goby pairing. They actually haven't. I imagine it is only a matter of time before they do.

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Looks very nice, but I don’t envy you having to prune it. I’m interested in how the consumption changes over time. With regular pruning you might be able to control the consumption enough to develop a regular water change and dosing routine.

 

Obviously you don’t want to the macro to entirely deplete the nutrients and/or elements (as that would increase the risk of it going sexual); however, dosing encourages growth (which increases nutrient and element consumption even more).

 

Keep up the good work. :)

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Wow the moonlight thing is awsome. The 29.5 day lunar cycle reminds me of this Lunar Tracker device- except it looks like you took it to the next level by figuring in accurate moon rise/set times. Do you manually adjust the intensity with the dimmer? what exactly is TLAR?

 

I'm actually in the planning phases of building an intertidal setup which will mimic tidal cycles, and since the tides coincide with lunar phases, it'd be cool to combine the two using a computer or some type of controller... I have no idea how to do that, so if youve got any suggestions, Im all ears

 

your tanks lookin great BTW

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Wow the moonlight thing is awsome. The 29.5 day lunar cycle reminds me of this Lunar Tracker device- except it looks like you took it to the next level by figuring in accurate moon rise/set times. Do you manually adjust the intensity with the dimmer? what exactly is TLAR?

 

I'm actually in the planning phases of building an intertidal setup which will mimic tidal cycles, and since the tides coincide with lunar phases, it'd be cool to combine the two using a computer or some type of controller... I have no idea how to do that, so if youve got any suggestions, Im all ears

 

your tanks lookin great BTW

Thanks for the comments! I think it would be fairly easy to do this with some type of controller, but you'd need a computer to feed the controller the tables of illumination and rise/set times from those webpages. I don't know, but that type of device may not be in existence yet. Yes I will manually adjust the intensity with a dimmer--see below. :D TLAR = that looks about right. You could actually do this with your intertidal pool model. You'd need to use the same tables and come up with weekly averages like I did. When the moon rises and is overhead, the tide would have to also rise or become active (depends how you want to do your "pool"). Then every week along with regular maintenance, adjust it for the next week's lunar cycle with rise/set times and illumination. This will be a simple manual controller for these parameters changed by the user. You could even get real nitpicky and set them daily, but personally I think that would drive me crazy.

 

S01.jpg

 

Ok, I picked up some items from Home Depot to continue this little side-project. (1) a double gang box, (2) a 15 amp outlet, (3) a push-on/off dimmer--cheapest one HD had ($4.95), (4) an dual outlet outlet/switch cover, and (5) a 6' non-grounded extension cord. I cut the outlet off the extension cord for the cord and plug. From there it was simple electrical work of mapping the hot wire (black) out of the wall outlet, through the extension cord, through the dimmer, through the outlet, then the neutral wire (white) through the extension cord and back to the wall outlet. I put it all together, attached it to the wall, and drew lines on the cover with a Sharpie where the lowest and highest settings were. From there I used TLAR. I halved the clockwise rotation of the knob from low to high and drew a line (2), then quartered the two halves into two other power settings (1 and 3). All four quarters were again halved for intermediate settings. Now I have 5 major power settings (LO, 1, 2, 3, HI) with 4 minor power settings. From there I plugged the dimmer's cord into the lunar light timer and plugged the lunar light into the dimmer's outlet. Confused yet? Here's what it looks like with everything installed.

 

S02.jpg

 

By using the tables from my previous research, I designated LO as my lowest value and HI as my highest value. Below are pictures of each setting. Picture 1 is LO (10%), Picture 2 is Setting 1 (30%), Picture 3 is Setting 2 (50%), Picture 4 is Setting 3 (70%) and Picture 5 is HI (90%). Those minor power settings equate to 20, 40, 60 and 80% respectively.

 

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Now the tank is actually not that bright, I had to set one of the variables constant--exposure time--to be able to show you, the audience, change in illumination. Picture data for each is Aperture 3.2, Focal Length 12mm, Exposure 10 seconds, ISO 64, No other light source. Questions?

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Looks very nice, but I don’t envy you having to prune it. I’m interested in how the consumption changes over time. With regular pruning you might be able to control the consumption enough to develop a regular water change and dosing routine.

 

Obviously you don’t want to the macro to entirely deplete the nutrients and/or elements (as that would increase the risk of it going sexual); however, dosing encourages growth (which increases nutrient and element consumption even more).

 

Keep up the good work. :)

I don't think consumption has slowed any. In fact it may have sped up. I may be approaching the point now where most if not all excess nutrients are being consumed. At least as far as nitrogen is concerned. Microalgae is basically non-existent so far, even with the excessive dosings, heavy feedings, and and considerably heavy bioload for this size tank. All except for the typical hard green algae on the glass--is that a type of coralline derivative? I decided I'd skip this past week and not dose anything but top off, phyto and zooplankton. Growth did not slow at all as far as I could tell. Coralline spots are appearing all over the place now.

 

The zooplankton population is enormous. Even with the aggressive feeders--barnacle blennies are death to pods--they still thrive. It's as though the excess algae serves as an in-tank refuge for the tiny animals. The pistol shrimp and the goby still haven't paired. The shrimp has been very active in building his expansive network of tunnels against the left side of the front pane. Still, I figure it is only a matter of time until they pair up. Oh and after the first couple of days, the blennies have left the Neon goby alone. No aggression that I can see out of any of the fish.

 

One thing to note though with regards to the algae, right after I dosed heavily the week before last, the Halimeda started looking a little ragged while the Caulerpa thrived. Later last week and now early this week, the Halimeda seems to be coming around and getting back on track for growth. In fact in all this time the Caulerpa keeps growing and growing. Some of the typical grape Caulerpa (racemosa I think) has also turned a darker green. I'm not sure what that means. I may try to duplicate it in the future. I'm still researching the implications of excessive Caulerpa trimming. And don't worry, the first picture below is what happens when Caulerpa is overloaded with nutrients. All of those white "new growths" will be a few "grapes" tomorrow after the dark cycle.

 

Pictures and a new FTS! I still can't figure out why the pictures in the post on the 14th had such a blue haze. Even in the unedited versions they're blue. Perhaps it was the dosings from before that is catching the blue from the actinic?

 

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Post-Thanksgiving but Pre-Christmas, I'll be adding some of the first and only corals! Check back again to see what they are.

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noobwithatank

oh man has that come along way,it looks very good. i believe u should get a bigger tank. hah. it would rock to see that stuff like that in say likea 55 gallonish sized tank.

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oh man has that come along way,it looks very good. i believe u should get a bigger tank. hah. it would rock to see that stuff like that in say likea 55 gallonish sized tank.
A larger tank? Yeah, it's crossed my mind. There's just something about a small tank that is very appealing to me though. Maybe someday when I don't have to move around the country/world every few years, I'll go for a much larger tank.
Those macros are lookin good!
Thanks, now if I can just keep them that way and make them look better! I'm taking a short vacation and will be back late on Sunday so hopefully everything will be fine. I'm going to dose a little extra nutrients before I leave today and everything should be good to go for the rest of the week. I don't have my auto top off yet, but its fairly cool here in Arizona and evaporation hasn't been an issue.

 

To all that are following along, have a great Thanksgiving! I know I will as I'll be eating some delicious hickory smoked chicken, ham and turkey my uncle cooks, tomorrow. :D There may even be some smoked venison. Oh and pumpkin pie, can't forget about that. See ya!

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