The Velvet Nano

[The Velvet Sea]

Hi Stallen, thanks for the reply and your continued help with my fuge. I still have a large healthy clump of chaeto in the back chamber. I'm going to wait it out a bit and see if the chaeto catches on. The little pieces don't break free often, I only had lots break off when I was messing around with the pvc filter stand and it shaked the chaeto up a bit. Since then, I don't see much making it to the display. Though if chaeto needs regular maintenance like turning it over, I might want to make it a little more accessible. Where it is now would kinda make it a pain to move around regularly. Just like my mechanical filter stand, I believe that regular maintenance items should be easy to do. The more of a pain they are, the more likely I am to skimp on how often I do it. Anyhow, just thoughts. I'll let the chaeto be for now and see if it starts to really take off. Thanks again.

 

Hello Capt Nemo. Thanks very much for the compliment. I really like the indigo psuedos too! They are a very vibrant blue color. I think they would look better under other lights, sometimes when they are out in the open the halide can kinda flush the color from them and make them look a little less colorful. I got them from Inland Aquatics, but they do not have them listed on their website so you would need to call to check price and availability. I got a sexed pair, so of course I had to pay above average of the normal price of single indigos. I've heard of single indigos sold around $70. I paid just a bit more than that for each, plus shipping. I was under the impression that they were the last pair Inland Aquatics had available, but maybe they can get more from ORA. If you really want some, call up ORA! They were so nice! I was nervous that they wouldn't really be overly helpful to a hobbyist since they only sell wholesale, but I was so wrong. They can probably help put you in touch with any LFS that carry their products or they may be able to put you in touch with other online sources of their stuff. I know Dr. F&S carry ORA stuff. They may be worth a try also. I know here on nano-reef, Icenine has an indigo too. I'm not sure where he got it but if you can find his monster tank thread it may have more info there. I have forgotten, sorry.

 

As far as the temperament, they are territorial. My pair seems to be getting along fine (only been a few weeks still though, so hopefully mine don't change like your fridmani). The large one does try to boss the little one around some. It is really funny though, about 50% of the time the little one will swim away, but the other times it stands it's ground. When it does, the larger one freaks out and swims away scared. So the big one is bossy but like any bully, if you stand up to them they are likely to pee their pants. I would recommend adding any timid fish before the psuedos. If you have plenty of rockwork for the fish to establish territories then I expect you will be fine with them. But I can't say much about keeping them with other fish. Right now my pair are my only fish and they have plenty of space. I imagine they could potentially be just as territorial and aggressive as Fridmani, but nowhere near the aggression of a Neon psuedo. HTH. Good luck and thanks again for stopping by.

 

 

Edit: So to avoid bumping and posting on my thread twice in 1 day I'm just going to put this in as an edit though it really deserves it's own thread! As you may see in my sig, I went to college to study marine fisheries which was inspired by my love for the ornamental aquarium hobby. I met some wonderful people that I could go on and on about. One good friend of mine (he was actually the TA for my Parasitology of Marine Organisms course) is working on his PhD at Coral Gables while he is working with a private company developing shark repellants. They use tons of rare earth magnets in industrial applications like protecting the divers involved with the removal of oil rigs that were damaged in the gulf during the hurricane season in '05. They are now developing a chemical repellant that will be available in suntan lotions!

 

Another friend of mine just started his own fisheries observer corporation and has been awarded with several jobs monitoring dredge operations looking mostly for endangered sea turtles.

 

But I have one friend that I am really jealous of, in a good way. He has spent the last 4 years with the peace corps. His first two years were in Belize where he was responsible for diving on the reefs and taking video documentation of the reefs for monitoring purposes. The past two years he spent in Palau doing very similar work. I just got a bunch of pictures from him and they are amazing. Check out these pictures of a tridacnid farm near Koror!!!

 

 

 

 

 

[The Velvet Sea]

I hate coming home to aquarium surprises. Today I arrived to find that my hammer coral had fallen and landed right on the acans. Polyps on polyps. I hadn't glued the hammer down because I'm just holding it for a while until a friend's tank is ready for it. Honestly, now I just can't wait to be rid of it. First it was just hogging space but now I have a real problem.

 

The acan is pretty messed up. Some tissue is coming off of it and lots of slime from both corals. I don't think it will be a total loss though. I think I need to do a water change to reduce the amount of toxins in water. I really need to get it back to normal because more frags are coming early next week.

[stallen]

Bummer. Hope everything turns out OK.

 

Hey I wanted to check on your cheato. How is it doing. I've been doing some experimenting with the light cycle on my fuge. I got a pinpoint pH monitor and I wanted to see if running my fuge light 24/7 would be better than running opposite the display light cycle. Well, I discovered something else besides pH swings. My cheato looks like crap after about three weeks of running 24/7 cycle. That's the only thing I can contribute it to. It has stopped growing, looks like a lighter color of green, and even has lots of little bits breaking off just as you described. Just now it was falling apart as I pulled it out.

