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


teenyreef

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@vlangel, sorry I missed your post, and thank you! I'm still reserving judgement on the ATS. It is slowly growing more and more algae every week but it's still slimy green/brown algae, not the kind of macroalgae that I'm supposed to have. I've continued to do weekly water changes (25%) and have been using PhosphateRx to keep the phosphate from getting too high. But the ATS seems like it might be starting to work...I skipped a weekly water change last week, but nitrates and phosphates went down slightly over the two weeks.

 

I'm getting some green algae growth in spots on the rocks now, which the ATS manual said should be expected under these conditions, as phosphates leach from the rocks as the overall levels go down. So we'll see...

 

Here's the latest shot of the ATS right before cleaning tonight. This is about a week and a half of growth.There are some actual chunks of algae in there in addition to the thick film. I've been seeing these chunks over the last month, so I guess that's some progress.

 

20181230_003051.jpg

 

But on the whole, the tank is doing well. I still see brown gunk on the sand and on the glass, and I have to scrape the glass every other day. But the corals and fish are doing great!

 

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A few random pictures I took a couple weeks ago...

 

Monticap garden:

20181216-untitled-069.jpg

 

Mummy eye chalice:

20181216-untitled-082.jpg

 

The red dragon is recovering from when I accidentally knocked most of it off...

20181216-untitled-079.jpg

 

Reverse superman monti:

20181216-untitled-065.jpg

 

ARC fireworks:

20181216-untitled-063.jpg

 

I noticed the blue digi was coming back and threatening the ARC fireworks, so when I changed the water tonight I scraped as much off as I could. Here's a quick cell phone picture of the carnage:

20181229_235915.jpg

 

No name pink acro:

20181216-untitled-062.jpg

 

Oregon tort ( there were some burnt tips a month or two ago, that's why there is a little algae growth here and there):

20181216-untitled-061.jpg

 

Green slimer. One of the oldest and brightest corals in the tank. And it's still thinking about branching out someday...

20181216-untitled-060.jpg

 

Upscales microlados. Still thinking about growing out someday, but I like the colors it's getting now that it's further back in the tank and getting a little less light.

20181216-untitled-059.jpg

 

JF fox flame. Lots of encrustation and I think there will be some nice growth soon.

20181216-untitled-058.jpg

 

PC Rainbow :wub:

20181216-untitled-057.jpg

 

CR's Planet Superman. This guy needs brighter light to get the red highlights back. I've been bringing the lights back up and just recently got them where they need to be, so I think by next month it may start coloring up again.

20181216-untitled-056.jpg

 

Joe's rainbow:

20181216-untitled-055.jpg

 

JF Hate Raid - this guy started as basic green but it's getting the other colors that I was hoping for. 

20181216-untitled-054.jpg

 

Walt Disney tenuis. it's growing like crazy and starting to color up. I have a hard time getting a picture that captures the colors accurately. Right now it's a really pretty pale blue, and the tips are more yellow than they appear in this shot.

20181216-untitled-053.jpg

 

JF Ice Breaker. One of my favorites from the JF live sale. It's getting really cool super bright blue highlights at the base. Unfortunately, those highlights blew out the exposure in the picture. But trust me it looks cool :biggrin:

20181216-untitled-052.jpg

 

Cherry Corals Voodoo Magick. This guy sat and did nothing for about a year but is starting to encrust and the colors are getting really nice.

20181216-untitled-051.jpg

 

The cali tort is starting to get that classic blue color on the new growth where the light is stronger on the right.

20181216-untitled-050.jpg

 

Acan garden. The yellow wall blue acans I got from Cultivated Reef years ago almost died a while back, but I moved them into this tank about six months ago and they're recovering well. They're in the lower left of the picture. The yellow walls down't show up much but they will as they get better.

20181216-untitled-049.jpg

 

Project X fungia from Reefgen:

20181216-untitled-048.jpg

 

Duncans. One of my favorite classics, especially up close:

20181216-untitled-047.jpg

 

Dendros. @Cannedfish isn't the only one with NPS love! :lol:

 

20181216-untitled-046.jpg

 

Pinky the Bear is still pink!

20181216-untitled-045.jpg

 

And finally, zoas with a silly clown 🙂

Oh and you can see the bubblebath unicorn in the lower left. It doesn't look like much yet but after almost nuking it when I left it in the dip too long I'm glad to say it's starting to recover.

20181216-untitled-039.jpg

 

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7 hours ago, teenyreef said:

@vlangel, sorry I missed your post, and thank you! I'm still reserving judgement on the ATS. It is slowly growing more and more algae every week but it's still slimy green/brown algae, not the kind of macroalgae that I'm supposed to have. I've continued to do weekly water changes (25%) and have been using PhosphateRx to keep the phosphate from getting too high. But the ATS seems like it might be starting to work...I skipped a weekly water change last week, but nitrates and phosphates went down slightly over the two weeks.

