Teenyreef's IM40 Not-So-Teeny Tank - August FTS

[Mariaface]

I'm pretty sure Spongebob lives in that one.

[fishfreak0114]

I've never seen a yellow pineapple sponge before. Neat!

[drgibby]

10 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Thanks, everyone. I agree that it just seemed like he was never going to fully recover anyway so this is probably for the best.

 

I think I will try another six line instead of a yellow coris wrasse. Although the previous six line I got didn't make it past the first day, I think that was probably just bad luck. And a six line should be able to hold its own with the clowns better than a YCW.

 

The tank is doing pretty well although nitrates have dropped to less than 1, and a few of the sticks are suffering from lack of PE, I suspect as a result. I've halved the daily dose of carbon dosing and upped the amount of coral food to see if that helps.

 

Surprisingly, all the corals I got from @drgibby are still hanging in there! The yellowtips lost all the skin on one side, but not on the other. It still has good PE and color on that side. The Katropora has some bleaching on the base, which I think may be due to an alk change from the original tank and mine, since I keep alk fairly low at 7.5.

Im glad they are all still hanging in there!  That yellowtips is the oddest coral and needs such a constant alk.  You can see the burn on the mother from a couple months ago.  but every other side if it continues to grow.  I tried to keep alk at 8-9 but it constantly dipped into upper 6 lower 7

 

 

[teenyreef]

Here's a shot of the yellowtips I took tonight. It's doing much better now. If you didn't know half of it was burnt, you'd think it was doing well

 

 

[teenyreef]

I've been waiting to take an FTS after I clear out some of the frags on the frag racks, but I'm going on a mini vacation later this week, with a lot of work travel over the two weeks after that, so I don't think there's going to be a lot of change with the frag racks for a few weeks. So I went ahead and got some update pictures just to record progress.

 

2017-02-17 FTS:

 

2017-04-17 Top Down:

 

[xAyanex]

Sorry to hear about Bartley. 

 

Freckles is adorable, and so is that yellow pineapple sponge!

 

And wow, that's a lot of corals in one tank!! Lol

[teenyreef]

On 4/20/2017 at 3:34 AM, xAyanex said:

Sorry to hear about Bartley. 

 

Freckles is adorable, and so is that yellow pineapple sponge!

 

And wow, that's a lot of corals in one tank!! Lol

Thanks! I think I'll try to pick up a six line this week and see how it goes. Sponge Bob is still growing, he's one of my favorite inhabitants now

[teenyreef]

I just got back from vacation last week, and travel this week. I managed to fit in a quick water change in between, and things are still going pretty well overall. The new frags from @drgibby have continued to recover, which is very encouraging.

 

The Strawberry Fields acro from Cultivated Reef has continued to decline, and only has a few patches left. I pulled it off the rocks, where I think it may have been getting too much light, and put it on a frag plug. I did the same for the JF Fox Flame and the Ice Fire Echinata, which just haven't been thriving where I've had them. On the other hand, nearly every coral on the frag racks is doing great, which makes me think I may have the lighting up a little too high for the corals that are high on the rocks in the middle of the tank, right under the lights.

 

After I see how the corals do now that they're moved to the edges of the tank on the frag racks, I'll probably lower the intensity of the lighting by ten or twenty percent.

[teenyreef]

Good news, bad news time. Good news, the corals from @drgibby have all recovered quite nicely, especially the Katropora, which is growing and has plenty of PE. Bad news, the Katropora is almost completely green

 

But hey, I'll take good growth over dead corals any day of the week, and I'm going to continue to bring the iron levels down which should help with the overly green corals.

 

 

[Mariaface]

The Katropora will spring back! It prevails!

[markalot]

Sorry about the wrasse troubles Teeny,

 

For me the Kat gets similar colors in 400, 200, and 100 PAR, just varying intensity.  /shrug

[spectra]

Good to see growth! Iron levels ?

 

I just picked up a nice little rainbow or who knows millli at least it looked rainbowish  under the lights where I got it. Put it under the retro in my tank and well its green now  

[teenyreef]

12 hours ago, spectra said:

Good to see growth! Iron levels ?

 

I just picked up a nice little rainbow or who knows millli at least it looked rainbowish  under the lights where I got it. Put it under the retro in my tank and well its green now  

I'm sure it's iron levels - the iron levels in my Triton test were through the roof and I have no idea why, unless it was overdosing trace elements. But since then I've stopped all trace element dosing and I've been using a Poly-Filter. But I'm starting to think that something has somehow fallen into one of the back chambers and is rusting away. Or something.

 

Another example is the Mr. Pacman acro, it was mostly purple with a little green when I got it, and now it's mostly green. It's gotten a little purple back since I started the Polyfilter, though, so maybe there's hope. I've also started dosing Potassium since that was a little low in the Triton test, which may help too.

 

Here are the other corals I got from @drgibby, as you can see, they're all doing pretty well. The setosa has paled a little bit but it still growing.

