Live Free or Reef

[Christopher Marks]

On 2/16/2019 at 4:41 AM, GraniteReefer said:

Want to give a thanks to @johnmaloney with reef cleaners as I got some critters for the reef bowl as a self-reward.  I also needed a CUC for the Red Sea 250 which is a good thing so I had a tank big enough to put the excessive amounts of snails in!  John must have double vision as there were twice the number of critters from what I ordered!  Everything arrived well packaged and alive(other than a crab who ate the other crab, but John sent an EXTRA crab!).  

Bags Floating in my Dirty Red Sea

I added two Dwarf Planaxis.  I put them on the sandbed.

4 zigzag periwinkles

10 dwarf Cerith 



And 4 baby filtering clams who also went onto the sandbed

I got other goodies too but those are all for the Red Sea, I’ll try to update the reefer thread with what was added there.  If you are looking for a CUC think reefcleaners!

That's a great cleanup crew from Reef Cleaners! Thanks for sharing all the photos of them, those are the same cleanup crew invertebrates that I've been considering for my pico reef too. Those dwarf cerith snails are even smaller than I imagined! 😲

[MainelyReefer]

2 hours ago, Christopher Marks said:

Those dwarf cerith snails are even smaller than I imagined! 

I chose the smallest ones possible out of the 100!  Some came in 2-3x bigger but still very dwarf.  

[MainelyReefer]

Picked up some Gaudy yellow airline tubing... special.  

Accidentally broke off 13 heads of the blue trumpet colony during the WC today(perfect excuse to add something from Frag Farmers Market)

I removed it and left the remaining 8 heads, they have strange growth structure but I’m hoping the extra flow will change that 

Also upgraded my fridge to a clearance lowes dented special, since you’ve all been looking at an ugly white fridge now it’s a pretty dented one.  Best thing is all equipment still squeezed in behind it, plus during transfer I consolidated to the battery pump alone, while slightly louder, the corals have been liking the increase in flow

 

[Christopher Marks]

Nice shiny new fridge! 👍

 

That's a big frag from the blue trumpets! What are you considering to fill its place, any new species? I'm curious to see what changes you notice after increasing the air flow with your air pump swap, it did really well considering there was just 8 gallons per hour from the phantom air pump!

[MainelyReefer]

Ordered off ebay for the first time, got a cornbred blasto for the reefbowl!  Cornbred has fire corals, I’m hoping the pictures weren’t incredible and the corals normal!  I performed a WC yesterday to make sure it’s being put in a clean tank with maxed parameters.  May have also gotten 2 other corals in hopes of using them to stock my tank in the upcoming contest!  Pictures later today!  Also two things to note about the increased air flow from the bigger pump is increased evaporation made salinity rise to 1.028 which is a new occurrence, and the air tube must be placed further off the ground in my liftpipe as the sand at the bottom is getting lifted by the bubbles and I’m having sedimentation issues on the corals as the flow is insufficient to remove the sand off the corals bodies once it gets there so I find myself blasting them off with the turkey baster.  Maybe I will go back to the 8gph pump?  I’ll give this one a few more weeks so I can work out the kinks and if it’s still a PITA I will revert.

[debbeach13]

Is the stronger pump to fight algae or you just wanted to see coral reaction to more flow? 

[MainelyReefer]

12 hours ago, debbeach13 said:

Is the stronger pump to fight algae or you just wanted to see coral reaction to more flow? 

The stronger pump has built in battery backup and I am trying to just run that one rather than have both plugged in and tee’d and checkvalved.  Plus the added benefit of more flow as the corals grow and slow the flow down with their mass.  Luckily this tank has never had an algae issue.

[MainelyReefer]

Cornbred Corals!

I only bought one coral for the pico, a PPE blasto.  If anyone knows WTF PPE stands for let me know please and thank you.  I know of purple people eaters but this is green haha.

