Jackal227 Posted November 16, 2019 Share Posted November 16, 2019 4 hours ago, Cpl_Wiggles said: Picked up tailspot blenny to munch on algae. The Blenny looks good. I've heard that they have great personalities. 1 Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted November 16, 2019 Author Share Posted November 16, 2019 He started off pretty shy, but has began to perch and explore. I want him to get hungry and start eating the algae! 1 Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted November 23, 2019 Author Share Posted November 23, 2019 New friends from AquaSD. 2 Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted February 6, 2020 Author Share Posted February 6, 2020 After Thanksgiving heater stopped working and temp dropped to 68-70 degrees. Obviously the critters did not enjoy this - lots of decay as well as disappearance of coraline. Upon further examination salinity in tank had dropped to 1.023 - as one could imagine parameters were all over the place. Good news is the algae in the tank went away. Bad news is the nice favia and leptoseris did not fare well. They are holding on three months later, but only by a thread. I might try to trim away the "dead" skeletons to make way for new growth. Long story short - have a backup heater ready and carry calibration fluid for your refractometer. Now that I've made sure water is 78 degrees and salt is 1.026, things seem to be doing well, with no algae growth. I haven't even yet placed the corals I purchased from AquaSD because I have been waiting for signs of coraline growth, an indicator of stability, which I am beginning to see. I will be traveling to Europe beginning of March and once I return from there I will place the corals purchased from AquaSD and acquire a few more. I will also remove my rocks and do one more mass removal of vermetid snails - as there has been aggressive growth since the addition of more snails from ReefCritters. I'll even make an effort to get some better pictures posted. 🙂 Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted September 20, 2021 Author Share Posted September 20, 2021 Tank is alive and generally well 1.5 years after my last post. Indeed, nothing good happens fast in a reef tank. What have I been doing? Alot of hands-off. Tank seems to have stabilized under the following parameters: 1. 2 or 3 gallon water change every week using Instant Ocean Reef Crystals and a pinch of Reef Builder, empty out skimmer 2. Replace Filter Floss every 2-3 weeks 3. Last carbon change 5/1/21 - probably need to update this guy soon 4. Every 4 weeks remove all the rocks and vacuum/level entire rockbed 5. Feed 4-5 sinking pellets of fish food each morning and afternoon for Clown (Cody) and Shrimp (Sebastian) 6. Feed corals with Coral Frenzy heavily the day before weekly water change 7. Keep tank temp around 78 or so with Chiller from ChillSolutions and a fixed Heater 8. Can't remember the last time I checked anything except salinity with a calibrated refractometer (lesson learned!) Here you can see the clown and the shrimp - each occupying their respective corners. 1. Yellow-Green Leptastrea from the Thanksgiving Mistake of 2019 has finally filled back in - pretty impressed he just kept truckin'. 2. Rainbow Ring Acan still a single head - probably need to feed him more 3. Blue Petals Monti won't grow but also won't die - I probably need to have cleaner water or better light somehow. 4. Blue War Coral - Good growth and the most impressive of my purchases from AquaSD. 5. Nuclear Eyes Blasto - slow growing but finally has started to sprout some new heads when the shrimp isn't throwing them around 6. Green Rhodactis Mushroom - Literally the only out of control expansion in my tank. At this point I don't even care - as long as I get full tank coverage of color. I can weed them out later 7. Pulsing Xenia - Trying to seed on the far right of my tank for some nice movement 8. Leather - Slow growing - doesn't really do much 9. Random Zoa - for some reason can't grow Zoas. Got lots of little critters in the tank. 1. Lots of Aesterina Starfish 2. 2-3 Nassarius - they're reproducing! 3. One stubborn blue-leg hermit 4. 2-3 Nerite snail - also reproducing 5. Still Vermatid Snails - but under control Overall, I'm glad the tank is stable, but not really impressed with what I've done. Still, gotta take the good with the not-so-good. I'll enjoy the fact that some of my corals are growing nicely while others just hang out. I've lost too many things to count so now trying to keep moving along slowly with what I have, and maybe find a couple different places to try to place the slow-growers. Plans for the Fall: 1. Try to frag some Rhodacti and take into local fish store to trade for something. 2. Carefully use Dremel to open up some more holes for plugs to try to mix up placement of corals to coax more growth 3. Glue together some live rock for "frag beds" so I can plant more corals that are under the lights 4. Remove some plugs from the tank. -Wiggles 5 Quote Link to comment
