Petolo's first Pico

[petolo]

Ordered a new light.. should get it in by end of the week, birds nest hasn't been looking good and the jerry rigged two light set up looks like garbage.

 

Saw mixed reviews on the AI Prime but seemed to fit the bill for me the best, plus I had some credit with amazon that helped defray the cost

[xenia30]

Prime is the real deal! I have one on my tank for 10 months now and love every aspect of this light!

[brandon429]

the food isn't uber critical as long as free access proteins are avail in the water for taking. we have our favs on the site after years of trial, so mine is simple blenderized Mysis frozen shrimp mixed with cyclopeeze or roti-pods, all refrigerated or frozen feeds.

 

I don't like dry feeds only in my opinion. I like the refrig reef stuff

 

you might not even see some corals feed, its the trick of feeding them and changing water regularly so it wont rot/make extra waste and keeping suspended protein quality high

 

might also add that not once in 16 yrs of constant reefing have I ever dipped, its optional. what you are seeing is likely pods that will always crawl on corals but the coral isn't looking well due to other reasons unconnected, that's the most likely scenario. the pods are part of optional feed for corals

 

this is all common in new tank work, the new light must be acclimated carefully or the current corals will bleach. my recent led acclimation took two weeks.

[petolo]

Well I was able to get some vids of my "pests" these don't look like any pictures of pods I've seen, but if you guys think I'm good I'll try to sleep easier at night

 

https://youtu.be/GG-TKd1JFjo

https://youtu.be/2lJflgYhRXA

[xenia30]

The video is really not showing anything! Try zooming in!

[petolo]

I took another that I hope shows it, will load and post link shortly. but on the snail video you can kinda see something crawling around on top.

[petolo]

https://youtu.be/IkLxou41NAQ

[brandon429]

those are the animals that IPSF sells as refugium starter kits, for cash

 

 

dips are for flatworms and preventatives against disease although I do not need any dips ever to avoid disease. the retail industries for fish tank options are just like human ones. our grocery stores are filled with items promising joint pain relief etc.

 

those motile pods are not bad they are normal. the reason for higher than average feeding, and water changes, is so that your corals aren't in a state of neutrality, but actually adding mass. growing corals don't get sick likechallenged ones do.

[petolo]

Got my AI Prime in the mail yesterday, threw it on the tank and sort of got it set up. I have it running at about 14k Kelvin from 11-9 with two hour ramp ups and an adjustment setting to avoid burning anyone. Running to the LFS to get some water and look at some mounting options, the last two mornings I've been waking up to corals in places where I didn't leave them, I think the snails are getting frisky.

 

I'm most worried about the birdsnest, but with the Prime do you guys think it would be ok kind of in the middle? I'll probably test it for a few days to see how it does before committing.

[petolo]

AI Prime in place and seems to be working well, everything is responding great to the new light. Also FTS of current layout. GSPs seems to be growing and adding polyps which is cool, would love to see it take over that rock.

 

Been feeding the Acans occasionally and might shift the GSPs just a little to be more completely on that lower rock. Feel like I need to find two more pieces to be satisfied, one on the top left (maybe a zoa?) and one on the right side on the white rock. I have a number of vacations/trips coming up over the next few months so I will probably be holding off from adding any critters until July.

 

My GF thinks I'm going crazy, constantly looking from different angles and staring at different things trying to decide if I want to move it or if it's growing well.

[petolo]

I think I'm done adding for the moment. Picked up some zoas and a candy cane on saturday, they are in the updated first post picture. Can anyone confirm (since I'm being too lazy to search the forum currently) if the Candy canes will need to be fed along with the Acans?

[brandon429]

those corals do well in both kinds of tanks. those tank that have fish and a lot of secondary feeding do ok with no spot feeding, and the corals gain nutrition indirectly from fish feed and fish waste.

