Nano Sapiens 12g - Ye Olde Mixed Reef

[LazyFish]

Still realy intrested in that mystery lps. Great pics!

[Nano sapiens]

Hungry, much?
 

 

The Button Scoly puffed and put out the tentacles when I pulled part of the hermit out for the photo.

Most likely a molt, but Mr. Scoly don't care and sucked it right back in again 

Yuma's like 'Hi Ya All! Do you like my mahvelously long tentacles?" 

[Nano sapiens]

Oct '22 FTS:
 

For the blue fans (this is my occasional 'cloud' setting that I just happened to catch):
 

Not much changed physically from the last photo in July other than some decent coral growth.

Over the last few months I have been very slowly adjusting the light spectrum to reflect a more shallow water environment (I just like that warm and sunny look, especially with winter coming on). The corals don't seem to mind:
 

The occasional battle with the Digitate Hydroids continues. This little Button Scolly has taken a few nasty hits on the left side:
 

The little pests can be really hard to get at in a small packed tank, so in this case I had to unmount the coral, find and dispose of the pest, then reattach.


Almost a year later, this Fallen Horizon Leptoseris has almost closed the gap up top:
 

This Pink Stylocoeniella is quite the achiever slowly gaining ground on this Leptastrea:
 

It's also gaining ground on the Leptoseris behind it with that wicked Stylo sting.


'15 minutes of fame' for the little colony of Shadow Prince Zoas:
 

In this photo, I like all the color floating around underneath the Zoas as well as the pleasing contrast in color and shape with the P. maldivensis.


And last but not least, a previously super tiny non-descript R. yuma that I got for $5 that besides getting huge is starting to develop a very nice deep orange/gold on a purple body:
 

 

 

Have reduced WCs down to 5%/wk (1/2g/wk) from 7.5%/wk.  So far, it has been my observation that the smaller water changes (2x/wk) have contributed to an even more coral friendly and stable environment.  However, this is as low as I'm willing go with such a small body of water that has so much life.

 

In less happy news, it appears that my charismatic Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny is on his way out. He refuses to leave his hidey-hole and hasn't eaten for 2 weeks, so not good...

 

Unless anything noteworthy happens...next update in Dec 

[debbeach13]

I always enjoy seeing this tank, It, gives me inspiration.

[Snow_Phoenix]

10 hours ago, Nano sapiens said:

Oct '22 FTS:
 

For the blue fans (this is my occasional 'cloud' setting that I just happened to catch):
 

Not much changed physically from the last photo in July other than some decent coral growth.

Over the last few months I have been very slowly adjusting the light spectrum to reflect a more shallow water environment (I just like that warm and sunny look, especially with winter coming on). The corals don't seem to mind:
 

The occasional battle with the Digitate Hydroids continues. This little Button Scolly has taken a few nasty hits on the left side:
 

The little pests can be really hard to get at in a small packed tank, so in this case I had to unmount the coral, find and dispose of the pest, then reattach.


Almost a year later, this Fallen Horizon Leptoseris has almost closed the gap up top:
 

This Pink Stylocoeniella is quite the achiever slowly gaining ground on this Leptastrea:
 

It's also gaining ground on the Leptoseris behind it with that wicked Stylo sting.


'15 minutes of fame' for the little colony of Shadow Prince Zoas:
 

In this photo, I like all the color floating around underneath the Zoas as well as the pleasing contrast in color and shape with the P. maldivensis.


And last but not least, a previously super tiny non-descript R. yuma that I got for $5 that besides getting huge is starting to develop a very nice deep orange/gold on a purple body:
 

 

 

Have reduced WCs down to 5%/wk (1/2g/wk) from 7.5%/wk.  So far, it has been my observation that the smaller water changes (2x/wk) have contributed to an even more coral friendly and stable environment.  However, this is as low as I'm willing go with such a small body of water that has so much life.

 

In less happy news, it appears that my charismatic Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny is on his way out. He refuses to leave his hidey-hole and hasn't eaten for 2 weeks, so not good...

 

Unless anything noteworthy happens...next update in Dec 

Oh, wow! Love the button scoly-acan-blasto combo you have going on! So beautiful. 

I like your coral arrangement/scape too! Everything seems to 'fit' together. 

[Nano sapiens]

3 hours ago, debbeach13 said:

I always enjoy seeing this tank, It, gives me inspiration.

