My first - 20L

[Wilioli]

^

exactly what happened to my two fish... goby jumped, 6 line ... stress....acclimate....something.. .lol

[irondragon013]

Must be a 20L thing. Though I think jumping is more likely in shallower tanks. Still its not fun to loose fish.

[bemi0701]

Must be a 20L thing. Though I think jumping is more likely in shallower tanks. Still its not fun to loose fish.

Just added a screen top to my 20L, cost was only about $15

Bought a 36" square screen framing kit and extra "corners" to go around my HOB skimmer from menards for $12

Also bought a tool to help with the actual netting install.

 

Bought some "netting" from a local craft store for about 50 cents (36x72" section, good for more than 2 tanks)

 

I like the result and I don't have to worry about my firefish bolting out of the tank now.

 

Followed this DIY.

[irondragon013]

I have a glass top now. I had been planning to get one the next day the night it jumped.

[JulieR]

Thanks guys

 

Sorry about your jumpers I cover all my tanks with glass lids, especially because my cats like to sit up on top of the warm lights. My sick boy might have pancreatitis, but we couldn't get him another vet appointment until Wednesday. It's going to be a long couple of days.

 

The tank is still looking better in terms of algae. It's not growing back rapidly or taking over.

[JulieR]

Haven't been on nano reef in awhile because I was away, plus it's such a hassle to browse on a phone. But I thought I'd update.

 

The tank is doing well. Readings are zero for the big trio, and my refractometer came in the mail as well. Neat little tool. I got a reading of 1.25, so that was good to see. I doubt I'll ever bother with the hydrometer now, heh. While I was away, some cyano decided to start growing. Quite a bit, actually. It's getting under control now. I scraped and syphoned a lot out with some water changes. My light fixture has two bulbs with two switches, and for the past couple days I've tried it with just one bulb on. That seems to help. I bought a clump of caulerpa and stuck it in an empty nano HOB filter with a little PC bulb above it. It's been growing. Hopefully sucking up some nutrients that would otherwise be contributing to cyano. Finally, I got a little green emerald crab who might eat some algae. If nothing else, the little guy is adorable and he hasn't picked at the corals at all so far.

 

Oh the frogspawn didn't make it. After the little crash when the fish died, the frogspawn was looking poorly while the rest of the corals were coming back. When I got back from my trip, the frogspawn had finally withered to a skeleton. The xenia, however, has grown a lot. It might even be double its original purchase size now. Acan is doing well. Good color/ texture and it's inflated nicely. I need to move the yellow polyps. When I put the caulerpa filter in, I moved one of the powerheads down and now there's too much flow on the polyps. I'll get to that.

 

The tank is crawling with amphipods.

[JulieR]

Nevermind on moving the yellow polyps. One polyp seems to have grown attached to the rock it's on. So I just moved the powerhead a bit instead. Everything should be good now.

[JulieR]

I just went to take some pictures of the tank, but the lights had already gone off. I turned it back on for a minute and quickly realized, durr, all the corals are going to be closed up for the night. I took a few pictures anyway.

 

The first two of these aren't from tonight. They were on my camera card.

Mega cerith who I rarely see. He surfaces every now and then.

 

I don't remember when I took this picture, but I think it's pretty neat. I just fed the acans some shrimp bits yesterday and the hermits came and stole some, grr. I gave a piece to the emerald crab too, he was very happy to take it.

 

The rest of these pictures are from tonight:

FTS

 

 

A shot from the left side.

 

Red banded trochus snail. My favorite snail in the tank. I keep meaning to get another one or two because they're such attractive snails, I just haven't gotten around to it yet. Has anyone ever noticed them making funny noises? Every now (especially when I'm going to sleep) I notice this strange sound... it's like a stuck gear that will stop and start a few times. Finally I caught a glimpse in the tank when the noise was happening and saw this guy rotating around faster than normal. Like he was adjusting himself. Saw him doing it again tonight. And he was right out in the open, so it wasn't like he was stuck in a crevice. Strange.

 

One of the two live rock pieces I originally bought. This one has been exploding with coralline algae over the past several weeks. I don't think it had very much at all on it when I bought it. Now it's really coloring up nice! The picture doesn't even do it justice.

 

Here's how the cyano is doing (that's cyano, correct? reddish brown goopy stuff. When it gets thick enough, I can peel it off in sheets). I'm really pleased with how well it's getting cut down. Just need to do some more manual removal of the bigger sections that I didn't get initially. But I haven't seen any new growth in the past week+. My main methods of removing it were 1) manual removal, 2) cutting down on lighting, 3) adding a small macro algae "fuge". Some of the rocks that were previously covered in it that I cleaned off, they don't even show signs of it now. All clean!

