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


teenyreef

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On 2/3/2018 at 11:51 PM, rO.oster said:

I was glad to read that your candy cane shrimp showed back up!  Tank looks incredible, I cant wait to see the plating montis start to weave and spiral up, I want them all!!!

Yeah, it was a big relief to see him again!

 

I need to trim the big Idaho Grape monti. That will help it start to curl up, and also let the other ones around it grow better. Monti caps are awesome but they require constant trimming in nano tanks ;)

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On 2/4/2018 at 7:33 AM, DaveFason said:

Looking good. I wonder if I should make a two bulb kit... :huh:

Ha ha, maybe so! Make a 12" one and I'll buy it for my 10g :lol:

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5 hours ago, silvertoe said:

Just how!?!?!

 

:lol:

4 hours ago, YHSublime said:

Your Acan garden looks really happy

Thanks! Yes, they are doing well. I'm always worried about them getting too much light and losing their colors. They've lost some color since they were new but so far they look OK. But the new T5 lights may be too much...I'm thinking I might move them into the corner where the gsp is, just to give them a little more shade.

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Stupid reefing tricks story time...after I took the last round of pictures, I felt like something was missing in the middle levels of the rocks. Eventually I figured out the JF Brain Freeze montipora was gone, and I realized I hadn't seen it in a bout a week :o

Which confirms my theory that the more expensive the coral, the more likely it is that weird and unexplainable things will inevitably happen to it. Here's a picture of it where it was once, looking all nice and pink:

JF Brain Freeze Montipora

 

So..I spent close to an hour digging through the sand underneath the mounting location. I cleared out lots of evil hair worms and stirred up a lot of ####, and eventually I found it buried deep in the sand. Amazingly, it was still alive, so I mounted it in a different location near the dendros, thinking it would get better light there. I took a picture just to document the condition it was in when I found it. You can see a lot of detritus in the water still...

JF Brain Freeze Montipora

 

Tonight, I was cleaning the glass when I noticed...you guessed it...it was gone again! This time I dug up the gsp (cleaned out still more evil hair worms) and the sand all around acans. I finally found it again buried deep in the sand. And it's still alive. At least for now :rolleyes:

 

Oh, and while I was digging around, I dislodged the RG Poinsettia Favia :rant:

 

So now both frags are sitting in a corner of the tank on the sand. I'm going to drain off about 20 gallons of water to expose the rock where they need to be glued, so I can be sure of getting a good bond this time.

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3 minutes ago, rO.oster said:

So how the heck is that coral getting buried?? :blink:

 

 

Well, I do have sand sifters like a conch, candy cane shrimp, and yellow watchman goby.

 

But I also stir up the sand about every other day with the turkey baster to clear off some light cyano. So it was probably me that was burying it. I think it just wasn't securely glued and the snails knocked it off.

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On 2/5/2018 at 8:50 PM, teenyreef said:

:lol:

Thanks! Yes, they are doing well. I'm always worried about them getting too much light and losing their colors. They've lost some color since they were new but so far they look OK. But the new T5 lights may be too much...I'm thinking I might move them into the corner where the gsp is, just to give them a little more shade.

 

I say if it ain't broke, don't fix it. I've got a ton of acans under straight T5 for 9 hours a day, no shade, and they love it, and haven't lost any color. I had a local hobbyist give me all of their acans as well, as they were dying in their tank, but are growing back. If you see a color loss, then move them, but I wouldn't be reactive if nothing is really happening. Tank looks great! 

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Warning: long rambling retrospective on what's been working for me over the last several months. To make up for it I promise I'll post pictures of corals afterwards. But if you don't care about all this stuff, feel free to skip ahead to the pretty pictures, I know that's why you're here :D

 

It's been five months since I started dosing ATI Elements, and four months since the last water change. On the right side of the tank, I've been running a filter pad in chamber one and a Brightwell Xport No3 brick cut into pieces to fit into chamber two. On the left side, I've been running the Tunze 9004 skimmer. Per the ATI recommendations, I run carbon for three to five days at the beginning of every month. And sometimes I forget to take it out until the beginning of the next month, oops.

 

The ATI Elements kit is pretty cheap ($20 for the small kit, which seems to last me about three months), and it's easy to mix up, just dump each one into a bucket with a power head to mix it up. The only downside I had to get used to is that it's not concentrated like the Seachem Fusion I used to use, and I had to get bigger dosing containers to avoid running out every month. And of course it took a while to adjust the doser to the higher dosing levels. 

 

In addition to the three-part ATI elements (Ca, Kh, Mg, and associated trace elements for each), I've been dosing NoPox to keep nitrates and phosphates down.

 

Overall I've been very pleased. There are no signs of problems due to the lack of water changes, and after the first couple months I was able to stop any additional phosphate reductions like gfo and Phosphate-Rx.

