Natalia’s reefbowl: 8 years old!

[natalia_la_loca]

[ReefWeeds]

3 hours ago, natalia_la_loca said:

 

Thank you Stella   In another week, it will be a year old 

Time flies!!!!!

[natalia_la_loca]

Reefbowl after dark. Just before the light went out tonight.

 

 

The Supergirl zoas seem to like their new location.

 

 

[Weetabix7]

oOoOoOoHHH, holy Wow, I'm in love with this bowl. 

Le sigh. 

[natalia_la_loca]

And so easy to set up and maintain!

[Weetabix7]

Just now, natalia_la_loca said:

And so easy to set up and maintain!

 

Yeah, I've been telling my entire family about this over the last few days, lol!!!

And making them look at all your Bowl pics.....

[SeaFurn]

SO AMAZING!!!! SO MESMERIZING!!!

[holy carp]

Your colors are crazy!

 

I know you said you do a little image processing with that snapseed app, but I assume that's just bringing the image to correspond to 'visual' coloration.  

 

So I was wondering what your feeding regimen is.  I believe you do 100% water changes (as I know Brandon and others with these small reef bowls do).  I've also been asked if my water might be 'too clean' when I have troubles with colors or corals.   Well, nothing gets more clean than 100% new water, so I'm wondering if I need to be feeding corals more.   

 

Also, and equally important:  What are those little zoas to the left of the blastos?  The peachy centers look so pretty.

[natalia_la_loca]

50 minutes ago, holy carp said:

Your colors are crazy!

 

I know you said you do a little image processing with that snapseed app, but I assume that's just bringing the image to correspond to 'visual' coloration.  

 

So I was wondering what your feeding regimen is.  I believe you do 100% water changes (as I know Brandon and others with these small reef bowls do).  I've also been asked if my water might be 'too clean' when I have troubles with colors or corals.   Well, nothing gets more clean than 100% new water, so I'm wondering if I need to be feeding corals more.   

 

Also, and equally important:  What are those little zoas to the left of the blastos?  The peachy centers look so pretty.

 

Well, for starters, I generally pick out extremely colorful corals  Also, my par38 lamp has a lot of blue to make the corals fluoresce. My aim in photo editing is to replicate what my eyes see. I'm sure I would get better results if I shot in RAW and had a tripod, but I just haven't gotten around to fiddling with the camera. I am not particularly technologically inclined, which is one of several reasons why I traded in two relatively complex systems for a reefbowl.

 

Here is one of yesterday's pics as it came out of the camera with no edits:

 

Not horrible, but my eyes don't see all that blue when I look at it in person. So I bump up the warmth and brightness in Snapseed, use the Structure and Sharpen tools to compensate for my lack of a tripod, then add a bit of a vignette effect to darken the surrounding area so that the reefbowl is what you focus on.

 

I highly recommend feeding corals a varied diet. 1x weekly before WC, I combine:

-rods food coral blend

-reef roids

-Fauna Marín ultra ricordea & zoanthus + ultra min D

-Phyto Feast

-target feed larger particles to LPS & large zoas, broadcast feed the rest

-pump off 10 minutes

-restart pump and leave several hours before 100% WC

 

The zoas to the left of the blastos are Raspberry Limes from Cherry Corals.

[brandon429]

hey can you remark on your topoff schedule? I top mine off every other day just to keep things tight, but when on vacation I can crank my air down and get 5 days easy .023 - .024 whats yours like on a normal basis

[natalia_la_loca]

Just now, brandon429 said:

hey can you remark on your topoff schedule? I top mine off every other day just to keep things tight, but when on vacation I can crank my air down and get 5 days easy .023 - .024 whats yours like on a normal basis

 

I usually only top off when the air is really dry in winter, at which times I top off once a week. 

[Rain24]

Thanks for posting what you feed your tank. I'm keeping notes for my future reef jar.

 

I'm in love with that top-down shot! And I love that you have frogspawn in there. My husband loved our frogspawn. I'm totally showing him your pics later.

[natalia_la_loca]

You're most welcome  frogspawns are great but are risky in such a small space. Fortunately mine had a fairly tall base to begin with and has maintained a compact form, so it hasn't encroached on nearby corals.

[A.Berry]

Natalia, your reef bowl is what motivates mine! Really is absolutely amazing! I showed my wife and now she can't wait for mine to start brightening up

[natalia_la_loca]

11 hours ago, A.Berry said:

Natalia, your reef bowl is what motivates mine! Really is absolutely amazing! I showed my wife and now she can't wait for mine to start brightening up

 

Thank you  I can't wait to see how yours evolves!

