Natalia’s reefbowl: 8 years old!

[HammerLover]

Damn Nathalie your gonis are so insanely awesome! Love those colors! Maybe I'll get brave soon to try my very first goni somewhere along the road. And your reefbowl is coming along really nice, Im sure in awhile it can be as pretty as Maritza's vase reef

[natalia_la_loca]

Thanks Aaron   It's not an exaggeration to say that Maritza is the standard of excellence by which I measure my reefbowl. I think it's doing fairly well, considering that Maritza has a four-year head start! With effort and luck, I hope the reefbowl will be just as beautiful in four years as Maritza is today.

 

I'm thrilled that such lovely gonioporas are available and that they are growing so well in the reefbowl. Based on my experience thus far, I would highly recommend you try one in TETO. Just remember they are aggressive, so they will need to be placed some distance away from other corals. Fortunately they don't put out any feeder or sweeper tentacles, but some of them have long-stemmed polyps that could cause some mischief.

[natalia_la_loca]

Photo dump and updates!

 

During friday's water change I zapped several near-invisible strands of GHA and afterward, bumped up the flucon dose by about 15%. No regrowth observed yet.

 

also on Friday, I got a tiny, tiny blue leg hermit. Small enough that finding him in there is like a game of "where's Waldo." So far he seems to be doing fine.

 

Acros grow well in the bowl, but the Tuna Blue LED certainly changes their colors. The "tricolor" valida has settled into this deep purple and green pattern.

 

The red planet acro is now officially a green planet. Pretty disappointed about that because the colors used to be spectacular! But it has great polyp extension and is recovering nicely from the superglue accident.

 

I love the glitches. Their color is much more intense than it used to be in my old Nuvo 8 zoa garden.

 

The pink and golds are looking extremely happy. I would never put these in the rockscape, I'm sure they would take over.

 

Utter chaos are also doing well. They have a new head (barely visible at upper left).

 

The raspberry limes and ummm...solar flares? (upper left) both have new babies starting to open up.

 

The two digitatas are all over the place.

 

Happy bowl.

 

 

[Nano sapiens]

Looking good, there!  Love the happy Zoas 

 

Based on many threads I've read, the typical Red Planet tends to go green when underlit.  It'll still do well, but likely will encrust more.  The variant I had from Vivid was really aggressive (right up there with my Pavonas) and had no problen taking out Palys, Zoas, and an aggressive Sunset Monti...and anything else that got in the way.

[Pinner Reef]

Friggin awesome! 

[natalia_la_loca]

28 minutes ago, Nano sapiens said:

Based on many threads I've read, the typical Red Planet tends to go green when underlit. 

I could see that. I did raise the lamp because i felt the zoas needed less light. It's a challenge, balancing the needs of these different corals in such a small space!

18 minutes ago, Pinner Reef said:

Friggin awesome! 

 

Thank you 

[vlangel]

Such beautiful pics Natalia!  Your reef bowl just keeps gettin' better.

[SaltyBuddha]

Beautiful pictures! You've probably already said it, but what camera are you using? Your bowl always looks so colorful and clear.

 

BTW This is one of my favorite reefs.I feel like you have more colors and awesome varieties of corals than people with 100 gallon tanks!

[J-Ranko]

What the...??  Acros, montis, LPS and softies all living together in a tiny bowl?  How is this system even possible?

 

Now I've seen everything in this hobby!    Now I do see some room next to one of the zoas for maybe one anemone...

[natalia_la_loca]

9 hours ago, SaltyBuddha said:

Beautiful pictures! You've probably already said it, but what camera are you using? Your bowl always looks so colorful and clear.

 

BTW This is one of my favorite reefs.I feel like you have more colors and awesome varieties of corals than people with 100 gallon tanks!

Thanks  I'm using a Canon Rebel T3i that I bought used a couple years ago.

 

The beauty of bowls is that i spend very little money on equipment, which frees up more funds for buying awesome corals!

[natalia_la_loca]

9 hours ago, J-Ranko said:

What the...??  Acros, montis, LPS and softies all living together in a tiny bowl?  How is this system even possible?

 

Big water changes are the key! Plus a good feeding once or twice a week  

[Rain24]

Love the new pics! I adore your goni garden.

 

Could you please go into detail about how much Flucon you're using in your tank right now and how you add it in?

[natalia_la_loca]

1 hour ago, Rain24 said:

Could you please go into detail about how much Flucon you're using in your tank right now and how you add it in?

 

It's kind of hard to explain   I started from an initial recommended dosage of 9 mg per liter of water volume.  My reefbowl contains about 6 liters of water if you subtract the rock and coral and substrate, so to get 9 mg/liter I would need 54 mg of flucon. 

 

Because the flucon capsules I have (ordered from https://www.payless-petproducts.com/fluconazole200.html ) contain 200 mg of flucon each, I needed to get a digital milligram scale, cut open a capsule, and measure out a smaller amount.  However, it turns out the full contents of one capsule weigh 385 mg.  This means almost half the capsule content is filler.