 

Nitrates are readily controlled using NoPox and the skimmer, but I'm still fine-turning the NoPox dose. For a while my nitrates were around 2, and I was concerned they were a little low, so in October I reduced the NoPox dose, and later added a second chunk of Xport brick. Nitrates bounced around between 8 and 15 from October through the new year, which was about where I wanted them. But I started to get some serious dark brown turf-like algae all over all the rocks, especially in the shaded areas. So at the beginning of January I increased the NoPox dose. Nitrates are back around 1 or 2, which worried me at first...but the algae is clearly dying, and there's no sign that the corals are bothered by the reduced nitrate level. 

 

Phosphates, on the other hand, have averaged around .02 continuously, regardless of the changes in nitrate levels, with the exception of the last two weeks. As of my last measurement they were at .04.

 

Note - I'm not chasing numbers with this dosing regime. In fact, I'd like to wean the tank off of NoPox entirely, but that probably won't happen with the number and size of the fish in the tank. So my strategy is to adjust the level of NoPox to control both Nitrates and Phosphates in response to what I observe in the tank. The two things I'm trying to avoid are too much nuisance algae (nutrients too high, and/or nitrates and phosphates out of balance), or sps colors fading significantly (nutrients too low).

 

One of the main reasons I decided to try the ATI Elements approach was that I was seeing "wrong" colors in many of the sps, specifically, things were green that shouldn't be. One theory I had for this was that I had trace element issues. Triton test results indicated very  high levels of iron and aluminum in the tank, and iron in particular is known to enhance green colors. And of course aluminum isn't good for corals, although what level is really "bad" is uncertain. There were also a few trace elements like potassium that were slightly low, which could also be part of the problem. 

 

To get rid of the unwanted elements, I did three things: 

1. Polyfilter - I used these several times over the last year and they seemed to help but didn't eliminate everything.

2. Several large(ish) water changes in September after starting ATI Elements.

3. A new product called Panta Lith, which is supposed to help remove many heavy elements including some that aren't removed by Triton's comparable product (I forget the name)

 

After the September water changes, I didn't make any more water changes, and dosed Panta Lith twice, once in November, and once in December. When I tested in January, all of the heavy elements I had seen before were gone. I never did find out what caused the high levels of iron in the first place, but I'm cautiously optimistic that the problem is fixed.

 

To address the lack of desirable trace elements, I had previously tried several different options such as Red Sea Colors, but it was haphazard, hard to determine how much to dose of what, and a royal pain to dose multiple bottles of trace elements on a daily basis. So I decided to try ATI Elements to give me a consistent, automated dosing approach for trace elements, along with regular testing to see how things were working.

 

After starting ATI, everything pretty much fell in line. The only element out of line was vanadium. So I bought a bottle of vanadium from ATI and dosed it according to their recommendations which took care of the problem. I realize that there's no real way to tell if it really matters at all if vanadium is low, so I admit in this case I'm just chasing a number. But since my goal was to see what effect getting all the trace elements at recommended levels would have, I thought it was worth a little experimentation.

 

The other things that affect coral coloration are lighting and frag maturity. After adding the T5 lights recently, I definitely saw an effect. But at the same time, some of my frags have gone from tiny nubs to actual small colonies with lots of new growth. And I've read (and observed) that while a small frag may lose color or turn green, the new growth may be the "right" color even if the original portion of the frag never changes color again.

 

So to summarize what I've change that seems to have helped with coral colors:

- Eliminated undesirable elements like iron and aluminum

- Adjusted trace elements to "recommended" levels

- Added T5 lighting

- Let frags grow out more

 

Things haven't been perfect by any means. I've lost a couple frags, and I have some damaged corals due to stinging or bleaching. But overall I think the changes I've made have been successful, and I'm looking forward to seeing how continued acclimation to the T5 lights changes things.

 

Now for the pictures...but first I need to go check my alkalinity levels ;)

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Interesting! You may get your sexy red planet after all! 

 

I need to go back and review my triton results, looking at trace elements particularly. I’ve just been dosing Ca/Alk with monthly water changes, but my colors could see improvement everywhere. 

 

Not it sure if I’m willing to do all the testing though ?

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4 minutes ago, HarryPotter said:

Interesting! You may get your sexy red planet after all! 

 

I need to go back and review my triton results, looking at trace elements particularly. I’ve just been dosing Ca/Alk with monthly water changes, but my colors could see improvement everywhere. 

 

Not it sure if I’m willing to do all the testing though ?

I honestly can't say how much difference it really made relative to everything else. And of course if could just be that the key is for the trace element levels to remaing unchanged. Just like we've figured out the it's more important to have steady levels for nitrates, phosphates, alk, and calcium than it is to hit certain magic numbers.