banasophia Posted September 20, 2021 Share Posted September 20, 2021 8 hours ago, Cpl_Wiggles said: Tank is alive and generally well 1.5 years after my last post. Indeed, nothing good happens fast in a reef tank. What have I been doing? Alot of hands-off. Tank seems to have stabilized under the following parameters: 1. 2 or 3 gallon water change every week using Instant Ocean Reef Crystals and a pinch of Reef Builder, empty out skimmer 2. Replace Filter Floss every 2-3 weeks 3. Last carbon change 5/1/21 - probably need to update this guy soon 4. Every 4 weeks remove all the rocks and vacuum/level entire rockbed 5. Feed 4-5 sinking pellets of fish food each morning and afternoon for Clown (Cody) and Shrimp (Sebastian) 6. Feed corals with Coral Frenzy heavily the day before weekly water change 7. Keep tank temp around 78 or so with Chiller from ChillSolutions and a fixed Heater 8. Can't remember the last time I checked anything except salinity with a calibrated refractometer (lesson learned!) Here you can see the clown and the shrimp - each occupying their respective corners. 1. Yellow-Green Leptastrea from the Thanksgiving Mistake of 2019 has finally filled back in - pretty impressed he just kept truckin'. 2. Rainbow Ring Acan still a single head - probably need to feed him more 3. Blue Petals Monti won't grow but also won't die - I probably need to have cleaner water or better light somehow. 4. Blue War Coral - Good growth and the most impressive of my purchases from AquaSD. 5. Nuclear Eyes Blasto - slow growing but finally has started to sprout some new heads when the shrimp isn't throwing them around 6. Green Rhodactis Mushroom - Literally the only out of control expansion in my tank. At this point I don't even care - as long as I get full tank coverage of color. I can weed them out later 7. Pulsing Xenia - Trying to seed on the far right of my tank for some nice movement 8. Leather - Slow growing - doesn't really do much 9. Random Zoa - for some reason can't grow Zoas. Got lots of little critters in the tank. 1. Lots of Aesterina Starfish 2. 2-3 Nassarius - they're reproducing! 3. One stubborn blue-leg hermit 4. 2-3 Nerite snail - also reproducing 5. Still Vermatid Snails - but under control Overall, I'm glad the tank is stable, but not really impressed with what I've done. Still, gotta take the good with the not-so-good. I'll enjoy the fact that some of my corals are growing nicely while others just hang out. I've lost too many things to count so now trying to keep moving along slowly with what I have, and maybe find a couple different places to try to place the slow-growers. Plans for the Fall: 1. Try to frag some Rhodacti and take into local fish store to trade for something. 2. Carefully use Dremel to open up some more holes for plugs to try to mix up placement of corals to coax more growth 3. Glue together some live rock for "frag beds" so I can plant more corals that are under the lights 4. Remove some plugs from the tank. -Wiggles Yayyy so nice to hear an update! That’s an interesting idea to take your scape out and siphon the sandbed every month… I've never heard of anyone doing that and I wish I could do that with my tanks, but I don’t think they are glued solidly enough. How are you liking the chiller and the Steve’s LEDs? Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted September 20, 2021 Author Share Posted September 20, 2021 3 hours ago, banasophia said: Yayyy so nice to hear an update! That’s an interesting idea to take your scape out and siphon the sandbed every month… I've never heard of anyone doing that and I wish I could do that with my tanks, but I don’t think they are glued solidly enough. How are you liking the chiller and the Steve’s LEDs? I believe @brandon429 has had a long-running pico reef jar in which he does a 100% water change and cleaning of the sand bed once a week or so - I liked that concept so when I built my aquascape I drilled holes in the bottom of my LR and put in plastic dowels so they would "stand" over the sandbed instead of plopping them down onto it. When I added my two flat base pieces I drilled the holes in them to locate the position of the LR. Because it's an "arch" I just have to center the base pieces so the two sides of the bridge touch". Makes it much easier to remove and expose the entire sandbed. My aquascape is actually 5 pieces. 1. Left Base 2. Left Main 3. Right Base 4. Right Main 5. Random topper that has a mushroom and xenia on top that I just move around randomly. To be fair - I could benefit from some additional LR and better use of space to maximize exposure to the LED lights. I still have not efficiently used the BioCube space yet - four years down the road. Chiller works great- no complaints there I like that it's pretty straight forward as far as technology goes - and when the power company cycles my A/C off the chiller keeps temps stable. I'm mixed on the Steve's LED. Clearly @Jackal227 has had impressive success with the stock BioCube lights whereas I haven't really seen a benefit - even when I was being more attentive to my parameters. Of course his water quality is undoubtedly better. I actually sent my lights in to get the Violet upgrade as well. Not sure why since I'm Red-Green colorblind. Light settings: 31% White 41% Blue 72% Total Updated 1/25 29% White 46% Blue 75% Total Updated 10/13 30.5% White 40.3% Blue 70.8% Total So I've played around with the levels (Steve's recommends not going past 80%) while trying to stimulate the monti growth. All in all, Mixed Feelings. Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted September 21, 2021 Author Share Posted September 21, 2021 Full View War Coral and Leather, with Monti and Blastos above and Rhodactis below Lone Acan in a sea of Rhodactis Lep doing well, but slow growing Good growth on War Coral - would really like to get the leather expanding along the side of the tank as a show piece 2 Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted October 5, 2021 Author Share Posted October 5, 2021 On 9/20/2021 at 2:07 PM, Cpl_Wiggles said: I believe @brandon429 has had a long-running pico reef jar in which he does a 100% water change and cleaning of the sand bed once a week or so - I liked that concept so when I built my aquascape I drilled holes in the bottom of my LR and put in plastic dowels so they would "stand" over the sandbed instead of plopping them down onto it. When I added my two flat base pieces I drilled the holes in them to locate the position of the LR. Because it's an "arch" I just have to center the base pieces so the two sides of the bridge touch". Makes it much easier to remove and expose the entire sandbed. My aquascape is actually 5 pieces. 1. Left Base 2. Left Main 3. Right Base 4. Right Main 5. Random topper that has a mushroom and xenia on top that I just move around randomly. To be fair - I could benefit from some additional LR and better use of space to maximize exposure to the LED lights. I still have not efficiently used the BioCube space yet - four years down the road. Chiller works great- no complaints there I like that it's pretty straight forward as far as technology goes - and when the power company cycles my A/C off the chiller keeps temps stable. I'm mixed on the Steve's LED. Clearly @Jackal227 has had impressive success with the stock BioCube lights whereas I haven't really seen a benefit - even when I was being more attentive to my parameters. Of course his water quality is undoubtedly better. I actually sent my lights in to get the Violet upgrade as well. Not sure why since I'm Red-Green colorblind. Light settings: 31% White 41% Blue 72% Total Updated 1/25 29% White 46% Blue 75% Total Updated 10/13 30.5% White 40.3% Blue 70.8% Total So I've played around with the levels (Steve's recommends not going past 80%) while trying to stimulate the monti growth. All in all, Mixed Feelings. So on a whim I emailed support at @StevesLEDs (whose customer service is fantastic) inquiring about how to determine the equivalent PAR and realized I've made a bone-head mistake. My current settings on the LED array are: Updated 10/13 30.5% White 40.3% Blue 70.8% Total 35.4% intensity At some point when I started acclimating a new coral purchase and turned my lights down to ~30% intensity per StevesLED instructions, I forgot to slowly increase the intensity and misread the readout on the controller to mean I was already back at the recommended 70%. To remedy this, I have increased my light intensity by 3-5% every two or three days. Currently around 60% intensity and plan on stopping around 70% to observe. Hopefully this is the root cause on the anemic growth of the Leather, Monti, Blastos, etc. Also tested water for the first time in forever. Ammonia, pH, Nitrites, Nitrates, Alk. Everything looked good except for a spike in Nitrates - which made sense as it was a water change day. Either increase quantity or frequency and problem goes away. 1 Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted November 13, 2022 Author Share Posted November 13, 2022 Still alive - been running a dirty tank this fall and seeing some bleaching on the war coral, reduced lights to 68% from 73% to see if it will recover. Not sure if it's nutrient related or water quality related or both. I had some dinos awhile back and in an attempt to promote competitive bacteria I removed my carbon bag and covered the tank with tinfoil for 3 days. This resovled the dino issue and I decided to make sure it didn't come back I'd hold off on the bag of carbon in the back. This was in May. I haven't put carbon back in since. Also added some more live rock as I think I might be "under" weight for lbs of live rock to gallons of water. Isn't it 1 lb per gallon? Something like that. Since I have confirmed in the last year I can grow green rhodactis like weeds I picked up a deep green, red, teal, and "ultra" from AquaSD as well as an Aussie Galaxea and a couple of chalices. The LFS in town said they would be interested in taking some of the green rhodactis from me which is pretty cool that I can finally "give" something back to the community for others to enjoy. We will see how that goes. Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted November 18, 2022 Author Share Posted November 18, 2022 I got a little too excited committing to daily broadcast feeding my corals and had an algae bloom. This happened back in the Summer as well and I wrapped the tank in foil for 3 days to knock it all down. Once I get this cleared up I'll go back to spot feeding and a broadcast feed the day of the water change. After nearly 5 years of running the 16 Gallon Biocube I'm still not really impressed with the rate of detritus removal by filter intakes. Maybe it's because I have my heater on that side and blocking the vents a little and them my Chamber 3 houses the skimmer - which still does a pretty good job. I feel like this contributes to my generally dirty tank experience. One of the drawbacks of the Biocube system is you have to establish counter-clockwise flow from upper left to upper/lower right. I also hypothesize my rock setup being so tall and close to the RHS edge of the Biocube reduces flow in that area and consequently the velocity of the detritus up and out of the system. To be clear - I still have dirty filter floss that I take out (especially this last week with over-feeding) but I wish the nutrient export was more robust. We will check in 3 days... Also noticed my splash guard for my Steve's LED array has a heat spot and a crack in it. I emailed Coralife with a picture and asked if they had a spare part - I got an immediate reply asking for an address and they would send me a replacement today! If all works out - very impressed with the customer service. 