Ankle Deep Reef~ Filterless 12.5 Gal

[derf9h]

Pretty sure I’m going to turn this into a zoa garden. I’ve seen some gorgeous tanks with a crap load of zoas. Need to find a place with cheap frags of them

[Elizabeth94]

Awesome! Zoas are beautiful. I have considered a nano with some higher end zoas before. Who knows, my coral quarantine might turn into one down the road XD  

[billygoat]

46 minutes ago, derf9h said:

Pretty sure I’m going to turn this into a zoa garden. I’ve seen some gorgeous tanks with a crap load of zoas. Need to find a place with cheap frags of them

Zoanthids are amazing! And so easy to keep, it's a wonder that more people don't stock them heavily. Just be sure to dip them carefully, because those zoa-eating nudibranchs are a true menace!

[Elizabeth94]

^ don’t forget about zoa spiders. I had one years ago. Gives me the chills just thinking about it. Spiders freak me out! 

[derf9h]

So I traded in my 2 clownfish and frog spawn for some store credit, a cleaner shrimp, emerald crab, and some orange ricordia. Shrimp and crab are hiding but here is the ric frag. 

 

I removed the HOB filter this morning so I am officially filter free as of today. Turned up the flow on both wave makers to 4 out of 10. Have a great flow through the whole tank. 

[TatorTaco]

On 8/8/2019 at 8:49 PM, derf9h said:

Pretty sure I’m going to turn this into a zoa garden. I’ve seen some gorgeous tanks with a crap load of zoas. Need to find a place with cheap frags of them

When you find something, be sure to share the source. 

 

Ive considered AquaSD, but I’m concerned that all their zoas kinda look the same. I opted to buy some popular zoas from a reefer online, but half of them died, so...I’m a bit lost myself. 

[zoafan627]

What Zoanthid morphs are you looking at?

[derf9h]

I have no idea what the names are for any zoas lol, I’m not that knowledgeable yet

[zoafan627]

15 minutes ago, derf9h said:

I have no idea what the names are for any zoas lol, I’m not that knowledgeable yet

Look into sunny Ds I had some in my 10 gallon and they were my favorite coral, the orange and green was great. 

[derf9h]

I really want to order some over the web but I’ve only ever bought corals at my LFS. If anyone has any suggestions that would be great. I’m gonna load his beotch up with zoas and rics. 

 

Also, I’ll try and take some pics of everything with just the blues on, awesome coloring so far 

[derf9h]

Emerald came out to see the new rics

[derf9h]

Someone needs to invent a rotating arm that follows the pattern of the sun. Like if I had 1 AI Prime HD and mounted it to this arm, it would start at one end of my tank and slowly rotate in an arc pattern over the top of the tank throughout the day. 

[zoafan627]

24 minutes ago, derf9h said:

Someone needs to invent a rotating arm that follows the pattern of the sun. Like if I had 1 AI Prime HD and mounted it to this arm, it would start at one end of my tank and slowly rotate in an arc pattern over the top of the tank throughout the day. 

DIYing your own may not be heard maybe put it on a clocks gears that move based on time? I’m sure someone on here is crafty enough to help. 

[A.m.P]

1 hour ago, derf9h said:

Someone needs to invent a rotating arm that follows the pattern of the sun. Like if I had 1 AI Prime HD and mounted it to this arm, it would start at one end of my tank and slowly rotate in an arc pattern over the top of the tank throughout the day. 

I've seen people do this actually, more common to just program a similar effect via multiple lights; all you really would need is a track, a small motor, a raspeberri pi, a belt and an arch lol.
Replicating the sun's movement however isn't really necessary or beneficial, the angle you would need to have your arch at to actually replicate the true sun-angle would essentially be 85% near-straight with two 60 degree ends for the first and last hour or two.

[derf9h]

Ok fine, I get it, I need to stop drinking and reefing at the same time lol

[A.m.P]

Some people say it helps keep the munchies away, tbh never been interested in trying myself, lungs of an 80 year old these days.

[derf9h]

Well I couldn’t stand the surface oil/scum looking stuff. No matter what I did I couldn’t get my wavemakers to break the surface tension, and when they did, they splashed water all over. 

 

So I rigged up a 5 gallon bucket underneath with my original return pump and used two of my existing bulkheads to just barely pump water into the tank. The rest of the return pump flow gets diverted back to the bucket with a tee and a valve. The flow is so low into the display tank that it only overflows into the drain when the waves push it over lol. The surface is now clean as a whistle and I’m happier. Im still filter free as of now. Water is still hazy for some reason. Maybe from me messing with it every 3 minutes. 

 

If this set set up continues to work nicely, I’ll take my heaters out of the DT and put them in the bucket, along with the temp probe for the Ink Bird. 

[derf9h]

My new light came in a couple of days ago. I really liked the lights I had but I wanted more control. I got a 21” “black box” LED rig off amazon and my corals are seeming to take to it nicely. I only had 60W power before now I’m at 160W so I’m running them at really low settings for now. Having control over hourly schedules is great especially over WiFi. It doesn’t have options for the red and green LEDs, but it has actnic, white, and night light controls. I’ve programmed in sunrise, peak, and sunset levels. Pics to follow later tonight. 

 

Also an update on my 5 gallon bucket sump. It’s working great, cleaning off the surface and pretty quiet. Still no filters to speak of and everything just seems to be settling into place. 

 

I picked up a duncan frag, some more gsp, and these weird little blue star polyp things on a frag plug. Pretty sure the guy at the store didn’t even know what they were but I liked them. Probably ending up being a pest that I can’t get rid of lol, oh well they are cool for now. 

[A.m.P]

If those are blue cloves they can and will absolutely take over every last inch of your tank, some people like the look and grow them underneath sps and other more resilient vertical corals, but they can absolutely turn into a pest. I believe the most common google autocomplete for them is "eradicate" blue clove polyps lol.

[derf9h]

Lmao. Well this is a tank for pests and corals of all types lol. I should have just put the GSP and these blue things in there and see who wins

[A.m.P]

My money is on the cloves =p

[derf9h]

Oh yeah I also noticed that my rics have split into 6 individuals now. I started with 4. I think they were in the middle of splitting when I bought them and have now fully separated. They have this gorgeous orange/red glow to them but its super hard to capture the full effect with a phone. 

 

Side note on that same topic, I bought an aquarium camera app for like $3 and it seems to help a lot with taking pics and cancelling out some of the blue on my iphone 8. There are a lot of options on the app so I'll just need to play around with it some. 

[A.m.P]

Perhaps the easiest tweaks are to set your white balance as high as it can go (10-16k), and your iso down to around 50-60, it can also help to adjust the shutter speed to around 1/50-1/25.

[derf9h]

 

[derf9h]

Sorry for all the blue pics, still working on that camera app. 

 

I put a submersible UV light in the bucket sump today to see if it’ll get rid of the white haze. Not sure if it’s some kind of bacterial thing or just all the new crap and me messing with the tank this week. I’ll run it for a day and see if it helps. I’ll do a big water change this weekend as well. 

 

It started to look better before I put the UV in but I did anyways.