Project: Kitchen Reef

[TerraMagnus]

 

Dripping in the second, and what might be the final fish in this tank. "Oliver", the ocellaris clown. No, we didn't go the designer clownfish route. We're old school aquarists and that's probably reflected in our taste in clowfish.

 

When the tank has matured a lot more, we're hoping to add a really nice little bubble tip anemone.

 

Water changes are happening regularly. Ammonia & nitrite are staying flat at zero. Nitrate remains very low. 

 

The copepod & amphipod population is really taking off. Anthony (clown goby) grabs the occasional big free swimmer, but he's not putting a dent in their population.

 

3 hours ago, Tired said:

Great start! Very interested to see how your corals do under that light- I'm eyeing that specific tank myself. Is it possible to adjust the amount of blue in the lighting, or is it all set on one ratio? 

The light is very primitive. It is controlled by a touch surface on top of the fixture (I'd prefer a toggle switch honestly). The light can be on, full spectrum (whites & blues both come on full blast), or just blues. 

 

I don't have the ability to measure the lighting but just eyeballing it, it doesn't appear to be terribly bright. I fully expect that we're going to invest in something much better before we add the bubble tip anemone or any SPS.

 

1 hour ago, Wonderboy said:

I agree, if it is openning, it is recovering just fine. Also those look like palythoa to me   ;]

As long as we've been keeping aquariums, this is our first reef! I was really surprised to hear how dangerous these could be, and I kind of feel foolish that we introduced them to the kitchen reef bare-handed. I think the worst sting I got from marine inverts in the past was from a carpet anemone and that wasn't so bad. This sounds like something I need to treat more carefully.

 

Wife has a desire to add one or two dwarf feather dusters next. The kids keep looking at crabs and shrimps. They were looking at a pom pom crab and I tried redirecting their curiosity toward sexy shrimp.

[CarolinaShoreReef]

Great set up. I see you’ve found Fintastic. That’s my favorite lfs in the area. Great people there. Good luck and remember to keep us updated! 

[CarolinaShoreReef]

17 hours ago, Tired said:

Great start! Very interested to see how your corals do under that light- I'm eyeing that specific tank myself. Is it possible to adjust the amount of blue in the lighting, or is it all set on one ratio? 

 

That does look like some damage on the zoa, but I'm sure it'll recover well. I might gently turkey baster it now and then to make sure nothing accumulates on it that could give it an infection before it's settled.

My experience with the light 

 

 

[TerraMagnus]

3 hours ago, CarolinaShoreReef said:

Great set up. I see you’ve found Fintastic. That’s my favorite lfs in the area. Great people there. Good luck and remember to keep us updated! 

Yeah, my eyes popped out at Fintastic. I much prefer that shop for inverts. They really take good care of their stuff. Everything looked so healthy. No dead stuff in the tanks, no sick fish swirling the celestial bowl, etc. It's a longer drive for me but totally worth it.

 

 

 

[TerraMagnus]

3 hours ago, CarolinaShoreReef said:

My experience with the light 

 

Hey, just curious, have you found a protein skimmer solution for the Evo 5 that you really like? I think that's our first upgrade.

[CarolinaShoreReef]

34 minutes ago, TerraMagnus said:

Yeah, my eyes popped out at Fintastic. I much prefer that shop for inverts. They really take good care of their stuff. Everything looked so healthy. No dead stuff in the tanks, no sick fish swirling the celestial bowl, etc. It's a longer drive for me but totally worth it.

 

 

 

I hear you there I usually go after class or work. 

 

I have not. I like minimal equipment in my tanks to make power outages easy to get through as well as maintenance. 

[classlesseagle3]

Tank looks great! Surprised you introduced fish so early before a clean up crew but it sounds like it worked out. 👍🏼

[TerraMagnus]

2 hours ago, classlesseagle3 said:

Tank looks great! Surprised you introduced fish so early before a clean up crew but it sounds like it worked out. 👍🏼

We do have 2 hermit crabs, an astraea snail, thousands of pods, live sand w/ worms, some micro brittle stars, etc. It's not without a cleanup crew. We just went small with most of it. Now that the algae is coming in nicely, we'll get probably 2 more snails.

 

We did have one hermit crab die, not from water conditions, but from getting himself stuck in a too-small hole in the back of the live rock. 🙄

[TerraMagnus]

“I’m not actually dead at all. Never felt better.” - hermit crab, who both shed and changed shells to totally fake us out.

[TerraMagnus]

Update...
 

• One of the zoanthids appears to be budding.
• Dripping in a sexy shrimp and a tailspot blenny right now.

I know I said we were done with fish, but the wife couldn't resist "just one more". I anticipate making some modifications to the filtration to beef up the bioload capacity.

 

I'll take some photos of the new kids when they are feeling at home.

