another 0.7 pico

[brandon429]

Yes thats considered massive success with the clam Ive never seen that in a pico. It indeed might have killed the tank if not skimmed or wc due to volume and bac bloom which is oxygen sapping. Interesting dichotomy on that event, it signifies good long term stability but would have possibly been lethal in short few hours if not changed out, nice going thats enviable clam health.

[Cameron6796]

Yeah that's lucky you caught it to clean it up. I'm sure zeph would love this.

[k4ndyk1ng]

love this stuff that pushes the boundaries

[Roland-Berlin]

The following picture is about 2 month old, showing the unbounded growth of xenia, overwhelming the reef, so I had to garden in order to save the other dwellers.

 

And than: summer came, claiming victims in my reef. The summer of 2015 was the hottest in Germany since weather records, and although I tried to keep temperatures in an acceptable range, LPS (except blastomussa) have lost their lives. SPS and the clam survived,- but where badly stressed.

 

 

(these pics still hurt)

 

The empty spaces were occupied by algae and Right now, the reef looks like this:

 

Yes, I am a bit frustrated.

[brandon429]

Hey I think it still looks great- I too lost many of my corals from heat in 2003 I know the feeling

 

like Andrewk's reef insult and rebound in the same tank, these pico reefs that weather 'storms' and have some loss, but rebound by saving the functionality of the tank, are doing what nature does by slowly rebuilding

[metrokat]

I think the right side has hydroids, they also seem to be irritating the clam. Covering them with epoxy putty will help.

[Roland-Berlin]

I think the right side has hydroids, they also seem to be irritating the clam. Covering them with epoxy putty will help.

I am afraid, these guys are aiptasia. I scrub them away every two weeks, but they allways come back. When they grow too big, the clam does not open appropiate.

[metrokat]

epoxy over them.

[Roland-Berlin]

Fiddeling around with my reef, the socket got lost, that there now is more space above the corals.

 

And I there is a new dweller, which I picked up during a vist on Madeira: I found the small anemonia viridis in the intertidal zone. I know, that this anemonia (snakelocks anemone?) is an aggressive animal,netteling its neigbours, when it can get hold of them. So the anemonia gets its own small rock, and I try to oversee it, bevor its starting moving around. Up to that point, the anemonia seems to be happy with its place, sitting in its rock without rambeling.

 

 

and one pic of the feather dusterworm:

[Roland-Berlin]

Besides this, I want you to show a small project beside the "main reef"- its an algae tank, just one rock, sand, some anemones, some light. This small tank is started to do some experiments on algae and plankton. Yet I am not content with the pump, shreddering all small floating animals like mysis or moina. I will improve this, probably using a plankton sieve to protect animals from the pump.

 

(and some playing with the moonlight:)

[Roland-Berlin]

supplement: the snakelocks anemone seems to be hungry: in the morning I found an empty snail shell next to the anemone. Greedy anemone, poor snail. Just live.

 

[smiz]

This is a very awesome tank! I love pushing the boundaries of this hobby! Also I think you need to edit your first post about broken English, as you speak it better then most natives!

[Roland-Berlin]

Almost one year of keeping this little reef.

 

When I started this project in December 2014, I thought it would be a temporary experiment. And I did not expect, that animals and plants, living in a small tank could be so fascinating, that I would do the regularly maintenance over more than some month. Yet, I can not say, why tininess of a tank makes it so fascinating, knowing that a bigger tank would make things much easier. Probably it is the focussing on small animals, that leads to this fascination. Looking through a loupe, a whole universe of little dwellers appear, which unfortunately elude from being photographed (at least using the equipment of my camera).

 

So things are evolving quite well, corals are growing besides the casualties during summer time.

Growing, one aim of coral-tending- contains an ambivalent tenor. When a pico is performing well, it will -sooner or later- destroy itself. Or it will move into a bigger tank, losing its pico-lable. Chipping animals is not what I understand when takling about taking care of them. Of course, there has to be some destroying energy substituting natural enemies and disruptive forces of the ocean. But on the other hand, it feels like an insane effort to do everything to let animals grow in order to deadhead them, when they do so. Now, sps starts to shade tridacna, xenia presses sps, macro algae is fighting against everyone. During the last month, I had to garden a lot, but thus far, I was too afraid to diminsh sps. I am thinking of replanting sps, but that would mean to rearrange the entire reef, since sps is sitting on a key-rock concerning stability of the rock constrution. So I am just sitting, and watching the development leading to declining conditions, knowing that there will arise some questions in future times.

 

 

 

(Some sand is back into the reef, and a back panel of a coral stone is hiding the heater.)

 

 

 

What else? I got rid of aiptasia, which established oneself on the tridacna shells. I uses calumhydroxid, but not in the kind, it is described in the manual. There it is suggested to use the calcumhydroxid inside the tank, using a syringe to inject the calciumhydroxid directly into the anemoes. I was afraid of water pollution in consequence of poisoned animals. So I used the calciumhydroxid outside the tank, meaning that I blended a thick solution, which was brushed on the shells, while the whole reef was outside the water. After a dwell time of about one or two minutes, the reef was rinsed with water, the tridacna shells where cleaned with an old toothbrush, and after this, the reef went back into the tank (yes, I know: NEVER remove a tridacna outside the water... it will die at once...).

 

=

(One pic to demonstrate what I wrote above. Just one tiny drip on ervery aiptasia.)

 

 

 

Besides the aiptasia, the snakelock anemone had to leave the reef. It was growing too fast, so I was afraid that it could nettle the other dwellers. It is now living in an unheated reef vase, in good company with an oyster and a lot of macro algae.

 

 

 

 

So far. Hoping for a more peacefull time.

