Nano Sapiens 12g - Ye Olde Mixed Reef

[Nano sapiens]

1 hour ago, Christopher Marks said:

 

 

That sounds really frustrating! What is one supposed to do when the wrong live fish shows up at your doorstep?

Yes, that is a concern since sending it back would be too stressful and costly.

 

The way I look at it there are two best options.  One, if the fish 'fits'' the aquarium (more or less), keep it...which is what I've done here.  If not, take it to the local LFS for store credit.

1 hour ago, gone_PHiSHin said:

we need pics!!!

Whoa!  The little squirts need to settle in a bit first, but pics will be a'coming 

[Nano sapiens]

45 minutes ago, Felicia said:

Well that's annoying! And eviota gobies we're going to be my guess for teeny tiny fish! What are you planning to do with 3 barnacle blennies? Are you going to keep them. They're cute fish at least.

 

Glad the divers den portion worked out at least. LOVE the choice of goby. Reminds me of the sculpin I see perched on the kelp bases when I go keep forest diving. Love the ornate fins. Awesome choice! And so unique!

Actually, they sent me (4) BBs!  I just fed the gaggle and, while still timid, they all did come out of their hidy-places to grab a few morsels.  Once they get acclimated, it'll be 'Dart City' come feeding time  

 

Not my fish, but best two pics on the IoT, IMO:

 

Taken at Lembah Straight ('Muck Diving').

 

 

 

Small Bristleworms...your days may be numbered!  .  Found in marine; freshwater; brackish; reef-associated; amphidromous (migrating from fresh to salt water or from salt to fresh water at some stage of the life cycle other than the breeding period) and a depth range of 1 - 15 m.  Found in tide pools and lagoons. Also occurs in rubble and the intertidal zone.  Interesting little beasty, for sure.

 

This is one fish that looks like it could be a foot long, but 3" is about max for the species.  The one I have is about 1-3/4", so it's got a bit of growing to do.  Some in it's genus are even smaller in size (similar to the Flaming Prawn Goby).

[Lula_Mae]

Exciting about the new additions!  LA may need to re-educate their order packers lolol.  Had a lot of trouble recently!

 

On 9/25/2017 at 2:57 PM, SavaS said:

Love your tank, I hope my little Pico will still be around in 8 more years. I want to get some mushrooms for it, just haven't found anyone locally with any for sale, maybe one day! 

Try ebay, I found someone selling the green striped ones.  Sadly it went MIA so I have yet to get one, but he still sent me the frag plug it was on because it had a baby green mushroom on it!  He has several varieties.  Priority shipping too so it's not too bad.

 

[Nano sapiens]

2 hours ago, Lula_Mae said:

Exciting about the new additions!  LA may need to re-educate their order packers lolol.  Had a lot of trouble recently!

 

Yeah, always fun seeing how the new arrivals do...even if they aren't quite what one ordered 

 

My previous LA order didn't go so well either (I had locked in the order for some ins stock Eviota Gobies, but was told they were "not healthy").  Interestingly, I had ordered the night before a major sale event, so read into that what you may.

 

I'll order from DD any day of the week, LA?  Their return policy is great, but they really need to work on getting their delivery fulfillment back up to par.

[Lula_Mae]

4 hours ago, Nano sapiens said:

Yeah, always fun seeing how the new arrivals do...even if they aren't quite what one ordered 

 

My previous LA order didn't go so well either (I had locked in the order for some ins stock Eviota Gobies, but was told they were "not healthy").  Interestingly, I had ordered the night before a major sale event, so read into that what you may.

 

I'll order from DD any day of the week, LA?  Their return policy is great, but they really need to work on getting their delivery fulfillment back up to par.

Yes, I'm still rolling my eyeballs over them sending me an empty almost 2" shell when I asked for a small scarlet hermit.  Like, really?  And a fish as skinny as my blenny shouldn't even have been counted as stock.

[Subsea]

On 6/29/2017 at 12:05 PM, Nano sapiens said:

Kicking this continuation thread off with a 9th Year FTS:

 

 

...and a few from the sides:

 

 

 

 

...and a few from the top:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I realized that I don't have single pic of my back chambers (oh, so sexy!)