 

Assuming I'm doing my math right (always a concern!) and that the flucon and filler are evenly distributed inside a capsule, the actual capsule contents I need to dose 54 mg is 103 mg.  I fudged upward to 110 mg.  I maintained that dosage for 35 days, replenishing 110 mg of flucon powder after each weekly 100% water change. 

 

How I dose flucon: After each water change, I fill a lidded plastic cup with tank water, add the med, and shake it. (Some of the powder does not dissolve.) Then I suck up the water and any undissolved powder in a turkey baster and squirt it near the bottom of the bowl, taking care to avoid LPS (There are some indications that LPS do not like ingesting the stuff directly).

 

As I've noted earlier, the flucon eradicated two varieties of hair algae or bryopsis and knocked back--but did not totally destroy--a third.  So I have continued peroxide spot treatments during each water change. And last Friday, I increased the flucon dose to 125 mg of capsule contents, which is about 65 mg of flucon if you subtract the fillers (again, assuming flucon and filler are evenly distributed inside a capsule; it does seem to be a uniform powder at least to the naked eye).

 

Sorry about the long-winded explanation. The dosage is confusing for a small system like mine because of the need to add flucon in smaller increments than a single capsule.

[Rain24]

Thank you so much for writing it out! I love information like this. I'm adding this to my reefing notes. It will totally help me in case that pesky algae pops up in my jar.

[JoeR]

Sorry if you've said this before (28 pages is a lot to sift through) but are you still not dosing anything? Just one full water change a week? Also is there a complete list of corals in here? 

[Weetabix7]

This is still one of my absolute favorites on NR. 

So much I could comment on, and some things I have even more appreciation for now that I am working in very small spaces myself. 

Do you take all of the corals out when you do a WC?

Was scaping this complicated?

I understand what you mean about balancing the light needs of all the livestock, especially since they can only be moved very small amounts up or down. I'm finding it's easier to move the light itself than the corals. 

I love the way the Digis are all growing together. 

[natalia_la_loca]

2 hours ago, JoeR said:

Sorry if you've said this before (28 pages is a lot to sift through) but are you still not dosing anything? Just one full water change a week? Also is there a complete list of corals in here? 

Correct, no dosing at all. The 100% water change is apparently enough for the corals. Current stock list is on the first post  

[natalia_la_loca]

2 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

This is still one of my absolute favorites on NR. 

So much I could comment on, and some things I have even more appreciation for now that I am working in very small spaces myself. 

Do you take all of the corals out when you do a WC?

Was scaping this complicated?

I understand what you mean about balancing the light needs of all the livestock, especially since they can only be moved very small amounts up or down. I'm finding it's easier to move the light itself than the corals. 

I love the way the Digis are all growing together. 

Thank you Weetie  nope, I don't usually remove the corals. Sometimes I move individual rocks to glue a frag or clean around and underneath, but that's about all. 

 

The scaping wasn't all that complicated because it was done in increments. I just wanted to create a sense of depth with a foreground, middle ground, and background, and some asymmetry with the top rock shifted to the right.

[JoeR]

7 minutes ago, natalia_la_loca said:

Correct, no dosing at all. The 100% water change is apparently enough for the corals. Current stock list is on the first post  

Thanks! Not sure how I missed that the list was in the first post though.

 

I see you have frogspawn- I thought/read that they're "aggressive"? Obviously that's not the case if you can keep one in the reefbowl? 

[natalia_la_loca]

Yup, they are aggressive. I placed the other corals so they aren't touching. Unlike some other aggressive corals like the chalice I traded in, the euphyllia doesn't seem to put out sweepers.

[SeaFurn]

So how much space should I keep between my hammer and other corals? 

[natalia_la_loca]

In my experience thus far...just enough so they aren't touching  I have zoas growing in its shade.

[kimberbee]

I silently follow along but wanted to chime in re: euphyllia! 

 

I have a large, 8-ish headed hammer, and for months I had an acan about 3-4 inches away on the sand bed. They co-existed happily!! However a couple weeks ago I noticed a VERY LONG hammer arm (could it have been a sweeper???) reaching into my acans!! Some damage was done, and I moved the acans, which are now happy again. 

 

Just keep an eye on things! But we're all used to doing that anyway! 

[natalia_la_loca]

That's a concern of mine for sure. My frogspawn has been a model citizen for almost a year, but that doesn't mean it will be forever.  I'm running a risk by having corals this close to it, and all I can do is monitor it and hope for the best.  One nice thing about it is that although it has more heads, it isn't really taking up any more space than it did when I first got it.  But I may eventually have to replace it with something more peaceful.

[YaBoyLaj]

gotta say, its been a while since i've updated myself in this thread and all i can really say is...wow! those gonis are amazing, i've heard straight up horror stories about those in massive established systems that barely make it, but yours are so happy and vibrant along with everything else, props to you