25yr old 75G Jaubert Plenum

[Subsea]

Taken from my lazy boy

[Subsea]

I continue to deal with phosphate by adding ammonia to promote uptake of phosphate into biofilter.  And I siphon out cynobacteria from sand bed.  

 

I have reduced 6” dsb down to < 2” in 80% of sandbed.  To get the rest will require me to dismantle 1/3 of rock wall.  At 2” shallow, I stop removing substrate.

 

I am “tickled pink” that the Golden Snails I transferred from the Janitor Brigade to brave the LARGE  Melanarious Wrasse that awaits them in my 25 year old 75G Jaubert Plenum are still OK.  Yes, 300 Golden Astrae and 100 Cerith Snails along  with 50 Emerald Crabs and 20 assortment of urchins are assigned to  Janitor Brigade.  

 

Last picture is 120G new build at one month old.

 

 

[Subsea]

On 12/5/2017 at 3:32 PM, Moolelo said:

Filter feeders and sea cucumbers are some of my favorites, they look great! Just keeping it all going with the microfauna population?

Aside from flake food, every day, I feed a whole live mussel .  If I wanted more sponges, I would dose  carbon.  I prefer populations of filter feeders that rise & fall with food supply.

[Subsea]

Just removed feather Caulerpa from platform with Dragons Tongue, Halymenia dilitata. 

[Lula_Mae]

6 hours ago, Subsea said:

Just removed feather Caulerpa from platform with Dragons Tongue, Halymenia dilitata. 

That dragon's tongue is gorgeous, is it the same as the one called dragon's breath with orange tipping on the leaves?

[Subsea]

They are similar, both slippery.  Halymenia dilitata is less fragile than its two cousins from Florida.  I also find it to grow much faster under bright light, doubling in size in a week.

 

I recently lost 90% of my inventory of Halymenia dilitata, due to bacteria infection.  I have been growing ornamental algae for more than 25 years.  Can’t say that I have ever considered bacteria as a problem in a seaweed culture.  However, in the future, intensive seaweed tumble cultures will have UV sterilization.  Two 55G tanks will be outfitted this week for tumble culture in the house.

 

I will also operate an outdoor growout system in the next six weeks after our winter here in Austin.  The grass shrimp growout consist of three 150G Rubbermade tubs buried in ground.  In a recent cold snap with 900W of resistive heat system temperature for shrimp and green mollies from Texas Coast drooped to 53.4 degrees.  As an emergency, I crammed 1000’ hose bundle of 1/2” irrigation hose.  Trinity Aquifer at 900’ deep is 78 degrees.  I run this geothermally heated water thru 1000: hose and add BTU’s to shrimp culture.  Ground water used goes to small pound which irrigates my wild glower garden.  I will use nutrient rich water from shrimp culture tanks to grow people ediable seaweed, Gracilaria Tikvahiae.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Subsea]

No big changes.  I caught a large emerald crab munching on my red grape cluster.  Crab left the system as nutrient export.

I put him into outside grow out system to eat gha.  Sixty and fifty degrees seems to be ok with urchins and Crabs.  Everybody slows down, including macro algae.

 

getting back to this 25 year old 75G Jaubert Plenum, which is no longer 6” deep.  In places eggcrate & window screen material is exposed to bulk water.  About 25% is still deep and it will remain that way.  

 

Halymenia dilitata & Bortacladia require less cleaning of particulate/detritus with much help from Astrae snails.  I moved Hammer Time back away from rock wall, that it help up during sand bed vacuming from 6” to 2”.

 

I am very happy with Yellow Ball Sponges & Red Tree Sponges from live-plants.  It amused me to see my new apprentice clean yellow ball sponges with a soft tooth brush.  I have both species in bright light with my corals.  Initially, this required daily cleaning to get funk (bad stuff) off.   An larger emerald crab has assisted with cleaning one of the red tree sponges.  It looks to be a learned symbiotic behavior.

 

I really like Drawf Angels.  When I introduced the Flame Angel, it was immediately bullied by a 25% larger Coral Beauty that had been in tank for 5 years.  I feared that flame would not survive 48 hours.  After 24 hours, Flame had clamped fins and was hiding in a ball of Gracilaria sp.  Twelve hours later, Flame was still hiding but he no longer had clamped fins.  Coral Beauty continued to threaten Flame, but I saw the posture change.  Instead of a scared fish with clamped fins, I saw an alert fish intently observing an adversary.  I feed often to encourage eating together and  to come out of hiding in the weeds.  Every time Flame tried to eat, Beauty would stop eating and chase Flame away from the food.  

 

Well, Flame had enough of bully behavior.  On one pass by Beauty to intimidate Flame, as Beauty turned, exposing a broadside, Flame head butted Beauty.  No more bully behavior.   The fish worked it out.

[Subsea]

Big Emerald Crab cleaning live rock.  This crab also cleans substrate.  He is the same crab that cleans red tree sponge branches.

[vlangel]

I had to smile about how the flame had just had enough from the beauty and the head butt!  Its always a relief to see a new resident stick up for themself when in a tank full of old residents.