 

When I had it on a ~16hr on/ ~8hr off cycle it was firmer, darker, growing, and I could pull the entire ball out of the chamber without it falling apart. I'm not sure what your light cycle is like, but you should try an on/off cycle if you are running 24/7.

[The Velvet Sea]

Hi Stallen, Good news first. The hammer and acans are both doing great. What looked like massive injury to the acan must have been just slime and maybe some food spit out of it. There is minimal tissue damage.

 

Sorry to hear that your chaeto is having issues. Good luck with that. Thanks for the input on the light cycle. I'm really curious about the lighting and how it will affect pH swings too. I'm behind on doing little experiments that I want to do like that because some test kits have been back ordered since before the holidays! I was running my light on it for 14 hours, opposite the main display. Whenever I would do water changes, change my filter floss, or jostle that PVC filter floss stand around I continued to get lots of chaeto to break free so I removed the chaeto. Lots of the pieces that broke free were pale and unhealthy looking, so I think it was dying. There was some healthy looking chaeto when I removed it, and I could see healthy chaeto through the glass window before I yanked it so some of it was healthy. But I figured any dying macro algae would release similar if not the same nutrients into my tank that I am trying to export, so I didn't want to take any chances and I yanked it.

 

The chaeto was being held in the chamber by a vertical piece of PVC pipe, the legs for my egg crate filter floss stand. Water flows around the PVC and the chaeto would get pulled into that little pinch spot between the PVC and the glass on one side, and between the PVC and false wall on the other. I think all of the chaeto that became pinched is what kept dying and breaking free.

 

Also, from your advice and other reading I have heard that it is good to regularly rotate the chaeto. I thought about making a baffle to hold the chaeto in place but I would still need to remove the PVC floss stand to get to the chaeto to rotate it. The filter floss stand I made is a snug fit. I think it would be a pain to take it in and out regularly so I could rotate the algae. Like I said before, I think regular maintenance items should be made so they are quick and easy to do. It has made me realize that my fuge was a bad design all around (except for the light! I'm still convinced that it's a keeper! Oddly enough, it was the part of my fuge that I didn't design )

 

I'm setting up an aquaclear fuge to try next. I'm not going to use rubble or sand or anything else in the fuge. Just chaeto. I'm not looking to breed pods or increase biological live rock filtration. I guess I don't want a fuge really. What I want to try out is a nano size algae scrubber. The aquaclear has several things going for it. I cut up the impeller and have a nice steady slow flow. The chaeto will be very easy to rotate as compared to in my chamber fuge. I know I know, the main thing it doesn't have going for it is it's small size. Yes my fuge will be undersized on my tank. It will not be a "cure all" fuge. I'm not trying to make my fuge support my tank. I'm thinking of my fuge as just a small additional polisher, the way a DI filter would be used to polish RO water even further. If it is working correctly I imagine it will have some benefits even though it is small.

 

Anyhow, I didn't have the fuge assembled in time before I yanked the chaeto, so I' have to hunt down some more, but I'll let you know how it does once I get it going again.

[aaronz]

DO you have a current picture of your chamber set up. I need to redirect my outflow of my PS as was trying to look at how you did it. I couldn't really get a grasp from the pictures. Also, how do you have that lockline routed? Does it come from a pump in the tank or from a pump in the chambers?

 

 

Nice tank Keep up the good work!

[The Velvet Sea]

Thanks Aaronz. I have some older pictures from before I put on the aquaclear filter. Everything else is the same. My locline is being powered by an extra mj900 in the second chamber going through a hole I drilled in the false wall. I got that mod from Icenine's Nano, Check pages 8 & 9 for Locline Mod.

 

So here are some shots of my second chamber with 2 mj900s, ATO float switch, and stealth heater. Shots of my first chamber and mechanical filtration are earlier in this thread.

 

[aaronz]

AWSOME THANKS!

[The Velvet Sea]

Got some new stuff from Sea Life Inc. and I am really pleased with it.

 

I got an emerald crab (for the bubble algae you can see in the pics), peppermint shrimp, cerith and nerite snails (5 species of snails in my tank now), and a couple of their nano gorgonians. I really love the gorgs. All of them were very healthy, unfortunately I think I used too much epoxy on the purple gorg on the left side. The polyp extension on it was better, hopefully it recovers.

 

 



 

[The Velvet Sea]

New Monties

 

[The Velvet Sea]

Well, as you can see, I'm almost done stocking my tank. If you look at the most recent FTS in the thread you can see front and center on the sand I have my acan frag. There is also a frag of GSP that fell down but it is no longer there. I like the acans but they don't deserve the prime real estate that they have. So I was thinking of moving the acans and putting something a little nicer down there. My ideas so far are either a nice pink/purple short tentacle fungia plate coral, a red and green trachyphilia open brain, or maybe a nice red and green favia brain.

