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

[DaveFason]

I found the BRS to be really interesting too. What they don't say as well is the amount of variables that most people add. Water movement, refraction, putting holding sensors wrong, etc. After that add that all the sensors seem to have flaws! 

 

Hope the tank is doing well John. 

 

-Dave 

[ninjamyst]

9 hours ago, teenyreef said:

I pulled the remnants of the rbta out tonight. It just kept getting smaller and smaller and finally melted down. I'm sad that I couldn't save it...but is it bad that I'm already eyeing the spot where it was and thinking about all the other corals that can go there? 

That sucks.   What are you planning to replace it with? 

[teenyreef]

28 minutes ago, ninjamyst said:

That sucks.   What are you planning to replace it with? 

Probably more of the frags I have on the racks around the edges of the tank. Maybe the mummy eye chalice...I haven't decided yet.

2 hours ago, DaveFason said:

I found the BRS to be really interesting too. What they don't say as well is the amount of variables that most people add. Water movement, refraction, putting holding sensors wrong, etc. After that add that all the sensors seem to have flaws! 

 

Hope the tank is doing well John. 

 

-Dave 

I agree, when I measure PAR I turn off the pumps and hold the sensor in the same place and angle every time. And I'm mostly doing comparisons, like how much did PAR increase when I make a lighting change, or how does PAR in one tank compare to another.

[teenyreef]

3 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

 

I think it's moving forward in a healthy way. 

Sorry you lost it, glad you will replace it with something cool for our vicarious viewing pleasure. 

 

Quick question tho, what do you attribute it's loss to?

I thought RBTA's were reasonably hardy. 

I've never figured out exactly what the problem was. I know the clowns and the angel would steal food away from it, so I think it was just too small to keep with adult clowns to begin with. It just gradually got smaller and smaller from the day I got it.

9 hours ago, Polarcollision said:

OT... doh! Should have known. it's my favorite coral. Re: nub. Yours wants more intense light to stay royal blue and to grow. Mine is 6-8" from the Hydras, others place it directly under MH. The teal color shows on mine just before lights out when only royal blue leds are on, but you really have to look for it.

 

Edit: just found the par #s straight from one of the original 3 propogators' mouth: 700 umol/m2

Thanks for the tips! I've got mine in one of the brightest spots in the tank. I need to post an updated picture now that I've had it there for several weeks and it's getting adjusted to the light.

[teenyreef]

I noticed this guy coming out for a walk this evening, so I took a quick cell phone pic with the flash. I knew he was getting big, but this is ridiculous, the part that you can see in this picture is about 8" long 

 

[kimberbee]

EEK!! Worms are scary! 

[vlangel]

That is when I get my trusty turkey baster out 'primed and ready to suck'.  Of course a worm that size might need something more industrial, LOL.  I try to keep the seahorse tank totally free of bristle worms as they can injure a pony's snout.  I do allow them to live in the fuge however.

[teenyreef]

I keep telling myself that it's a great part of the cleanup crew. But still, ewwwwwww!

[xAyanex]

Ick, that's a long worm! Gross, I hate worms, they're so iiiiiiicky.

[teenyreef]

2 hours ago, xAyanex said:

Ick, that's a long worm! Gross, I hate worms, they're so iiiiiiicky.

Yeah, I'm just not a big fan either. 

 

I also have a lot of hair worms in the zoas. Unlike spaghetti worms, hair worms can really irritate zoas. So tonight I pulled most of the zoas out of the sand and gave them a light peroxide dip. Many of the hair worm colonies fell out of the rocks, and I picked a bunch of others out of the sand. Hopefully I can get them under control like this. 

 

I also picked up a conch at the lfs. He's a little big and will probably turn over some frags on the sandbed, but I needed something that will do a better job of keeping the sand turned over. 

[Polarcollision]

I'll just leave this here

[jedimasterben]

I wish I could just have any of them. I can't seem to keep them alive.

[teenyreef]

The zoas are doing a little better now - I gave all of them a light peroxide dip, pulled out all the hair worms I could, and the conch is keeping the sand stirred up.

 

I got a couple fish pics last night while the lights were low.

For some reason these guys decided to be picture buddies.

 

And they started hamming it up 

 

It doesn't help the zoas much when the clowns decide to make their home in them. But it's kind of cute

This is Dilbert:

 

Humphrey is a big girl now!

 

And she has attitude 

 

[teenyreef]

I had a very busy weekend and changed water in all three tanks. While the water was low, I got a whole bunch of top down macro shots of the corals. Nitrates and phosphates had gotten a little high because I went two weeks without a water change while I was sick, but I got one done last Thursday and did another one today. I was pleasantly surprised - the last time I looked closely, I thought I had a lot of fairly brown sticks, but I think the water changes together with coral food, Fuel, Reef Energy, and a few trace elements seem to be really helping. I've also been slowly bringing the lights up and keeping them on a little longer each week.

 

I took a lot of pictures, but it's late, so here are just a few as a preview.

 

 

 

 

[pappadumplingz]

Lovely photos, the colours are really saturated, which is super pleasing to the eyes. On that bristle worm, what you gotta do is:

 

1. catch it. 

