My 3rd Reef Tank - Build Thread

[cavipower1]

hey how big do those pygmy angels get? ive been contemplating getting one wen my 33long finishes its cycle

[mathias999us]

Heh, it's true, I'm lagging with the updates. I'll post some pics within a day or two.

 

I've had the sixline in there for about a week now, and they have formed a VERY interesting relationship, and I've never seen them fight, nor have I seen any evidence on the fish that they have fought at all. They sort of remind me of and old bickering married couple - they seem a little annoyed with each other, but they like to hang out together all the time, and neither seems particularly worried about the other. Sammy is also out in the open a lot more after the addition of the wrasse, so it's fun to watch the two of them "play" together.

 

I've also put some frogspawn and a small hammer frag in there, which seem to be doing really well.

 

Unfortunately, I noticed last night that Sammy has Marine "Ich". Doh! Sixline has no visible signs of it. Not sure what I'm going to do about it yet - I do have a space 10g glass tank I could set up as a treatment tank, but I'd prefer that only as a last resort. He's still healthy, active, and eating well, but it has me worried - I really like the little bugger.

 

cavipower - I believe they grow to around 2.5" in length.

[xADUBx]

Yea can't wait for some picks.

 

Sorry to hear about the ick problem, hope all goes well.

[mathias999us]

Thanks xADUBx - things are going OK so far....

 

OK, sorry for my lagging. Here's a bunch of pics.

 

Here's a lame pic of my emerald:

 

My frogspawn:

 

This is a hydnophora I got. It's super-bright neon green, but I'm not sure how healthy it is. It's doing OK so far:

 

The Rhodophyta is really growing like crazy - looks great I think:

[mathias999us]

More pics.

 

Here's my hammer frag, seems really happy after five days:

 

Angel:

[mathias999us]

And:

Angel and Wrasse together (Wrassie the wonder fish):

 

Wrassie the wonder fish:

 

Thanks for looking.

[PurpleUP]

This is a hydnophora I got. It's super-bright neon green, but I'm not sure how healthy it is. It's doing OK so far:

 

Excellent photography skills. You'll know your hydnophora is happy when it's feelers are all out and flowing in the current. It almost looks like green grass. Mine is pretty resilient and it looks just like that at night or whenever a crab traverses over it.

[dubsmcfly]

looking good, your tank is so clear! cant wait till more color comes into play.

[mathias999us]

Hey PurpleUP - Thanks. I suspect the hydno may be unhappy or still settling in. It still looks just like that pic. It's hard to tell, but I suspect it may be receding a little bit. I have it in a very high light location, with moderate turbulent flow. Maybe it needs less light???

 

dub - Thanks! There ARE some particles and microbubbles in there, but they don't really show in the pics. Because the flow is so turbulent and random, there is continuously debris in the water column. Not always the look we strive for, but I'm sure it's no better in the ocean

 

Good news about Sammy's ich - he appears to be beating it. Wrassie is still showing no signs of it either. I've been feeding heavy with frequest small feedings of a variety of flake, nori, frozen cyclopeze and mysis since I noticed the ich, and I'd like to think this has helped. These two make pigs of themselves, really! My RHG in my other tank got ich at the same time as Sammy too. I put pieces of the frogspawn in both tanks, and I also put frags from the LFS in both tanks this last weekend. Those are the only two things I've added in common to the two tanks, so I'm pretty certain it came from one of those two sources. I think the RHG is overcomming it as well, with frequent small feedings. All are still behaving normally, and piggin' out all day long.

[mathias999us]

I still can't get things as colorful as I think they look in real life, but here's a cropped full size FTS for ya:

[PurpleUP]

Hey PurpleUP - Thanks. I suspect the hydno may be unhappy or still settling in. It still looks just like that pic. It's hard to tell, but I suspect it may be receding a little bit. I have it in a very high light location, with moderate turbulent flow. Maybe it needs less light???

 

You're an early beard too, huh? I have a big 5" x 2.5" colony of this and it definitely did not like being up close to the halides. After I put it under PCs, it recovered quickly. But careful, b/c once it starts receding it goes FAST. There are now too 1" frags of it on my ADA sand bed, and they're doing quite well. It doesn't seem to have an issue with high flow. Hope this helps! NICE TANK.

