Nano Sapiens 12g - Ye Olde Mixed Reef

[DevilDuck]

This journal is simply amazing! 

[Nano sapiens]

50 minutes ago, DevilDuck said:

This journal is simply amazing! 

Amazingly long 😊

[Nano sapiens]

Spotlight on the little Bowerbanki twins, which are not so little anymore!

 

 

 

I got this pair for a 'a song and a dance' when around the size of a nickel and dime (respectively) since the LFS didn't think they were very nice ones.  Personally, I think that the blue-white feeding tentacles, especially, are super 

 

 

 

I was a bit concerned about how compatible Bowerbanki and M. lords would be.  So far, no issue at all and they have been touching for a good part of the daylight period now for over a month.

 

And I picked up this ridiculously large Utter Chaos zoa morph.  This was the smallest polyp of the group (other than the little baby attached to the side), but it's still the size of a quarter!

 

 

And in all my years reefing, I've never seen a Zoa not close up for a while when newly introduced before opening again.  This one just shrunk slightly in the bag and then puffed out immediately when attached to the rock.  Awesome!

 

I placed this Zoa right in the middle of a large Leptoseris colony that received too much light recently and lost tissue.  Instead of lowering lights too low for some other coral to possibly get the Lep to recover, using the Zoa up top with it's wide skirts for shade beneath seemed a good way to go (time will tell).

[Nano sapiens]

New Coral and a Fish (sadly, fish didn't make it...)

 

One of my rare LFS visits and netted a Geometric Pygmy Hawkfish (Plectranthias inermis) and a couple corals.  Unfortunately, after proper acclimation and the fish behaving as expected for the first day in a new tank (completely normal respiration), the next morning I found it stone-cold dead.  Really odd, as it was even exploring the new digs on the first day.  The only thing I could possibly think of is that I saw it eat a spaghetti worm from the substrate, but I've never heard of these being toxic.  Oh well, c'est la vie...

 

On a brighter note, a few corals I picked up from the 'bargain bin' section:

 

A nice 'standard' 1" Blastomussa wellsi vivida (with a couple tiny baby buds):

 

 

 

Fat and happy RPEs ('Red People Eaters') Zoas:

 

 

I'm a sucker for any really big and juicy zoa!

 

 

'Fox Coral' (Nemenzophyllia turbida). 

 

 

One of those 'old school' corals that takes me back to the beginning of reef keeping.  Back in the 80s/90s nearly every LFS had these as they were very popular, but it is one of those corals that I have never actually kept.  Bought as a little 3/4" frag that after a few short days has now expanded to 2".  Looked very pale green under the LFS high blue LEDs, but is now showing a beautiful pearlescent coloration under my fuller spectrum lighting 🙂

[Jungle_vip]

Bargain bins are the best! Really really nice frags you scored. That Fox coral is super cool. People

eaters couldn’t look any better and the blasto is just awesome. 

[Nano sapiens]

36 minutes ago, Jungle_v_i_p said:

Bargain bins are the best! Really really nice frags you scored. That Fox coral is super cool. People

eaters couldn’t look any better and the blasto is just awesome. 

 

Yes, they sure can be!  Just need to take a bit more time to find the 'diamonds in the rough'.

 

The majority of my system's corals came from the LFS '$35 or less' bins (mostly $10 and $20 bins).  Looking at the corals, you wouldn't guess it though 😉

[Jungle_vip]

On 5/31/2021 at 11:09 PM, Nano sapiens said:

 

Yes, they sure can be!  Just need to take a bit more time to find the 'diamonds in the rough'.

 

The majority of my system's corals came from the LFS '$35 or less' bins (mostly $10 and $20 bins).  Looking at the corals, you wouldn't guess it though 😉

Same! I paid $40 for two pink zoas with green skirts and $30 for a liams cloves frag. Other than that all mine have been $10-$20 as well. You can have beautiful corals that don’t break the bank no problem. 

[gena]

An oldie but goodie!!!!  Cool to see this gem is still going!!!!  I love your little fox coral.  I had a pretty big one and sold it a few years ago when I downsized tanks.  It will always be a favorite.  My porcelain crab was always in it.  

[Nano sapiens]

1 hour ago, gena said:

An oldie but goodie!!!!  Cool to see this gem is still going!!!!  I love your little fox coral.  I had a pretty big one and sold it a few years ago when I downsized tanks.  It will always be a favorite.  My porcelain crab was always in it.  

Yes, I remember how happy you were with that fluffy pillow of a coral 😍

[gena]

50 minutes ago, Nano sapiens said:

Yes, I remember how happy you were with that fluffy pillow of a coral 😍

Perfect description of it!!!! 😊

[Nano sapiens]

So, here we go with year 13!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking back on the last 4-5 months it's been quite interesting working out some lighting and nutrient issues...

