TeenyReef's 10g Fusion - ATO Disaster

[markalot]

That is some quick thinking and major heroics . I would have been like "what do I do, what do I do omgomgomg" LOL. Frozen with fear. Great job, Mark!

 

The wet side tumbled down with him in it and it's the last time I've seen him in a pump, so maybe he fears them now? My MP10 has a 2 or 3 second delay from power on where the MP40 is almost instant, so I got really really lucky. It was stupid of me not to check before I turned it on because he's done it before.

[teenyreef]

I repurposed my quarantine tank into a frag tank so that I could clear some of the excess from the display tank. I've got the evil favites and gsp frags here now, as well as an acan frag recovering from being smothered by a mushroom, a piece of the angel eye favia that got broken off when I was gluing it up, and some leftover zoas. I'm using my old CC PAR 30 18K bulb.

 

Frag Tank by TeenyReef, on Flickr

[clink51]

if you ever feel the need to pack your acans into a box and ship them up north, id be more than happy to help you with that unusual urge lol

[FlowerMama]

I love your cute little frag tank.

[teenyreef]

 

Online stores, and many LFS, show off their corals under 20,000K MH lighting. The corals look magnificent because they flouresce under those conditions. It's good for sales. But when we buy them and place them in our own tanks they look pale... even brown at times.

 

Check this out. Dennis has a 10g Fusion containing a few softies and LPS: no SPS. The colors of his creatures are spectacular, and his NB settings are CH1: 255, CH2: 105. In other words, he's running the blue channel at 100% and his white channel at 41%. That's much higher than Dave at NB recommends.

 

I know you experienced bleaching with your initial NB settings. The trick to increasing lighting while avoiding bleaching is to increase the light by no more than 5% every week of two. (Corals can take a lot of light if done correctly. In natural reefs, many corals sit under intense sunlight all day long without bleaching.)

 

Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I have a lot of SPS corals (although no Acros) in my Fusion 10g. My Nano Bx setting match yours, and I'm not happy with the coral colors either. I've done a lot of reading on LED lighting, but remain as confused as ever on that topic. So I'm going to have to do my own experimentation. Over the next several months I'm going to gradually increase the blues to around 225 and the whites to 90... maybe even closer to the settings Dennis uses if all goes well. Right now I know I need more blues to get my corals to color up and look the way I saw them looking under 20,000K MH lights.

Thanks for the advice, and let me know how things go for you! I've been very careful about ramping up the lighting gradually. I haven't had bleaching problems due to rapid lighting increases, although I did have some bleaching on my acros due to placing them high in the tank too quickly.

 

The problem I've had is with the acans changing from lots of different colors to just plain red, and it definitely seems to be because the lighting is just too bright, even when I ramp it up gradually. So I think the balance between blue and white is really the key. My theory is that too much white turn acans red, but they seem to tolerate a lot more blue. The link you gave for Dennis' tank (which is awesome, btw) would seem to support that idea.

 

Of course, the other problem is that this lighting balance makes everything too blue and isn't as well balanced for good color presentation for other corals. The new T5 hybrid lighting that Dave is making seems to be the best way to go to get that natural balance, but that's not practical for really small tanks.

 

I am planning to send my light back to Dave to get upgraded to the V3 array, and four channel control. It will be interesting to see what I can do then

Sorry about Norbert.

Thanks, Kat! I'm definitely going to try again in a while. He had a great personality and really added a lot of life to the tank.

Yeah, merlettis are a ton easier but just as pretty, thank goodness .

 

Sorry to hear about Norbert .

 

That is some quick thinking and major heroics . I would have been like "what do I do, what do I do omgomgomg" LOL. Frozen with fear. Great job, Mark!

Yeah, I'm really impressed. I would have been reaching for the power cord, and the would have been too slow

[Sk8n Reefer]

Sweet little frag tank!

[teenyreef]

I love your cute little frag tank.

Thanks! It won't stay up too long. I need the light back so I can send my Nanobox to Dave for the V3 upgrade.

 

Of course, that's what I'm planning. The reality is that I'll probably become so dependent on the frag tank that I'll have to buy a new light for it. I never appreciated how convenient and useful it would be

if you ever feel the need to pack your acans into a box and ship them up north, id be more than happy to help you with that unusual urge lol

Well, now that I have the frag tank, I just have to wait for the acans to start spreading a little more

[teenyreef]

I promised Cindy a picture of the lava flow mushroom. I'm waiting for it to start growing a little more. It's one of those corals that looks really pretty in macro shots, but looks like an indistinct blob from more than a foot away

Lava Flow Mushroom by TeenyReef, on Flickr

 

While I had the camera out, I got some nice top down shots of a bunch of the zoas. These are some radioactive dragon eyes from the LFS. They are unusually big The zoas to the right, and the zoas on the bottom left, are un-named zoas from the same LFS. I think I got a really good deal on them, they were priced like generic zoas but they look like fancy designers.