 

Here's a shot to show the caulerpa fuge. It's working out great. I can see it growing towards the light.

 

I'll have to keep it trimmed though so that it doesn't grow out into the tank.

 

Sometime down the road I'd like to add a green clown goby. Oh man, I just remembered. When I returned from my week long trip, besides everything being covered in cyano, I also saw what I can only assume is a bristle worm! I had never seen the guy in there before, but it must have come in on either the live rock or possibly even one of the corals. It wasn't too big, it looked like a white millipede. As soon as it saw me, it bolted and I haven't seen it since.

[JulieR]

Update update. Tank is 11 weeks old now.

 

FTS

 

Left side

 

Right side

 

A newcomer! I found this dragon eye zoanthid for $13 a couple days ago! I feel like it's a steal. I don't often see zoas around here, but they're usually pretty pricey, aren't they? It has (I think) 9 good size polyps and 3 or 4 smaller ones. I really love the colors of it It does seem to wince a little bit when amphipods crawl around them.

 

The xenia is explosive! I love it. I knew it had been growing all this time, but when I went back and compared it to some original pictures, I was blown away. It almost looks sickly in the original pictures when I compare it to how full and fluffy it is now. The smaller species of the two, the pulsing xenia, is my favorite.

 

The other newcomer, Florida Ricordea. I picked this up at the same time as the zoanthids. It was $20, seems comparable to what I've seen around. It was hard to get a picture that really does it justice. I think it's a nice looking little frag.

 

The yellow polyps. This also shows my only concern with the tank right now. This frag came in with a little bubble algae on it and I hadn't thought much of it at the time. That reminds me, I think earlier in this thread I had mentioned that I was having some problems with bubble algae? That wasn't actually bubble algae, it was just the beginnings of cyano and it was producing a lot of bubbles. Anyway, that's gone. The only bubble algae I have is on this frag chip and it's not spreading past the chip, but I'd like to get rid of it before it actually does becomes a problem. I think it might be suppressing the polyps too. the hard part is that one of the yellow polyps has fused with some live rock next to it, so I can't just move/remove this chip anymore and clean it off. Whatever I do it has to be done down in the tank. Unless I were to just rip the frag away from the rock, but that doesn't sound pleasant at all.

 

Acans. They're growing a bit. I've fed them shrimp a few times but the hermits come and pull at it. So now before I do anything else, I'll give all the crabs a piece of shrimp so that they're busy when I feed the acans.

 

Here's a picture I took awhile back. The xenia was in a different spot and I only moved it because it had grown so much that the water flow had knocked it off the ledge that it was on. I promise I don't move these things around all the time! I feel like it sounds like I do, haha. But here's my emerald crab defending his spot from me, the big scary human. He was backing away slowly as I took this shot.

[JulieR]

Well, I got the yellow polyp bubble algae taken care of. I woke up one day recently to see that the frag had been moved about two inches to the right and was no longer attached to the rock it was on. I can only assume it was the green emerald crab. Looked like some of the algae was eaten, too. So while it was detached, I took the opportunity to remove the rest of the algae. This is the part where I feel real clever, hehe. I thought of the perfect took to remove it. A cuticle remover. I certainly don't need it for my own nails. It worked great to get in under the bubbles and scrape them away.

 

Also, this morning I found my zoa frag laying sideways on the sand. I'm glaring at the green emerald for that one, too. So I found what I think should be a safer place for it, snug between some rocks at the bottom.

[javisaman]

Nice start and good recovery. I can already see from the pictures that the coralline is coming in which means your tank is stabilizing.

[JulieR]

^Thanks I'm real pleased with how things are going along right now.

 

A couple days ago I was out and decided to stop at Petco because they had some corals with attractive price tags. I got the zoas at Petco, everything else has been from a specialty fish/coral place that prices most of their corals by multiples of 10 (and the cheap $10 is really piddly. That's also the place that I picked up the bubble algae). So the $13 price tag of the zoas and stuff at Petco lured me in and they must have an employee who really is fish oriented, because the stuff there is perfectly good looking. There were three candy cane coral frags to choose from that I mulled over. Two of them had longer stalks and fewer heads (possibly even just two heads each? If I remember right), so the third one won out. It was more compact, which I like, and has 11 heads of varying sizes. I also liked the colors more based on the colors that I already have in my tank. The other two were pink/red colors, and the one I got has green in the center. OH. Plus. You guys. I guess at Petco you have to be 18+ to purchase livestock, which isn't a problem for me but. I was there alone the other day buying the cc and I got up to the register and the woman looked at me and hesitantly said "uh... do you have someone with you who's 18 or over?" And I was confused and said "huh...? I'm 23". And she said I looked like a little kid. I was 18 half a decade ago, bawww.

