XIII's Nano Cube - 28 Gallon LED

[XIII]

So just when I thought everything was going well, last night before going to bed I discovered that the Sixline Wrasse had died. Not sure why as yesterday morning it was out and about swimming. Only thing I can think of is that it didn't adjust well as I hadn't seen it eat anything. My wife was very disappointed. Everything ese is still doing great (and I think the wrasse had died recently so I was able to scoop it out before it started producing a lot of waste).

 

I tested my parameters to see if something there might indicate why the wrasse died, but they are all normal, with the exception of the pH, but this was taken first thing in the morning so it was expected (it's been around 8.05-8.20 during the day for the last two weeks).

 

Parameters:

Temp = 78.3 degrees F

pH = 7.84

Specific Gravity = 1.023 %ppt

kH = 9*dkH

NH₃ = 0.00 mg/l

NO₂ = 0.0 mg/l

NO₃ = ~5 mg/l

PO₄ = ~0.0 mg/l

Cu = ~0.0 mg/l

Ca = ~440 mg/l

 

 

Any help in this would be appreciated.

[csal1-175]

Sorry to hear about the wrasse,very nice build,love the scape...

[XIII]

Sorry to hear about the wrasse,very nice build,love the scape...

Thanks, and thanks.

 

This morning I noticed that I have an orange star polyp or two mixed in with my green. Very surprised about that and can't wait to see them grow out a bit. Everythign else is still happy. The cyano and hair algae that I had is almost all gone as well; only a few small patches and on the back wall behind the rock branches.

[rO.oster]

sorry to hear about your six line. the green star looks really nice, i wonder if it frags easily

[XIII]

sorry to hear about your six line. the green star looks really nice, i wonder if it frags easily

Thanks.

 

As for the GSP. Not sure personally, but from what I've read, it grows in mats that cover a rock, so I'd imagine if you were to gently pry it up, cut a section of the mat, and attach it to a new rock, then essentially that would be the frag. My GSP was originally tied to the rock it came on, as I found remnants of a string in a cross-tie pattern encrusted with coraline.

[dday80]

Sorry to hear about the six line. Are you going to try another? I hope that GSP can be fragged easily too. Orange polyps would be awesome. The GSP in my tank is trying to take over a rock. I'm going to attempt fragging it soon.

[XIII]

Sorry to hear about the six line. Are you going to try another? I hope that GSP can be fragged easily too. Orange polyps would be awesome. The GSP in my tank is trying to take over a rock. I'm going to attempt fragging it soon.

Thanks. I do plan on getting another, but might wait a bit. Good luck if you try to frag your GSP.

[XIII]

So I rearranged my tank a bit last night, and moved the majority of the frags from their plugs in the sand to more permanent homes on the rock work. I left the ice ice favia on its disc, as it had already overgrown it a bit but glued it to a new area, and the candy cane acan on its disc in the sand bed, as it really looks good along the bottom. Almost everything else was moved throughout the tank to add new bits of color here and there. The corals were mad at first, but most of reopened today and seem happy with their new placement.

 

Sorry for the lack of an updated FTS, just haven't been able to capture a good one lately, hopefully soon.

 

Also took the opportunity to do a 20% water change and clean everything, as I will be gone for the next few days (don't worry, I have a fish sitter so my clowns won't starve). I was fiddling with the pump for my chiller as it was being very loud, and accidentally dislodged the hose spraying water everywhere. Took a bit to fix it and reposition the pump so that it was running a little quieter (it was dead silent when the hose disconnected), but ultimately I think I will need to replace the pump with something that has better flow rate as I think this one is undersized and is what is causing the noise. Does any one else have the JBJ Mini Chiller on their Nano, and if so what pump do you use (inline/submersible, flow rate)?

 

I've started planning my next additions, and will hopefully be getting them at the end of the month.

 

UPDATE: So after messing around with my chiller and it's pump some more tonight, I discovered that the issue isn't my pump surprisingly, but that it is the hose. What is happening is that over time, the hose is collapsing near the connection joints (going into/out of the chiller, and on the tank rim), causing the flow to be impeded and therefore the pump to overwork. If I correct the hose, the pump runs perfectly and is absolutely silent, and the flow rate is very strong. So it appears that my solution will be to get stiffer hose that won't crimp.