 

The one at the bottom middle is a Raptor's Rainbow from Legendary Corals. For some reason, the pink ring around the middle doesn't show up from this angle. Finally, the ones at the bottom right are Aquafresh Vice zoas, mostly closed up when I took the picture.

 

Zoas by TeenyReef, on Flickr

 

There's two more zoas in this shot. Bottom right are unnamed freebies from Zia (deal of the century!!! ). Bottom left are another set from a new LFS near me - but I can't remember what they're called

More Zoas by TeenyReef, on Flickr

[Livewreck]

I am planning to send my light back to Dave to get upgraded to the V3 array, and four channel control. It will be interesting to see what I can do then

 

I'm definitely going to want to learn from your experience with the new light upgrade. However, light is not the only factor in achieving great coral colors. Corals are sensitive to water conditions and can take up to 6 months or more to adjust to new environments. So even if our water conditions are pristine, corals may just need time to adapt to our tanks before they exhibit their best colors.

 

IMO, fish are a great addition to any reef tank. They add interest and beauty, but they also add to the bio-load. I don't mean this as a negative criticism, but given the number of fish you have in your 10g, you have a very high bio-load for a nano. I'd be surprised if your Nitrates are 5 or less... a requirement of some corals; although I do not know if Acans need that level of water purity for optimum color.

 

When we add corals, fish, and inverts to our nano reefs, we change the bio-load in out tanks. With each addition, we alter the bio-load and present the established corals with new conditions that they need to adapt to. I wonder if all you need to do to color-up your Acans is to keep your bio-load steady and give them time to adapt to the conditions in your nano??? - Just a thought.

[clink51]

what are the ice blue zoas in the last zoa picture u sent out?

[markalot]

 

IMO, fish are a great addition to any reef tank. They add interest and beauty, but they also add to the bio-load. I don't mean this as a negative criticism, but given the number of fish you have in your 10g, you have a very high bio-load for a nano. I'd be surprised if your Nitrates are 5 or less... a requirement of some corals; although I do not know if Acans need that level of water purity for optimum color.

 

When we add corals, fish, and inverts to our nano reefs, we change the bio-load in out tanks. With each addition, we alter the bio-load and present the established corals with new conditions that they need to adapt to. I wonder if all you need to do to color-up your Acans is to keep your bio-load steady and give them time to adapt to the conditions in your nano??? - Just a thought.

 

I mean no offense but it's not nearly as simple as some thought. Incoming sps snob talk.

 

Acans are crappy LPS corals that color up when they are well fed, and fade when they are not well fed. Actually this is the same for most corals.

 

15 nitrates

 

Same conditions, recovering from whatever the heck it didn't like in the first place.

 

I have other acros that are brown brown brown, other LPS that are brilliant, and other acans that are dull. I have 150 gallons and as a result am much more stable than a little tank, just because of the water volume. In my opinion about the only blanket statement that can be made is you need to feed heavily and export frantically to keep most corals at their best. Acros respond to more food, acans respond to more food, bubble tip anemones respond to more food, my purple stylophora responds to more food, etc. More food might end up raising nitrates and phosphates, but lowering feeding or bioload to try to balance things is not the solution IMO.

 

[owenj]

Catching up on your thread and those zoas! Love the new RFA too, but I'm a sucker for anything green . Sorry to hear about the TSB I'm worried about my little gobies because I always leave the pumps to come back on when the feed timer runs out...

[Livewreck]

 

I mean no offense but it's not nearly as simple as some thought. Incoming sps snob talk.

 

Acans are crappy LPS corals that color up when they are well fed, and fade when they are not well fed. Actually this is the same for most corals.

 

15 nitrates

 

Same conditions, recovering from whatever the heck it didn't like in the first place.

 

I have other acros that are brown brown brown, other LPS that are brilliant, and other acans that are dull. I have 150 gallons and as a result am much more stable than a little tank, just because of the water volume. In my opinion about the only blanket statement that can be made is you need to feed heavily and export frantically to keep most corals at their best. Acros respond to more food, acans respond to more food, bubble tip anemones respond to more food, my purple stylophora responds to more food, etc. More food might end up raising nitrates and phosphates, but lowering feeding or bioload to try to balance things is not the solution IMO.

 

 

Hey, that is great info. Thanks for posting that, but I would have preferred a magic solution. Hearing the truth (feed more and export frantically) is not what I wanted to hear.

 

I know that the ocean is food rich and nutrient poor. I suppose I could duplicate that in a 3,000 gallon tank containing a ton of live rock and only one Zoanthid polyp. But I don't know if my Nano Box Mini Tide will be able to supply such an aquarium with enough light.