 

Here's a picture I took yesterday (with my camera, the second picture is a phone picture).

 

And here's a picture I took a few minutes ago. I'm surprised that the phone picture came out more true to life than the camera picture, ha.

 

The only thing I wonder about is how it's prickly? I'm guessing that just means it isn't inflated all the way, and as soon as it puffs up more, those little prickles will flatten out and it will look more like the candy canes I see from other people. I tried googling all around and couldn't even find a picture of another "prickly" candy cane. I'm not too worried thought because so many people have said that these things are so hardy. I'll just let it adjust to the tank and see how it goes. Right now it's in a medium flow area, off to the side of the filter output. And lighting is also about medium, with the frag about halfway between the sandbed and the top of the tank.

 

I'm using just one of the two bulbs on my light now because the acan was getting angry. I had lowered the lights to just one bulb for awhile a few weeks ago to control algae growth, and once I got that taken care of I started to use both bulbs again. The acan hasn't been puffing up much at all and I'm thinking it's because it didn't like so much light. I'm still trying to get rid of the freshwater-planted mindset that more light=more growth! I saw in another thread someone saying that acans will grow and spread more in lower light so that they have more surface area to catch the light they need, whereas in high light environments, they get all the light they need and don't need to expand. That makes sense. None of the other corals have showed any signs of distress from the one-two bulb tinkering, so as long as they don't mind, I'll go with what the acan favors.

 

Here's a little video I shot around lights out a few nights ago, feeding the crabs. I wanted to feed the acan too to see if that'd help it get it's shape back, but it wasn't interested in food. Each time I set the camera down to reload my tongs, I focused on the xenia because that's what has the most motion in the tank. You can see it close up more and more as the video goes along. Also, if you have the sound on, you can hear my cat in the background crying because I wasn't giving her attention

[JulieR]

Suspicious "candy cane" frag has been caught! I made a thread in the coral section to id this guy (the one in the most recent pictures). I did some searching around myself to see if I could come up with a better id than candy cane before I made the thread. And my conclusion was right! It is in fact a blasto.

 

Neat little discovery. I've heard of people finding things mislabeled in stores, but I never considered the possibility that I'd stumble upon something.

[JulieR]

I just realized today that my ricordea is noticeably bigger than when I got it, about a week and a half ago. I guess it really likes the spot I put it in. It just about covers the whole plug now. At the center, there appear to be two little mouths right next to each other, so maybe it will split sometime soon?

 

[saraswati]

That blasto is awesome! What a score!

[JulieR]

Interested in a little update? Not too much to report, but I do have a little something.

 

In two days, the tank will officially be four months old, woo! A week ago, I got back from a two week trip to visit some old college friends. Since there aren't any fish in the tank, I left instructions to simply top-off with some provided water. When I returned, everything was pretty good looking. The only little problem was that I came home to find my macro algae fuge was missing a lot of caulerpa. See here. It had previously been packed with the stuff. I noticed the fuge light was turned off when I got home, so I guess it got turned off and not turned back on during some top-offs. Not the end of the world, but the decline of macros spurred on the growth of a little cyano. Just a tiny bit, but it covers my yellow polyps every day. The green emerald crab cleans it all off almost nightly. I haven't seen any macros in local stores, so I guess I'll just have to wait until the next time I can get up to Boston to go to the good lfs. Maybe this weekend.

 

That was the bad news. I come bearing good news too. My zoanthids are taking off like a rocket. I want more zoas! I apparently have great conditions for them if the one I have is growing so much, haha.

 

Here's the original picture I took of them:

That was a little over a month ago.

 

Here they are now:

 

Fish will come any time now As soon as something catches my eye and looks healthy.

[JulieR]

Something caught my eye today.

 

 

 

Brought home a lovely bicolor blenny today. He's a nice size at about 3.5" or so. I tried to get some nice shots of him after he had time to settle in and come out of hiding. I watched him from across the room. He was poking in and out of caves here and there, swimming around in the open water and just generally exploring. Then as soon as I walk over to the tank with the camera he darts back behind the rock pile and sticks just his head out and watches me. Of course he waits for me to leave before he comes back out.

 

I love him to bits already. He is so cool to watch (even if from afar!) Who else has bicolor blennies?