 

Also, my zoas all have new buds/polyps, and the gonis have new polyps as well.

[urbaneks]

Looking good. Would love to see some close ups of those zoa/paly's.

[XIII]

So after being away for a few days, I come back to my tank in great condition. I check everything over, and it all looks good, except a small hair algae bloom.

 

The only real issue was that the intake hose for my chiller disconnected from the pump (luckily the tube didn't fall out of the tank and cause a small flood), so the temperature had risen to 84 degrees one day. I reconnected it and everything appeared fine.

 

The next day, things are still going good, temp was back to normal, nothing to note. I leave for a few hours, come home, and both of my remaining two acros suffered RTN and were white. I knew that the bottle brush was struggling for a while, but seemed to be hanging in there. And the pink lemonade was thriving and had great coloration and showed new growth; so I was shocked that it died. I checked all of my parameters, and they were all within the ideal ranges, so I'm very confused as to what the hell happened. The only thing I can think of is that the high temperature that one day, followed by being reduced to 78 degrees by the chiller, may have happened too quickly and that this stressed them out. Nothing else in the tank was affected. Help with this (at least understanding why) would be appreciated.

 

I have decided that I will no longer keep acros, or perhaps SPS at all, for a good while at least, until I have more experience, stability, and perhaps a larger tank. I'm really pissed that my pink lemonade died as it was a really nice frag.

[XIII]

Here are some updated pictures.

 

A new FTS, taken on 7/25/10 when I go back from my long weekend. You can see the pink lemonadae acro in the upper right, which died the next day.

 

My Ice Ice favia that is growing quite a bit; if you compare to the second picture from when I first got it (taken under different lighting) you can see how much it has grown.

 

 

An updated shot of my GSP. There are two new growths on the rock; one is a dark blue sponge perhaps (bottom center of the GSP colony), and the other is a new brown mat with green dots on it (just to the right of the sponge near the red coraline) that could be another patch of GSP starting or something else.

 

And urbaneks, since you asked for an update on my zoas, here are the best shots I could get of 4 of them (couldn't get a decent pic of the Blueberry ones).

 

I'll keep trying to get better shots and update them when I can.

[rO.oster]

wow what a series of events. I think you may need braided hose to run from your chiller to eliminate any kinks in the line that may occur. Whats RTN? That sucks to hear about the issues, I wonder if light intensity had anything to do with it as well, I hope someone with some knowledge can help. surely the temp swing didn't help matters much.

 

the frags are looking nice, i remind myself that it takes being exposed to the good and bad to become knowledged. cya

[dday80]

Chiller shenanigans. I'm sorry to hear about your acros. That rapid temp swing probably didn't help if there was anything else goin on. My tank gets up to 84 sometimes but its very gradual. It seems these things are very finicky. That favia has taken off! It looks good. Everything looks good bro, keep it up. Don't get too discouraged about the SPS. sh!t happens eh.

[XIII]

Thanks for the encouragement. The lighting has been really good for the corals so far, and it was just the acros that I have had issues with since the beginning, but as I said, that one pink lemonade was always doing good and had great color and growth until that one incident. Live and learn. I'll probably try again eventually.

 

RTN is rapid tissue necrosis; basically it is a rapid cell death of the coral where it dies off and sheds its living tissue, leaving only the white coral skeleton behind, over a very short time period.

 

Hoping to pick up some new additions this weekend, so I'll have more updates next week.

[XIII]

So here is my weekly update, as I lot has either happened or been discovered this weekend.