I glued this one directly to the glass hoping the pistol doesn’t knock it off somehow.  I also bought two other corals but I’m saving those for the future contest.  Luckily though I got a freebie blasto which I also put in the reefbowl!  On the rockwork by where the recently fragged blue trumpet was.

Arctic Blast blasto

If you have ever considered eBay corals Cornbred gets an A+ from me as everything looks exactly as marketed and is 🔥

[MainelyReefer]

8 hours ago, GraniteReefer said:

I glued this one directly to the glass hoping the pistol doesn’t knock it off somehow

1 am last night and there I am with tweezers and super glue as the pistol had already knocked the blasto off, I remounted it to the rockwork just below the arctic blast.  Perhaps it’s time for some nanorox wall mounts?!?

[ECLS Reefer]

You have such a beautiful tank @GraniteReefer!! I want to do something like this, though I'm not sure I can shell out the dough for an AI prime. I was wondering-did you ever put in the canister filter you spoke of trying? And if you did, how did you set it up? I didn't catch that on reading through your journal and I was interested to see if you ever tried it, if it helped, and how it was built. Or, do you just continue to use the air pump/lift pipe system? Also, did you bother with a circulation pico pump, or was the air pump enough? 

[Lingwendil]

PPE= Purple people eater.

[MainelyReefer]

2 hours ago, Dirté Sanchez said:

You have such a beautiful tank @GraniteReefer!! I want to do something like this, though I'm not sure I can shell out the dough for an AI prime. I was wondering-did you ever put in the canister filter you spoke of trying? And if you did, how did you set it up? I didn't catch that on reading through your journal and I was interested to see if you ever tried it, if it helped, and how it was built. Or, do you just continue to use the air pump/lift pipe system? Also, did you bother with a circulation pico pump, or was the air pump enough? 

Never tried the canister, and have had great luck running air pump and lift pipe only.  So much so I’m designing my new pico largely off this one.  I did upgrade the 8gph air pump to a 19gph one to increase flow after growth.  Get the AI Prime it will be viable for many tanks beyond a pico so is a good investment, used ones go locally for 100$-125

[MainelyReefer]

2 hours ago, Lingwendil said:

PPE= Purple people eater.

That’s what I thought but the coral  is green!🤤

[ECLS Reefer]

57 minutes ago, GraniteReefer said:

Never tried the canister, and have had great luck running air pump and lift pipe only.  So much so I’m designing my new pico largely off this one.  I did upgrade the 8gph air pump to a 19gph one to increase flow after growth.  Get the AI Prime it will be viable for many tanks beyond a pico so is a good investment, used ones go locally for 100$-125

Oh okay I’ll look for a used setup. Did you use the freshwater version? I saw you specified no HD and their website now makes it seem like HD is marine only, non HD is fresh. They have a refugium version too- just don’t want to blast the crap out of a teeny weeny tank.

[MainelyReefer]

8 minutes ago, Dirté Sanchez said:

Oh okay I’ll look for a used setup. Did you use the freshwater version? I saw you specified no HD and their website now makes it seem like HD is marine only, non HD is fresh. They have a refugium version too- just don’t want to blast the crap out of a teeny weeny tank.

It’s a marine version from before they offered HD, I run mine at 17w max

[MainelyReefer]

Went for a little over two weeks without a WC.

luckily my algae grows almost exclusively on the glass.

The weekly 100% WC’s are great for the system and most corals but the bounce mushroom preferred the tank to be a mess.

thinking I’m going to have to get out the goggles and gloves and scalpel those zoas off the mushrooms plug.  And the reason these tanks are so great is that you can have it looking 100% in less than an hour

[MainelyReefer]

Haven’t cleaned the walls of the bowl since my last post in March but have maintained the weekly WCs.  This has resulted in some hair algae but nothing I fear. Coral growth is great even though the free arctic blast blasto I got must have been knocked off by the pistol as rubble, I’ll keep an eye out for it in his piles and hope I get lucky.

you can barley see a new head growing at the top of this blasto

The Acan I placed where the bounce had been(moved to the Dropoff) is growing back over where it had receded from shading in its previous location, it’s the purple one in the zoas.