[mathias999us]

Yep, gotta beat that morning rush. Thanks for the advice - I'll try moving it a little lower in the tank and see if that makes a difference.

 

Interesting that yours didn't like the halides... I thought these were very high light-demanding corals.

[eklikewhoa]

That FTS is really awesome looking!

[mathias999us]

PurpleUP - I moved the hydno down on the sandbed at the right end of the tank yesterday afternoon, and it definitely appears to be a bit more expanded this morning, but the feelers still aren't out like you described. I'll try to post a new pic tonight. Makes me wonder what corals will be able to withstand the full brunt of my lighting close to the center of the tank... Is it possible I've actually gone TOO bright for SPS and clams?

 

eklikewhoa - Thanks, glad you like it!

 

I actually got to observe the wrasse cleaning the angel for about 3-4 minutes yesterday! The angel was presenting itself for cleaning, and the wrasse was methodically picking at its side! Way cool - they really ARE friends. They don't even appear to be territorial at all towards each other. Great fish pair so far.

[disaster999]

how did you ever fix your bryopsis problem? i saw in some of your pics they were really growing...but then they some how dissappeared

[mathias999us]

Hi disaster -

Yeah, there was what I believed to be bryopsis all over the rock when the cycle finished. Whatever it was, both the blue-leg hermits and the emerald crab loved it, and they had every last bit completely cleared out within two weeks of their introduction. There's no a sign of it anywhere now.

[dubsmcfly]

Thats pretty cool about the fish your lucky you get to see a great interaction. The fts looks really good, i am very jealous hahaha. My sisters house was great this weekend, plenty of room for my nano over the summer plus i think they would have it out in the open for decoration! I got a new light for my tank 70 watt sunpod!! so sweet hahaha im gonna pick up a cuc today and post some pics later tonight. Hope things are well

[mathias999us]

Thanks dub - yeah, the fish are working out GREAT so far.

 

Quick update.

 

Not too much going on in the tank. I haven't added anything new, and I'm really just giving it a period of stability for now, until everything seems to be well established. The frogspawn, hammer, and rhodophyta are all doing great. The fish seem to be mostly ich-free at this point, although I have a couple times seen some small spots appear on the angel, that disappear rather quickly. I moved the hydnophora into a lower light area on the sandbed about 10 days ago at the advice of PurpleUP, and I do think it's doing better. At first, there was some tissue recession (in the upper-left part of this pic), but that seems to have stopped, if not reversed. It's definitely growing too, you can see lots of hydnophores starting to develop and grow upward. The tenticles don't come out like PurpleUP described, but there seems to be a lot more polyp extension than when I first got it. Here's an updated pic of it:

 

I'll post another update if anything changes, or if I get anything new (I'm also taking a period to let my hobby budget heal a bit from this project too ).

 

Thanks for reading.

[PurpleUP]

Thanks dub - yeah, the fish are working out GREAT so far.

 

Quick update.

 

Not too much going on in the tank. I haven't added anything new, and I'm really just giving it a period of stability for now, until everything seems to be well established. The frogspawn, hammer, and rhodophyta are all doing great. The fish seem to be mostly ich-free at this point, although I have a couple times seen some small spots appear on the angel, that disappear rather quickly. I moved the hydnophora into a lower light area on the sandbed about 10 days ago at the advice of PurpleUP, and I do think it's doing better. At first, there was some tissue recession (in the upper-left part of this pic), but that seems to have stopped, if not reversed. It's definitely growing too, you can see lots of hydnophores starting to develop and grow upward. The tenticles don't come out like PurpleUP described, but there seems to be a lot more polyp extension than when I first got it. Here's an updated pic of it:

 

I'll post another update if anything changes, or if I get anything new (I'm also taking a period to let my hobby budget heal a bit from this project too ).

 

Thanks for reading.

 

I see that it is starting to show signs of recovery. My entire mother colony definitely looked MUCH WORSE before I saved it from my tap-water contaminated office tank. I snapped off a pic of a frag I keep on my ADA sand bed, just about the same size if not smaller than yours. As you can see, it is much happier down there than it was only 15" away from 400 watts of halide power. However, in my BC14 I do have the mother colony 3" underneath stock PC lighting, so they can tolerate lower intensity light. This is what you have to look forward to once it completely grows back! Let me know if it doesn't quite make it. I'd be happy to send you a frag of my own.