 

But it does make sense to me that a significant deficiency of some of the better understood elements like potassium, or a significant excess of something like iron, could have a significant effect on color. And maybe on growth, too.

 

Btw, I should have mentioned, while color is improved, and many corals are growing well, I still don't have much PE on most corals. I've never been able to figure out why. Nutrients are OK, flow is great, and now I've eliminated the excess heavy metals which was the main thing I thought might be causing it.

 

 It's possible the angel is nipping at the corals, but I've watched the tank day and night and never once seen him do it. So it's still a mystery to me.

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OK, time for some pictures omgomgomg

 

The dendro babies are getting bigger. They're close to the size the original head was when I first got it.

20180203-untitled-069.jpg

 

The blue kenya tree leather has gotten big again, too. It's time to cut it back or move it again, as it's stinging the blueberry shortcake acro nearby. It doesn't grow nearly as fast as a regular kenya tree, but it still gets big.

20180203-untitled-024-2.jpg

 

Likewise, the duncans are big and fluffy. I never bother to feed them now, they just live off of light and whatever they catch from the water column. 

20180203-untitled-064.jpg

 

The plate coral (Project X fungia) is doing great, it's about four inches across now, and it's encrusting on to the rocks. It's hard to see in this picture, but at the bottom right corner, it's growing out a little piece that's expanding onto the rocks below. Laura from Reefgen told me it would encrust and frag itself when it gets bigger, so I think that's what I'm seeing.

20180203-untitled-066.jpg

 

These zoas and palys are growing well, although I don't think the colors are as vivid as they were several months ago. I'm not sure if it's because they get more light than they used to, or less. The zoas on the main zoa rock (partly visible on the right) are also not as good as they once were, with less color, and some are not growing well at all, due to some kind of fungus/algae growing on them. Peroxide dips seem to help so I'm going to start doing them more regularly.

20180203-untitled-031-2.jpg

 

The mummy eye chalice is growing well, but after adding the T5's, it turned from green to partly yellow. It's pretty, but I think it's a sign of too much light too fast. Hopefully cutting back the intensity and duration last week will help.

20180203-untitled-017-2.jpg

 

The acan garden continues to do well, popping out new babies all the time. I'm keeping an anxious eye on the colors with the additional light. The red ones on the far left used to be rainbows, but now they're pretty much straight red now. Same thing for the orange ones to their right, although they still have some rainbow colors on their sides.

20180203-untitled-015-2-Edit.jpg

 

Well, that's it for the softies and lps. SPS coming up next!

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The plating montiporas are doing great! I'm going to trim the Idaho Grape (the purple one on top) and the red one, to give the other ones underneath some more light and room to grow. The two in the back (Seasons Greetings and Reef Raft Tropic Thunder) don't really show as much contrasting color in their polyps as I think they should, and I think that's due to not enough light, as they're in the back of the tank, and there's no reflection from the black back. Hopefully the more even lighting from the T5s will help with that.

 

Oh, and the skunk cleaner shrimp is very entertaining, he likes to be right in the middle of whatever's going on all the time.

20180203-untitled-063.jpg

 

Going clockwise from the top: bubblegum montipora, Carolinia (deepwater acro), some little scraps of a really orange polyp montipora (I think it's finally starting to make a comeback, yay!), Mr. Pacman acro, Tyree Pink Lemonade (far lower left corner), JF Red Hot Setosa (far upper left corner), and strawberry shortcake (right below the bubblegum monti). I'm especially excited about the shortcake because it got bleached out and has now colored back up.

20180203-untitled-059.jpg

 

The idaho grape monticap and the Mr. Pacman are having an interesting fight. The monticap hasn't been successful in stinging the acro, so it's just trying to go right over it. This will be part of what I need to trim back, along with the spot where it's trying to fight with the orange monticap.

You can also see a few of the inferno mushrooms just above the red monticap. They've stopped growing so fast and have lost a little color, like the zoas.

20180203-untitled-058.jpg

 

Tyree pink lemonade, with the burning bananna stylo encrusting next to it. The stylo is a little shaded so it doesn't have the bright yellow color yet, but I'm sure I'll see it as it encrusts onto spots with more light.

20180203-untitled-056.jpg

 

Red dragon acro. This guy has grown super fast, and got a little bleached in the process. The brown stuff is algae, which I later blew off. 

20180203-untitled-055.jpg

 

Hawkins Echinata - growing slow but steady.

20180203-untitled-054.jpg

 

Oregon tort - growing slowly (like OT's tend to do) but encrusting nicely. Still stubbornly green instead of deep blue. Sigh...maybe I need to move it higher where it will get more light. But I'm going to wait and see what effect the addition of the T5's has. Also, this is one of the few acros with any PE at all, so I have hope.