 

I'm getting some green algae growth in spots on the rocks now, which the ATS manual said should be expected under these conditions, as phosphates leach from the rocks as the overall levels go down. So we'll see...

 

Here's the latest shot of the ATS right before cleaning tonight. This is about a week and a half of growth.There are some actual chunks of algae in there in addition to the thick film. I've been seeing these chunks over the last month, so I guess that's some progress.

 

20181230_003051.jpg

 

But on the whole, the tank is doing well. I still see brown gunk on the sand and on the glass, and I have to scrape the glass every other day. But the corals and fish are doing great!

 

Thanks teeny for the commentary.  Your experience will dictate whether I set up an ATS on the A,B,C tank.

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3 hours ago, vlangel said:

Thanks teeny for the commentary.  Your experience will dictate whether I set up an ATS on the A,B,C tank.

I think what I'm seeing has more to do with conditions in the tank than the ATS itself. I still have hopes that it will work out! 

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On 12/30/2018 at 11:46 AM, Reefkid88 said:

Tank is maturing very very very well Tenny !!! Everything looks so happy,especially all the Acro's !!! 

Thank you!

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Happy New Year, everyone!

 

One of my Christmas presents this year was an Orphek blue LED flashlight. I tried taking a few pictures late the other night with all the lights off and just pointing the flashlight through the glass at the corals. After a little white balance adjustment, I have to say I really like the way the pictures turned out. I was surprised that the blue didn't completely wash out all the other colors the way I normally see when using the regular tank lights set to the blues.

 

This is the CC Voodoo Magick. There's a top down under regular lighting in the set of picture I just uploaded the other night.

20181228-untitled-006.jpg

 

Yellow walled acans. You can see hints of the yellow here and there...

20181228-untitled-001.jpg

 

Walt Disney tenuis, with green slimer in the foreground on the bottom, and JF Hate Raid in the foreground on the left:

20181228-untitled-004.jpg

 

California tort:

20181228-untitled-003.jpg

 

Rainbow acans:

20181228-untitled-002.jpg

 

I'm definitely going to try and get some more pics with the flashlight!

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21 hours ago, skyscraper2290 said:

Gorgeous corals and gorgeous photos! Some tank goals can be found here!

 

 

Edit: The blue light photos are awesome too!

 

10 hours ago, DaveFason said:

John, just incredible. Keep up the great work. 

 

5 hours ago, Tamberav said:

Tank looks great!! 

 

Thanks everyone!

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Here's a slightly better picture of the JF Ice Breaker, with the lighter blue on the base. It looks really cool in real life :biggrin:

 

20190101-untitled-058.jpg

 

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25 minutes ago, micoastreefing said:

Hey how did the other JF purchases turn out? Recall there was a birdnest involved at one point. 

Pretty good overall. The super cheap ones for $5 or $10 of course turned out to be meh. And the birdsnest for some reason hasn't been doing well at all in the frag tank and I'm thinking about moving it to another tank. But the rest are turning out to be pretty nice so far. This weekend I'll see if I can collect progress pics of all of them.

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31 minutes ago, mtgmichaelg said:

That mummy eye chalice looks amazing and I really like how the fungia is place in the rock work. Looks great 👍

Thank you! I bought the fungia from Laura (Reefgen) at a coral show. She told me this particular fungia encrusts on the rocks, and when it's happy, it will propagate by dropping babies. I've seen it try to drop a baby or two but haven't had them stick around yet.

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I have a question for you that I bet you have experience with!

 

When your SPS starts to encrust and grow into each other (maybe in the past) what do you do? What is the plan for this tank? 

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10 hours ago, YHSublime said:

I have a question for you that I bet you have experience with!

 

When your SPS starts to encrust and grow into each other (maybe in the past) what do you do? What is the plan for this tank? 

As they start to grow together, I cut the more aggressive and/or less desirable one back and grow some frags. But for the most part, I just let them fight it out. If I see that one isn't going to make it, I frag it or remove as much as I can and start it over in another spot or another tank. 

 

Which reminds me, I need to cut the CR Electric Myagi Tort back quite a bit because it's crowding the Katropora. Same for the blue stylo. And the idaho grape monticap...sigh.

 

The long term plan is to start a much larger tank and thin things out in this tank, or just replace this tank with the larger tank. I actually could fit a 90g standard tank on the builtin bookshelf this tank sits on now, I'd just have to do some modifications to the shelves above the tank. I already have a 90g FW tank in the eat-in kitchen, but we don't spend nearly as much time in there, and it gets neglected a lot. I think it's really important to have the tanks right where I see them every day.

