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?

Thanks!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.

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).

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.

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.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.

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.

Is fish porn illegal?

You know, I just noticed this, but your barnacle blenny looks like a hatching alien a la the Alien movies. Chest burster blenny!

I just had this unbelieving face... kinda like this . Very disgusting.
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!





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!

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.





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.





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.

yeah...my jaw dropped when I read this.

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

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

Hopefully in a good way? If so then thanks! 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.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?

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.

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.

One Month.











Now to figure out how to carefully trim down and thin all 6 Caulerpa species before they take over the tank! 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.

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.

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. 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.



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.



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.











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?

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?











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

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.

Those macros are lookin good!

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.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. There may even be some smoked venison. Oh and pumpkin pie, can't forget about that. See ya!

WAR DAMN EAGLE...if your talkin about my Auburn tigers

boy awesome job and great thread I had started here. made my comment then went back and read entire post. realy cool! I am going through some changes right now and starting a large reef but now I know what I am going to be doing with my 26G bowfront or my jbj 12 cube once they ere empty. Thanks and the dog will be traveling along

i cant believe the eco complete worked so far! nice job war eagle!

War Eagle! Are you originally from alabama?

simply amazing! cant say anything really other than im really impressed as to how that tank looks, and that im really really impressed about the whole moon cycle thingy...... that's just disgusting (in a good way) how you took the time to do all that.

Originally from Tennessee. My internet alias originally started a long time ago when I first started using the internet and comes from something completely different than the Auburn slogan/fight song. On a related but unrelated story, I did consider going to Auburn nearly 7 years ago for engineering when I was browsing for a college. Great school! However, I did not go there. My alma mater's mascot ended up being a falcon.

The Eco Complete has been fairly uneventful. At least I've not been able to tell any difference with this tank so far with that particular substrate. The mix of substrate that I used appears to keep the candy striped pistol shrimp happy. The different sized rocks lets him construct very elaborate tunnels without them collapsing underneath my live rock.

I haven't died on you guys. I've been incredibly busy this last month and am finally getting around to getting my tank back in order again. I'll be getting some of the December pictures up shortly (tomorrow night maybe) as I know some of you are ready for some new pictures and to actually see some progress with this 10G.

A little sneak peek. Corals--mushrooms, zoanthids, palythoas and small polyp stonies! Algae--removed that mega mass of green caulerpa. It literally overgrew my tank in early December. Then it began to go clear so I got it out right away. I picked up some more much slower growing algae and it's taking a while to take hold and grow. The caulerpa was going to prove to be a difficult hassle in this size tank but I'm enthusiastic with how it looks now. Hopefully you'll feel the same. Check back again for another update with pictures for December.

That's one nice looking Randall's goby you've got. The whole tank looks spectacular. I have a ton of algae in one of my tanks, but it's all...well, green microalgae. And some Caulerpa. So while your tank looks like a wonderful forest or jungle, mine looks like someone's front lawn. Nice job on the tank.

I guess we'll have to be patient and wait for the December update, then I'm greatly looking foward to it.

Have you considered getting one of those chunks of huge dried barnacles for the blennies to sit in? Just a thought. They'd look really nice once they got encrusted with coraline, might provide a focal point. Plus, I'm totally in love with your barnacle blennies.

Great job so far!

I trimmed it up quite a bit and put all of the caulerpa in another 10G tank with 4x10W 6500K power compact bulbs and a Rena Filstar XP3 on it. The Caulerpa spp. in that tank fill an entire 10G aquarium from side to side and top to bottom now. I'm going to sell it for some more stuff!

No need to wait any longer. I know this was way overdue and please accept my apologies. If you only knew my particular situation, I'm pretty sure you'd understand. Thanks for the good comments on the little blennies. Sadly, now there is only one. I'm actually -1 blenny, -1 sexy shrimp and -1 emerald crab. They disappeared during the caulerpa overgrowth. No corpses, just one day they were there and now they're not. And when I bought the blennies the LFS actually gave me 3 small barnacle shells for them. Though, I found they prefer living in the holes in the live rock--maybe more comfortable?

Enough talk, below you'll see some of best pictures I've taken on my digital camera yet! And they're fairly self explanatory as you'll see some of the same 10G crew.
















Ah, too many pictures! I have more but I can't post them now. They include a FTS!

why cant u post them? if the site is telling you to many just wait 30 seconds and then post again
the tank looks great. I have some of that sargassum in my 10g. too

Well, sometimes the nano-reef is not the most important thing in life. I'm sure all of us understand that.



