Money's Evo 5 *Lets Try this Reef thing*

[money88]

Picked up two new additions on my drive home today. They are currently closed as I just put them in the tank, I will be sure to send pictures when they have opened up!

Small zoanthids (Bam Bam Zoas)

 

Duncan

[money88]

Well opened up just a bit. Here are a few photos

 

 

I plan on grabbing some reef epoxy to get these both to a better suited resting place. 

 

I also need to pull out my nicer camera for everyone and figure out how to photograph the tank.

[Lula_Mae]

Nice pieces!  That orange-red on the zoas is so bright!

[Weetabix7]

Ooh, those look great, really nice additions!!!

[Rain24]

I'm very partial to orange zoas - those look so nice!

 

And is the other one a duncan?

[money88]

16 hours ago, Lula_Mae said:

Nice pieces!  That orange-red on the zoas is so bright!

 

16 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

Ooh, those look great, really nice additions!!!

 

3 hours ago, Rain24 said:

I'm very partial to orange zoas - those look so nice!

 

And is the other one a duncan?

Thanks for all the kind words on the new additions! 

 

@Rain24 Yep, the other coral is a Duncan (Live Aquaria Link) I have never seen one before Sunday but they look pretty awesome!

 

So I wanted to give a bit of an update as to what has been going on with my tank over the last few days:

 

As you can see I added to new inhabitants yesterday making my current list of inhabitants the following:

• Randall Pistol Shrimp (Candy Cane)
• Green Florida Ricordia
• Bam Bam Zoanthid
• Duncan (didn't ask what the designer name was)

Here is a bit of a timeline as to what has been going on. Last Wednesday I topped off the water to compensate for the evaporation that occurred it took only a few small cups. I am usually gone for the weekends so I like to do a tank check on Friday before leaving for a few days. Friday I decided to test the water; the readings were 0.25 ammonia (Any ideas as to why my ammonia is just staying at 0.25 ppm?), 0 nitrite, 20-30 nitrate. With those readings I decided to do a 40% water change. I ensured that the salinity of the new water was the same as my tank (currently 1.024) and the temperature as well then I siphoned out some water and used cups to put the new water in. Taking salinity readings again after the change the tank still read 1.024 so that was a plus. Since this last weekend was the first weekend that I was going to be gone with some actual inhabitants in the tank I needed to run to home depot and pick up a small $4 analog timer to control my lights. Unfortunately with this timer I am unable to run a blue -> white -> blue light cycle because of the touch interface used within the stock lighting. So instead I just ran a 10 hour white light cycle. 

 

I have been spot feeding the Ricordia every other day and leaving some extra for the Candy Cane (which my GF decided to name Mr. Peppermint - ya I know it's not a peppermint shrimp but least its striped). When I was doing the 40% water change Friday I noticed that I have some bristle worms that hitchhiked on my live rock. From what I was reading I saw that they aren't harmful and their population will depend on the excess food in the tank. So at the time being I decided they weren't worth the trouble of getting rid of even though they kinda do creep me out. Is this accurate? Are they okay to leave alone?

 

With tank parameters looking better after the change I headed out for the weekend. If you haven't noticed most of the new additions to my tank take place on a Sunday because that is when I am on my way home. I like to stop at the LFS up near the Chicagoland area because they have much better prices and inventory. Grabbing the duncan and the zoa on Sunday I asked for a slightly larger bag with oxygen and water to make sure they traveled well over the 2 hour drive. Once I got home I started the acclimation process of the new corals and noticed that the tank had some evaporation in those few days so I threw the heater on the RO/DI water I already had in a 5 gallon container to prep it for the tank. I then put the corals and the RO/DI water into the tank. Initially placing both coral plugs in the sand to let them become a bit more accustomed to their new home. Also because I don't have any epoxy or super glue to mount the corals anywhere else yet. I was looking at picking up some BRS Extra Thick Gel Super Glue as the reviews seemed pretty good; but then that leaves me to how do I remove the bottom stub off of my frag plug? 

 

I think that I will eventually put the zoa on the right rock and maybe let it spread, while I leave the duncan in the sand from what I was reading if I decide to spot feed the duncan it will have some pretty awesome accelerated growth and they don't seem to mind the sand. Hopefully in the next day or so they will fully open up under the white light, like they seemed to do last night under the blue. 