 

the tanks that directly feed them simply grow them faster. its important to note that as non-autotrophs, all corals (heterotrophs) must have access to feed or they will die in time as natural stores exhaust. they'll take on invaders and diseases quicker in this nitrogen-negative state, even though they may last a year or so. it doesn't mean anything other than if a system has coral of any species, and especially non photosynthetic ones, feed must enter that tank somehow in some way relative to mass addition.

[petolo]

Well I plan on feeding, I'd love to see good growth and have the current batch of corals last me, I really like where it is headed.

 

 

the tanks that directly feed them simply grow them faster. its important to note that as non-autotrophs, all corals (heterotrophs) must have access to feed or they will die in time as natural stores exhaust. they'll take on invaders and diseases quicker in this nitrogen-negative state, even though they may last a year or so. it doesn't mean anything other than if a system has coral of any species, and especially non photosynthetic ones, feed must enter that tank somehow in some way relative to mass addition.

From this I'm reading that given nothing more than light and water that isn't toxic, eventually any coral would perish? In which case I am definitely going to spot feed everything. I want to try to schedule around my water changes so I can export some waste and reduce my bioload

 

Having no experience with most of this, would it be safe to try and pull my GSPs off the plug they came on? the rocks aren't really flat enough and I don't know what kind of effect would be had if they block off a section of water, might it trap their waste (I assume they have waste, even if minimal)? You can kind of see this space in the picture I updated on the first post.

[brandon429]

The tank is clean and in fine direction no matter of the gsp, pruning it or not is no effect even if it did catch some waste, that sandbed and the rock porosity is all that matters, unplugged you are getting max filtration. our tanks will usually have some detritus always, since we don't clean daily and live rock really does eject a lot on its own (worms, pods, corals, fanworms, all solid waste producers and heterotrophs) so as long as your sandbed is nice and rinsed and kept clean you don't have anything to worry about a bit of waste.

 

 

It is true that every coral will die without a direct protein access in the tank. The great author and aquarist Eric Borneman taught me that in private message in 2001 at reefcentral. my fav reefer. I too was thinking plants...light, water, some ferts and don't do anything for nine months but he corrected me at autotrophs vs heterotroph feeding biology and that's all it took for pico reefs to now compete for coral growth. without his input I wasn't going to feed, to avoid pollution.

 

everyone thought in the beginning you should withhold feed to prevent nutrients compiling, and do tiny water changes to not upset, but those are opposite of the truth. you pack feed, pack in mass water changes -or- the $$ support gear to handle wastes for you, and you can actually beat the coral production of a larger system not just hang with it. By causing corals to take on mass vs slow starvation, you literally head off diseases at the pass.

 

a system of busy export and water changes is exporting coral mucous excesses, waste stores, dissolved organics in the water, all the things the old system of fearful water changes caused to accumulate and kill the pico reef. doesn't have to be much more than something good done weekly, sustained.

 

by staying busy with export you are keeping a perfect ORP setting for these tanks perpetually, it never ends if you keep getting hardware and procedure lucky.

 

in all fair disclosure, the -amount- of feed is entirely tweakable. certain metabolic settings don't require tons of feed, they require just some. take coldwater reefs for example, or tiny stilled reefs that don't even have active circulation. people find the bare minimum feed access those kinds of coral systems will take and provide only that much...so that they indeed don't have to change water often. for additional research, consider PJ Reefs mini picos.

 

Those are solid science. three month running intervals in between servicings, and light feedings, and you could grow green star polyps briareum with literally no circulation. that's why its so forgiving in your tanks, you've over provided its needs. you could literally pack your whole reef with frags and continue course or just add them slowly, doesn't matter. I had sps frags in my tank within 24 hours of setup, because I used live rocks that were hundreds of years old...however old real live rock is

[petolo]

Those PJ Reefs are really cool! Now I want one on my desk! I think we're on the same page, I plan on having some kickass growth in this pico, and now I'm willing to bet I'll have an itty bitty mason jar reef in about a month, Geez Brandon, what have you done?!