[Roland-Berlin]

This is a very awesome tank! I love pushing the boundaries of this hobby! Also I think you need to edit your first post about broken English, as you speak it better then most natives!

 

speaking better than natives?? -if there is something to this, the honour deserves to my online dictionary -

[Weetabix7]

I love this.

[brandon429]

Roland

 

You did a professional effort, stuck with it like Andrewk has (weathering storms is real pico reefing) and brought strong biology as a prep tool backing the tank. Totm here due to sum of factors and outcome. I've linked this countless times including the total access details. Working in the air as needed, forced tank compliance, algae just say no lol

 

 

It's true a pico will outgrow itself and pruning is needed, I've always justified it by comparing chipping and harshness to the known asexual fragmenting reproductive pathway that sps use in the wild (in addition to gamete based reproduction)

 

Storms literally break off staghorn acro, the broken ends land on adjacent substrates and calcify leading to a new colony all legit.

[Roland-Berlin]

Roland

 

You did a professional effort, stuck with it like Andrewk has (weathering storms is real pico reefing) and brought strong biology as a prep tool backing the tank. Totm here due to sum of factors and outcome. I've linked this countless times including the total access details. Working in the air as needed, forced tank compliance, algae just say no lol

 

 

It's true a pico will outgrow itself and pruning is needed, I've always justified it by comparing chipping and harshness to the known asexual fragmenting reproductive pathway that sps use in the wild (in addition to gamete based reproduction)

 

Storms literally break off staghorn acro, the broken ends land on adjacent substrates and calcify leading to a new colony all legit.

Hallo brandon,

thank you for your praise.

Actually, I am afraid of pruning sps, since I have never done this before. Do I need a saw? A pruner? Hammer and chisel? Will the calcareous skeleton splinter? I rember how much time i needed to follow your advice of using hydrogen peroxide to dam algae invasion. I am afraid of damaging something beyond repair. On the other side: "never change a running system" is not a good advice for running a reef.

[Nano sapiens]

Very interesting thread. Pushing boundaries, for sure.

 

A pair of wire clippers can be used to prune most SPS. Most SPS respond well to pruning and heal quickly, when healthy.

[brandon429]

I would just press down and snap and the damaged areas heal right back, others dremel a live cut right into the arm you want to trim just try one method on a test nub it w be clear in a month didn't hurt

 

the key is heterotrophic feeding which you get an A grade

 

The mass adding doesn't stop even with injury. That feeding and water change in/out is constant protein, constant clean water it will simply plate over

 

But agreed it feels strange to do! A test nub is ok start and reevaluate in three weeks or so

[Weetabix7]

This is one of the most interesting threads I've seen- wow! All this discussion on clams, water quality, etc is just fantastic.

 

I'm going to start from page one when I get on my laptop

 

Couldn't agree more, I've spent all day reading this thread.

[Nano sapiens]

During the last month, nothing spectacular happened, except last week, when I saw my clam ejectin clouds of sperm into the water.

By then, I thought it would be a baby clam, but sexual activity disabused me. The reef was transformed shortly into a milky soup, and all animals, including the clam itself hided away. It was pure coincidence, that I was at home when it happened, so I could do an immediate wc. Probably, this occurrence is one more arguement against maintaining a clam in a pico, at least when no protein skimmer is installed.

 

Now that is an amazing thing to witness in a Pico. Ausgezeichnet!

 

Sad to see the heat issues in summer, but at least most of the animals survived.

 

After reading through all the thoughts on algae control, I must say that I have had relatively litttle trouble with it in my 12g (46 liter) nano over the last 7-1/2 years largely due to starting off with 9 year old purple coralline algae coated rock from a previous tank. The few spots where hair algae occurs today is always where the coralline cover is drastically reduced or missing. Starting off with bare rock does greatly increase the likelihood of algae proliferation.

 

Hope this little tank continues to do well for you for a long time to come.

[brandon429]

100% fact. algae loves bright reflective surfaces not colonized by purple coralline, its literally algae exclusive to a large degree, I try to purple things up and always start tanks using purpled substrates, its my fav reef color. purple equals algae control swayed in ones favor, and then all the rest is manual removal, manual removal of waste (blast cleaning a tank) grazers, or bandaid fixes per the variables in each tank.

[Sunstar]

that little tank is epic. beautiful well done!

[Roland-Berlin]

Hello everyone.

During the last weeks, I was lazy, not only in terms of this little blog, but also in maintaining the pico. Algae have come again, and aiptasia are growing on the tridacna shells, so that they touch tridacna tissue, leading to an retraction of the clam. Something´s got to give.

 

So today there was time at least for realising the clam:

 

the whole rock is placed in a sink, the tridacna shells are covered with calciumhydroxid. Of course, the calciumhydroxid must not get into the clam. Dwell time: 2 or 3 minutes.

 

After duration of exposure, the rock is sluiced out with a lot of water.

 

Using an old toothbrush, the shells are cleaned between its ribs.

 

And again: A lot of water. During the whole treatment, I used 10 liter of water (meaning, the entire volume of the pico was used to elute the rocks). As a consequence of this: 100% wc following.

 

The treatment is almost equal to the session with hydrogen peroxid.

 

Besides struggeling against aiptasia, I am playing a little bit with the decoration.

I wanted xenia to cover branches, so I was crafting some "branches" with coral gum, than I somehow fixed peaces of xenia on it and let things grow. The result is certainly not leading to an award. But at least xenia likes to sit on its lookout.

(And finally a full view)

[Roland-Berlin]

Postscript: getting rid of the aiptasia seems to please the clam. It is the first time for long while, that it opens completely. Probably because of the the retaken space, probably because of the 100% wc, probably because of the feeding with microalgae, probably because of everything. Such a diva.

(lateral view, not showing the entire extent)