 

I am also excited to eventually get a shrimp goby but I know that patience is a virtue in the reef eco system so I just want to take everything slow and steady. When I finally get there I was looking into the Yasha Goby or the Yellow Watchman Goby but I wasn't sure if the YWG was too big for the 5 gallon, I guess I will have to do some more research. In the meantime I was looking at other inverts and was thinking of grabbing a cleaner shrimp and/or snail, what does everyone think? Do you think my pistol would bother them? I've read it is usually a hit or a miss but the pistol will usually only bug them if they get near his cave. 

 

Custom controller update:

As I mentioned early in this post I am currently working on a custom controller to monitor and handle a few of my day to day things for the tank. I have been tinkering around with the Raspberry Pi a bit and gaining quite a bit of knowledge on circuitry. I ordered 5 float switches, a DS18B20 Temperature Probe, and a Raspberry Pi camera. I am currently working on creating a 4 socket outlet with relays controlled by the arduino / raspberry pi. My work on that was halted until I received some more parts to properly mount the relay inside of the socket housing. Ideally, my plan is to have the temperature probe monitor and record temperature and control the outlet that the heater is plugged into to turn on or off the heater in case the internal thermometer in the heater fails. Another outlet is to be used for light control replacing the cheap $4 analog timer from home depot with a more sophisticated lighting schedule. The last planned outlet right now is to control an ATO pump that will be flipped on and off by two float switches (1 in the bucket and one in the tank, possibly more for redundancy). 

 

In the mean time I have been getting Apache setup on the pi to run a web server so I can control and monitor all of the components in real time from a web interface for ease of mind when I am away for the weekends. As well as utilize the raspberry pi camera to have a 24/7 live stream of my tank that I can check to make sure everything is going well or just to look at / show off to friends. I will keep putting updates on the tank and the controller in this thread but really the controller is being made as more or less a beta test for a similar one that I plan to use on my 40B when I finally get that up and running. 

[Rain24]

I love Yasha Goby and candy cane shrimp pairings! I could forever stare at them sharing their tunnel while the shrimp keeps building it. Does your sand have a few larger pieces so their tunnel doesn't collapse? When I had my BC14, I had plans for a Yasha/Pistol combo.

 

Do you have a chisel? You could probably chisel off the bottom of that frag plug if you need to.

 

My bristle worms never bothered me, so I left them alone.I liked seeing them come out at night. Oh hey, which LFS store do you go to in the Chicago area? I used to live there and my favorite store was Beyond the Reef up in Schaumburg. Mind you, that was probably four or five years ago now, so I'm not sure what they're like now.

[money88]

3 minutes ago, Rain24 said:

I love Yasha Goby and candy cane shrimp pairings! I could forever stare at them sharing their tunnel while the shrimp keeps building it. Does your sand have a few larger pieces so their tunnel doesn't collapse? When I had my BC14, I had plans for a Yasha/Pistol combo.

 

Do you have a chisel? You could probably chisel off the bottom of that frag plug if you need to.

 

My bristle worms never bothered me, so I left them alone.I liked seeing them come out at night. Oh hey, which LFS store do you go to in the Chicago area? I used to live there and my favorite store was Beyond the Reef up in Schaumburg. Mind you, that was probably four or five years ago now, so I'm not sure what they're like now.

I think I have pretty fine sand in there I think its the olite sand from CaribSea. The half used bag is still sitting on my kitchen table haha I will take a look when I get home. That is the hope though, I'd love to have the pistol goby pair they fascinate me; I know its not a guaranteed pairing but I can be optimistic.  

 

I don't have a chisel but I am sure I could easily get ahold of one from my dads left overs and see if that works. Great idea though. 

 

The local store I have been going to so far is Reefwise for the corals, I have been really meaning to get to Beyond the Reef in the next couple of weekends to compare prices and inventory. It is a small world! 

[Weetabix7]

When you talk about removing the bottom stub off the frag plug, are you talking about a longer, kinda stem like protrusion from the bottom of the frag plug? If so, I would personally use a dremel with a diamond cutting wheel. 

Or were you talking about removing the coral from the frag plug itself?

 

Bristleworms are good and will clean up any food that doesn't get eaten by other stuff. 

 

I'm really uncertain about the ammonia. Has it never gone down to zero? What brand test kit are you using?

Doing a WC was the right call. 

 

You could probably do a YWG if it was a small one. 

[money88]

31 minutes ago, Weetabix7 said:

When you talk about removing the bottom stub off the frag plug, are you talking about a longer, kinda stem like protrusion from the bottom of the frag plug? If so, I would personally use a dremel with a diamond cutting wheel. 

Or were you talking about removing the coral from the frag plug itself?

 

Bristleworms are good and will clean up any food that doesn't get eaten by other stuff. 

 

I'm really uncertain about the ammonia. Has it never gone down to zero? What brand test kit are you using?

