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ADA - the 2 island reef


Andreww

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24 minutes ago, sublunary said:

That's pretty! Dragon's breath?

 

 

ETA - or I can just read the title where you say gracilaria. *facepalm*

Lol honestly that’s what I’ve been told that it is gracilaria, although there seems to be multiple growth patterns if you start googling...

To tell you the truth, it grows way different in my sump vs the display, and I attribute that to flow and spectrum which is totally different.

 

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27 minutes ago, rO.oster said:

I'm loving the feather dusters everywhere, tank is looking amazing.  The rainbow bta is sweet!

Thank you. Sponges and feather dusters are in heaven :) I feed my tank a lot, and used to have feather dusters on the sand and that got annoying.

I started pulling them off the rocks as well at some point and now they’re in pretty high numbers but haven’t gone on sand anymore. 

Fingers crossed ? 

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My tank inhabitants love salmon. Cut up in small pieces and served in the current. :)

Anthias have dropped their taste in Calanus , mysis is hit and miss, depending on the day...but salmon works every time. 

By the way, this is pink salmon I caught in the Pacific Northwest last summer.

Montipora has a taste for it as well lol, it caught a small piece floating around. Nems, acans, and everybody else is fine with what’s on the menu. They’ll sleep well tonight heh

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Started noticing a white spot on my monti cap. Upon further checking, looks like the whitening is from underneath all the way to the other side? 

Is this typical monti nudibranch action? 

I tried looking with a bright flashlight under the cap and on my other montis and can’t see any nudibranch or eggs. Notice the white spot on the shelf extending to the right.

What could this be?...

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As for parameters, the only big shift I can think of for the past month is a temperature shift. I left the balcony window open and the house got really cold for a few hours while I was at work, and when I got back I noticed my temperature was 70 instead of the 77 I keep the tank at.

My heater is undersized for my tank by a bit, so it couldn’t keep up with the cold air coming from outside...

Thats a pretty big temp swing, could that have something to do with it?...my acro is showing signs of stress with some white fuzzy tips /flesh in the current. I’m wondering what’s up...DKH has not moved from 9.5 ...

 

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On 2/6/2018 at 11:54 PM, Andreww said:

My tank inhabitants love salmon. Cut up in small pieces and served in the current. :)

Anthias have dropped their taste in Calanus , mysis is hit and miss, depending on the day...but salmon works every time. 

By the way, this is pink salmon I caught in the Pacific Northwest last summer.

Montipora has a taste for it as well lol, it caught a small piece floating around. Nems, acans, and everybody else is fine with what’s on the menu. They’ll sleep well tonight heh

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Salmon feeding, very interesting. Can you show us the process? 

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6 minutes ago, PshThisGuy said:

Salmon feeding, very interesting. Can you show us the process? 

Real simple. Cut off a small piece from the main filet, then chop it up in very small pieces so fish and coral can eat them.

Standard procedure just like any other frozen food. Will post a pic sometime today when I feed them again..

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Well it was really tough to spot anything but noticed minuscule black bugs of some sort roaming around on that white spot. Had to zoom in quite a bit to see some action going on. Broke off that piece of monti cap and took it out of the tank. Hopefully none of my other montis were affected.

Now I know nudibranchs are white, what is black and eats montis? Scratching my head..lol

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Yup, read that one. Thanks for the link, looks like a mysterious black bug that not many people had to deal with.

On another note, gracilaria grows like crazy. First trim tonight, was growing over the rock hanging down, shading corals underneath. 

Trim and throw in the sump:)

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  • 7 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Been a while since I’ve been on the forum. Thank you Ramona for the compliment.

 

Quite a bit has changed and the tank was a rollercoaster for the past 3 months or longer..more like a rollercoaster going downhill full speed.

 

Phosphate and Nitrate went out of control because of neglect (mostly cuz I got busy with another hobby). The encrusting montiporas bleached/browned out, monti cap got really pale , anemones lost some color too but most LPS were ok.

Gotta admit, stopped water changes and dosing too so all the other parameters were out of wack.

Alk down to 6.5, Cal 380, Magnesium 1100...

What can I say? I was mad at myself for being lazy with the tank.

 

Because of the high nutrients and everything else going on, a nasty hair algae/bryopsis started growing over the whole surface of the rock. And I mean all of it where there was no coral. I thought to myself...dang, pretty nasty forecast ahead of me if I don’t take care of this stuff.