[markalot]

 

Hey, that is great info. Thanks for posting that, but I would have preferred a magic solution. Hearing the truth (feed more and export frantically) is not what I wanted to hear.

 

I know that the ocean is food rich and nutrient poor. I suppose I could duplicate that in a 3,000 gallon tank containing a ton of live rock and only one Zoanthid polyp. But I don't know if my Nano Box Mini Tide will be able to supply such an aquarium with enough light.

 

I think the take home ... and I said think, not know ... is that if a coral is not adapted to high nitrates or phosphates we really don't know how it will behave. The Katropora, the acro in the pic above, apparently does quite well in higher nitrates while my other acros stay brown and can't tolerate it. This creates some interesting "facts" because you'll hear some reef keepers say they only feed their fish and corals look fine while others say they must feed corals to get them to color up.

 

So is the feeding raising phosphates and nitrates to make the corals happy, or is it allowing corals that would otherwise require a steady supply of food to color up in a low nutrient environment? I believe if I get my nitrates down to below 5 the Kat will fade unless I make sure to feed coral food on a regular basis. I'm also betting my acans will fade and recede again because they can't tolerate both a low nutrient and low food particle (not sure what else to call it) environment.

 

Really it's what make the hobby so interesting.

 

There is a really long thread on RC, and a shorter one here, about dosing nitrates to increase coral health and help reduce phosphates. When the RC thread started years ago people were flat out called idiots for even considering such a thing.

[Livewreck]

Great points, Mark. I've also read threads reporting that frags react differently to light and water conditions than do larger colonies.

 

I've been in this hobby for only about 6 years or so. I used to think I knew very little about nano reef keeping. Now, I'm convinced I know very little about it. One thing for sure: both you and teenyreef have the knack. Your aquariums are top notch!

 

In any case, I'm going to try to color up some of my sps by slowly playing around with the lighting, without changing anything else I'm doing. The one thing I'm not willing to do is to go nuts over water changes. I'd rather trade my sps colonies for softies.

 

 

[markalot]

Great points, Mark. I've also read threads reporting that frags react differently to light and water conditions than do larger colonies.

 

I've been in this hobby for only about 6 years or so. I used to think I knew very little about nano reef keeping. Now, I'm convinced I know very little about it. One thing for sure: both you and teenyreef have the knack. Your aquariums are top notch!

 

In any case, I'm going to try to color up some of my sps by slowly playing around with the lighting, without changing anything else I'm doing. The one thing I'm not willing to do is to go nuts over water changes. I'd rather trade my sps colonies for softies.

 

 

 

I've only been on the saltwater side for 3 years now. I thought lighting was the main culprit with some frags but I've gotten acro frags from unique corals that will knock your socks off, and then proceeded to have them fade in my tank. Some prefer to run as much blue as they can tolerate for the best colors, but I prefer a whiter tank. I was running 4 coral+ and 2 blue+ bulbs but now I am once again trying the whiter (and greener) aquablue special to add more white to the tank. Some corals look better, some worse, what I don;t know is how the corals will respond to the different light and how they will look 3 weeks from now. 3 weeks is about the longest I've ever tried the AB special before getting sick of it.

[ReefWeeds]

I repurposed my quarantine tank into a frag tank so that I could clear some of the excess from the display tank. I've got the evil favites and gsp frags here now, as well as an acan frag recovering from being smothered by a mushroom, a piece of the angel eye favia that got broken off when I was gluing it up, and some leftover zoas. I'm using my old CC PAR 30 18K bulb.

 

Frag Tank by TeenyReef, on Flickr

This is awesome.

[skyscraper2290]

Love the top down shots, looking great

[metrokat]

I repurposed my quarantine tank into a frag tank so that I could clear some of the excess from the display tank. I've got the evil favites and gsp frags here now, as well as an acan frag recovering from being smothered by a mushroom, a piece of the angel eye favia that got broken off when I was gluing it up, and some leftover zoas. I'm using my old CC PAR 30 18K bulb.

 

Frag Tank by TeenyReef, on Flickr

Where do you live again? When will you NOT be home? Leave door unlocked please. Kthxbai.

 

 

 

What are you plans for husbandry on the frag tank while it is up and running. I have 2 picos (plus a 10G) that are empty and I would have set up the 10 a while back except for the additional parameters to keep track of.

 

Thoughts?

 

I mean no offense but it's not nearly as simple as some thought. Incoming sps snob talk.

 

Acans are crappy LPS corals that color up when they are well fed, and fade when they are not well fed. Actually this is the same for most corals.

 

15 nitrates

 

 

I know that coral

[teenyreef]

what are the ice blue zoas in the last zoa picture u sent out?

Do you meant the ones in the upper right of this picture? Those are Aquafresh Vice zoas.