Doing a WC was the right call. 

 

You could probably do a YWG if it was a small one. 

Kudos to you on picking out the questions from that wall of text 

 

Yep the frag plug has a stem like protrusion here is an image of what I mean. Something like this

 

A dremel seems easy I will have to pick up a diamond cutting wheel but at least I already have the dremel. Eventually, at least on some corals in the future I may want to remove the frag itself from the plug and I read you can do that very carefully with an exacto knife and the appropriate gloves and eye-ware. But maybe even just making the plug sides smaller is a better option. 

 

The ammonia hasn't gone to zero since I have started the tank I have seen a fluctuation in nitrite and nitrate but the ammonia seemed to have stayed at 0.25. It also seems to be extra bubbly compared to the other samples so maybe those two bottles are just bad? I use the API test kits. 

 

Thanks for the tips and advice!

[money88]

Some updated pictures of them more opened up now that they have settled in. I will give a longer update tomorrow when I have more going on!

 

Duncan has really opened up a bit more. I will have to try and get a shot of it under the blue light because the greens really pop!

 

 

Bam Bam!

 

 

The ric is really starting to spread out and open up more which is nice to see!

 

 

Duncan and the ric

 

Mr Peppermint digging out the holes in the rock and multiple tunnels underneath

[Weetabix7]

Those corals look happy!!

Seeing that makes me question your ammonia test kit as well. 

 

And yeah, dremel with diamond wheel was my best fragging tool. 

[money88]

Updates

 

This morning was a busy morning. I did a water change on 4 tanks, trimming my 3 planted tanks and testing each one as well. For this little pico my readings were showing 0.25 ammonia still (I am going to try another one of my test kits on Sunday), 0 nitrite, 0-5 nitrate. Thursdays / Fridays are usually my water change day so I did 40% on this tank. I wiped down the salt creep and scrubbed off the algae that was building up on the back filtration wall. My Duncan hasn't been happy since the water change and only one of his heads is about 5% open the others are closed up tight. Hopefully it will relax a bit and open back up. I then fed about 1/4th of a mysis cube turning the filter off for a while target feeding the Ric and the Duncan hoping it'd open up a bit and putting the rest over by the shrimp's cave. 

 

I will be completely rescaping one of my planted tanks hopefully this Sunday if I can find some nice hardscape. So most likely wont be picking any new corals or inhabitants. Plan on going to checkout Beyond the Reef in Schamburg so if I do find something like a nice Goby, small clown, or a coral I just cannot pass up. 

 

While doing the maintenance I did notice some algae growth on my rocks any suggestions on next steps I need to take to prevent this from taking over?

 

 

 

[Weetabix7]

Manual removal, look up how to kill algae with peroxide and do that, make sure you have a good amount of snails to eat it. 

Can't remember what you have in that area. 

You do want to address it now.

[money88]

6 hours ago, Weetabix7 said:

Manual removal, look up how to kill algae with peroxide and do that, make sure you have a good amount of snails to eat it. 

Can't remember what you have in that area. 

You do want to address it now.

Right now I only have a pistol shrimp. I want to get some snails a cleaner shrimp and an emerald crab?

 

What sort of snails can i get that won't reproduce like crazy? I want to pick up a Bumblebee snail and a trochus? A cleaner shrimp and maybe an emerald crab thoughts?

 

Bumblebees stay relatively small and don't need a zombie snail bc I plan to get a goby to sift some sand

[money88]

Update time

 

So Sunday I went and picked up a few CUC at least to get me started. I bought a cleaner shrimp and 3 Nerite snails. I think I will be getting a few more snails soon, even though my Nerites I keep finding upside on the sand. 

 

It seems that my test kit is either starting to work or my 0.25 ammonia just magically went away because I have the last two days of testing been reading 0 with no raise in nitrites or nitrates. Leaving my overall tank testing at 0 ammonia, 0 nitrites, 0 nitrates, 0 phosphate (picked up a phosphate test kit as well), 1.024 salinity, and 8.2 PH. I topped my water off yesterday because the salinity jumped up to 1.026 due to evaporation. I am getting pretty close to getting an ATO system setup need to order a small pump but waiting on a soldering iron to build a PCB board to wire my arduino / pi setup to. I will send updates when I get that setup! 

 

Never made it to Beyond the Reef this past weekend hopefully I am able to get out that way this weekend to checkout their inventory. May need to spend some of that tax money on some new corals!  