 

So about 2 weeks ago I got back on track, cleaned the whole sump, tank, as much as I could, pulled algae off the rocks with the tweezers for days on end(it kept growing ), did a few water changes, pulled out the second reactor from the closet, filled one with GFO and the other one with carbon , started dosing every day , new macro algae in the sump with a new power head in there, etc

 

Corraline algae took off, I can still see hair algae on the rock but not nearly as much as before, a few more turns with the tweezers and I’m going to be algae free; GFO definitely helps in this respect lowering those elevated phosphates.

 

Corals are making a comeback and they started encrusting and coloring better, except my rainbow monti. It was a bit light in color and lost its polyps so I moved it down in the tank about low-midway. Hopefully it’ll pull through.

I should mention I changed my light schedule on the Hydra HD to David Saxby program, only that I cut all levels in half cuz my tank is so shallow. Great stuff.

 

Added a new pink birds nest with green tips.

Also a huge rock full of pulsing Xenia. 

Anemones split a couple times and had 5 at one point. 3 of them went to the LFS , I’m left with the 2 good looking ones. 

Other than that, I’m happy the tank is back on track and me back to being motivated.

 

Im going to upload a picture soon. 

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About a week ago I hung the 2 grow LED lights as high as I could inside the cabinet and threw in a small ball of chaeto in the refugium.

 

Also plugged in a Koralia nano powerhead for flow over the macro and I unplugged the skimmer. Didn’t have any luck growing chaeto in the past ...it would just melt on me.

 

Now a week later, everything is looking surprisingly good , algae disappeared off of the sand , the rocks are getting cleaner and I’m still feeding my fish daily.

 

Did I mention my skimmer is offline? No more humming noise from the pump either which was driving me nuts. Completely silent.

 

Corals are coloring very nicely . Here’s the chaeto growth in 6-7 days...

Pictures of the corals to follow...

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Looks great! No worries, I neglected my tanks over summer too.. doh. Everything seems to turn around pretty quick though with some maintenance. My GHA seems to be dying off too.

 

I went with AIO's this time to keep it simple and lower the noise, I don't miss the hum of bigger pumps and skimmers one bit. 

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49 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

Looks great! No worries, I neglected my tanks over summer too.. doh. Everything seems to turn around pretty quick though with some maintenance. My GHA seems to be dying off too.

 

I went with AIO's this time to keep it simple and lower the noise, I don't miss the hum of bigger pumps and skimmers one bit. 

I hear ya’. Not sure how I survived with the noise thus far. It’s an Aquamaxx WS-1 in sump skimmer...from what I’ve read, most of the nano ones are noisy...

 

When I unplugged the skimmer to clean it I’m like wow, let’s leave it like that (full disclosure, WWC 293 gallon display running with no skimmer looks amazing so that was when I decided 100% that I’m gonna take it offline to try it out for a while). 

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Yeah there is a reefer here who has an amazing tank and no skimmer. If/when I turn mine back on... it is going on a timer to only be on when I am not home. 

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A top down picture of the chaeto color with a more natural light source. It’s easy to misjudge the color of the macro with these pink LED’s; you gotta check it once in a while to make sure it ain’t melting or losing color. 

 

And these cheap Amazon LED’s can really grow stuff. 

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3 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

Yeah there is a reefer here who has an amazing tank and no skimmer. If/when I turn mine back on... it is going on a timer to only be on when I am not home. 

That sounds like a great idea. Might implement it when I’m out of town as well??

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Xenia ....out of control. Wonder what happens when it reaches the end of its rock. Will it start growing on sand? Will it just stop growing?

And why do they have the long stalk? Normal or...?

First time caring for Xenia....Quite enjoy it but don’t want it to turn into a nusissance ..

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When mine got to the end of the rock it would literally send frags floating around the tank to land somewhere else.

 

I usually can't keep it alive but its doing okay atm for me. I really love this coral even if it can grow out of control. 

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Agreed, it’s a beautiful coral even though seems like there’s a lot of hate surrounding it from what I’ve been reading...I just like the movement. And when I stop the pumps to feed the tank, they keep pulsing. 

My kids love it.

Ill keep an eye on it ...

 

I re-scaped the tank today...I wanted the anemones on an island all by themselves. Xenia on its own rock, SPS on their own rock; all this in a 2ft x 1ft tank....challenging...

It looks ok at the moment...different, not sure I like it better but  at least there’s more water going around rocks and such for sure.

More open sand as well. Some corals got relocated. 

 

Centepiece will be a maxima clam, dead center under the light on the sand...don’t have room on the rocks...might have to look into scooping a cradle into a piece of live rock and plant it there on the sand. 

 

FTS to follow...

 

 

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