[brandon429]

le addiction!!

[petolo]

So I definitely had a learning experience yesterday, I thought I'd been having little baby snails on my glass, but then I saw something move on my mushroom and did some research, lo an behold: I HAD FLATWORMS haha. Fortunately I had some CoralRX, mixed up 1/4 gal and murdalized those things... turns out, I have a green mushroom, not a purple one. It wasn't very happy with me for the dip, but I feel better knowing that I now know what to do if I see those evil things again.

 

I'm not actually sure that they hurt anything, but I definitely wasn't happy about the surprise.

[ReefJar]

Here's a picture of a bigger one in my jar, before I realized there were a lot more than 1 or 2.

 

 

If you see a few flatworms, you probably have 5x, 10x or who knows.

 

Last month I noticed I had quite the infestation. I guess the problem is when they become an epic plague and potentially block light from reaching corals. And when they die they have the potential to release some nasty toxins in to the water column. Although I'm sure these things would require a massive infestation.

 

The population would probably max out at some point, I didn't like seeing them all over corals or the glass when the lights came on...

 

I used FlatWorm Exit on my 2 gallon jar. It took a few treatments and over dosing before I finally got rid of the issue. However, since I literally left the FLE over night one time, I think the FLE combined with the dead flat worm toxins created some nasty water and some of my corals took a beating.

 

A popular question, will FLE kill inverts? Well, It didn't wipe out my pod population or my stomatella snails so that was great!

 

A month later things are doing great, no signs of the little buggers

[brandon429]

team Im about to have to dose something too for the first time Im not happy about

 

whatever it is that kills those dang vermetid snails. peroxide wont do it, I think it has to be a de wormer or something not very happy about that!! by having these vermetids unchecked, they now sometimes popup dead center of my very old blast colony and wipe out one head at a time...soon ill have to act. like you mentioned no collateral pod losses, im now searching for something that will target and kill only vermetids it might be panacur or something or fenben maybe

[petolo]

I think I have some of those vermetids too, but not so many that I feel the need to napalm them just yet, maybe I'll CA glue the suckers in...

 

ReefJar, did you see a pretty quick reaction with the FLE? I noticed the flatworms writhing and falling off the second I dropped the frag into the CoralRX, but I don't think pulling every last thing out of my tank to dip in CRX is my idea of a good time. And every time I see those little worms on my glass I go scrubbing with my magnet, don't know if they die but it makes me feel good.

 

Fortunately I really don't have much in the way of inverts, just the snail CUC

[ReefJar]

I didn't really noticed the flatworms dying quickly. Actually on the bottle it says wait 45 minutes and if you don't notice anything, add more.

 

Another thing to note is that some of them don't look dead as they will still cling to where they are. Others will have a long string that comes out of them indicating death. And others seemed unaffected.

 

I used a chop stick with a sponge on the end to get as many off the glass as I could before treatment. If you do it just right, they will go inside the sponge rather than let go and float away. They don't go easily. haha

[petolo]

I'm going to try that sponge trick, thank god my GF has chopsticks or I'd be ordering out tonight!

[petolo]

On a business trip going crazy not knowing what is happening in the tank, the other half face timed and showed me but it isn't the same ?

[petolo]

Today I wake up and a frag that was glued down was knocked off and laying on another, I swear I think I have the most destructive snails in the hobby, every day something else is moved, whether or not it's been glued

[petolo]

Strange weekend with the tank, hadn't been able to do a water change for a little over a week and I was noticing an infestation of flatworms, and algae, so I finally got some water and did about 75% (would have been 100% but it's a little complicated with the set up I have so I do a 50% while stirring thinks up, then fill up, and do it again. What was worrying me was the GSPs weren't coming out, and I had no clue why, but finally yesterday evening they graced me with their presence. All in all good things and starting to mature, now to just get this algae under control (won't be feeding until thursday when I can do a water change)