[Subsea]

I thought Flame was the last fish in this tank.  With the unexplained death of two Tangs, I had a need for blue and yellow.  So I added a dozen blue yellow tail Damsels.  They are so spunky.  Every now and then when doing in tank maintenance, one of the alphas nips me.  While it does not hurt, the sudden withdrawal of my hand with impact on the “cray bone” hurts a lot.  I do not know why it scares me so.  Perhapes Jaws the movie has imprinted me.

[vlangel]

2 hours ago, Subsea said:

I thought Flame was the last fish in this tank.  With the unexplained death of two Tangs, I had a need for blue and yellow.  So I added a dozen blue yellow tail Damsels.  They are so spunky.  Every now and then when doing in tank maintenance, one of the alphas nips me.  While it does not hurt, the sudden withdrawal of my hand with impact on the “cray bone” hurts a lot.  I do not know why it scares me so.  Perhapes Jaws the movie has imprinted me.

I used to do the same thing when Ato, my hormonal female tomato clown would nip me.  It did not hurt much either but it always surprised me.

[Subsea]

it has been close to four months with lights out in 30G mud refugium.  Pods & micro starfish still in abundance scurrying about. 

 

Yellow cryptic sponges are everywhere.  

 

With large Tangs no longer in display tank, I am hoping to bring in some more deep water macro like Bortacladia into display. 

[Subsea]

On 11/15/2017 at 4:18 AM, Sharbuckle said:

Would love to see a new video of this tank. It’s beautiful. 

 

On 11/15/2017 at 4:18 AM, Sharbuckle said:

Would love to see a new video of this tank. It’s beautiful. 

I have enjoyed looking at your videos and so much like the way you have tied all three tanks together.  Have you experienced a power failure to see how everything levels out.

 

[Subsea]

I am working on a video for this tank.  

 

I have added red grapes & dragons tongue to to this tank, after taking out a rogue Emerald Crab.  The large Emerald Crab in the picture has taken up residency behind the same rock.  This large Crab does not bother macro.  I see him eating stuff off of sand grains,   

[Subsea]

Dragon’s Tongue & Red Grapes are both doing well after a night of herbivore grazing.  I still have numerous Emerald Crabs in this tank but it seems as if I got the rogue out.

 

lights on 15 minutes.

[vlangel]

Looking good as always!

[squamptonbc]

I love the sea weed you keep. I used to as well when I lived in California. Now in Canada pretty much impossible to find. Lovely as always.

[Subsea]

I do enjoy aquascaping with seaweed.  I use so much less rock and get very good circulation.  

 

I eased dropped on some reefers on this site from Canada that are in-the OTTAWA Macro Club.  Don’t know much about it, but it seems as if macro does come in to Canada.

 

 

[squamptonbc]

Macro can be found especially back east, more difficult out west. Store local to me at times have Chaeto for $20 for golf ball sized. Other then Chaeto I have not been able to find much else.

[Subsea]

Too much money.  Check out Algaebarn.

 

https://www.algaebarn.com/product-category/macro-algae/

[Subsea]

While it is difficult to quantify the overall benefit from 5 months of cryptic refugium, I can say without a doubt that cryptic refugium is supporting Chilie, who seems to be healthy in the dark.

 

Third picture is surface skimmed water flowing thru very coarse media.  While not obvious in the picture, micro starfish and amphipods bigger than mollie babies are moving about.  To properly see it would require getting on belly to get a close up.  I will leave that to my grandkids.

 

 

[Subsea]

Bengal Roach spray works very specifically and is selective, as best I can tell.

 

Four days ago, I fogged two bedrooms and a bathroom.  Those rooms were closed up.  All aquariums in living/dining area were covered in towels.  NOTE:  Cotton towels do not prevent penetration with insecticide.

 

Crabs and shrimp (Peppermint, amphipods & copepods) all took a hit.  The worst hit was a 10G Peppermint Shrimp tank and my 75G tank that has been set up for 25 years.  I watched bristle worms feasting on Peppermint Shrimp before they were completely dead.  Not a pleasant sight.  On the Jaubert Plenum seven Green Emerald Crabs were removed.  Oddly enough, the Emerald Crabs were becoming a problem for Red Grapes, Dragons Tongue and Caulerpa Prolifera.  

 

All tanks were filtered with large amounts of GAC and are immaculate to look at.  I am most interested in seeing what happens to the bristle worms that eat shrimps and crabs killed by roach insecticide.  I would say that at four days after the event, the bacteria populations as well as micro fauna & fana have not been adversely effected.  Fish are feeding very well and coral are waving their polyps.

 

 

[vlangel]

The tank looks wonderful but sad to hear that the peppermints and crabs were hit so hard.  That is good to know however since I have peppermints.  I live in PA so not likely to ever need to spray for roaches but will keep it in mind nevertheless.

[Subsea]

@vlangel

I think I had New York roaches, they were very prolific.  They came in two years ago with a roommates belongings.  Previously, I had big Texas roaches, which were a delicacy for the scorpions.  Just don’t step on the scorpion.  I never used insecticides in my home.  Boric acid is a non hazardous remedy for safe treatment.  However, when rhe roaches join you at the dinner table, it is war.  

 

 

[Tamberav]

Love the tank