 

So after adding the cleaner shrimp the Duncan seemed to close up for quite some time, I think it was due to it not being used to getting touched by the cleaner as often as it was. Since then in a few days already it has been staying open quite well unless the cleaner like pounces on it which happens when I try to direct feed the cleaner. The cleaner is ruthless when I am feeding putting its arms all the way up the pipette trying to grab the mysis. I also am sure to burst a small amount into the pistol shrimps cave b/c otherwise the cleaner will just go crazy. 

 

After adding the cleaner and snails I have heard A LOT more snapping from the pistol when the cleaner gets near its cave entrances. But he seems to be holding his own, hopefully he is still coming out at night to get some food but I can never see him so I am not quite sure. 

 

I also bought some chemi-pure blue nano bags and purigen that I haven't put into the tank yet. I am still currently running the stock filtration which is a foam block with first carbon then biomax. I have to figure out which two would make sense to run or if I should just move forward with creating the egg crate media rack. 

 

I also pulled out the nicer camera with the macro lens in an attempt to shoot some better pictures so I will give a mix between some cell phone and macro pictures below. Bare with me as I am still learning to use the DSLR. 

 

The cleaner shrimp:

 

The Ric:

 

Zoa:

 

Duncan:

 

Oh and something I don't know what it is. Any ideas? It is tiny so I even blew it up and circled it for us. 

Well as always I have been really enjoying the new dive into saltwater so far and is really motivating me to get some of the plumbing on my 40 breeder done to eventually get that up and running. More updates will continue to be provided! And I will be sure to link to the 40 breeder thread if I ever decide to create one. Not sure I will be able to put anything in that one until the October time frame. 

 

[Lula_Mae]

It's been a couple weeks, how's the tank coming along?

[money88]

Tank is doing really well! Sorry for the long period without an update I'd like to continue to update more regularly for my own learning and for anyone else that is enjoying following along!

 

 I have been doing the normal maintenance and doing quite a bit of work on my controller software as well as my other freshwater tanks. Did a complete tear down and re-aquascape of the 10 gallon tank. I need to swap the front swords for some different foreground plants but this is just what I had on hand.  Here is an image for those interested

 

Well back to the saltwater, last week I noticed I have some sort of pods I couldn't quite identify exactly which ones so I am hoping its the good ones. I haven't seen them eating the corals or anything so that is good so far. Here is an image of what I could get

 

I also noticed yesterday that I have started to see some coralline algae on the back wall. Very small amounts so far and I haven't scraped it off yet because I don't know if I wanted to let it spread a bit on the back wall or not. But people say that is a good sign of calcium and other elements for corals so that is a plus! I am doing either weekly or biweekly water changes and ensuring to top off when necessary. 

 

So some information about my inhabitants. I picked up 2 Astrea snails who are doing a really nice job keeping the tank clean; meanwhile one of my Nerite snails was killed by my pistol shrimp and his shell was used for a door at his burrow entrance. The cleaner shrimp started to worry me a little as his antenna were getting a little brown over the last few days but today I came home to my first molt. After seeing this I snatched the molt out of the tank with a pair of tweezers so it didn't contaminate the water any. 

 

 

The pistol shrimp I have still only seen once haha but I continue to hear his clicks when the cleaner gets too close for too long so at least I know he is alive. Other than that the 3 corals I have are doing really well the ric has really opened up and I can already seen growth, the duncan continues to show me its awesome colors and the zoa as well. I did swap the location of the duncan and the zoa because I had to move the left most rock a bit closer to the middle rock so it was further away from the left and back glass panels. But even after the move they both seemed to open up quite fast and weren't to upset about it except a little slime from the duncan while I was actively touching him.

 

I just got a diamond dremel blade in the mail so I may give cutting the frag plug a try and gluing my first coral this week or weekend. I also bought myself some new goodies for the tank that I am sure I really didn't need but oh well. I purchased the inTank filter basket and I am running some chemi-pure blue nano, phos-guard, some filter floss, and biomax. I think the order I have it now is filter floss -> phos-guard -> chemi-pure elite blue -> normal carbon that came with the tank -> biomax pellets. Other than that the tank so far has seemed pretty stable (*Knock on wood*) so I was going to pick another coral up this weekend then realized it was Easter so I will have to hold off until the following when I travel to see the GF. 

 

In other news I am kept quite busy managing my 2.7 gallon planted tank that has a carpet of Hemianthus Callitrichoides (Cuba) which if you have never had this or are not familiar with it, it really is amazing looking but needs constant trimming and then it's a pain to get all the tiny clippings. I also as I mentioned just re-did the 10gallon I have here and have been maintaining the 30 gallon and 3 gallon at the girlfriends place as well both planted. I just love the natural look and feel of plants and corals to go with the artificial look. 

