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ADA 60p Soft Coral Mangrove Peninsular - Long overdue update


East1

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Not very much to report, removed some SPS because of my 'artistic vision' so watch this space in the next like, 3 weeks ha!

 

one of my LED's blew so tank has had half light for a week, things aren't dying yet which is good

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I didn't realise, but my mangrove is one year old today! (at least, one year old in my posession)

 

here is an FTS as it stands now

 

C4UiIsi.jpg

 

I've got a club meet at my favourite LFS this Saturday, so I've taken back some of the frags I had in anticipation of picking up a nice maricultured SPS colony or two.

 

I'm still shocked time's gone so fast!

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Keeping in line with my DIY/2nd hand only motif I'm adding a used Aquatronica to control my ATO, pumps as well as running an automagic water changer that'll provide a constant water change of about 5 litres a week (33% total, after the maths of dilution it works out to be about 28%) hopefully this will do away with the need for a dosing pump to keep my cal and alk stable too, but we shall see. I'll probably use this to auto-dose other additives simply by adding them to the fresh water, things such as amino acids and coloration elements

 

 

I've upgraded the skimmer and I'll be modding this to run two pumps in series, a MJ500 with a custom meshwheel will feed the BM pump and provide what I hope to be very very dense microbubble mass,

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  • 2 weeks later...

it has been a while! I'm not fully ready for an FTS but some changes have happened! Mostly in the underbelly of the system and not really the stocking sadly. I've set up my Aquatronica running my ATO and the majority of my equipment, including turning off my biopellet reactor for a few minutes a day to allow the pearls to settle, running my powerhead in the display with a day/night wave cycle etc. I've changed the LED to a combination of 20k, 6500k and a milder 3500k spotlight to give the perfect (in my opinion) midday sunlight look. Corals are responding well as is coralline growth.

 

I've also got myself a 3 channel dosing pump, two of which are running cal and alk at 0.2ml per day from Red Sea's ABC package and I'm going to use the third to dose a refrigerated mix of NLS pellets, reef roids and some form of amino acids which brings me onto my third point: I got a huge skimmer! The BM Nac5e is absolutely monstrous and is doing a great job of keeping everything in Czech (see what I did there)

 

I'm seeing the beginning of two axial branches on my mangrove which is nice, it's been a month or two since I've seen foliage growth from it, I attribute this to switching from fresh to salt water and re-establishing it's roots.

 

Stocking plans are still a work in progress but I want to keep the scale desperately and I've pushed away the idea of getting something like a regal damsel just yet. I'm going for a pair of evoita, perhaps one to three trimma sp. and a trio of sexy shrimp to compliment the bumblebee. I really do like the idea of a yellowbelly regal damsel or something similar to add some mid-water movement but I need to find a small enough specimen. The idea now is to maintain the sense of scale while adding many small critters to emulate a far larger reef tank. The oversize filtration and over the top water management will allow for both this and for me to take weekends away with my girlfriend without having to educate someone on the calcium assimilation process of SPS corals.

 

I've got a delivery of a large number of pocillopora frags due next week which should finish off my scape. I'l ltake what's left to my LFS to trade for some soft corals and zoas to add to the biodiversity and hopefully have an FTS and some angular closeups by Wednesday.

 

mandatory pic

 

yq6cTuW.png

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So, confession time. I like the hair algae! it's kinda charming when clean, so I suck mine into a pipette to pull any detritius out of it.I'm also still waiting for my dosing pump which should get here tomorrow.

 

My lovely girlfriend got me some little Zeo bottles so I'm starting that regime soon, I want to bring out strong coloration in this tank and encourage some good growth. I think I'm fully stocked with corals now, and need to start getting some inverts and fish. I really want a Trapezia coral crab for the pocillopora

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Nothing like getting a call asking why the floor around your tank is sopping when you're away visiting the little lady for a weekend

Yeah, that is pretty much the worst.

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Mmmhmm, fortunately I was able to Skype my little sister who let me have a look at everything, my skimmer overflowed but nothing catastrophic, just got back and everything is alive, just a little pissed off and browned.

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At the moment I'm getting about 0.5-1mm of encrusting edge on most of my SPS, despite browning and the cyano problem from having my skimmer off for 36 hours after it flooded, now that I've completed my goal of no equipment in the display I'm going down the route of coral coloration now, so we'll see how this goes

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