Carniverous caleurpa? It's invasive, and now it eats small animals.

Well, on the bright side, your missing critters probably helped your algae growth.

Good macros. Now that I'm trying to take photos, I can appreciate how tricky it can be. I like that brown algae! Did that grow out of the LR? The sawblade caleurpa is nice too.

Awesome, here we go! Thanks, fishfreak. **edit: Oh and Rene, too!**

NICE! You have quite a few different macros in there! Would you mind listing your current plants?

Well, they're not too fantastic. I have some geometrically different Caulerpa spp. (I think C. scalpelliformis and C. serrulata along with a particular species of C. racemosa), a few branches of Halimeda sp. (that's not been doing well since I removed the monster caulerpa spp. bunch btw), the few strands of Botryocladia sp., a few shoots of a Penicillus sp., a very nice ball of Codium sp. I picked up in December, and quite a few algae that I cannot identify.

For the un-ID algae, there are quite a few. I have the purple/red bunch alga that grows unlike any algae I can find. I've had it since early November and it doesn't look like how it did when I bought it. There is the encrusting green bubble-like alga that actually looks very nice I think, another slow grower. At least its better than the dreaded Valonia--a few bubbles of these, too. I have the Sargassum-like alga/plant--which is slowly distributing itself across the live rock, again another slow grower. There's the many different varieties of coralline algae--brown, red, pink, purple. And there's even a branching coralline/calcareous sp. growing among a patch of the Sargassum-like plant. And that's about it as far as I can tell. I'm still looking for others.

I've added nothing but water, food, and a few nutrients since the last post early this month. Look for another picture post later this week. Oh, and my birdnest and acropora corals are growing. SPS + Bio-wheel = wtf? Talk amongst yourselves.

how are your readings with the biowheel and macros?

seabass (for his seagrass tank) may be better off going with a biowheel than CO2 injections if your readings are balancing themselves out.

Sorry this may sound really stupid but i would really like to start a planted saltwater tank. Ive been looking at them for a few months now and so far your thread is the most informative ive found. Anyway, do you think using tap water would be alright in a macro tank as long as you had a lot of algae eating livestock to feast on the micro algae (the cows of the salty world)?

For the readings, I'll have to get back to you. But as far as CO2 goes, I think the Bio-wheel does combine CO2 and O2 into the water. I don't notice very many bubbles coming out of the filter so it may mix it well before letting the water come out. I do notice the bubbles on the algae throughout the day almost as thought it is pearling oxygen bubbles a little. You'll see on the brown algae in the pictures below what I'm talking about.

I think it's a great idea to set up a salty planted tank. My advice, set it up and just don't touch it except for water changes and minor changes in tank. Try a few species of algae and a few corals. Let it all grow. If you get caulerpa, just be careful on letting it get out of control. As far as the tap water, it depends on the minerals in the tap water. Soft, dechlorinated, tap water should be fine if you decide to use it on a tank with algae export. Hard or water with nitrates or heavy phosphates may prove to be cumbersome. But use it at your own risk. I use RO/DI water.

Observations over the past month. That little sprig of hair algae on the mushrooms and palythoas/zoanthids in the picture earlier this month went away very quickly. I'm not sure if it is hungry 'pods, snails, or hermit crabs that got rid of it so quickly. Pod population is still significant. Occasionally I will get some hair algae and diatoms growing out of the filter exhaust but within a week something has eaten it. I'm not sure if it is a small brine population that slowly munches on it through the week or if it is a super snail that wipes it all out. I do notice it disappears shortly after and sometimes during one of the astrea's multi-day trip across the outlet of the filter. Light feeding right now and minimal maintenance at this point. Coralline is growing well as you'll see in the FTS and other pictures below.

Alright, January pictures, enjoy!
















I still have to get a few better pictures of the other animals and algae in the tank. Look for those soon. Questions? Thanks for looking.

tank looks realy nice, wats the green stuff growing under the pink palys and were can i get some !

OK welcome back! It's the end of February and I'm fairly pleased with the tank so far. The macros are growing well and the animals are doing well--all except the black clown. About mid-month, one day I didn't see it swimming around. On closer inspection, it was lying underneath the rock dead. Not sure what happened. Crabs and snails made short work of the corpse--and any freed nitrogen only fueled the macros. A LFS had a sale on some baby clowns and I picked up a 1/2" ocellaris clown for the replacement. I've been working on fattening him up so he can eat the pellets the other fish eat. He's only on some finely crushed flakes and sweetwater zooplankton.