2. Put it in cup
3. Napalm the cup

4. Cover the remains in mecury 

5. Napalm tank to ensure none of its nightmare babies will ever appear again

[Sharbuckle]

Wow great pictures! The CB and watchman are a great pair lol

[holy carp]

Those colors are amazing. What are you feeding this tank these days?

 

[kimberbee]

How's the conch doing in the tank? I was thinking about getting one to help with sand turnover too, but am worried about things on the sand like my plates and sun corals. 

[Weetabix7]

Holy Wow. 

Absolutely gorgeous. 

[xAyanex]

LOVEEEE THE FISH PICS!!

[teenyreef]

18 hours ago, pappadumplingz said:

Lovely photos, the colours are really saturated, which is super pleasing to the eyes. On that bristle worm, what you gotta do is:

 

1. catch it. 

2. Put it in cup
3. Napalm the cup

4. Cover the remains in mecury 

5. Napalm tank to ensure none of its nightmare babies will ever appear again

Step 1 is the hard part, the rest is just having fun 

 

I actually tried my little bristle worm trap but he ignored it. I probably need to try some different bait than two year old dried brine shrimp.

15 hours ago, Sharbuckle said:

Wow great pictures! The CB and watchman are a great pair lol

Thanks! They don't typically pal around but it was funny how they ended up together right when I taking pictures.

[teenyreef]

14 hours ago, holy carp said:

Those colors are amazing. What are you feeding this tank these days?

 

Hmmm, practically everything right now, it seems. I have lots of stuff sitting around because I never ran out of food when all I had was the 4g and the 10g.  But here's the basic lineup:

Pellets every second or third day with nothing else.

Frozen, either angel food mix or spirulina enriched brine shrimp, when I don't feed pellets. I broadcast, and then target feed the meat eating corals.

Every three or four days I feed a coral food mix, with cube of frozen PE Calanus, a pinch of Reef Roids, Goni Power, and Zoa Plan, and a small squirt of Brightwell Phytochrome. I mix it up in about an 1/8 cup of tank water, and broadcast it as well as target feeding.

A little bit (2 ml) of Acropower daily (via the doser).

Aqua Vitro Fuel, once or twice a week.

Red Sea Reef Energy A and B, most nights.

 

For the sun corals and the dendro, if they aren't open when I feed, I keep an eye on them, and when they open, I put a pinch of pellets in a shot glass of tank water, and target feed them.

 

I'm also dosing 2 part, as well as B-Ionic Transition Elements Plus (recently started using this instead of NoPox, it seems to work well).

I occasionally dose Aquavitro Ions for magnesium, Iodide, Reef Trace, and Red Sea Colors (very rarely because I don't like to bother with the measurements).

 

A lot of this stuff is just because I happen to have it. My go to items are pellets, frozen angel food, PE Calanus, Reef Roids, any of the three coral supplements (I'd probably stick with Acropower if I had to pick just because it doesn't need to be refregerated), 2-part, Ions, and Iodide. The rest I could probably skip and nothing would change. Maybe.

14 hours ago, kimberbee said:

How's the conch doing in the tank? I was thinking about getting one to help with sand turnover too, but am worried about things on the sand like my plates and sun corals. 

It's doing well, but as I expected things get turned upside down every few days if they aren't attached to decent sized rocks under the sand. My plate is up on the rocks, so that hasn't been a problem. He doesn't seem to really dig up sand and it put it on things, it's more that he digs under things and flips them over.

5 hours ago, xAyanex said:

LOVEEEE THE FISH PICS!!

Thanks!

[teenyreef]

14 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

Holy Wow. 

Absolutely gorgeous. 

Thanks, Weetie!

 

 

As promised, here are a few more coral pics. Some are on the frag racks and some are on the rocks. Well, and this one's on the sand.

 

Electric Miyagi Tort:

 

Bird of Paradise:

 

Green Slimer. This one is a good example of a coral that has lost a little color. The skin used to be highlighter green/yellow all over, but it's more pale/white in the middle now. But I think it's been improving, so it will be interesting to see if it gets better over the next week.

 

 

This is half of the surviving maricultured colony from ASD, that I glued up on the rocks. It's slowly coming back from being all brown.

 

 

This is the "pink acro" colony I got at MAMAX. It's looking more and more like the blueberry shortcake in the previous batch of pictures.

 

Mr. Pacman has lost much of the purple colors and is almost all green.

 

Acro from the ASD ten pack:

 

ORA Pearlberry:

 

Oregon Tort:

 

[Weetabix7]

That's alotta feeding!!

Sounds like you're on the opposite end of the spectrum from my tendencies to not feed enough. 

I'm working on it, doing much better. 

 

[teenyreef]

 

2 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

That's alotta feeding!!

Sounds like you're on the opposite end of the spectrum from my tendencies to not feed enough. 

I'm working on it, doing much better. 

 

It's not really as bad as it sounds, as that one cube of frozen gets shared between three tanks, as does the coral food mix. And I feed the pellets probably 35 or 50 percent of the time. Basically I let the nitrate measurements tell me if I'm feeding too much. Usually I try to keep nitrates around 2 or 4, and if it gets higher I know I need to cut back on frozen.