[TerraMagnus]

Confession: Aquariums were always my thing. It's a little hard watching my wife make the main decisions with this one, even if I'm advising her and helping out. We might need a second setup in my home office to satisfy my need to cultivate magical sea creatures. 🤣

[billygoat]

16 minutes ago, TerraMagnus said:

Confession: Aquariums were always my thing. It's a little hard watching my wife make the main decisions with this one, even if I'm advising her and helping out. We might need a second setup in my home office to satisfy my need to cultivate magical sea creatures. 🤣

I approve of this plan. 😉 A his-and-hers comparison between the two could be interesting down the line! I'd be intrigued to see where you take your own little setup and how it might end up differing from this one.

[TerraMagnus]

5 minutes ago, billygoat said:

I approve of this plan. 😉 A his-and-hers comparison between the two could be interesting down the line! I'd be intrigued to see where you take your own little setup and how it might end up differing from this one.

She wanted to do the AIO, because she likes the nice clean sightlines. But I know we're just going to upgrade everything in it anyway, and we're never going to be happy with that little wedge of a sump, so my proposition had been to grab a 5 or 10 gallon tank from Petco, drill it, and use something smaller as a sump behind it. But then we'd start out with good lights & everything, even if it didn't look like something designed as a complete system from the factory.

We've definitely had some disagreements along the way and it would be interesting to see how mine goes where I'm making the decisions but hearing her advice (instead of the other way around).

[TerraMagnus]

Tailspot Blenny, early reflections... whoa, is this the most perfect reef tank fish ever? He immediately set up home in the live rock. He bullies no one. Is bullied by no one. He grazes the rocks much of the day, but leaves everything alone that needs to be left alone. And before he even had his first feeding, his belly became nice and round just off of what he could forage from the tank.

[TerraMagnus]

Added a bubble tip anemone a few days ago. I wanted to wait for it to acclimate so it wouldn’t just look like a picture of something an alien coughed up.

[debbeach13]

That is gorgeous!

[Ratvan]

3 hours ago, TerraMagnus said:

Added a bubble tip anemone a few days ago. I wanted to wait for it to acclimate so it wouldn’t just look like a picture of something an alien coughed up.

The colour on that is amazing

[TerraMagnus]

This morning as I was brewing my coffee, I noticed the sexy shrimp has wandered far from his normal tiny range. I watched him leap into the anemone, and the anemone recoil as if to say “Nope. Do not want.”

 

The shrimp kept trying to host in there for a few minutes before leaping back to the main rock pile and somewhat moving off.

 

The (CB) ocellarus clown has zero interest in the anemone so far.

[TerraMagnus]

The tail spot Blenny has been awesome. Truly a joy. After a brief initial hunger strike, he’s now got a fat belly. When he’s not perched on the hard scape or hiding in its labyrinth of nooks and crannies, he cruises around cleaning green algae from everything. And he’s way more productive at this work than the astraea snail. He’s not a bully but defends himself very well from the bully (yellow clown goby). He leaves all the good creatures alone.

 

Since adding him and the clown goby, the visible copepod/amphipod population has been kept very much in check (but not eliminated). I think the clown goby is doing more of that work but I can’t be sure. The Blenny here seems more interested in veggies.

[TerraMagnus]

Coming next: lighting upgrade. AI Prime HD is on the way.

[billygoat]

Amazing pictures! That BTA is really incredible, and it's great to see the sexy shrimp doing their thing in and around it. That's really a great shot of the TSB; I love his silly blenny smile. 😊

 

Also congrats on the AI Prime! The Prime HD seems to be the standard for high-quality LED lighting these days. I am certain that you will be very satisfied once it arrives.

[TerraMagnus]

There's been a little bit of brown algae, a diatom bloom... wife has been losing her mind doing daily water changes and other things to combat this. And I'm all like "natural part of the cycle... ride it out". I may be wrong, she may be wrong, but I know which path takes a lot less effort. 🤣

[Gravity]

29 minutes ago, TerraMagnus said:

There's been a little bit of brown algae, a diatom bloom... wife has been losing her mind doing daily water changes and other things to combat this. And I'm all like "natural part of the cycle... ride it out". I may be wrong, she may be wrong, but I know which path takes a lot less effort. 🤣

It’s a natural part of the tank maturing. Best you can do is weekly water change and maintenance to keep nitrate and phosphate low to reduce algae growth. 

[TerraMagnus]

Yep we do 50% water changes weekly as a matter of habit.

And we've got something in the sump for drawing phosphates and silicates out of the water. It gets swapped out every week.

[TerraMagnus]

AI Prime HD is here.

 

The gooseneck arm (short) is not good for our application. It’s lighting up the left 1/3 of the tank brilliantly, but there’s not a way to center the light with this arm on this tank with this overhead clearance. Will need to get another arm.

 

The Zoa’s immediately perked up. This is less than 50% intensity.