ADA 60-P sumpless, HOBless MACRO experiment

[mad28gnc]

Great looking tank maybe even totm sometime!

[tako]

Great looking tank maybe even totm sometime!

Thanks! Maybe someday if this thing actually grows in. Like the title says, it's an experiment so it may blow up in my face.

 

Short Update:

 

I'm not happy with the current state of the tank so no FTS yet -- frag plugs sitting randomly on rocks, macros that need glued, etc. Sadly I've had to remove the sargassum. I thought I was seeing the sprouting of new leaves for a while, but recently the snails and hermits started tearing the 'bark' off of it and it was going down hill. It never developed holdfasts to the rock, either. My first suspect is the light spectrum of my LEDs. I had the sargassum in a very high light area that could have supported SPS (dead center ~10" below the lamp). Another issue could be that my water is still too pristine. I'm doing water changes every two weeks, but still reading 0 nitrates despite feeding my tank everyday and adding 1-1.5ml of phytoplankton every other day. I'm not convinced the phyto does anything other than add pollution, but I have two bottles of the stuff now so I might as well use it.

 

In one month my pencil cap has done all this:

The taller one grew from nothing to the size you see in a little over a week. It's directly on the grass which is a pain, but interesting because you can see the "root" structure. I can try to get a better shot of just the roots if anyone is interested. The roots actually extend all the way to the bottom glass, so maybe i should consider making my sand a little deeper. Any input on when it's safe to replant these offshoots?

 

My deformed mermaid's fan has just recently sent up two new runners (maybe one of these will look like a fan):

[tako]

Picked up a normal orange oc. clown this weekend. It actually took four stores for me to finally find one properly sized for my black clown. Most of the clowns I saw were the designer ones -- for the profit margins, obviously.

 

I also picked up a bottle of Seachem Flourish Iron for FW planted tanks. The new growth in my algaes, especially the reds, have been discolored/yellowed somewhat, while the older parts are still vibrant. I've been reading up on iron dosing and it sounds fairly safe to do without testing. I'm starting out small and will post if I observe any changes.

[SbCaes]

FTS?

[tako]

FTS?

Ok, but it's a quick and crappy picture. The dead looking SPS at the top is actually bright orange.

 

Tank is a bit of a mess with frags still needing home and algae needing relocated. I went three weeks without a water change, but only had the second clown for one of the three. No explosion of nuisance algae even with the iron dosing, so I'm pretty happy with this tank thus far. Over that period I was only dosing alk and saw my calcium drop 60-80ppm, but it's still above 400.

 

And, shot of my pom-pom exploring the forest

[yoshii]

Looks like it's really starting to grow in

Has the iron dosing affected the macro's grow rate?

 

Lol when I read about the ca I thought it said "my calcium dropped to 60-80ppm"

 

Where did you buy the pompom? Cool crab

[tako]

Looks like it's really starting to grow in

Has the iron dosing affected the macro's grow rate?

Yeah, the caulerpas are growing like weeds. Halimeda is growing but the older stuff is dying off. The only things that didn't make it were the sargassum and scroll algae. It was probably a lighting issue or nutrient issue. The scroll algae may have had too much flow from the mp10. They're supposed to like high flow, but I think it was tearing it apart.

 

Where did you buy the pompom? Cool crab

I got it at Dolphin Pet Village last September. Took me a while to find one back then, but maybe the situation has improved. Mine is a male and I'd like to get another, but it will have to be a female. He's pretty aggressive. He'll try to grab my goby occasionally and will fight off my cleaner shrimp for food.

[yoshii]

I think the scroll needed to be more attached to the rock before it was moved to higher flow

I ordered some sargassum & fauchea from reefcleaners, if you're interested, we could work out a trade or I can just give you some when it grows out

 

Oh ok that's kinda far away :/ Yeah recently it seems hard to find one for sale

[tako]

I think the scroll needed to be more attached to the rock before it was moved to higher flow

I ordered some sargassum & fauchea from reefcleaners, if you're interested, we could work out a trade or I can just give you some when it grows out

I'll definitely be interested in some of your fauchea if it grows out for you haha. I'll get my hands on a macro you don't have one of these days. I was digging through Neptune's fuge last week and they had an interesting caulerpa species. I didn't buy it because I wanted to ID it first, which of course I forgot to do until just now...

 

I forgot to mention about the iron last time. It's still too early to tell, because it's only been a week and I've only added a tiny amount. I'm keeping my eye on the new chaeto and caulerpa growth.

 

Have you tried Sustainable Reefs in San Jose? They seem to be mostly online, but do have some weird store hours at night. I'm thinking about checking out their frags and buying some ORA green gracilaria.

[yoshii]

I'll definitely be interested in some of your fauchea if it grows out for you haha. I'll get my hands on a macro you don't have one of these days. I was digging through Neptune's fuge last week and they had an interesting caulerpa species. I didn't buy it because I wanted to ID it first, which of course I forgot to do until just now...

 

I forgot to mention about the iron last time. It's still too early to tell, because it's only been a week and I've only added a tiny amount. I'm keeping my eye on the new chaeto and caulerpa growth.

 

Have you tried Sustainable Reefs in San Jose? They seem to be mostly online, but do have some weird store hours at night. I'm thinking about checking out their frags and buying some ORA green gracilaria.

Hopefully it will! Hmmm pencil cap? *hinthint*

Really? All I saw was Caulerpa Prolifera and C. nummularia. Haha what did it look like?

 

Cool, I'll certainly be interested in the results!

 

No, I've never been there, they have such strange hours!

Oooh I need some of that haha

[doppelganger]

wow tako, keeps looking better and better! great job!

[tako]

wow tako, keeps looking better and better! great job!

Thanks!