 

So, after having a series of moltings by the scarlet and Halloween hermits, I placed a few new and more interesting shells in the tank for them. One scarlet immediately went for this pure white fancier shell I had, which make it stand out a lot more and provides a lot of contrast between its red and the white shell. The other scarlet was content to stay it its own shell. The Halloween however chose this cream colored round shell, which was also a good contrast to its coloration and markings, and then hid for a day or two under the GSP rock. When I moved the rock to put another coral in that area, I discovered that it had abandoned this new shell, and couldn't find the Halloween anywhere, as it hadn't taken up residency in any of the other shells. Last night, I found it's carcass in a crevice on the opposite side of the tank while turkey basting the rocks, so it appears that it didn't like any of the new shells, and tried to hide, but ultimately was picked on by something. Kind of odd, and very unfortunate, as the Halloween was my favorite hermit. I'll be picking up a new one eventually.

 

I went to my LFS to pick up a new sixline wrasse, and see what else they had. Took a while pursing as they were a little understocked at the moment, but I ended up getting:

 

A new sixline wrasse,

It wasn't until after we had it home and tried feeding it later that evening that I found that this particular wrasse was missing his upper jaw. Worried that it might not bode well for this wrasse (and given my lack of success with the previous one) I was I bit nervous. It seemed to eat and was quite content with exploring the tank (much more so than the previous wrasse), so we'll see. It actually swam with the clowns for a bit too, which I was surprised that the female didn't bully it away. So far it has been very happy and really likes hanging out by the GSP rock.

 

A three-headed frogspawn colony (green with purple tips),

 

A Fire and Ice zoa frag (12-15 polyps for only $5, couldn't pass that up),

This zoa colony also has what appears to be a small clove or tube worm/fan colony on the same rock. They are really small but have bright green tips, so I can't quite tell what they are yet, but another cool bonus.

 

Along with 6 dwarf hermits, and a couple of small rock pieces to build a new coral shelf in the back of my display between the Totoka columns ( a base for future planned corals). I officially declare my rock work "complete."

Here is a left and right side view of the new rock shelf.

(Wrasse is checking it out)

 

 

So when I got home and was arranging the tank and finding new homes for everything, this lead to a period of discovery in my tank (in addition to the death of the Halloween hermit). While moving the GSP colony in favor of the frogspawn for that same location, I discovered a small but thriving blue alveopora colony on the GSP rock. This was a great surprise, especially given that the previous one that I had had died off (this new one is actually larger and more open than the first, go figure).

 

I also found what appeared to be a black nudibranch at first, but when I took it out to inspect it closer, discovered that this was a snail of some sort. It had a hard "button" that seemed to be the beginnings of a new shell, so I'm curious if one of the hermits had tried to take it's original shell, and it is forming a new one. It was definitely a snail, as the shell had a spiral pattern forming, but it was still odd to see one that "open" so to speak.

 

I found a few other new growths here and there, something neon orange with a crimson "sheet" around it. It's on one of the Totoka pieces in the back corner, and is too small to clearly see, but it really glows under the actinics which is why I noticed it. I'll keep an eye on it and provide updates. The coraline is really starting to take hold in some areas, and there is a lot of rich purple and dark red patches in various locations of the rock. I also found a few buds of what I think are chaeto here and there (bright green tube formations growing on the rocks). Not wanting to have it grow and overrun my tank, though I know it is beneficial, I removed most of them for the main viewing areas, but left one or two alone for now to see what it really is.

 

I also discovered a few more negative things: a couple of what I believe are Asterina starfish (though they have 5-6 legs on them) on the GSP rock, and promptly removed them to be safe; something living in my superman favia. Not sure what it was, but it had a little burrow hole that it hid in and I could see little feelers popping in and out. As I had never seen this before, and didn't want something living in my favia, I stuck a pin into the burrow hole and poked it a few times, hoping that I killed it and didn't damage the favia. I haven't seen it since.

 

Along with these new additions, I'm also placing an order with CultivatedReef for a few additional frags and pieces, and Greg has been great to work with to help me figure out what I want and put together a good package. That should be here as soon as I confirm my order. This will be my last purchase for quite some time, though I do plan to pick up a few additional corals, a goby, and a clam sometime this fall. I want to let everything grow out a bit and see how the tank does for a while.