 

On the lighting front, I spent the last 2-3 months reducing mid-point PAR from 170 to 140 on my DIY array.  So far, this reduction has been great for most of the corals (especially the Leptoseris and LPS) and refutes the old axiom 'More is always better' (which I think most reefers realize is often not correct).  Also tweaked spectrum a bit as I had a bit too much violet/hyperviolet and too much white (I have found that Ricordia reactions can be good indicators of a less than optimal spectrum), so it now more-or-less mimics an older Radion G3 (I use the online SPECTRA program to determine approximate spectrum):

 

The nutrient PO4/NO3 situation is rather more complex, however, as they are not balanced.   Feeding a single fish (Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny) is not quite enough to keep PO4 from dropping too low as my Montipora Sunset showed me by going gray and losing tissue.  Feeding the corals more foods raised PO4, but was mana from heaven for my pest digitate hydroids.  So the two obvious choices were either start dosing PO4, or get another fish which would add mostly ammonia and PO4 from feeding.  Since I avoid dependencies and complications, I opted this weekend for the second choice and an Azure Damsel now calls this 12g it's home 🙂.  Time will tell if the extra fish helps to bring back more of the PO4/NO3 balance that I've had in the past with more fish in this system.

 

Speaking of the 'devil' (first hour and it's already copping an attitude) 😉 

 

 

 

It started gobbling baby earthworms within the first hour and is now keeping down flakes on the second day.  Occasionally it gets too close to the Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny, but it won't have any of that and charges the Damsel like The Flash.

 

While I was at the LFS for a fish, I was thinking about a thin branching Acro that I could grow next to a Ponape BN at around 150 PAR.  They had a colony of a turquoise/blue Echinata and that certainly fits the bill, so here's the nubbin on the right side (excuse the unopened Monti frags which were just added to the tank an hour before the photo was taken):

 

 

I'm not a 'Stick Head' by any stretch of the imagination, but there's something about deepwater smooth-skins that I find really appealing.  Just need to give it a couple months to settle in and then see if encrusts a lot or starts branching out.

 

In order to make room for the Echinata, I had to move a sad frag of a BOP BN.  I've found that these things need at least 170 PAR and good flow to get any fluorescent coloration and start growing, so it's now basking under ~190 PAR (already looking much better than it was):

 

 

 

A lot of literature states that Fox Corals don't feed on bigger items (if at all), but here's a little 2 incher downing a Mysid shrimp:

 

 

 

A very photogenic coral (especially with the reddish-pink Leptoseris providing contrast in the shot):

 

 

 

And lastly, nature can be a bit crazy (I have no idea what kind of worm this is, but it has a 'white bubble helmet' head and has stripes like a mini-me sea snake):

 

 

LOL, just noticed that the Damsel had photobombed every single tank shot 🙃

 

 

[Pjanssen]

Wow, 13 years! Amazing. 

[Rehype]

Absolutely incredible nano....This tank is always evolving. What are using for lighting and how are you measuring PAR?

[Nano sapiens]

1 hour ago, Pjanssen said:

Wow, 13 years! Amazing. 

Thanks!

 

Yeah, time flies when you are watching coral grow

[Nano sapiens]

1 hour ago, Rehype said:

Absolutely incredible nano....This tank is always evolving. What are using for lighting and how are you measuring PAR?

 

Hey Eugene - Thanks!

 

You might have been out of the hobby for a while, but nothing has changed in my system since...2013'ish? . 

 

So still using my 'hella-lot-of-emitters-oversized heatsink-no fans' DIY retrofit for the original Cadlights housing (just had to replace a bunch of degraded Violet/Hyperviolet emitters this year). 

 

And, still the same original Apogee SQ-120 'electric' quantum sensor coupled to an old Radio Shack multimeter.  Although I have to perform a few additional calculations (compared to the latest sensor) to get accurate readings, the setup still works well enough

[Rehype]

35 minutes ago, Nano sapiens said:

 

Hey Eugene - Thanks!

 

You might have been out of the hobby for a while, but nothing has changed in my system since...2013'ish? . 

 

So still using my 'hella-lot-of-emitters-oversized heatsink-no fans' DIY retrofit for the original Cadlights housing (just had to replace a bunch of degraded Violet/Hyperviolet emitters this year). 