[ry05coupe]

bicolor looks awesome!

[Bishop]

It's good to see you made this move to salt water. I really admire your dedication and the way you post every little detail. I wish I had made a detailed journal of my tank. 6 months ago it was just a blank canvas and looked very pitiful. Now it's hard to believe how far it has come in that time. There were many difficulties along the way.

[JulieR]

^You can make a journal for your tank at any point, it's never too late! (Unless you already have one, that is) It's really handy to be able to go back through and look up any history on the tank.

 

Have another picture, guys:

Blenny must have been jealous of the white stripes on all the clownfish at the store.

 

I've been reading about these sort of white spots/splotches on bicolors and it seems the general consensus is that it's a stress response and that it's nothing to be worried about unless the fish is constantly spotted. Being his first day/night here, I'm not worried about it. The spots vanished earlier this evening when he was exploring. Now that the lights are out in his new home, he probably doesn't know yet if anything is going to come out and eat him while he's sleeping. And man does he sleep like a rock. Earlier today I tried creeping up real slow and low to the ground so he wouldn't see me and he would still bolt behind the rocks. But as I went to look at him a minute ago and get this picture, I started out slow and got braver until I realized I could practically dance in front of the tank and he didn't flinch. Reminds me of the clownfish pair I had when they would bunk down together for the night.

[JulieR]

Success! I got a video of the blenny He's looking good today. Taking up a spot at the top of the rocks in the center of the tank. He wasn't quite as shy this time when I crept over to the tank.

 

 

Youtube mangled the quality a little bit. But I'm happy I was able to get him on film coming out of the rocks.

[Deano]

^Thanks

Here's a picture I took yesterday (with my camera, the second picture is a phone picture).

 

And here's a picture I took a few minutes ago. I'm surprised that the phone picture came out more true to life than the camera picture, ha.

 

The only thing I wonder about is how it's prickly? I'm guessing that just means it isn't inflated all the way, and as soon as it puffs up more, those little prickles will flatten out and it will look more like the candy canes I see from other people. I tried googling all around and couldn't even find a picture of another "prickly" candy cane. I'm not too worried thought because so many people have said that these things are so hardy. I'll just let it adjust to the tank and see how it goes. Right now it's in a medium flow area, off to the side of the filter output. And lighting is also about medium, with the frag about halfway between the sandbed and the top of the tank.

 

Tank is looking good.

 

This is a Blastomussa Merletti. They are a very hardy LPS. You have a nice specimen there. They are like the Blastomussa Wellis. But don't come in the exotic colors. You have it placed perfect.

 

 

EDIT: Sorry just found the post stating you ID this coral.

[JulieR]

^Thanks The blasto didn't stay where it was in that picture for long, due to moving the acan closer to that rock. I didn't want them to be too close to each other. But where it's been moved to seems to be working great because I noticed it seems to be growing! I went back to my earlier posts to see how many polyps I'd said it started with (11 I think), and now it has at least 14, and that's without being able to see every side.

 

 

 

Some other little bits of news: When I originally bought one of the pieces of live rock, I noticed a clam/scallop/bivalve thing wedged in it, but I couldn't really see the whole thing so after awhile I forgot about it. Yesterday I noticed it sitting on the sand bed under a rock cave, so maybe someone (hermit, fish, or crab maybe) knocked it out. I scootched it over a little to get a better look at it, and a picture. Neat little thing. It was tightly shut after I moved it (like in the picture) but after a few minutes, it looked like it opened a crack. I'm just going to leave it as is unless I get a load of responses telling me it's some horrible tank crasher livestock eater

 

I also found a second bristle worm (I think it's a BW at least?). It was really hard to photograph because it was tiny and the tank lights were out. I'm amazed I even spotted it. It's at the center of this picture, bright orange end with some purple/brown body.

 

And finally, here's a picture to show that my yellow polyps have grown off the frag chip and onto the live rock around it. I think it's just one polyp on the LR so far (the one on the right). But still exciting. Damn cyano is still crowding this coral, thankfully it's not anywhere else in the tank. I haven't been able to get to the LFS that has macro algae yet because it's an hour away :/

[Deano]

I have been looking at a Blasto colony just like yours at my local Petco as well. $34.00. Everytime I look at yours the more tempted I get. I love the Yellow Polys I think they were my 1st soft coral years ago. Long since gone due to who can remember what but they were cool.

 

Cyano go on it. Get a turkey baster and blow the s#!t off daily.

[wimby]

Blastos are pretty They grow pretty fast also. The cyno, suck it out when you do your water change get as much as you can .