Trumpets may need to be hacked back soon

[fishfreak0114]

1 hour ago, GraniteReefer said:

Haven’t cleaned the walls of the bowl since my last post in March but have maintained the weekly WCs.  This has resulted in some hair algae but nothing I fear. Coral growth is great even though the free arctic blast blasto I got must have been knocked off by the pistol as rubble, I’ll keep an eye out for it in his piles and hope I get lucky.

you can barley see a new head growing at the top of this blasto

The Acan I placed where the bounce had been(moved to the Dropoff) is growing back over where it had receded from shading in its previous location, it’s the purple one in the zoas.

Trumpets may need to be hacked back soon

 It’s filled in so nicely!

[MainelyReefer]

Cleaned the glass!  

I found the arctic blast blasto that I had assumed was pistol rubble, while the tank was drained for the WC I used my tweezers and toothbrush to remove it from wetherbee’s retaining wall.  And I glued the crap out of it this time

and here’s the PPE blasto for fun 

Hungry Corals

[ef4life]

Ppe- personal protective equipment is my guess, like a lime green safety vest for construction workers. 

 

The little bowl looks awesome. You have so much coral in there it’s almost unbelievable 

[MainelyReefer]

Not sure if my most recent move will be something I look back at and regret but when window shopping in a LFS a small Goby with a sunken stomach was basically asking me to please save her so I had to respond.  

Sure I’m stuffing her in this small ass tank with another fish and shrimp but she immediately took to her new home.  It it a she? No one knows but I’m assuming she is, how unpolitically correct of me to assign/assume gender, maybe I’ll ask the fish what it feels it is today or buy it gender neutral tank decorations.  I caught fritz’s Face the first moment he saw her it wasn’t so impressed.

She held her own though and made the same face back

They act like an old married couple, turn up your brightness for this photo as they are in the darkest partHoping these two will pair up or Atleast tolerate each other, the pistol shrimp likes having two gobies as at times they are at separate burrows and the shrimp excavates back and forth between the burrows with a fish to guard him at each site.

Wetherbee with the new goby

fritz in his usual spot to the back left, so naturally the new Goby has been manning the front right hole which has been nice as it makes viewing easier

[debbeach13]

She is so cute! I hope they all continue to get along. 

[MainelyReefer]

The new fish is doing great, as is fritz and wetherbee.  Fluconazole knocked out all my pest algae and also almost all the yellow sponge, this will likely grow back though.  

I got a 50$ Frag of holy grail micromussa yesterday. It sure is micro

fritz took a liking to it, maybe because he’s sick of looking at the same old stuff in a small bowl.

[MainelyReefer]

Tank is on cruise control, less than 2 months until it’s 2 years old!

fritz and weatherbee and the rainbow acan that is getting shaded out by the darn zoas(never should have added them)

As seen in this photo fritz’ yellow head is IMO losing color, I’m guessing age

He eats the same as the other goby who has a nice deep yellow still and is rapidly growing(both have fat bellies) so I don’t think it’s dietary.  Then again fritz had less color than the other to begin with as I think I noted when the second one was added.

and a rare photo with both fish on opposing sides of the tank. If I could get one with the shrimp too it would be a flat out miracle.

[MainelyReefer]

Last post I mentioned fritz’ head was losing color, sadly he continued to degrade and passed away on September 1st.  I have never seen a fish wither so slowly but I think it’s the first time I’ve seen a saltwater fish die from old age.  One day he lost his ability to stay upright and 3 days later he passed.  Once he lost balance he would perch in the corals to stay upright

his fins began to tear but unlike other dying fish the CUC wasn’t reacting, even once dead they didn’t eat him at all, after taking this photo I removed and discarded his body.

happier update next time 

also the remaining Goby is now fritz