 

Nice compliment, thank you! 🙂

[Nano sapiens]

5 hours ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Oh, wow! Love the button scoly-acan-blasto combo you have going on! So beautiful. 

I like your coral arrangement/scape too! Everything seems to 'fit' together. 

Thanks!  In the past, I would just have separated the LPS into their own little separate clusters with more room in between.  While a safe way of arranging, to my eye it can look a bit contrived since different corals on a healthy, pristine reef are often found tangled and intermixed as they fight for space (excluding the case of certain large reef areas of super dominant single or very limited  species of corals).  So I decided to try mixing things up a bit and surprisingly the aggression has been a lot less than I expected.  The only LPS that I currently have that I absolutely wouldn't even attempt to place next to another LPS is the hyper-aggressive Acanthastrea pachysepta.

 

Simple 'scape of just a few pieces of LR that happen to interlock (more or less).  The original idea was to have it 'open and airy' to allow as free a through flow as possible and still have a structure to place corals onto.  Having the coral frags grow into and compete with each other over a long period of time gives that 'fit together' look.

[Nano sapiens]

Well, all things have a beginning and all things have an end...

 

RIP, you little wild-and-whacky Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny (Ekemblemaria sp.):

 

 

I bought this little guy from Live Aquaria way back in Sep 2017, so that makes it just a month over 5 years now (I was initially expecting 3 years at most).  Considering the fish was already mature when purchased, it could well have been 6 years old.

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

5 hours ago, Nano sapiens said:

Well, all things have a beginning and all things have an end...

 

RIP, you little wild-and-whacky Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny (Ekemblemaria sp.):

 

 

I bought this little guy from Live Aquaria way back in Sep 2017, so that makes it just a month over 5 years now (I was initially expecting 3 years at most).  Considering the fish was already mature when purchased, it could well have been 6 years old.

 

Few years ago, I saw a tiny blenny with red eyes at the bottom of a frag tank in a LFS. Went back home and looked it up - turned out to be a barnacle blenny that hitchiked from a coral shipment. It was quite adorable - looked exactly like yours, except for the eye color. Impossible to fish out of the frag tank though. 

Sorry for your loss. 5 years is good/long for a wild-caught fish though. He looked very content in that pic too. 🌺

[Nano sapiens]

8 hours ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Few years ago, I saw a tiny blenny with red eyes at the bottom of a frag tank in a LFS. Went back home and looked it up - turned out to be a barnacle blenny that hitchiked from a coral shipment. It was quite adorable - looked exactly like yours, except for the eye color. Impossible to fish out of the frag tank though. 

Sorry for your loss. 5 years is good/long for a wild-caught fish though. He looked very content in that pic too. 🌺

 Thanks.  5 years was a good run (maybe it was those weekly earthworm feedings) 🙂

 

What you saw was very likely the Hancock/Panamic Barnacle Blenny (Acanthemblemaria hancocki), or one of a few quite similar looking species, that only get up to ~1-1/2" max.

 

The Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny (Ekemblemaria myersi) can get to 3-1/2".  To make thing even more confusing there are many different closely related species of Ekemblemaria that look similar, and I strongly suspect that the one I had was one of these other species (different coloration and quite a bit smaller size than E. myersi).

[Nano sapiens]

End of year FTS:
 

Left side:
 

Right Side:
 

Only new coral this quarter was a Blastomussa vivida (trade for a few of my extra R. florida). Looked a bit off at the store and looked worse when I got it home. Had a lot of perimeter algae and even a small Aiptasia, so the base was dipped in H202 (not the polyp). A silk creating worm then crawled on it and caused the wedge of destruction. It then sulked for a good month before showing any signs of expansion and is now finally putting on a bit of color (blurry photo, but the best I could get):
 

Bizarre worm with no markings whatsoever (not even eye spots):
 

Looks like some type of gastropod's long proboscis, but there is no visible body attached to this snout...so I'm calling it a worm at this point.


I keep feeding any Hermit Crab molts I find to this guy (nom-nom) 

I lost one of my two Button Scollys to a Digitate Hydroid. I stopped feeding all powdered foods and BBS which has really helped to knock down the DH population. Surprising my lone NPS Scleronephthya is still alive and kicking, just not growing.


