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

[teenyreef]

14 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

Beautiful. 

I really love the way you have the rockwork in here, I think it's perfect for this tank. 

 

14 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

Really love the individual close-ups and everything is looking great. 

I think the Rainbow Knockout Favia is my favorite of all you posted, though I like the Blasto and Bubblegum Monti from natalia as well. 

Thanks, Weetie! I'm still thinking about doing some additional rockwork for the zoas on the right, but I've been pretty happy with the rockwork overall.

 

Those favias are some of my favorites too. I almost killed them when I got them because I put them next to the mummy eye chalice on the frag rack. By the time I rescued it, there were only two polyps left. But it's growing fast now 

[teenyreef]

1 hour ago, KJoFan said:

Looking great! Can you do a quick recap on what maintenance or methods of control are for nutrients? Are you keeping N & P levels pretty reasonable? It would appear so based on your corals.

 

I find I'm having some issue with nutrient export in my IM40, so looking for some ideas from others with the same tank.

My nitrates used to run between two and three, but the sps started getting pale. I cut back on the carbon dosing (NoPox) and now it's usually about 8, maybe 12 at most. I use PhosphateRx, two drops a day, to control phosphates, and they are consistently around .01 to .03. 

Maintenance is a weekly water change, between 5 and 8 gallons depending on whether I feel like dragging out a second bucket. At least once a month I put the siphon tube down in the back chambers, blow into it to stir up the water really well, and then siphon out all I can get (with the pumps off of course). I stir up the sand and blow off the rocks once a week.

I run a floss pad, changed twice a week, and carbon. No gfo since I used PhosphateRx.

I run the Tunze 9004 skimmer very dry. It can run for a week or more without filling the cup. I hope this helps!

By the way, the duncans were back to normal today! So either they mysteriously recovered on their own, or they just needed food...

 

[KJoFan]

23 minutes ago, teenyreef said:

My nitrates used to run between two and three, but the sps started getting pale. I cut back on the carbon dosing (NoPox) and now it's usually about 8, maybe 12 at most. I use PhosphateRx, two drops a day, to control phosphates, and they are consistently around .01 to .03. 

Maintenance is a weekly water change, between 5 and 8 gallons depending on whether I feel like dragging out a second bucket. At least once a month I put the siphon tube down in the back chambers, blow into it to stir up the water really well, and then siphon out all I can get (with the pumps off of course). I stir up the sand and blow off the rocks once a week.

I run a floss pad, changed twice a week, and carbon. No gfo since I used PhosphateRx.

I run the Tunze 9004 skimmer very dry. It can run for a week or more without filling the cup. I hope this helps!

By the way, the duncans were back to normal today! So either they mysteriously recovered on their own, or they just needed food...

That does indeed help. I've tried to stay away from anything to assist with nutrient control, but appears I might have to go back. I've used NoPox in the past and it kept nitrates somewhere down near 5, sometimes 2.5. P stayed elevated so I tried a dash of lanthanum chloride in my top off and bottomed out P to 0. Whoops. So, now I'm doing nothing and hopefully letting them balance again. 

 

Isn't PhosphateRX a variation of lanthanum chloride? or am I thinking of something else? I might have to give it a try though. I can handle a few drops of something. I just hate the yo-yo effect some things can have, like gfo.

 

I am also running the Tunze 9004 now, only for the past 2 weeks so we'll see how that goes and am just now setting up AWC with my DOS for this tank, to change out 4-5 gallons weekly. 

 

Sorry to clutter up your thread with my IM40 issues.

[teenyreef]

Yes, PhosphateRx is lanthanum chloride, just packaged and labelled for aquarium use. You do have to be super careful with it, as you found out, because it can eliminate phosphate completely and in a hurry which is really bad for the corals.

In theory, NoPox should eventually lower both nitrates and phosphates, but at least in my tanks, it doesn't work that way. Lowering the phosphate has made a huge difference in the color of the corals.

[teenyreef]

I took a few more while I had the camera out for the duncans. 

Blueberry Shortcake acro - this one is a good example of how the colors of some corals are off, mostly shifted from blue to green. In this case I get more of a purple color instead of the original blue.

 

Same for the blue digitata. Which is growing like crazy by the way

 

Electric Miyagi tort from Cultivated Reef:

 

Mummy eye chalice:

 

[gone_PHiSHin]

where do you get that setosa btw? 

 

so ORANGE

[KJoFan]

22 hours ago, teenyreef said:

Yes, PhosphateRx is lanthanum chloride, just packaged and labelled for aquarium use. You do have to be super careful with it, as you found out, because it can eliminate phosphate completely and in a hurry which is really bad for the corals.

In theory, NoPox should eventually lower both nitrates and phosphates, but at least in my tanks, it doesn't work that way. Lowering the phosphate has made a huge difference in the color of the corals.