20180203-untitled-048.jpg

 

The WWC Yellow Tips acro definitely got bleached from the T5's. But at the same time, it started growing yellow tips for the first time ever. I took this picture four days ago, and it's looking better already. Note: I "think" the brown stuff on this coral, and on the red dragon acro, is some kind of algae. But it also looks like it might be some kind of bugs. If anyone better at bug ID than me knows what it is, let me know. I'm a little nervous...

20180203-untitled-047.jpg

 

WWC aussie candlelight - it's getting stung near the base by that evil hair worm living in the rock on the upper left. Time to get out the syringe of boiling water...

The sunset montipora is next to the candlelight, and the birdsnest is on the far right. It's doing really well, too.

Oh, and there's that shrimp again :lol:

20180203-untitled-046.jpg

 

The blue stylo is growing out very nicely now. Fortunately there's plenty of room for it in the back of the tank.

20180203-untitled-041.jpg

 

This is the CR electric miyagi tort. Growth is really starting to take off now that it's fully encrusted.

20180203-untitled-040.jpg

 

the katropora is on the verge of busting out all over! It's really well encrusted and you can see lots of growth buds. Best of all, it's not all green any more :)

20180203-untitled-039.jpg

 

The green slimer, on the other hand, continues to stubbornly encrust. And encrust some more. Maybe someday it will decide to grow up. In the meantime, the color is really nice. This is one of the ones that should have been green but wasn't (it was bright highlighter yellow).

20180203-untitled-038.jpg

 

 

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By the way, the green banded goby is still around - for a while I though he had disappeared. Turns out he was just a really good hider. Now that he's a little bigger, he lives in a hole in the rocks and comes out all the time.

20180203-untitled-051.jpg

 

The yellow watchman goby and the candy cane shrimp now hang out on the far left of the rocks. It's hard to see them there, unless I'm looking straight down from the top.

20180203-untitled-030-2.jpg

 

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WOW, as always, amazing set of pics @teenyreef!   I like your version of a Monti Island :lol:.  The layers of colors are meshing in very nicely.  The comeback orange monti looks like a starburst. I think that BoP deserves a spot on your SPS feature, let's see it. ;)

 

On the livestock front, I still wait for my candy cane pistol to come out of hiding, I hear the snapping everyday, but never see him/her, sigh.  I don't even know if he found my YWG to pair up.  How long did it take yours to stop hiding? 

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Tank looks amazing, despite the "incorrect" colours. Never knew about how trace elements affects colour. And I would also love to find out what gives good PE, because I'm in the same boat! Glad you joined the T5 hybrid club, cus I got my inspiration from Mark too!

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On 2/8/2018 at 4:57 PM, Orangutran said:

Tank looks amazing, despite the "incorrect" colours. Never knew about how trace elements affects colour. And I would also love to find out what gives good PE, because I'm in the same boat! Glad you joined the T5 hybrid club, cus I got my inspiration from Mark too!

There's a lot of folklore about which elements affect which colors. Red Sea has a list in the manual for their Colors program. I don't know how much of it is truly "proven", but there seem to be pretty consistent reported results for at least a few of them. But it's not clear if you need a certain level, or if you just need to make sure the levels aren't deficient.

 

I've been wanting T5 hybrids for a long time, but I never found single bulb fixtures that were small enough to place on either side of the wide quad. When I saw what @markalot used, I was sold immediately!

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On 2/7/2018 at 11:27 AM, micoastreefing said:

WOW, as always, amazing set of pics @teenyreef!   I like your version of a Monti Island :lol:.  The layers of colors are meshing in very nicely.  The comeback orange monti looks like a starburst. I think that BoP deserves a spot on your SPS feature, let's see it. ;)

 

On the livestock front, I still wait for my candy cane pistol to come out of hiding, I hear the snapping everyday, but never see him/her, sigh.  I don't even know if he found my YWG to pair up.  How long did it take yours to stop hiding? 

Thanks! My candy cane shrimp didn't come out for months. I mean, like three or four months. So don't worry too much. As long as you hear snapping he'll come out eventually. My theory is that they spend a lot of time up front building their cave system and they don't really come out until they feel secure in their new home.

 

The orange monti was a freebie from Cultivated Reef, and I really wasn't impressed for a long time because it was just kind of a blah orange/red, and then it started to recede anyway. But since it started coming back and the polyps started coming out, I'm really loving it. Hopefully it will start to grow faster like the rest of the monticaps.

 

As far as the BoP goes, I just happen to have a picture :D

This is one of my favorite corals in this tank.

20180203-untitled-053-Edit.jpg

 

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On 2/7/2018 at 10:47 AM, debbeach13 said:

Every thing looks fantastic as usual. Great pictures and I enjoyed the long rambling retrospect. 

Thanks! And thanks especially for sticking with me through the monologue :happy:

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