 

What do you think would be a nice "front and center" show piece for my tank? Medium-low flow, medium-low lighting.

 

Let me know what you think! Thanks.

[FUGU!!!]

still the cleanest 24 around

 

super cool.

 

I am gonna do a 15+15 pritty soon.

[aaronz]

Keep up the good work! Love to check back in with your tank once a week. What kind of flow are you working with? I have a decent size yellow gorg and it seems that its polyps are only fully out once or twice a week. Other than that its only half out or 1/3 out. I can't find the dang topic that said how much flow they like.

[Koral krazy (reefer 365)]

the best ap24 i have ever seen!

[The Velvet Sea]

Thanks for the very kind words you all. Not sure if I really deserve them, but I'm not one to correct someone else's opinion so I guess I'll just take the compliments. Thanks!

 

Fugu! I think you will be happy with a 15+15. I've seen a couple of those around here and they look like well designed nanos. From my experience with my aquapod, I like the "all in ones" but I think a traditional overflowing tank with a sump design is still better. I'm mainly saying this because of my skimmer issues... it is just sooo much easier to incorporate a skimmer into a sump system as opposed to trying to make one work in hang on back mode. Good luck with the 15+15! I think it is a great choice.

 

Hi Koralkrazy, thanks for the kind words and for stopping by. If you like my tank, you should keep looking around here. EZcompany and Icenine have two of my favorite AP24s on this site (those were the 2 tanks that helped me decide on my AP24).

 

Hello Aaronz, good to hear from you again. The only flow I have in my tank is supplied by the 2 MJ900s in the false sump area. One to the hydor flo, and one through the bulkhead and dual locline nozzles. One nozzle is up top in the center. The other is halfway down shooting out of the rockwork.

 

How long have you had your gorgonian? From my experience, they can be similar to green star polyps (gorgs and gsp are both octocorals after all). They may take some time for the polyps to open up. It took my GSP almost a week of being in my tank to really start to open up, the gorgonians took a few days too. From my experience with gorgonians, they really like good flow. As I understand it, they don't demand it as much as acropora or other sensitive corals like that but they do like it. My tank doesn't really have high flow. In fact if I compared my tank to others around here, I'd say my tank is medium-low flow. I'm just very strategic in my coral placement. The two gorgs on the left get good flow from the hydo flo, and the really nice purple gorg on the right is getting nearly direct flow from the hidden locline nozzle. It isn't getting blasted (since the output is divided to 2 nozzles it cuts down on the flow from each nozzle) but it is getting constant soft direct flow and it seems to love it. HTH let me know if you have any other questions.

 

Thanks again for stopping by and I hope you all liked it. Feel free to flame me over my ugly bubble algae if you want, or if you have an opinion on a good centerpiece coral for my tank I'd still love to hear it!

 

GO BEARS!

[FUGU!!!]

haha thanks

 

You think the 24 is almost complete!? nononononono,you need to get the tank established and let things grow and get cooler.

 

 

get a plate coral there my favorite

[The Velvet Sea]

It is hard to get nice macro shots in focus with my camera but I'm getting a little better with it. Here is a picture of my favorite frag of montipora that I added and a much better shot of my favorite gorgonian.

 

[The Velvet Sea]

Current Full Tank Shot

[aaronz]

Nice as usual! I got rid of my gorgs for some sps pieces from a friend. It was to big and kept getting in the way. All you need now is a clam!

[The Velvet Sea]

I haven't updated this in quite a while but my nano is going strong! It has had some ups (really fast growth on my Montipora) and some downs (massive flatworm infestation). My only additions have been some red with blue spot mushrooms and a small frag of teal and pink Cyphastrea. The only losses have been the two purple gorgonians. Everything else is doing well or thriving. I'll work on some pictures soon.

[The Velvet Sea]

 

 

[Diskusting]

disc golf owns

[The Velvet Sea]

The Velvet Nano Post of Pictures @ 1 Year Mark!

 

FTS!

 

 

Right Side



 

 

 

Left Side



 

 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

 

Top Down Shots



 

 



 

 



 

 



 

 

[Krayon]

this is by far the CLEANEST tank i have ever seen! i love it, keep up the good work! your making me jealouse this may have already been answered but what kind of lighting do you have?

[The Velvet Sea]

Thanks very much. It is the 70w HQI Metal Halide sunpod, 14k stock bulb. Just replaced it 2 months ago but I bought the same bulb again. Not much selection in those 70w bulbs. Its on for 8 hours a day.

[Krayon]

Looking at your older pictures, your hammer's growth is outstanding IMO.