All the other animals are thriving. I've noticed the Randall's goby doesn't hang out with the shrimp during the day--and if it does only on a rare occasion. At night he disappears with the shrimp into its caves and the shrimp snaps at night. Both sexy shrimp have molted. Coralline is growing on a steady basis. This past glass cleaning took a little longer as many spots had sprouted all over. And I've yet to touch the Bio-Wheel or the cartridge.

But, enough of the chatter. Here are some update pics for the month of February.





















And there we enter the last month. Thanks for stopping by and more pictures to come!

Nice tank WarEagleNR88. I wish my seagrass was progressing as well. I really like your mixed macro/coral reef; but if you don’t mind a suggestion, a little more beach up front might make your aquascape look a bit cleaner. Keep up the good work.

Yeah Seabass, I'm not sure what is going on with your seagrass. I bet it has something to do with a nearly nutrient free substrate. In a planted FW tank, the nutrients in the substrate provide the plants food and keep them flourishing. But there's a funny coincidence that happens when you first put a planted FW tank together. Its almost as though the substrate must age a little before the plants will take hold and begin to flourish. I think what the seagrass needs is the environment it comes from--an environment rich in nutrients plus lots of sunlight. In a 10G tank, very difficult to do. Maybe March will be the month it trips it's nutrient level in your substrate and you see some growth. Good luck!

Yeah I'm trying for the beach up front, but the caulerpa has other plans. I'm trying to keep it low instead of letting it climb all over the place. We'll see how it goes.

Here a couple of more pictures from February.







Hope you like that coralline growth! It's already growing on the front glass again less than a week later.

its Codium.. as far as where to get it.. www.floridapets.com has it sometimes

lookin' great, war! love the plant variety!

End of March Entry
March has been a very busy month for me personally, please excuse the late entry for March. The tank has been doing well. So far things are looking good, the algae is still growing and the tank is still maturing. Being only its fifth month in existence, I feel it is becoming fairly stable. Parameters have been consistent over the past couple of months and the temperature and salinity have been rock solid. This is truly my best work with an aquarium as far as maintenance and upkeep are concerned. Here are the parameters as of today:

Temp 78 degrees ____ (Coralife digital thermometer)
Salinity 1.024 _______ (Coralife Deep Six hydrometer using Instant Ocean mix)
Ammonia 0.0 ppm ___ (Red Sea Marine test kit)
NO2 0.0 ppm _______ (Red Sea Marine test kit)
NO3 ~5 ppm _______ (Hagen Nitrate test kit)
Alk ~3.2 meq/L _____ (Red Sea Marine test kit)
pH 8.2 ____________ (Red Sea Marine test kit)
KH 140 ppm _______ (Hagen GH/KH test kit)
Ca 460 ppm _______ (Hagen Ca test kit)

The Caulerpa again rose up and began to take over the tank again this month like it did in December. After a good trimming, I was able to shape it up to look presentable. Again during March, the front of the glass was covered with coralline and the fish have been eating well. 'Pods are numerous and everything is looking good. Here are the end of March pictures. In the next post I'll display the final entry and compilation.

Contest Summary
This has been an interesting contest. It was my first aquarium contest and it is slightly different from anything I've ever seen. I don't think in the Reefkeeping magazine Tank of the Month contest you'll see a macro-algae dominated aquarium anytime soon. I've enjoyed toying with the aspect of growing plants in a saltwater environment and mixing in a few colorful animals to aid the picture. While I don't think I had complete success learning how to grow algae and corals in an environment such as this, I think given the circumstances and restrictions in the stock category I did fairly well--but the voting will be the measure of that.

What would I do differently if I had it to do over again? Well for one, I'd not add Caulerpa racemosa-like species to an aquarium this small. I'd pick a single type of algae and a single type of coral. Perhaps only Halimeda and Ricordea? I think the combination of those two would be striking. Maybe throw in a little Botryocladia and add a few branches of Frogspawn to complete the pattern of shapes and sizes. Closely monitor the calcium levels and keep the water changes consistent and regular.

I look forward to the end of the contest and to the winners, congratulations! Here are some of my favorite pictures from my aquarium over the past ~6 months and I threw in a never-before-seen picture. I hope you enjoy all and remember me when you go to the polls.













For a list of fully updated tank specs, please Click Here. You will be returned to the first post of my entry that I have kept updated with all of the plants, animals, equipment, supplements and monthly entries categorized by month. Again, thanks for stopping by.