 

 

 

 

 

Got a bit tired of coral fighting and then having to prune, so Last year I started to use corals to control other corals.  This Acan was bought specifically to stop the spread of the Sunset monti (on the lower left), mostly by providing shade:

 

 

I let the Setosa stretch way out to shade the Pavonas...which virtually stopped all the potent sweeper tentacles from both Pavona species:

 

 

Using Zoas to keep the Setosa and Pavona from fighting (this worked surprisingly well):

 

 

The 9^th year for this super-simple, ‘unfiltered’ little nano tank.  System wise, the only real changes this year have been gutting the Hydor rotating flow nozzle and shortening it up by 1-1/2” and replacing (2) Lime LEDs with Cyan.  I didn’t bother replacing my NO3 and PO4 test kits from the previous year since the readings were 'consistently consistent' for the last 2-3 years, but I did have a LFS check PO4 recently with a Hanna tester which showed ‘0.00’ (due to 2x/day fish and 2x/wk coral feeding, a good portion of the system’s phosphate requirement is being supplied by organic forms, so the ‘0’ result for inorganic phosphate is not unexpected).

Inverts:  Due to the short natural lifespan, I have just one big female Pederson’s Shrimp left out of three that I had ordered sometime last year.  Still have one Dwarf Zebra and a Red-Legged Hermit crab and they seem to be doing fine keeping up with the small amount of algae present.

Fish:  The biggest surprise this year was finding out that a small Green Banded Goby I had bought a while back is a second male.  Currently, both are 2” and grapple violently with each other on a daily basis (the wounds inflicted look like someone took a piece of sandpaper to them, but they heal really quickly).  Still have a single Yellow Striped Cleaner Goby and a Two-Spot Bimaculatus Blenny that likes to perch on my favorite Petroglyph Zoa colony (grrrr…), which causes the tentacles to stay fully retracted (while the fish has some real character considering its small size, I don’t think I’ll be replacing it in the future due to the irritating perching habit).

Coral:  Coral health, coloration and growth have been quite good for nearly all inhabitants.  The stony coral growth is at a point where Kalkwasser additions are getting close to a 100% fully saturated solution, so I keep this in check by gradually modifying the day length, ramp time, intensity, etc.  The mushrooms and zoanthids are doing their best to cover everything in sight.  Managing the coral warfare in close quarters has been the biggest challenge, and the easiest solution has been to use some of the branch type corals to create shade conditions underneath that considerably slow down the other, more aggressive corals.

 

Onward to the 10th year (hopefully)  

 

What a gorgeous tank!  It inspires me to see such a magnificiant DT with only biological filtration.  

[Nano sapiens]

6 hours ago, Lula_Mae said:

Yes, I'm still rolling my eyeballs over them sending me an empty almost 2" shell when I asked for a small scarlet hermit.  Like, really?  And a fish as skinny as my blenny shouldn't even have been counted as stock.

I remember reading about your troubles and thought it might be a one-off 'whoops!', but evidently not.  For a business that lives or dies on customer service and satisfaction, top priority should be to correct the issue before they loose customer confidence...which is hard to get back.

[Nano sapiens]

4 hours ago, Subsea said:

What a gorgeous tank!  It inspires me to see such a magnificiant DT with only biological filtration.  

Thank you!  It's just a little itty-bitty thing about the size of four paper towel rolls (older photo), but it's been quite stable once it got past the first 2 years or so:

 

 

I set this up back in 2008 just to see how far 'small, simple and inexpensive' could go and thought 5 years would be far enough.  But, over 9 years on now and I'm still enjoying it  

[Subsea]

For certain, it is a pleasure to maintain a reef tank and to not be a slave with time & money.    Too many newbies coming into the hobby are inudated with high tech equipment and methods.  As you have said,  components of a ecosystem can not be treated as if it exist in a vacumn.  

[Lisa166]

This tank is so awesome! It looks great! Could you tell me how you manage to get all these corals to play nice? How do you know which ones to place together and which ones not (my research so far hasn't brought me any further on this point)? And how do they get so huge and filling every spot of the tank? Is that patience, or do you have other secrets? 

[Nano sapiens]

On 9/27/2017 at 9:43 AM, Subsea said:

For certain, it is a pleasure to maintain a reef tank and to not be a slave with time & money.    Too many newbies coming into the hobby are inudated with high tech equipment and methods.  As you have said,  components of a ecosystem can not be treated as if it exist in a vacumn.  