 

And, still the same original Apogee SQ-120 'electric' quantum sensor coupled to an old Radio Shack multimeter.  Although I have to perform a few additional calculations (compared to the latest sensor) to get accurate readings, the setup still works well enough

 

Its the little things like the additional coral/microfauna/livestock adapting to your mature system that are so great to see in your updates. Theres always something interesting to observe 😊

[Nano sapiens]

1 hour ago, Rehype said:

 

Its the little things like the additional coral/microfauna/livestock adapting to your mature system that are so great to see in your updates. Theres always something interesting to observe 😊

 

My bad, I should have specified, "But nothing hardware wise has changed in my system..."

 

Yes, the biological elements are always in a state of dynamic equilibrium and that's what makes this hobby challenging and fascinating.  Just when you think you've got it all figured out, something unusual and unlooked for can pop up (not always in a good way, though).  Adding new coral and especially fish in these small tanks can be a bit of a crap-shoot, but I've found that it usually works out okay in the end if researched properly beforehand.

[gena]

Happy 13th!!!!  I'm pretty certain my fox coral would eat mysis or pellets of some kind.  I always had a crab living in it which may have made it more difficult to feed.  I don't know....I just can't recall exactly.  But seeing the image of your fox coral eating rings a bell for me.

[Nano sapiens]

21 minutes ago, gena said:

Happy 13th!!!!  I'm pretty certain my fox coral would eat mysis or pellets of some kind.  I always had a crab living in it which may have made it more difficult to feed.  I don't know....I just can't recall exactly.  But seeing the image of your fox coral eating rings a bell for me.

 

Thanks, Gena!  That's really cool that a crab would associate with the Fox coral in the aquarium, but I wonder if that would happen in nature.

[gena]

19 minutes ago, Nano sapiens said:

 

Thanks, Gena!  That's really cool that a crab would associate with the Fox coral in the aquarium, but I wonder if that would happen in nature.

I wonder too.  It was a porcelain crab.  I had the fox coral in two different tanks, and the crab never left it.  I even sold them together when I downsized and could no longer keep the fox coral.  I couldn't stand to separate them.

[jservedio]

Congrats on 13 years! Your latest shots also answered a question I have had for a very long time - can a Bowerbanki and Lordhowensis peacefully co-exist while they are touching. Have you had any aggression between them? I've been long debating adding my big bowerbanki to my acan island but was always afraid that my lords would get wrecked at night.

[A.m.P]

2 minutes ago, jservedio said:

Congrats on 13 years! Your latest shots also answered a question I have had for a very long time - can a Bowerbanki and Lordhowensis peacefully co-exist while they are touching. Have you had any aggression between them? I've been long debating adding my big bowerbanki to my acan island but was always afraid that my lords would get wrecked at night.

Mixing Micromussa and Acanthastrea spooks the heck out of me, also wouldn't put a Pachyscepta near them... But my tanks are all 90% empty space anyway.

[jservedio]

Just now, A.m.P said:

Mixing Micromussa and Acanthastrea spooks the heck out of me.

Yeah, me too! Which is why my big bowerbanki has been on a tile away from everything else in my tank for...9 years now. But, if it can live peacefully, it's getting glued down this week.

 

Apparently Bowerbanki got switched over to Homophylla, which makes it even more worrying - I too got the memo late 🙂

[A.m.P]

27 minutes ago, jservedio said:

Yeah, me too! Which is why my big bowerbanki has been on a tile away from everything else in my tank for...9 years now. But, if it can live peacefully, it's getting glued down this week.

 

Apparently Bowerbanki got switched over to Homophylla, which makes it even more worrying - I too got the memo late 🙂

I keep forgetting about that reclassification, acanthastrea basically got cleaned out lol...

[Nano sapiens]

50 minutes ago, jservedio said:

Congrats on 13 years! Your latest shots also answered a question I have had for a very long time - can a Bowerbanki and Lordhowensis peacefully co-exist while they are touching. Have you had any aggression between them? I've been long debating adding my big bowerbanki to my acan island but was always afraid that my lords would get wrecked at night.

Thanks! 

 

What I can say so far is that the particular Aussie Lord colony you can see in the side-shot photo with this particular orange Banki get cozy without showing any signs of aggression (so far).  What can't be seen quite as well is that there is another orange colored single polyp LPS on the other side of the Banki that looks like a 'Lord on a stem' (picture a 'Merletti stem with a Lord head') and it and the Banki have interacted a bit with their mesenterial filaments (no damage, just a bit of tissue retraction).  It was almost like they were probing each other to see if a full blown attack might be warranted.  Currently, the Banki is showing some retraction where this unusual 'Lordish looking LPS' is touching it, so it appears to be somewhat dominant.

 

I guess the best I can say is that 'my Aussie Lord is fine touching a Bowerbanki', but others' results may vary.