Mark's 40B and 46 bow

[eitallent]

Beautiful pictures of beautiful coral.

 

The wp-25 really get the surface of the water moving.

 

It works well on the gas exchange and keep temps down little I bet.

[markalot]

Beautiful pictures of beautiful coral.

 

The wp-25 really get the surface of the water moving.

 

It works well on the gas exchange and keep temps down little I bet.

 

Seems to, or else the pump just runs cooler.

 

My plan is to alternate 2 WP-25's in the same wave mode, so I get reversing wave action. I'm not sure how well the pump electronics like being turned on and off, so this might not be the smartest idea.

[markalot]

Well this is interesting. New product just listed at BRS:

 

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/tunze-turbelle-nanostream-6095-controllable.html?trk_msg=S5RB7332LFH4P6O617JHAHMGC0&trk_contact=93JE39ET9FFFPLN4IQ9527UEA4&utm_source=Listrak&utm_medium=Email&utm_term=http%3a%2f%2fwww.bulkreefsupply.com%2ftunze-turbelle-nanostream-6095-controllable.html&utm_campaign=education&utm_content=newprod_080113a

 

That is pretty much exactly the WP-25, minus the controller.

[just a noob]

And the price tag

[markalot]

The neon goby is alive. No idea where it was, and it looks mal nourished. Hanging around at the bottom, not really swimming.

[metrokat]

Spot feed the goby.

[Felicia]

I'm glad he's alive! I agree that you probably need to spot feed him since he isn't getting enough to eat. Poor little guy.

[Gramophone]

 

This particular coral makes me love birdsnests even more. I love the way this is growing!

[eitallent]

I hope the BNG is eating for you. They are such great little fish.

 

Good luck.

[markalot]

He would not eat and I've not seen him since. What the heck happened?

[markalot]

Tank news, sans pictures.

 

My two MP-25's finally arrived yesterday, this brings me to a total of 3 MP-25 pumps. I love these things. I installed a second one n the 46 and set one of them to W2 and the other to W3 mode, with one dial set a little faster than the other. Result is periods of intense flow up top followed by perioids of relative calm. The LPS on the bottom rarely experience very strong flow and the torch and frogspawn seemed happy enough.

 

I think I've also discovered the secret to getting an ORA green stylo to actually turn green. If you suffered through most of this thread you'll recall I received an extra large green stylo from Live Aquaria for the price of a much smaller one, but when it arrived it was half dead. I cut up and super glued the living pieces to rock rubble and ended up with 4 living frags.

 

I killed one of them when my 20 gallon crashed, but the remaining 3 are still with me and all are growing rather quickly. The piece in the 46, a tank not meant for SPS, suddenly started to get green polyps on the tips after adding my first WP-25. The secret seems to be a lot of flow because this thing was getting blased by waves whenever the WP-25 kicked on. With two WP-25's in the tank now it's getting hit with periods of even more intense flow so it will be interesteng to see if this coral continues to color up.

 

The other WP-25 was installed in my 40 gallon and I set it to create a standing wave with decent but not overly strong flow. My MP10 is in reef crest mode so when it winds up past mid point the water flow in the tank gets nice and chaotic. Below 50% I get a gentle back and forth motion with lots of polyp movement on the SPS corals.

 

In other news, my red monti cap I added a few weeks ago started to show signs of bleaching so I removed the ATI bulbs from the front 2-bulb fixture and replaced with two AquaticLife blue bulbs that have much lower par. Since doing this everything in the lower front part of the tank has looked better. Bottom line, these AquaticLife T5 fixtures, remember I'm running 3 2-bulb fixtures married together, paired with ATI bulbs put a crap ton of PAR into the tank. Some corals can take it, but most really seem to get stressed by the amount of light.

 

As a result here is the bulb order in the 40.

 

-front-

AquaticLife Blue (420/460)

AquaticLife Blue (420/460)

ATI Purple+

ATI Blue+

ATI Purple+

ATI Blue+

-back-

 

Overall look is a tad blue but the purple+ bulbs bring out plenty of reds.

 

Now the bad news.

 

In the 40, my razor Caulerpa which had been experiencing extremely slow growth when I was starving my corals has managed to infect most of the rocks. I'm feeding coral food twice a week, which has done wonders for coral color, but the algae seems to love it as well. Last two water changes included intense blowing of the rocks and deep cleaning of the sand bed, and I'm running phosguard and changing it weekly at the moment. I think the issue will be manageable if I can slow the growth.