I too have found NoPox to not really do much for Phosphates except get the N to P out of balance. Then again, so did the lanthanum chloride, just in the opposite way. I'm going to pick it back up but only by dosing a drop or two directly into the filter floss and go from there.

[teenyreef]

2 hours ago, KJoFan said:

I too have found NoPox to not really do much for Phosphates except get the N to P out of balance. Then again, so did the lanthanum chloride, just in the opposite way. I'm going to pick it back up but only by dosing a drop or two directly into the filter floss and go from there.

I found the same thing. I think that's part of how my 10g tank got so out of balance earlier this year.

23 hours ago, gone_PHiSHin said:

where do you get that setosa btw? 

 

so ORANGE

The problem is it's supposed to be hot pink 

But even orange it's still pretty and it really stands out in the tank. I got this one from the lfs, but it looks exactly like the Jason Fox Red Hot Setosa I got from @drgibby.

[DaveFason]

8 hours ago, teenyreef said:

I found the same thing. I think that's part of how my 10g tank got so out of balance earlier this year.

The problem is it's supposed to be hot pink 

But even orange it's still pretty and it really stands out in the tank. I got this one from the lfs, but it looks exactly like the Jason Fox Red Hot Setosa I got from @drgibby.

I don't think setosa is ever going to be "pink". You can blast it with light and go ULN and you will get it to look "pink". They are all a insane orange. 

 

But everything is coming together. I recently had a coral that as been with me for ~ eight years that has been greenish for a while. In the last week things changed dramatically and now I have the white color with purple tips. No idea what or how I did this but glad to see it happy. I am sure the same will happen with a few of yours shortly.  

 

-Dave

[RollaJase]

Tank is looking sensational mate. As always, your pictures are stunning.

[teenyreef]

22 hours ago, RollaJase said:

Tank is looking sensational mate. As always, your pictures are stunning.

Thanks, Jase!

On 8/17/2017 at 8:58 AM, DaveFason said:

I don't think setosa is ever going to be "pink". You can blast it with light and go ULN and you will get it to look "pink". They are all a insane orange. 

 

But everything is coming together. I recently had a coral that as been with me for ~ eight years that has been greenish for a while. In the last week things changed dramatically and now I have the white color with purple tips. No idea what or how I did this but glad to see it happy. I am sure the same will happen with a few of yours shortly.  

 

-Dave

True, but the frags I have in the other two tanks are more pink and less orange, if you know what I mean. The one in the 10g is super bright especially under the blues.

 

One of the most satisfying things about keeping sps is seeing how they can change colors so dramatically due to seemingly minor changes in conditions

[teenyreef]

Speaking of sps colors...I wanted to get a new picture of the bubblegum montipora @natalia_la_loca shared with me, just to see how it compares in this tank and in her reef bowl.

 

And, since @DaveFason and I have decided Macro Monday needs to be a real thing, here's my entry. A little late, but, hey, it's still Monday!

 

[teenyreef]

A couple more macros that turned out decent...

Blue stylo:

 

Green monticap:

 

[Felicia]

Wow, Teeny!  I am behind and man did you really do some impressive things with this tank while I've been gone.  The colors in here are just stunning!  I love the pops of neon green distributed throughout the tank and the combination of brightly colored fish.  I noticed the bright yellow watchman goby right in the center of one of your photos.  That is a fish that is definitely on my stocking list for my new tank.  I love those guys and yours is super vibrant.  Also, just wow on the color and PE on the SPS.  You have some serious SPS keeping skills!  Also, insane macro photography skills! 

[teenyreef]

On 8/22/2017 at 2:18 AM, Felicia said:

Wow, Teeny!  I am behind and man did you really do some impressive things with this tank while I've been gone.  The colors in here are just stunning!  I love the pops of neon green distributed throughout the tank and the combination of brightly colored fish.  I noticed the bright yellow watchman goby right in the center of one of your photos.  That is a fish that is definitely on my stocking list for my new tank.  I love those guys and yours is super vibrant.  Also, just wow on the color and PE on the SPS.  You have some serious SPS keeping skills!  Also, insane macro photography skills! 

Thank you so much! Freckles, the yellow watchman goby, is a great fish for this tank. I rarely can get a picture of his shrimp buddy, but they are lots of fun to watch together as they dig out everything under the rocks.

[teenyreef]

...

For those of you following along in my 10g thread, I recently ordered five green banded gobies from Ebay. And when they were shipped, the seller added another five as a thank you gift! So I put two in the 10g, four in the 30g frag tank, and four in this tank. However, as is typical for young small gobies, they are super excellent hiders so I haven't seen even one of them since putting them in the tank yesterday. It will probably be a few weeks or even months before they are out all the time, but once they mature a bit, they are typically pretty fearless even with much bigger fish in the tank.