In the last couple months I've dropped the temp down to 76 (from 78/79), dropped the blue channel a little, upped the white channel quite a bit along with Red and Cyan. I may still minimally increasing the violet channel and call it a 'done deal'. A bit slower growth (about 20% less Kalkwasser consumed than before) but some improvement in non-fluorescent pigmentation...which is what I was after. For those thinking that white light = algae, not necessarily the case as the system remains as virtually algae free as before. One additional side benefit to the warmer lighting is that very little image post processing is needed.

[Snow_Phoenix]

2 hours ago, Nano sapiens said:

End of year FTS:
 

Left side:
 

Right Side:
 

Only new coral this quarter was a Blastomussa vivida (trade for a few of my extra R. florida). Looked a bit off at the store and looked worse when I got it home. Had a lot of perimeter algae and even a small Aiptasia, so the base was dipped in H202 (not the polyp). A silk creating worm then crawled on it and caused the wedge of destruction. It then sulked for a good month before showing any signs of expansion and is now finally putting on a bit of color (blurry photo, but the best I could get):
 

Bizarre worm with no markings whatsoever (not even eye spots):
 

Looks like some type of gastropod's long proboscis, but there is no visible body attached to this snout...so I'm calling it a worm at this point.


I keep feeding any Hermit Crab molts I find to this guy (nom-nom) 

I lost one of my two Button Scollys to a Digitate Hydroid. I stopped feeding all powdered foods and BBS which has really helped to knock down the DH population. Surprising my lone NPS Scleronephthya is still alive and kicking, just not growing.


In the last couple months I've dropped the temp down to 76 (from 78/79), dropped the blue channel a little, upped the white channel quite a bit along with Red and Cyan. I may still minimally increasing the violet channel and call it a 'done deal'. A bit slower growth (about 20% less Kalkwasser consumed than before) but some improvement in non-fluorescent pigmentation...which is what I was after. For those thinking that white light = algae, not necessarily the case as the system remains as virtually algae free as before. One additional side benefit to the warmer lighting is that very little image post processing is needed.

That mushroom-scape on one side is stunning. The blastos are beautiful too. 

[Nano sapiens]

5 hours ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

That mushroom-scape on one side is stunning. The blastos are beautiful too. 

Thanks. 

 

Zoas, Rics, Blastos, Lords, Bankis...all great corals 🙂

[Nano sapiens]

1st Quarter 2023 FTS:

 

 

The aquarium as a whole is doing okay, but I've had some issues with specific corals recently due a sudden bloom of digitate hydroids:

 

 

 

 

 

 

LPS wall:

 

 

Banki and Pachy are doing great (and the Ponape doing very well where it hasn't been attacked):

 

 

The hydroids just seem to come and go at random (I haven't fed particle foods in months and I'm careful not to overfeed (so says every reef keeper 😉).  I do have a sizeable benthic pod population and the hydroid population is undoubtedly closely tied to their abundance/scarcity.  Interestingly, the Merletti, Bowerbanki and Pachysepta have never been affected by the hydroids (might be that they are just in spots that the hydroids don't frequent).

 

 

I started a small 'Mussid Refugee Rock' away from the main rock structure where the hydroids like to hang out to try and save some of the different strains:

 

 

Next time I go to the LFS I'll be looking for some small gobies to control the pods since my single Azure Damsel isn't a benthic pod eating specialist.

 

 Anyway, so goes life and death in the glass box...

[CrazyDialogue]

Great little acan garden!

[Nano sapiens]

11 hours ago, CrazyDialogue said:

Great little acan garden!

 

Thanks, hoping it'll recover and get back to it's former glory:

 

 

 

[ml86743]

Man hydroids are such a pain..

[Nano sapiens]

'Well, that was 'fun'...'

 

Boo, a 21 hr. power outage (Tues 1:30 pm - Wed 10:30 am 😒.  But yay, everything survived! 😊

 

This ranks high on the list of every reef keepers' worst nightmares.  The two most important parameters I consider in this scenario are oxygenation and heat.  And here's how I dealt with this (low-tech fashion).

 

Oxygen/flow:  Way back-in-the-day (talking Victoria era, here), it was fashionable for the cultured well-to-do ladies to have an interest in science and many kept sea creatures such as native cold-water anemones.  In order to provide oxygen, they would instruct their maids to 'swish the water' with their clean hands on a regular basis (hourly, bi-hourly, couple times a day?).  Anyway, it worked and anemones could be kept alive and healthy for years this way along with weekly feedings.  So, in my case I grabbed a large plastic fork and every 2 hours or so I 'swished the water', vigorously for a minute or two. (since I don't sleep 8 hrs. solid, I managed 2x during the night).