1 Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted January 10, 2023 Author Share Posted January 10, 2023 So I purchased some corals for the first time in a long time, some from the LFS in San Luis and the others off AquaSD. Since I've had some luck with mushrooms I went that route and bought a ultra, red, and green mushroom set and they threw in another teal as a bonus. I also picked up three chalices, due to their color and reputation for hardiness, as well as a frogspawn/hammer hybrid that a local reefer has cultivated in his tank. Also wanted a galaxea for awhile and an Aussie galaxea was somewhat affordable so I picked one of those up. To round out the purchases, I once again tried a montipora and a zoa/paly as well as a nice fat acan colony since my single Acan has survived thus far. I finally gave in and added purigen to my tank system. I still am not running GFO carbon. Hammer/Frog doing fine, so is Acan. Chalices are seeing some discoloration along the sides, but happily open mouths to feed for brine shrimp. I added this chunk of live rock to supplement cycling and the added corals, but it seems to be stuck with this brown crud? Algae? I thought it was just part of the cycling, but I don't remember it staying this color for this long? Ideas? Montipora still isnt' happy, you can see some of the brown crud in the back as well where there used to be nice coraline. In my infinite wisdom, I thought it would be a good idea to cut/frag some of the green rhodactis and take it in to the local fish store. I followed the general guidelines on the forum and split them with a razor along the surface, brushed off the excess with a toothbrush, rinsed in non tank water, and put back into the tank. Then I put the fragged pieces (8 to 10) in a low flow area of the sandbed for them to attach to some rubble where I could then glue them to a plug. It did not seem to go well. I believe the rhodactis released spores or some sort of chemical in the water that damaged all the remaining mushrooms in the tank. I lost 2 of the 4 new mushrooms, as well as about 30% of my existing green rhodactis. In addition - the chalices and monitpora do not seem to be very happy, and the zoa/paly did not last, as expected. I have never been able to grow zoas, palys, or GSP. Lights: 54% blue 71% white ~63% average I reduced the lights by 5% to make sure I wasn't stressing anything out. The recommendation from Steve's customer service (which is great) is in the 60-75% range, depending on species and application. So we will see where things go. I will probably brush off the brown crud during my next water change (increased frequency to every 4-5 days instead of 7-8 days. Also raised my temperature to 80 degrees, up from the 79.4. Green Rhodactis: Recovering Pulsing Xenia - doing Well Acans - doing well Lepostrea - doing well War coral - doing well Frog/Hammer - doing well Galaxea - doing well I'll get around to adding some better pictures. 1 Quote Link to comment
Cpl_Wiggles Posted January 1 Author Share Posted January 1 Nearly 5 year update: I moved from California to the Denver, Colorado area. I enjoyed my time in CA but it was time for a new chapter. The tank was moved last week of July - hottest it traveled through was 119F through Las Vegas. I overnighted in Grand Junction for 6 hours late at night and left the tank in the truck where it had cooled off to about 70 or so. Amazingly - I had some pulsing xenia melt but that's it. Tank has functioned fine since 1-August. Excellent local fish store close by. I have been having more evaporation here and seeing my salinity spike from 1.026 to 1.028 in about 7 days, so it's important to keep on the weekly water change schedule. Green Rhodactis: doing well Red Striped Rhodactis: doing well Blue Rhodactis - doing well Pulsing Xenia - doing well Acans - doing well Lepostrea - doing well War coral - doing well Galaxea - doing well Toadstool Leather - doing well Montipora - unhappy due to alk swings and high salinity Cody the Clown - happy Nerite, turbo, astrea snails - happy blue leg hermits - happy bristle worms - lots asterina starfish - lots Got an Orange Discosoma from a buddy that lives in Seattle - believe it or not they will let you bring corals through TSA - just request a hand check - don't send through x-ray. He sells them out of his 40 gallon to some wholesaler for some nice beer money, so I started a colony for him in case he crashes. It's doing impressively well. Night Biggest takeaway is my Alk continues to swing. After discussing with LFS I will start dosing Tropic Marin All for Reef daily in addition to adding SeaChem's Reef Builder during my weekly water changes. I also remove everything and fully vaccuum/clean the sandbed every month. LFS was surprised I haven't had a crash in doing this but my take is my tank runs a little dirty anyways and swings alot, so the stuff that is in there is hardy and would explain why I have had a myriad of other corals that are considered "easy" not do so well. As always, my mileage varies. I'm going to put together a plan and better pictures for my 5 year post and try to really make the tank thrive in 2023. Quote Link to comment
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