 

 

Aussie Candlelight, also very green:

 

WWC Yellow Tips are more green than yellow, again, with the green thing

 

Garf Bonsai - I took about ten pictures and not one of them came out in focus 

 

The stylo is bouncing back quickly, with lots of new growth

 

 

[spectra]

Looks good though!

 

My Garf croaked a while ago one of y favorite corals................

[teenyreef]

1 hour ago, spectra said:

Looks good though!

 

My Garf croaked a while ago one of y favorite corals................

Thanks! I'm looking forward to it growing out. I had one in the 10g before the big sps crash and it was one of my favorites too.

 

A few other corals - this is the tricolor acro I got from @natalia_la_loca. The bubblegum digitata is doing well too, but it's on a lower frag rack where it's hard to photograph. I'll get a picture of it after I glue it up.

 

 

And in spite of the overall overly green look of most of the corals, the cali tort has colored up just right. Go figure...

 

[teenyreef]

I decided to try another wrasse in hopes of better luck. I found a nice fat six line at the lfs the other day, and he's been out swimming around and eating consistently for two days now, so I think he's going to be ok! Of course the down side of his being so active is that it's really hard to get a good picture.

 

Meet Seymour:

 

[teenyreef]

On 4/30/2017 at 2:22 AM, Mariaface said:

The Katropora will spring back! It prevails!

Thanks! It definitely didn't have any trouble coming back from being all discolored and with no PE. So I know that with the right lighting and water conditions it should be fine.

[teenyreef]

19 hours ago, markalot said:

Sorry about the wrasse troubles Teeny,

 

For me the Kat gets similar colors in 400, 200, and 100 PAR, just varying intensity.  /shrug

That's actually good to know, as it helps confirm that the problem isn't the intensity of the lighting, it's probably more related to trace elements.

 

Other parameters are pretty good. Nitrates are stable right around 1 after dropping as low as 0.5, and phosphates hover around .03 to .06 most of the time. Alk is steady at about 7.6, and calcium is about 450.

 

Magnesium has been very high though, at about 1500 most of the time. After doing some research, I've found that the Aquaforest salt actually has much higher magnesium than they claim, even in batches where they've measured parameters. For example, the batch report on my latest bucket claims that magnesium was measured at 1320, but I measure it at about 1500. I would assume it's a problem with my testing, except for two things:

1. When I sent my water in for a Triton test, it measured at about 1500.

2. Others have reported the same thing with Aquaforest salt, including measurements with multiple test kits as well as Triton (ICP) testing.

 

Now high magnesium isn't much of a problem, but snails don't like it, and I've had problems with snails in all three tanks as a result. They're consistently sluggish, and they tend to die after a few months. 

 

So as of today, I've switched over to Red Sea Blue Bucket, which has the best balance of parameters close to natural sea water, especially alkalinity.

[teenyreef]

I'm off on a work trip to San Diego this week. I stayed up late getting the water changed in all three tanks and while I was at it, I glued up a bunch of corals that had been on the frag racks. 

 

I also moved the blue kenya tree to a spot in the back corner. It was getting big enough to reach some of the acros on the top of the rocks. I'll either let it continue to grow and provide a nice backdrop for the tank, or trim it back and put a smaller frag in the front. 

 

I'm a little nervous about moving all these corals right before going out of town but it needed to be done anyway. 

[WV Reefer]

4 hours ago, teenyreef said:

I decided to try another wrasse in hopes of better luck. I found a nice fat six line at the lfs the other day, and he's been out swimming around and eating consistently for two days now, so I think he's going to be ok! Of course the down side of his being so active is that it's really hard to get a good picture.

 

Meet Seymour:

 

Suddenly Seymour!

[teenyreef]

On 5/1/2017 at 4:45 AM, WV Reefer said:

Suddenly Seymour!

Yes! 

[teenyreef]

My work trip this week was to San Diego, and my meeting finished up early today, so I found myself with several hours to kill. Since I'd never been to Aqua SD before, I decided to visit. Will was kind enough to take me up to the private frag bins upstairs and helped me cherry pick some nice acans. They're all wrapped up in a cheap Walmart cooler packed in the dirty clothes in my suitcase.

 

I'll be home in less than twelve hours so they should make the trip just fine. 

[frahny]

26 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

My work trip this week was to San Diego, and my meeting finished up early today, so I found myself with several hours to kill. Since I'd never been to Aqua SD before, I decided to visit. Will was kind enough to take me up to the private frag bins upstairs and helped me cherry pick some nice acans. They're all wrapped up in a cheap Walmart cooler packed in the dirty clothes in my suitcase.

 

I'll be home in less than twelve hours so they should make the trip just fine. 

Mmmmmm I sense new pictures soon?

[ninjamyst]

sounds more like the work meeting was something you slotted in during a trip to Aqua SD...

[teenyreef]

23 minutes ago, frahny said:

Mmmmmm I sense new pictures soon?

10 minutes ago, ninjamyst said:

sounds more like the work meeting was something you slotted in during a trip to Aqua SD...

Ha ha, I told Will I flew out from Virginia just visit him