 

Lastly, here is some updated side and full tank shots:

 

 

[XIII]

I thought I'd give a try at a video, to show off some of my tank a bit, but considering this was shot using my Droid Eris phone, and technically my first edited video, I don't think that it does my tank justice in any way. But at least you get to see just how intricate my rock work really is.

 

XIII's Aquarium - 8/1/10

 

Feed back and advice on this as well as any of my other updates is always appreciated. Thanks.

 

(If anyone knows how to embed the video, please let me know. Thanks. )

[XIII]

So I just placed my order with Greg at CultivatedReef, and it should be here on Friday. He was great to work with and I highly recommend him for the New England area; A+ service and can't wait to see the corals. This will be my last significant addition for a long while, though I do have plans for 2 or 3 select pieces down the line.

 

In other news, my new Sixline has died (found it when I got home from work). This was really surprising as it had been eating and swimming around a lot. It seems I am cursed when it comes to Sixlines. I still can't figure out what happened, as once again all the parameters are normal, everything else is thriving, the Clowns are doing very well, and nothing else has shown any kind of stress/issues. Can anyone with some experience PM me to help me figure out what I could be doing wrong so that in the future, I have more success with my fish?

 

Meanwhile, my Candy Cane acan has shown a lot of growth this week, and has been more open more often than I have ever seen. I've noted yet another growth of some sort; it is a deep dark red and is growing in these really small translucent "sheets." It's right next to my alveopora, so hopefully this red growth won't compete with that, but it is very cool. I might try to remove it once it gets large enough, and move it to another location. I'll try to get a pick when able for help identifying it.

[XIII]

My order from Greg at CultivatedReef, arrived today. I can't say enough about the great service and corals that he sent. I highly recommend him.

 

My new corals are the following:

 

- Blue Solomon Tree

- Red Yuma Ricordia

- Clavularia Liams Clove Polyps

- Pink Montipora Capricornis

- Armageddon Palys

- Red Aussie Blasto Wellsi

 

Everything had great coloration and either opened or showed signs of opening within a hour after being introduced to the tank. I'll get some pictures of what I can over the weekend once they all fully open.

[dday80]

Look forward to new pics! Keep up the good work and updates!

[rO.oster]

things look great looking forward to the new pics

[XIII]

Thanks. Here are some images of the new additions. The pics were taken under the daylights, so under the actinics the colors are even more pronounced (but harder to capture good images).

 

Red Yuma Ricordia

 

Red Aussie Blasto Wellsi. The color on this blasto is amazing. It really pops under all lighting conditions. Can't wait to see it grow and expand.

 

Armageddon Palys. These also have amazing color, especially under the actinics.

 

Blue Solomon Tree

This one was a hard one to get a picture of. It took a couple days to "stand up" and is located on the rock shelf in the back of my tank. I placed it there so that once it is fully grown, it will give some interesting color to the background of the tank. It is a nice powder blue color, with dark blue tips.

 

I couldn't get a picture of the Liam's cloves yet, as they only opened yesterday and haven't been moved from the frag rack yet. And the Pink Monti images didn't come out as well as I would have liked. Both are doing great and the Monti is a deep pink (almost magenta) under the actinics, and orange under the daylights.

[dday80]

Awesome new stuff man. I really like the ric and the paly's!

[XIII]

Awesome new stuff man. I really like the ric and the paly's!

 

Thank you. I managed to get a couple really good images last night (all under the actinics):

 

The Blasto's

 

The Fire & Ice zoas (and whatever the little green feather dusters/tube worms are)

 

And a close up of the Armageddon Paly

 

Still trying to get a decent one of the Blue Solomon Tree and Monti.

[XIII]

Saw my first amphipods in the tank last night; they were crawling all around the GSP. I know that they are good for the tank, but I'm hoping they don't irritate my alveopora. Also, found a few of what I believe to be asterina starfish. Things are taking off it seems. I know my skimmer has been producing a lot more skimmate as well.

 

I wonder if it might be safe to try to add another fish; any suggestions?

[srkdaz]

XIII, very nice additions...FTS pls?

do you dose anything in your tank? how long do u run the lights?