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7 hours ago, teenyreef said:

As they start to grow together, I cut the more aggressive and/or less desirable one back and grow some frags. But for the most part, I just let them fight it out. If I see that one isn't going to make it, I frag it or remove as much as I can and start it over in another spot or another tank. 

 

Which reminds me, I need to cut the CR Electric Myagi Tort back quite a bit because it's crowding the Katropora. Same for the blue stylo. And the idaho grape monticap...sigh.

 

The long term plan is to start a much larger tank and thin things out in this tank, or just replace this tank with the larger tank. I actually could fit a 90g standard tank on the builtin bookshelf this tank sits on now, I'd just have to do some modifications to the shelves above the tank. I already have a 90g FW tank in the eat-in kitchen, but we don't spend nearly as much time in there, and it gets neglected a lot. I think it's really important to have the tanks right where I see them every day.

Yep. When the 15L was in a room I don't spend much time in, maintenance wasn't as frequent as it should have been.  Well, that and the clownfish biting me all the time. :rolleyes:

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On 1/4/2019 at 9:29 PM, teenyreef said:

As they start to grow together, I cut the more aggressive and/or less desirable one back and grow some frags. But for the most part, I just let them fight it out. If I see that one isn't going to make it, I frag it or remove as much as I can and start it over in another spot or another tank. 

 

Which reminds me, I need to cut the CR Electric Myagi Tort back quite a bit because it's crowding the Katropora. Same for the blue stylo. And the idaho grape monticap...sigh.

 

The long term plan is to start a much larger tank and thin things out in this tank, or just replace this tank with the larger tank. I actually could fit a 90g standard tank on the builtin bookshelf this tank sits on now, I'd just have to do some modifications to the shelves above the tank. I already have a 90g FW tank in the eat-in kitchen, but we don't spend nearly as much time in there, and it gets neglected a lot. I think it's really important to have the tanks right where I see them every day.

 

Got it. So kind of the same approach that I take with my lighting: you either make it, or you don't. I don't have very many variants of par levels, it's just on the rock, or the tank floor, which is all of but about 7". I did my first removal of a Jedi Mind Trick colony, hammer and a flat head screwdriver. I pulled the whole rock out though with all the acros on it. Honestly, I'm shocked things like the mummy eye don't bother its neighbors. Just looking at your pictures though it looks like you'll have your work cut out for you! You could take a dremel saw and just checkerboard out your corals, lol!

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Yeah, I always figure the mummy eye would be hostile, so I placed it way over the side away from all the other corals (at the time, lol). But even now it doesn't seem to put out big sweepers...hopefully it's not reading this thread and getting ideas...

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I drained off some extra water during the last water change and took a shot at trimming back/fragging some of the bigger corals, with mixed results.

 

I got a bunch of decent little frags from the CR Electric Miyagi tort, and one or two off the Katropora. But when I tried to cut off some of the blue stylo with bone cutters, it was an epic fail - all I did was start breaking the whole thing off at the base where it's attached to the rock and I didn't get s ingle frag.

 

So I glued it back on, and started working on the WWC yellow tips, and did the same thing after getting a couple tiny frags. 

 

Turns out that since the flow is really high in this tank, the corals grow nice and thick. That's a good thing until I'm trying to break pieces off with the bone cutters. Next time I use the Dremel!

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Hey teeny! Things are looking great and im happy to hear your entertaining the idea of a bigger tank 🙂 more room for your over crowded systems.   Just getting my couple month visit in to calm my urge of reefing.  The wife comes home in august and hopefully all the moves will be coming to an end this year sometime.   That said I miss my reef but sooo do not miss the maintenance.  When i do it again it will be one system probably bigger then ive done before so the swings aren't as much.  

Take care and keep these lovely systems going!

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On 1/16/2019 at 4:16 PM, drgibby said:

Hey teeny! Things are looking great and im happy to hear your entertaining the idea of a bigger tank 🙂 more room for your over crowded systems.   Just getting my couple month visit in to calm my urge of reefing.  The wife comes home in august and hopefully all the moves will be coming to an end this year sometime.   That said I miss my reef but sooo do not miss the maintenance.  When i do it again it will be one system probably bigger then ive done before so the swings aren't as much.  

Take care and keep these lovely systems going!

Thanks for stopping by! It will be great when you can get a tank going again. When you do I will have frags for you, of course. The Aussie candlelights didn't make it, nor did the green stylo/birdsnest. But the Katropora, WWC Yellow Tips, and JF Red Hot Setosa at all doing great. The Garf Bonsai is still hanging in but when it started getting encrusted by the monticaps, I put a frag of it in the 10g. Hopefully it will do well there and I can give you a frag of that one back too. 

 

And as payback for the awesome free corals, I'm sure I'll be able to add some additional goodies 🙂

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