 

Haven't added any fish or corals in a couple weeks. The clownfish have been getting along well, but still don't appear to share the same sleeping space. The black one is in the cave, while the orange is just outside on the torch coral. The orange one has worried me because he always seems to have some white markings on his skin. At first I was worried about ich, but that doesn't seem to be the case. I haven't ruled out a fungus or bacteria, but it hasn't shown any signs of getting worse over the past few weeks. It may just be from sleeping in the torch or fighting that I'm not seeing. It could be the porcelain crab defending his torch coral; I really wish the clown would sleep somewhere else. He doesn't show any signs of it bothering him and eats well, so I'll just keep observing.

 

Finally got around to making a new mount for my float switches. It's mounted out of sight behind the skimmer along with the heater. I honestly haven't needed it because I have so little evaporation; I've only been topping off about once a week. Now that I finalized the float switch design I can finally get a real lid cut. You can see the two ugly sheets I've been using.

 

REDACTED for warranty claim

[tako]

Guess I spoke too soon. I saw the black one had some cloudiness on one of his eyes today. Nothing else other than that so he probably scratched it somehow. Neither one shows any change in their behavior, so I'm going to keep monitoring both of them closely.

[Rabb.D]

cool.. nice tank tako, looks really good.. honestly i wouldn't consider that messy... rather, more like unique.. looks really good no doubt about that though..

[tako]

Thanks, I call it messy because of all the frag plugs and rubber bands.

 

So my black clowns eye is perfectly fine. Disappeared by the next day. The orange clown's skin still bothers me, but he acts fine and eats so I don't know what's going. Probably fighting or the torch coral irritating him.

 

The MP10 finally broke and luckily I was home when it happened. The entire wetside started spinning very rapidly and making a horrible noise. I called Ecotech and disassembled the wetside to see that the ceramic washer had ripped free and dug into the frame. The wetside doesn't spin anymore and it will work when I turn it on, but it makes even louder noises than it used to. Hopefully they'll get back to me tomorrow and send me a new one.

 

[Giga]

great tank!

[tako]

great tank!

Thanks, Giga. I watched your last tank closely because I had originally planned for mangroves in this tank. I can't take the risk of running without a lid because someone would murder me if that black clownfish ever dies. I can't wait to see your next one.

[tako]

I've been too busy lately to keep up with NR or buy anything new for the tank, but I'll try to get some pics up later after the lights are on.

 

1) Back to just the black clown . Orange clown never got past that bad looking skin. It started to go down hill so I took it out and tried hypo, but it eventually died. I still have no idea what caused it and neither the goby or the clown caught it. It was a very slowly acting ailment, whatever it was. Goby just passed away recently, but it didn't show any signs of sickness. I noticed in the couple days before its death that the black clown was chasing it some. It seemed healthy and then just turned up dead. She may have also been partially responsible for the orange clown's poor skin and health, too.

 

2) The disk-like caulerpa (not sure of the name, but yoshii gave it to me) went sexual despite an 11 hour light cycle. It was probably due to a fluctuation from 80-83 during a heatwave. Luckily I was home and caught it while the tank was only somewhat milky and removed most of the caulerpa. Tank was back to normal after a few hours with no casualties. After two weeks the stuff is back and even thicker than before.

 

3) still doing three-week water changes with 11 hours of light. Everything seems happy except for some bubble and hair algae that was introduced on a frag I bought from yoshii's store lol. I may try the peroxide dip that seems to be all the rage to prevent it from spreading.

 

4) The unknown plant that emerged from a rock I've had over a year turned out to be razor caulerpa. It's still small, but very cool looking.

 

5) Dry rocks are starting to turn purple. In a few months they should blend in nicely.

 

6) Pencil cap and mermaid's fans appear to only last a month or so before turning white, but so far a new one has emerged in a different spot each time. Just have to wait and see if it dies off for good. I seem to be able to grow dragon's breath very well but my agar growth has been rather slow.

 

 

Overall I'm still getting a lot of algae growth, but I think some species are suffering due to the lack of nutrients. My remaining clown pigs out everyday, but it's still not enough. I'm taking a short vacation soon so I don't want to introduce new fish to the tank yet. The pair of yasha hase gobies on DD are really teasing me, though.

[tako]

New FTS:

 

Shot of the forest:

 

Finally a shot of the spreading spreading blue cloves. They disappeared to almost nothing back in January, but they're back on the move. You can also see the neon green miniature tube worms of some kind. Had them for about a year and I keep hoping they'll spread, but no luck so far.

[tako]

Regarding the MP10 situation: They replaced the wetside, but the noise wasn't decreased at all. I was told that they believe the magnet on my dryside is unusually strong, so I should try using the spacer even though my tank is thicker than the range that needs it. The noise was greatly abated, but it may be partially caused by the rubber damping the vibrations better than the glass.

[tako]

First, I'm going to be doing some scuba diving in Key Largo this weekend and beginning of next week so that's pretty exciting. I believe this is my eleventh trip to the Keys haha. Keeping a nano reef is nice, but it's nothing compared to the real thing.

 

I picked up a few cheap corals yesterday. I don't have pictures of the green Kenya tree or echinata yet. But, here's a short of the green hydnophora:

 

This $5 favia was covered in algae and is in preetty bad shape. If it survives it will look amazing:

[tako]

I hope this green Kenya tree does well in this tank because I love how it looks.

[tako]

Can't sleep, so I'm messing around with a $5 UV flashlight.

 

More to come if I don't pass out...

[kriskristofferzen]

sweet uv shot. i used the spacer for the mp10 right away and mine is not too loud, i also have a sump and it is in the basement. glad you got the noise down some. the tank is looking great!

[bobmonkey11]

those little green tube things in that pic above are actually colonial hydroids....hence they are not good, probably not an issue unless you have sps which isn't the case