[mathias999us]

Wow, looks like I've got quite a way to go with this one... I'm wondering if I should start slowly moving it back towards the brighter area of the tank, a little bit every few days.

 

Thanks for your help with this PurpleUP! I've had a lot of trouble finding much info about hydno, other than my Bourneman book and a few retailer sites. Good to know that someone that has been through this before still thinks I might be on a good track here.

[Laplace]

This is amazing, you are quite the craftsman.

[PurpleUP]

Wow, looks like I've got quite a way to go with this one... I'm wondering if I should start slowly moving it back towards the brighter area of the tank, a little bit every few days.

 

Thanks for your help with this PurpleUP! I've had a lot of trouble finding much info about hydno, other than my Bourneman book and a few retailer sites. Good to know that someone that has been through this before still thinks I might be on a good track here.

 

I'm definitely no expert, but I have seen this thing react to different tank environments over the past year. I think it can definitely "come back" from where it is now as long as it doesn't recede further. The parts that don't recede can come back to healthy life, but it will take considerable time for it to re-grow it's flesh outward and over its old skeleton. Upward growth and polyp extension is definitely easier than outward, if that makes sense. Light may not be its primary issue. In the past for me, it's been water conditions more than anything else. In my BC14, which leaved a bit to be desired in water quality, it showed nice extension in its polyps but it lacked the color it has now. Believe it or not, mine used to be green like yours, but then it turned blue after living in my ADA for a while. I cannot attribute it to one thing, but I think it started to show most improvement after I recently got my Ca, Alk, & Mg in check. My guess is, it'll take roughly 2 months to grow itself back to full health once it starts to "like" the water it's in. Your tank is relatively new so it might take a little while longer to get where it needs to be. Like I said before though, it's pretty resilient. The key thing in the short term will be to keep it from receding, and only frequent water changes with proper params will do that. HOPE THIS HELPS! Good luck.

[mathias999us]

Thanks Laplace - glad you like it.

 

PurpleUP - Yeah, I noticed it looked quite a bit better after my last water change. And then, I've increased my dose for 2 part calc/alk supplementation, and I believe it is responding positively to that. So far, my experience would say the same - high alk, calc and mg helps a lot with this coral. Thanks for your advice.

[mathias999us]

OK, I swear, every time I say that I'm letting things chill out for a while, I go and get something new.

 

It's been two and a half weeks since I added anything to the tank, so I went and picked up a couple frags last night. Got them for really cheap, but I wasn't quite sure what they were. I'm pretty sure they're both either favia and/or echinophyllia. Looking around for more positive IDs though.

 

These are pics right after they were added to the tank, so they aren't opening up yet (which makes them harder to ID I think).

 

Frag 1, think it's favia:

 

Frag 2 (I actually have 2 frags of this stuff), think it's echino? These polyps were really inflated in the store tank, looked more like big blasto polyps or something:

[mathias999us]

OK, time for more updates!

 

I really think this hydnophora exesa might be improving at this point. Every day it seems to look a little better. I moved it to a higher light location, but it didn't seem to like it as much again, so I moved it back. Here's an updated pic:

 

I've moved my favia and echino frags to more permanent locations now. Here's one of the echinos, expanding more now:

 

And the other tiny echino frag. It's expanding quite a bit now:

 

Here's the favia, placed a bit behind the rhodophyta. I think it likes the higher light here - it seems to be expanding a lot more now. Note the coralite in the upper-right of the pic. I saw some fungus-looking stuff on it that I didn't like, and I couldn't blast it off with a baster, so I scraped it off with my fingernail. Hopefully it will recover from this. It seems to be looking better and better each day:

 

AND.... I JUST got this new coral this morning. A really wildly-colored Blastomussa colony that I've had my eye on in the LFS for the past two or three months. This thing is really eye catching, and I finally decided to get it. In this pic, it was JUST added to the tank not 10 minutes earlier, so it is still pretty much fully retracted. But, you can see how nice the coloration is. I'll post more pics when it has adjusted and expanded more:

 

Thanks for reading!