[Weetabix7]

12 hours ago, natalia_la_loca said:

You're most welcome  frogspawns are great but are risky in such a small space. Fortunately mine had a fairly tall base to begin with and has maintained a compact form, so it hasn't encroached on nearby corals.

 

This is actually something I had wondered about, whether you had to worry about stinging from the tentacles. 

I'm so used to the idea of keeping a certain "safety margin" between corals and there are definitely places where you have corals snuggled right up next to each other in that bowl. 

I've looked at it and thought, "How does she do that, without allelopathy issues?". 

I absolutely LOVE Euphyllia Corals, and Frogspawn in particular, and have a hard time thinking about a tank without one in there. 

[natalia_la_loca]

4 minutes ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

This is actually something I had wondered about, whether you had to worry about stinging from the tentacles. 

I'm so used to the idea of keeping a certain "safety margin" between corals and there are definitely places where you have corals snuggled right up next to each other in that bowl. 

I've looked at it and thought, "How does she do that, without allelopathy issues?". 

I absolutely LOVE Euphyllia Corals, and Frogspawn in particular, and have a hard time thinking about a tank without one in there. 

 

You're right to worry. i don't think allelopathy is an issue (at least with the corals I have), or I would have seen problems earlier. But nematocysts definitely are. I've assumed a level of risk by having zoas so close to the frogspawn. But they have been growing in its shade ever since I added the frogspawn last spring. Its tentacles never seem to extend beyond a limited radius. Fingers crossed that will continue.

 

The chalice was a different story. I'm glad I traded it in. 

[Weetabix7]

Ok, I get that. 

I actually passed up some chalice frags recently for that very reason. 

What about from your Leather? Nepthea, right? That specific one you have is another coral I've always had a fondness for. However, Leathers are known for sometimes causing allelopathy issues from the mucousy stuff they sometimes "shed". (I forget what it's called.)

[natalia_la_loca]

3 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

What about from your Leather? Nepthea, right? That specific one you have is another coral I've always had a fondness for. However, Leathers are known for sometimes causing allelopathy issues from the mucousy stuff they sometimes "shed". (I forget what it's called.)

Yeah, I was worried about that one too, but it's been fine. Sometimes it brushes up against the digitatas, but I've observed no negative reaction. It has great polyp extension but has maintained a satisfyingly compact size, very good for a reefbowl.

 

By the way, I've never seen the nephthea shed anything. The one weird thing it does is that a couple of times it's expelled little hard twiggy things from its base, kind of like tiny pieces of gorgonian skeleton. I interpret these things to be foreign objects that it originally grew on top of and that it has slowly removed from its body over time.

[natalia_la_loca]

Reefbowl is one year old 

 

It's a little off today. I got home from a 3-day business trip late last night to find all LPS except the Duncan closed (they usually have tentacles out at night). Over the course of today they improved but are still not back to normal, so I took a water sample to the LFS. Turns out alk is way low, only 5??!! (Salifert), salinity a bit high, and nitrate undetectable. Calcium is 390. Because the water is so clean, I threw in some reef roids and am letting them eat a while before I do a water change that will hopefully bump up the alk. the afternoon sun may help too.

 

not really sure what has changed to cause this. All other corals are fine (one of the gonis was closed this AM but is wide open now).  All snails active and accounted for. Not aware of any flucon side effects on kH.  GHA has been knocked way back after Friday's H2O2 treatment but is still barely there.

 

anyway, pics:

 

few days ago

 

afternoon sun today

 

[Weetabix7]

Happy Birthday, Reefbowl!!!

 

How odd for the alk to be that low. Hope the WC corrects the issue, and if it comes back, you're able to figure it out. 

Hope the business trip was successful. 

Welcome back!!

[natalia_la_loca]

Yeah, it's weird. Wouldn't I be seeing more pissed-off corals at such low alk? And why would it be so low in the first place? Or maybe test kit is inaccurate? Anyway, hopefully the water change will help.

 

yup, biz trip was nice. Magnolias are in bloom in Washington DC  

[holy carp]

Happy Birthday, little bowl!

 

Can you do a big water change to bring everything back, or do you need to slowly dose it back up so as not to shock the corals with a big alk swing?

[natalia_la_loca]

My inclination is just to do the water change, as I do those every week (and occasionally more than once a week) with no ill effects. I would be very hesitant to dose alk in such a small water volume, I'd be terrified of overdosing and I honestly don't put a whole lot of faith in test kits.

[Weetabix7]

What brand test kit did you use to test the alk?