 

In the 46 the feather Caulerpa (whatever variety it is) has gone hog wild as well. I stir the sand but can;t vac it as it's too fine. Peroxide is my solution for this tank as most of the infested rocks can be removed easily. It's interesting how this algae completely surrounds one of my smaller Duncan frags but can't touch the frag itself. I wonder what kind of defense the coral has that keeps the algae at bay? Zoas and Palys are at the most risk with this stuff as it quickly overtops and covers them up.

 

I'm considering radical intervention in the 46 to destroy this algae. I can see myself carefully rebuilding both tanks to remove mistakes I made early on, but I'd like to let the 40 keep aging and growing for another 6 months at least.

 

 

 

[markalot]

Did a peroxide treatment in the 40, I'll copy text from the peroxide thread here as well. I removed a lot of base rocks and opened up the back to improve flow and allow me to scrape easier. Only the right side of the tank has one part of a rock touching the back wall.

My Flame Hawkfish is back at the LFS. Fun to watch, but they call them a Hawkfish for a reason. Hopefully I will see more of the Rusty Goby now. I also added 5 Berghia Nudibranches to see if they will control the aptasia menace.

Very rough sketch of the new rock layout.

 

 

All of the rocks can be easily removed if they need to be re-treated. I've slowly built a collection of taller rocks that can stand on their own without me worrying if a large turbo or hermit will knock them over.

Copied from the peroxide thread:

My back hurts, but here's how it went down with one post treatment pic. If this goes like before dieoff shoudl start later today or tomorrow.

I needed to send a Hawkfish back to the LFS, the one in my avatar, so I could add those Berghia nudibranches and I was having aggression issues between the hawk and the blenny. So I took a half day off and removed 8 gallons of water in two buckets, removed the most infested rocks, caught the hawk, and made a quick trip to the LFS.

My indicator species for how much peroxide made it back into the main tank was a small frag of neon trumpets. In my experience all trumpets hate peroxide and will discolor for a week if exposed to too much. I treated the rocks with direct 3% peroxide poured on and around the algae. Some got on my SPS, I was not that careful. I double rinsed in my two buckets and returnes the rocks to the tank. Once I was done treating every rock with algae I basically had a carefully constructed stack of rocks with corals back in the 40. I re-scaped, removing some base rocks that I suspect were leaching phosphate, and then did a 50% water change (the beauty of the 32 gallon Brute cans!).

Indicator species showed no discoloration, even though one of the rocks was bubbling prior to the water change. SPS species began to recover an hour after I was done and look fairly normal this morning. I don't see any color loss or other damage, other than a few broken branches on my Montipora digitata 'Forest Fire'. Speaking of which, one of the smaller branches sat unoticed in a bucket of mostly peroxide for 2 hours ... 2 HOURS ... and this morning it's showing some polyp extension. I dropped it back into the tank as soon as I found it. I'll report on how it's doing in a few days.

Post treatment FTS and closeup of the main treatment area. These were taken 2 hours after the final water change.





Main cleanup crew consists of numerous blue and red legged hermits plus a large thin stripe and a big turbo, moved from my 46. The bigger white coral at the top left is a stylophora suffering from shipment damage. While it was out of the tank I painted the dead areas with super glue to aid in recovery of lost tissue.

[markalot]

Yesterday I spot treated the 46 with peroxide in a turkey baster so some of the soft corals are still upset in this pic. Coraline on the front glass ... whay does it love me so? You can see both wp-25's in this pic. I have them set to W2 and W3 modes (step up and down in speed). This creates periods of calm followed by chaos. SOmetimes flow is mainly left to right, sometimes right to left. Works out really well IMO.

 

[markalot]

I'm hoping since I re-homes the Hawkfish that my Rusty Goby will be more visible.

 

He's got a new home near the front of the tank, which is good. Used a flashlight to get this shot.

 

One of my cheap frags ... a $10 pocillapora with numerous dead branches. You can only see one dead tip now, and I've only had it a month.

 

[markalot]

Top down angled show, trying to show the space in the back left and along the back wall.

 

[markalot]

More pics. I updated my version of http://www.rawtherapee.com/ which apparently fixed an issue with RAW photos not being adjusted correctly, making them too dark with washed out colors. Going through some older pics and re-processing them, plus some newer ones. These look much closer to what my eyes.

 

I've also changed bulb again in the 40. I'm reducing the number of ATI bulbs to just 2 and using the lower PAR aquatic life bulbs in the remaining slots. A mixture of AL Blue and Purple bulbs looks much better to my eye than a Blue+ and Purple+ combo.

 

New bulb layout:

 

-front-

AL Purple

AL Blue

ATI Purple+

ATI Blue+

AL Purple

AL Blue

-back-

 

 

 

 

 

40 FTS

 

 

46 FTS

 

 

Re-processed 40 angled shot:

 

 

The green Monti cap in the 40.