Yeah, since the hobby has become much more popular (and commercial), newbies are especially important prime targets. 

 

I have always hoped that having a long running 'au naturel' nano tank as an example would inspire at least a few to consider that these don't need to go belly-up after a few short years and that providing the basic requirements for coral (along with patience, stability, input/output balance and a good understanding of what they are/need) can be a recipe for success.

[Nano sapiens]

On 9/27/2017 at 9:51 AM, Lisa166 said:

This tank is so awesome! It looks great! Could you tell me how you manage to get all these corals to play nice? How do you know which ones to place together and which ones not (my research so far hasn't brought me any further on this point)? And how do they get so huge and filling every spot of the tank? Is that patience, or do you have other secrets? 

Thank you .  The short version, to your coral aggression question, is that they don't really play nice since each is genetically programmed to try and dominate the reef via various methods (some not so obvious), or at the very least, protect their turf at all costs.  In an aquarium we have the choice of what to add, but that only helps if one understands how the coral/false coral will tend to behave.  This kind of info is gleamed from other peoples' threads, publications, etc. and by one's own trial-and-error.  

 

'Filling up the tank' can be done by adding lots of mature colonies in a short time, or by acquiring frags and polyps and letting them grow out together over time (which is the method used in this tank).  I feel that the later method is the most natural one as it more closely mimics the coral settlement that typically occurs on the natural reef and the resulting grow-in that naturally occurs,

 

[Lisa166]

Just now, Nano sapiens said:

Thank you .  The short version to your coral aggression question is that they don't really play nice since each is programmed to try and dominate the reef via various methods (some not so obvious).  In an aquarium, we have the choice of what to add, but that only helps if one understands how the coral/false coral will tend to behave.  This kind of info is gleamed from other peoples' threads, publications, etc. and by one's own trial-and-error.  

 

'Filling up the tank' can be done by adding lots of mature colonies in a short time, or by acquiring frags and polyps and letting them grow out together over time (which is the method used in this tank).  I feel that the later method is the most natural method as it more closely mimics the coral settlement that typically occurs on the natural reef.

 

Thank you! Your tank has really inspired me and I would love to find a way to maintain something similar. I'm just not sure how. 

I am in the process of setting up a new tank right now, and would love to have it as thriving and beautiful as yours. I'm just not sure how to do so . 

Right now my nanocube is thriving with mostly LR as filtration, and it is working great. But your corals!, their placement and the way it has all grown together. 

 

All in all, you say I can just sort of place the ones I like and it will sort of grow out and find a way in itself or? 

(Hope you don't mind me asking questions, I'm still super new to this and only have a few frags in my tank. And don't know how to make it all look nice)

[Nano sapiens]

18 minutes ago, Lisa166 said:

Thank you! Your tank has really inspired me and I would love to find a way to maintain something similar. I'm just not sure how. 

I am in the process of setting up a new tank right now, and would love to have it as thriving and beautiful as yours. I'm just not sure how to do so . 

Right now my nanocube is thriving with mostly LR as filtration, and it is working great. But your corals!, their placement and the way it has all grown together. 

 

All in all, you say I can just sort of place the ones I like and it will sort of grow out and find a way in itself or? 

(Hope you don't mind me asking questions, I'm still super new to this and only have a few frags in my tank. And don't know how to make it all look nice)

Truth be told, we all struggle a bit with aesthetic coral placement.  One gets better at it over time...

 

First concern should be an assessment such as 'Is coral A going to survive next to coral B?'  For example, a Discosoma Mushroom in contact with a Stony Coral would typically result in severe damage, or even death, to the stony.  However, if that mushroom is placed so that it can't touch the stony, then the stony should be fine since mushroom corals only inflict damage when in direct contact.  Many soft corals, however, can inflict damage to a stony coral several inches away via release of toxic compounds.  So as you can see, a general knowledge of how different coral groups tend to wage war is important, but keep in mind that there are always exceptions, too.

 

I would suggest grouping 'like with like' for the best chance of success.  For example, group all Ricordia mushrooms together, all Rhodactis mushrooms together, different varieties of Seriatopora (aka 'Birdsnest') together, etc.  If you have very different types of corals, space them some distance apart to begin with and let them grow in towards each other.  You'll soon see which will make a truce, and which won't, so that you can determine if relocation is necessary.