 

Now some might say, 'Why not use a battery powered pump and air stone'.  And this legitimate question ties nicely into heat retention over extended periods.

 

Heat:  The big problem with a power outage is it's total unpredictability.  Could be 20 minutes...could be 2 days or more.  I think a lot of people get caught taking the 'This'll be over soon' hopeful approach and then get caught in a bad place when the outage lasts a lot longer than expected.  At any rate, the first thing I did was bundle up the aquarium in it's usual night time covering and then wrap it in a thick towel:

 

 

Next I periodically checked the temperature and watched the rate of the temp fall.  In ~6 daylight hours the temp went from 77 to 72F and that's where I started to take action.  I remembered that my son had given me two 'Hot Hands' hand warmers a while back, so I activated these and placed them into ziplock bags (leave the bags open since air is needed to activate them, just make sure water says out) which then went into the aquarium (clipped to the aquarium sides so they wouldn't wander):

 

 

 

Every hour or so I'd shake the Hot Hands to reinvigorate them.  In this small nano, this was sufficient to keep the temp stable at ~72 for another couple hours.  I then went to sleep and awoke to find a rather chilly 67 in tank.  That was getting too far down there, so at that point I bailed out a quart or so of tank water and heated it up enough to be quite warm to the touch.  And then from there, I very slowly add the heated water back into the tank while vigorously stirring with the plastic spoon for even distribution.  Before long the temp was back around 75.  I then had to go to work, but luckily the power came back on in about 4 hours.

 

Now air pumps are fine for short outages and supplying sufficient oxygenation, but for longer outages they tend to release the heat too rapidly out of the aquarium due to the constantly disturbed surface boundary layer.  And since the length of the outage is typically not known, I opted not to use this method even though I do have a battery operated pump.

 

A bit of a rough ride, but still alive and kicking:

 

 

 

[mitten_reef]

Phew, your opening line had me really worried that something truly terrible happened to the tank. 
 

what a great save!!  Hope everything rebounds in the days to come 

[Nano sapiens]

8 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

Phew, your opening line had me really worried that something truly terrible happened to the tank. 
 

what a great save!!  Hope everything rebounds in the days to come 

Didn't mean to startle you!

 

Things are looking close to normal already, so all appears to be good.  Now if the cold turns out to be deadly to Digitate Hydroids, that would make me super happy 🙂

[jservedio]

16 hours ago, Nano sapiens said:

Didn't mean to startle you!

 

Things are looking close to normal already, so all appears to be good.  Now if the cold turns out to be deadly to Digitate Hydroids, that would make me super happy 🙂

It's only anecdotal, by my digitate hydroids disappeared during my cross country move, so have you considered packing up your tank, buckling it into the passenger seat, and taking it for a nice, long drive through the mountains?

[Nano sapiens]

19 minutes ago, jservedio said:

It's only anecdotal, by my digitate hydroids disappeared during my cross country move, so have you considered packing up your tank, buckling it into the passenger seat, and taking it for a nice, long drive through the mountains?

Wow, how did you know I was getting ready to do exactly that! 😉

 

We might be onto something, here 🙂

[jservedio]

13 minutes ago, Nano sapiens said:

Wow, how did you know I was getting ready to do exactly that! 😉

 

We might be onto something, here 🙂

It'd be a really good opportunity to finally have "the talk" with your tank as well. Word of warning, I'd definitely avoid asking a teenager where he picked up those hydroids...best of luck with that...

 

I am really, really glad to see the tank made it through the power outage!

[Nano sapiens]

2 hours ago, jservedio said:

It'd be a really good opportunity to finally have "the talk" with your tank as well. Word of warning, I'd definitely avoid asking a teenager where he picked up those hydroids...best of luck with that...

 

I am really, really glad to see the tank made it through the power outage!

 

Adolescents 🙄

[Nano sapiens]

Wanted to check temp and could barely read a thing:

 

 

'Bob' (or one of his relatives) 'chill'in on the thermo' 🙂

 

And I've got another species of Eunice type worm that looks a lot more like a house centipede (long body bristles that look like long legs), but haven't managed a pic yet.

 

Funny that after 14 years the little demons started showing up 🤨