 

I turned off the pumps during feeding tonight to try and entice them to come out, but no luck. But I did notice something interesting on one of the zoa frags after the zoas closed up during feeding. This rock is very old, and the zoas on it are survivors from the alkalinity dosing crash in my 4g pico. Either there was a tiny bit of sps frag that survived on the rock, or a tiny frag from one of the corals in this tank somehow got attached, but there is a nice booger-sized chunk of sps growing on the frag rock! You can really tell how small it is when you see the closed zoa polyps next to it.

 

And since I had the macro lens out, I took a few more macro shots of some of the zoas and palys. In comparing these to the shots I took last fall, they are still pretty but have lost some of the intense color they had back then. I think this is because the PAR is not as high on the sand bed as it was then.

These are the zoas I got from Reefgen, I never did figure out their name!

 

Aquafresh vice zoas, from Aquascapers. I'm still sad they've never reopened their store...

 

Raptors Rainbow, from Legendary Corals:

 

[teenyreef]

I also got a new phone, a Galaxy S8. I did some experiments taking raw pictures (.DNG) and then adjusting the white balance in Lightroom. The phone doesn't take good pictures on it's own, the white balance is just too far off. Interestingly, the same phone takes good pictures of the 30g tank - it's just the difference in spectrum with the hybrid T5/LED Nanobox I have on that tank. I will probably play with the photo setting on the light to see if I can get good cell phone pics, but that's a job for another day.

 

In the meantime, I was able to take the raw picture and turn it into something that pretty much looks like what I see with the naked eye. It's still not great, though, as many of the colors are a little bit too saturated. Still, it's nice to know I can get reasonably good pictures if I'm in a hurry and just want to use the cell phone.

 

[teenyreef]

I found one of the gobies, he's taken up residence right up front on one of the pistol shrimp's caves. 

 

[vlangel]

That FTS is very nice.

[Weetabix7]

9 hours ago, teenyreef said:

I found one of the gobies, he's taken up residence right up front on one of the pistol shrimp's caves. 

 

 

I love this video!!

[teenyreef]

I glued all the zoa rocks onto and into bigger rocks today. Pictures to come later tonight, but I took a quick cell phone pic just to document what they looked like before I destroyed it all 

 

[teenyreef]

On 8/25/2017 at 8:35 AM, vlangel said:

That FTS is very nice.

Thanks, Dawn!

On 8/25/2017 at 8:45 AM, Weetabix7 said:

 

I love this video!!

They are so cute - I'm going to try to get a better picture of him tonight.

[teenyreef]

Things have mostly opened back up now, so I took some pictures. I ended up making a peninsula of rocks that curls back around itself, to make kind of a zoa lagoon. There are actually three big rocks built up out of little rocks. One for the zoas, one for the bigger zoa/palys that I really like, and once for the nuclear green and blue palys, which are true palys and tend to spread like crazy. Keeping separate rocks will help keep the fast growing palys from taking over the zoas. I hope...

 

Front view of the zoas:

 

I took a different approach to gluing up these rocks, using Reef Welder.

 

You heat a little bit of water in the microwave, and pour in some of the beads. They turn clear in a minute or two, at which point they form a soft, easily shaped plastic.

 

This is the first time I tried it, and although I like it, it's not perfect. The working time is very short, about a minute, maybe two minutes tops. If you wait longer, the plastic is still moldable, but it doesn't stick to the rocks.

After it sits for a few minutes, it hardens up and everything is stuck together.

Due to the short working time, I had to heat up my little cup of water probably 15 times before I was done. It only takes a minute to heat up the water, and another minute to heat up the beads, so it's quick work, but still kind of a pain.

A nice benefit is that it doesn't make the skimmer go crazy, like super glue does.

Here's the zoa rock all glued up:

 

And the "desirable palys" rock:

 

I used a mix of the existing rocks and a few new rock chunks. So overall the zoas are up on rocks now, instead of being down in the sand bed. Here's a front view of the zoa rock:

 

 

[fishfreak0114]

It looks great!  I like how you separated them onto 3 different rocks.

[teenyreef]

37 minutes ago, fishfreak0114 said:

It looks great!  I like how you separated them onto 3 different rocks.

Thanks! I think it will also help with cleaning, because I can easily move the rocks around, or even pull them out for dipping.

 

I took a few more pictures tonight, here's an updated FTS:

 

Top down:

 

Freckles, the yellow watchman goby:

 

Oh, and look, there's a green banded goby in his little cave below the acans:

 

Scary, the sole remaining bangaii cardinal:

 

Boris, the yellow coris wrasse. Blurry is his natural state 

 

Humphrey, one of the two clowns...or is this one Dilbert? After having these two for years, I still can't remember which one is which...

 

Sunset, the coral beauty angelfish.

 

I didn't get a picture of Seymour, the six line wrasse. I'll try again tomorrow!