[Felicia]

That's fun that you're keeping the blennies!  While they're not your original choice, at least they're cool fish.  I love the personality of blennies! 

 

That goby looks so awesome too.  Pretty BA that they eat bristleworms.  I can't wait to see a photo or video of your new additions.  Sounds like its a happening place in your tank right now! 

[Nano sapiens]

1 hour ago, Felicia said:

That's fun that you're keeping the blennies!  While they're not your original choice, at least they're cool fish.  I love the personality of blennies! 

 

That goby looks so awesome too.  Pretty BA that they eat bristleworms.  I can't wait to see a photo or video of your new additions.  Sounds like its a happening place in your tank right now! 

Yes, it's a 'Happening Place', alright!  Of all the fish I've ever kept in this tank, Hancock's Barnacle Blenny personifies the term 'loonie'.  Now I have two of the goofballs...as well as their two almost as loonie cousins.  Right now they are scaring each other at feeding time; that's how fast they are

 

The Hasselt's Goby is MIA, but I expected that.  Being true to their kind, they tend to be cryptic for a while until they settle in.

[Nano sapiens]

Barnacle Blenny iPhone pics (old digital camera is kaput):

 

 

 

 

Cast of 'Loonie Toons' characters, I tell ya!   

[Christopher Marks]

Wow they look really cool, those red eyes! I bet they have a lot of personality, you should shoot a video clip with that iPhone  

[Nano sapiens]

45 minutes ago, Christopher Marks said:

Wow they look really cool, those red eyes! I bet they have a lot of personality, you should shoot a video clip with that iPhone  

I used to use PB for vids, but the site I now use, Imgur, doesn't host them.  II'll try converting a short .mov to a .gif  and see if I can post it here on Nano-Reef.

[Christopher Marks]

Youtube works really well, and embedding is as easy as posting the video page address here. A gif would be cool too, of course  

 

 

[Nano sapiens]

Barnacle Blenny Overload Update:

 

Pleased to say that all four 'Barnacle Blennies' are settled in and (surprisingly) behaving themselves.  Just the occational mouth opening threat displays.  All eat like there's no tomorrow 

 

In taking zoomed photos today, I noticed that I apparently have two different 'Eyebrow' Barnacle Blenny species:

 

 

The top one is Eklemblemaria myersi, but the one below is apparently a different species (different coloration, eye and body pattern and fin shape).  I've checked on Fishbase through all the similar genus, but no luck so far.  

 

The Hasslett's Goby is still quite secretive.  I was able to find one of it's lairs (it shares it with the Yellow Striped Cleaner Goby, surprisingly) and managed to drop some chopped earthworm under it's nose...which it devoured.

 

So, the '9 fish and a shrimp in the 12g' is so far a-okay   

 

[Felicia]

They're so cute!  I love blennies with their crazy personalities and adorable faces!  So of the 4 new blennies, how many different species do you have?  And then you have a bimaculatus blenny right?  You may get the award for most blenny species kept at one time on N-R!

[Nano sapiens]

On 10/3/2017 at 11:43 AM, Felicia said:

They're so cute!  I love blennies with their crazy personalities and adorable faces!  So of the 4 new blennies, how many different species do you have?  And then you have a bimaculatus blenny right?  You may get the award for most blenny species kept at one time on N-R!

 

LOL, yes, I might win that award

 

1.  Two different species of 'Eyebrow' Barnacle Blenny (Ekemblemaria myersi and an 'unknown')

2.  Panamic Barnacle Blenny or Hancock's Barnacle Blenny (Acanthembelmaria hancocki)

3.  Bimaculatus or Two-Spot Blenny (Ecsenius bimaculatus)

 

...and three species of Goby...

 

[Felicia]

That's a pretty impressive collection of less common nano fish!  Very cool set of fish.  I'm glad the mix-up on Live Aquaria's part is working out ok.

[Nano sapiens]

5 minutes ago, Felicia said:

That's a pretty impressive collection of less common nano fish!  Very cool set of fish.  I'm glad the mix-up on Live Aquaria's part is working out ok.

I was a bit concerned with this mix of fish, but so far they all are playing it cool.  The fatty GBG's are definitely less combative which is very likely due to the new distractions.