 

More Zoas by TeenyReef, on Flickr

[teenyreef]

Wow, I went 24 hours without getting on NR and my thread blows up! Now I have a little taste of what Kat deals with every day

 

I'll catch up tomorrow night, hopefully, but I feel privileged to have triggered such a great conversation! Just to clarify a few things, though, strictly from the perspective of this tank: my comments about lighting are really about the colors of the acans and the rics. While I have a couple little acro frags in this tank, my focus for them is just to make sure they survive and don't lose too much color.

 

I've satisfied myself that if the whites get too high, my rainbow acans change from rainbow to plain red. When I turned the whites back down, they turned rainbow again. Right now, I'm fairly happy with the colors on both the acans and rics.

 

Also, just for the record, last time I checked (about a week ago), nitrates were around 3 or 4. I run the skimmer constantly and use carbon/gfo, and do about a two to three gallon water change every week. Since the actual capacity of this tank is probably about 8 gallons, that works about to about a 25-40% water change. I also dose Microbacter, Acropower, and Aqua Vitro Fuel once a week. I think all this together helps keep nitrates low even with all the fish, but who knows if it will work in the long term. I'll be monitoring how things go and make adjustments as needed

 

I can say that the colors of the corals are great as long as I have the lights set "right", and I only have algae on the glass, in need of scraping about every third of fourth day.

[teenyreef]

Where do you live again? When will you NOT be home? Leave door unlocked please. Kthxbai.

 

 

 

What are you plans for husbandry on the frag tank while it is up and running. I have 2 picos (plus a 10G) that are empty and I would have set up the 10 a while back except for the additional parameters to keep track of.

 

Thoughts?

Come by any time! I don't have cool tea but there's plenty of beer Free admission for authorized Katropora dealers bearing samples

 

I'm trying to keep the frag tank extremely simple. Floss/Carbon/GFO filter. Change the floss every two or three days, change the carbon/gfo every two weeks. There's an ATO, a heater, and a mechanical timer for the light. 50% water change once a week, or more often if things don't seem to be OK. Since it's bare bottom and I'm not using any biological filtration at all, I could do 100% water changes if needed.

 

The thing I love love love about it so far is that because it's so small, and there's nothing in it but frags, I can target feed everything very precisely. Tonight I fed every polyp on every frag exactly one spirulina enriched brine shrimp. When I turned the pump back on, there were about four of five leftover pieces that got sucked up in the filter - everything else went inside of a coral

 

I don't know if this kind of setup would work for more demanding SPS since I'm not dosing and not trying to provide the kind of nutrient environment that a mature tank could with a high level of dissolved organics.

[teenyreef]

Just because, here are a few top down pics of the frags.

 

Evil Favites:

Favites - Medium Frag by TeenyReef, on Flickr

 

Angel Eye Favite:

Angel Eyes Favite - Tiny Frag by TeenyReef, on Flickr

 

Acan recovering from being covered up by one of the rics:

Rainbow Acan - Tiny Frag by TeenyReef, on Flickr

 

Leftover Morning Glory zoas:

Morning Glory Zoas by TeenyReef, on Flickr

 

Here's the green monti plate that I accidentally broke off. I plan to frag it up onto plugs once I'm sure it does OK in the frag tank.

Green Monti by TeenyReef, on Flickr

[metrokat]

Come by any time! I don't have cool tea but there's plenty of beer Free admission for authorized Katropora dealers bearing samples

 

I'm trying to keep the frag tank extremely simple. Floss/Carbon/GFO filter. Change the floss every two or three days, change the carbon/gfo every two weeks. There's an ATO, a heater, and a mechanical timer for the light. 50% water change once a week, or more often if things don't seem to be OK. Since it's bare bottom and I'm not using any biological filtration at all, I could do 100% water changes if needed.

 

The thing I love love love about it so far is that because it's so small, and there's nothing in it but frags, I can target feed everything very precisely. Tonight I fed every polyp on every frag exactly one spirulina enriched brine shrimp. When I turned the pump back on, there were about four of five leftover pieces that got sucked up in the filter - everything else went inside of a coral

 

I don't know if this kind of setup would work for more demanding SPS since I'm not dosing and not trying to provide the kind of nutrient environment that a mature tank could with a high level of dissolved organics.

Hmm, might have to visit bearing gifts then.

 

I think I have to just harden my heart and throw out the frags that keep showing up with bryopsis, I've been dipping them and hanging on to them, haven't glued them down. I should cut my losses and move on. Just can't seem to be able to do it though.

[ImAllBlurry]

Tonight I fed every polyp on every frag exactly one spirulina enriched brine shrimp.

 

Do you posses extraordinary patience or is spot feeding a zen experience for you?

 

I kind of wish there was an emoji with it's eye's closed in meditation...