 

 

The new frag of Appleberry Monti. In just this short time it encrusted over the superglue I accidentally splotched near the base.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Felicia]

The new FTS's look great! Looks like your SPS corals are doing really well. I love that pocci and that it already looks so healthy! That thing is going to be huge before you know it

 

Hopefully the rusty goby gets less shy for you. I think they just tend to be very shy fish. Gena said hers hid all the time in her old tank but I believe she said they've been more visible in the new tank.

[markalot]

The new FTS's look great! Looks like your SPS corals are doing really well. I love that pocci and that it already looks so healthy! That thing is going to be huge before you know it

 

Hopefully the rusty goby gets less shy for you. I think they just tend to be very shy fish. Gena said hers hid all the time in her old tank but I believe she said they've been more visible in the new tank.

 

The Rusty was swimming in the open today, and stopped in the corner for a while before going back to a rock. I was shocked because I had never seen this guy swimming. So far so good.

 

I removed and treated (peroxide) the algae infested rocks in the 46, double rinsed, and returned. Zoas closed up for maybe 10 minutes and then re-opened so I think the double rinse worked well. I took a brush and scrubbed the rock I could not remove. This caulerpa is invasive, but wimpy. It covers fast, but pulls up very easily.

[markalot]

Even more pictures, since I'm documenting peroxide dips.

 

 

 

 

 

The green polyp birdsnest when I first got it on May 11th.

 

 

Yesterday (a little over 3 months)

 

 

First frag

 

 

This will go in the 46 when it grows up.

 

Bird of Paradise, May 11th

 

 

Yesterday

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't have a newer closeup of my Montipora spongodes that was purchased at the same time but needless to say it's more than tripled in size. I broke it into 2 frags and one small oops.

 

The blue polyp Monti I bought a few months ago has suffered and is not nearly as nice. It's obviosly a lower light Monti so I've moved it lower in the tank, to the bottom and partially shaded, and moved my remaining frags of it to a more shaded area. The small frag in the 46 bleached and/or died. The frag near the bottom of the 40 mounted on a rock is bleaching badly.

 

Final pic is from the 46. The Starry Blenny is a real punk . When I walk by the tank he gets right up to the glass and follows me. I was taking algae pics and he hovers in place right in front of my face. Take my photo!

 

 

[markalot]

Even more pictures.

 

 

 

 

Rainbow stylo with shipping damage and superglue treatment.

 

 

Montipora setosa

 

 

Montipora capitata 'Blueberry' from Reef Gardener

 

First Purchased (end of July)

 

 

Yesterday

 

 

 

Look how yellow the Blenny is in this next photo. Removing the Flame Hawkfish has really changed the personality of the fish, and apparently the Blenny had been stressed.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I have noticed, when looking back at older pictures, that I tend to like the previous scape better than the current .. always. I would rather not re-arrange the 40 again, but perhaps a few tweaks around the edges are in order, especially if I have to re-treat for the Caulerpa issue. /shrug

[Sunar357]

Love the Starry Blenny...every time I see one it makes me want one. =)

[Felicia]

Great photo of the starry! I love those guys!

[markalot]

More photos, mainly playing with the camera and lenses here but I did clean the glass. Well, mostly. I also re-added my ReefBright White/Blue strip to the front of the 40 and turned off the T5 above it. I really like the shimmer and clarity this LED provides, but I also like the color of T5. If stability is the goal, I ain't providing it. Apparently change is my middle name!

 

-front-

ReefBright Blue/White 30" LED

Purple+

Blue+

Coral+ <-- also a change

Blue+

 

I used by 50mm 1.8 lens which I paid good money for and then haven't used yet. Wow. I'm trying to figure out why pictures are so much better. I think fine detail at a distance is key, but why so much more color? I'll have to go read up on it. Anyway here are a few FTS with the lens. I am standing 8 to 10 feet away from the tanks to get all of it in.

 

 

 

[bucknellreefer]

So you have 2 WP-25s in the 46 and one in the 40? How close to the surface can you run them without them sucking bubbles? I am thinking about one or two in my 45g tank but I've only got about 11" of water and am worried about them creating a bubble/sand storm.

[markalot]

Pretty low power in both tanks, about 2 inches below the surface. Any increase in power sucks air. It's certainly an issue because these beasts are so powerful. It's hard to believe until you see it run. When I installed the first one in the 46, way up where it is now, full power, it sucked air and blew sand around and made a complete mess of the place.

 

 

So you have 2 WP-25s in the 46 and one in the 40? How close to the surface can you run them without them sucking bubbles? I am thinking about one or two in my 45g tank but I've only got about 11" of water and am worried about them creating a bubble/sand storm.

 

 

 

.. quoted.