 

Sorry back to the saltwater tank it is so easy to get distracted when you are trying to type up what has been going on for a few weeks. Well not much else to talk about, I guess I picked up some calcium and phosphate test kits but as I have done more and more research I think that was unnecessary for such a small tank. The phosphates usually wont read out much because if there are excess you are going to see it in algae and the calcium I don't have to test for at this point or at all with such a small tank as long as I am doing regular water changes. 

 

Well last but not least here are a few more pictures I took right before my light went off for the night since I knew I was going to type this post up

 

 

 

 

Well that is all for now. I will try to be more regular about my posts and definitely let everyone know when I make future additions!

[Rain24]

The pistol killed the nerite and had the nerve to use it's shell as a door to it's burrow? Sheesh, talk about adding insult to injury.

 

Aww, I like your cleaner shrimp. I used to know someone who had a tank with a very friendly cleaner shrimp. When I stuck my arm in there to move corals around, he would climb on my arm. I hope it stays away from that pistol.

 

The zoas and duncan look really good.

 

Let me know if you ever make it to Beyond the Reef. I'm curious to know if it's still well maintained.

[Lula_Mae]

Love the freshwater tank!  Was gonna work on getting mine back up to speed till I lost my job last week.

Also, glad your tank is doing well!  Mine had a colossal crash about the time of your last update.

[money88]

10 hours ago, Rain24 said:

The pistol killed the nerite and had the nerve to use it's shell as a door to it's burrow? Sheesh, talk about adding insult to injury.

 

Aww, I like your cleaner shrimp. I used to know someone who had a tank with a very friendly cleaner shrimp. When I stuck my arm in there to move corals around, he would climb on my arm. I hope it stays away from that pistol.

 

The zoas and duncan look really good.

 

Let me know if you ever make it to Beyond the Reef. I'm curious to know if it's still well maintained.

Yea I am not that upset about the snail loss because it's like nature and obviously the snail encroached to close to the shrimps home. I did remove the snail shell and ensure that all of the snail was actually out before placing it back in front of the shrimps cave. I wanted to make sure any unnecessary decay wouldn't cause an ammonia spike. But yea pretty much a real kick in the rear by the shrimp. 

 

Thanks, I love my cleaner shrimp as well. He is extremely friendly and curious as well! He will always investigate whatever comes into the tank, my fingers or my pipette when feeding its quite awesome. I don't think that the cleaner shrimp will have problems by the pistol he always sits right next to the pistol's home and the pistol snaps at him like crazy but the cleaner seems unphased haha. 

 

Thanks again I haven't seen any new growth on the duncans or the zoa, even though I haven't actually counted the Zoa's polyps since I have gotten it. But I was worried the duncan may have needed more calcium but the recent existence of coralline algae tells me my calcium levels are doing okay. 

 

I actually did make it to Beyond the Reef I think 2 weekends ago. It seems maintained extremely well and had some pretty awesome displays and crazy fish. They didn't have much in terms of smaller frags so I will most likely continue to pick up my frags from Reefwise and continue to checkout other stores. Plus their prices were a tad steeper at Beyond the Reef than some of the other stores I have been to recently. 

 

9 hours ago, Lula_Mae said:

Love the freshwater tank!  Was gonna work on getting mine back up to speed till I lost my job last week.

Also, glad your tank is doing well!  Mine had a colossal crash about the time of your last update.

Thanks! It is one of many that I maintain. Currently have a 2.7 gallon, 3 gallon, 10 gallon, and 30 gallon all freshwater planted tanks. So it keeps me pretty busy maintaining those and I am still fairly new to the planted scene as well so lots of learning going on there as well. 

 

Sorry to hear that about your job  and yea I haven't been browsing the forums as much. I did just notice your thread and I am terribly sorry to see the crash. Hopefully you can recover with your new tank!

 

Thanks for checking in! 

[Hirsh]

The reef is a savage land. No place for the week. 

[Lula_Mae]

1 hour ago, Hirsh said:

The reef is a savage land. No place for the week. 

 

My pom pom crabs aptly demonstrated that last week...

[money88]

3 hours ago, Hirsh said:

The reef is a savage land. No place for the week. 

 

Yea especially if you have ever seen a mantis shrimp take down its prey!

[Lula_Mae]

4 hours ago, money88 said:

 

Yea especially if you have ever seen a mantis shrimp take down its prey!

Or seen a pom pom crab steal its rivals poms, beat it up and proceed to eat its leg! Peaceful my foot!