Banasophia’s Biocube 32 - Return of the DragonReef 🐉

[twofishys]

12 minutes ago, twofishys said:

Thank you so much for the input.  The more preventative measures I take the less likely I am to have a meltdown....personally and in the tank.

Love the Bayer option.  I actually have this on hand.  

 

 

[twofishys]

4 hours ago, banasophia said:

 

 

 

I really love your tank! The scape looks great and I like the way you incorporated squidward’s house. Yeah, in my Biocube 16 my clownfish don’t sleep together either... one sleeps in the cave and one near the top in the current. But they do swim around together some from time to time throughout the day.

 

I think I lucked out that these two new little guys bonded so well... they weren’t bonded when I got them, they were in a tank full of little snowflakes that were all swimming around separately... maybe they were from the same clutch? 
 

Yes, definitely dip your corals... and evening if you do, you’ll still get pests... I think of it as harm reduction. Some people quarantine their corals, but that’s a bit beyond my motivation level... I use Coral RX. I probably need to get serious with the dipping since I’m doing SPS in this tank and try using Roundup... apparently it works better, I’m just reluctant since it’s such a strong chemical and not made for this application. 
 

Yeah, I have lots of LFSs in my area, and it is nice to be able to do the rounds and see what they have in stock... the really lucky California reefers are those down in SoCal though... I think there are quite a few well known LFSs there. 

You are too kind for the kudos.  Roundup as a resource is wild! Such a delicate balance is necessary for coral to live and thrive in a small environment.  The idea of introducing frags to a product named in multiple lawsuits as cancer causing is mind bending.  I'm just getting over Crazy Glue to secure frags and now this.  The hobby continues to surprise and amaze me.  

[A.m.P]

Glyphosate doesn't cause hodgkins lymphoma, good lawyers and a trial with no interest in the scientific-method or objective-reality however give payoffs to whomever can best convince them, and pop-sci will sensationalize anything they can "research" and market in under an hour.

Corals don't mind the stuff at all, plenty of folks out there will attest that it actually seems to stress out Acros far less than a dip in coral-rx or revive. 
I would do my best to stay away from the mentality that "chemicals" are dangerous, your entire person is just a sack of chemicals - it's the dose that matters and there are quite a few "natural" chemicals which will accomplish the comparatively-simple job of harming you or your corals far, far more easily than glyphosate.

[banasophia]

Well I decided I should add a second pest-eating fish since clearly Brienne wasn’t preventing the little buggers from spreading. I went to all 4 of my LFSs in search of a yellow coris wrasse to no avail. Well... one LFS had like six of them but they were all turning white and looked like hell as did the rest of their fish. 😢
 

So I looked back at this thread and decided to go with one of the damsels @Amphrites mentioned. I’ll admit I was nervous cuz of course I’ve heard horror stories about damsels being little buttheads, but now that I have it, I’ve been watching the fish and I think it’s good it’s a more aggressive fish because you know who is really a butthead, my bangaii cardinal! It chases Brienne into her cave, but the tiny damsel holds its own when the bangaii gets in its face. And looks like the damsel is buddying up with Brienne, so maybe Brienne has her Jaime, gold and all!! I think the damsel I picked is an azure, they weren’t labeled. 🤞🤞🤞
 

I sure do have a lot of fish now... so far they seem like a good mix... we’ll see if I can keep them all together in harmony or if I’ll need to rehome some. The modular scape made it easy to get the other two bangaii cardinals out to take back to the LFS, so at least that’s an option with this tank. In the 16, once something goes in in doesn’t come back out... the caves make it impossible to catch anything and the scape doesn’t come apart.

 

 

Oh and here’s an article about the Chrysiptera damsels, for anyone not very familiar...

https://aquariumstoredepot.com/blogs/news/116712964-is-there-a-sane-damselfish-yes-they-exist

 

[A.m.P]

What a great contrast, I love azures - they're just about as peaceful as you can get imo, and wonderful to watch. Hope yours has a great personality and keeps your tank clean, I know pods in my tank are always a thing of the past once I throw a damselfish in.

 

Also, yeah, Cardinals can be little terrors.

[twofishys]

My last damselfish became the bully of the tank and had to be re-located   I would get another but fear the same result overtime 

[banasophia]

39 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

What a great contrast, I love azures - they're just about as peaceful as you can get imo and wonderful to watch. Hope yours has a great personality and keeps your tank clean, I know pods in my tank are always a thing of the past once I throw a damselfish in.

 

Also, yeah, Cardinals can be little terrors.

Yeah I hope between the pink streak and the damsel they’ll scarf up all these nasty little pods messing with the corals and the corals will recover.

36 minutes ago, twofishys said:

My last damselfish became the bully of the tank and had to be re-located   I would get another but fear the same result overtime 

Yeah, that’s what I often hear about damsels... what kind was yours? 

[banasophia]

Oh yeah, I also got 2 new corals yesterday... a tropic thunder monti that you can see in front of the castle in the pic I posted with the fish, above... colors look nice under the Biocube lights.
 

And then I also got an Indonesian acro that I decided to try. Three of my 4 LFSs had maricultured colonies grown on small rocks from Indonesia in stock yesterday. I’ve read that it’s really best to stick with tank raised acros that you know will thrive in home aquaria, but I decided to give one a shot anyway. I chose one that was a beautiful yellow under the LFS lighting... got it home... and under @Sancho’s advice I removed it from its rock to avoid the pests, dipped, then glued to my scape. (I would’ve used Frag Collars/Mag Collars, but I’m all out... need to get some more from @NanoRox !)

 

Anyway, the acro was disappointing... it’s one of those that looks totally different under the spectrum of the Biocube lights, not the pretty yellow color it had at the LFS at all... almost looks bleached, rather than the pretty yellow. (I’ll try to get some pics under blues tonight, this one I’m posting is under whites.) I will probably rehome it, but maybe I’ll give it a little time before I decide for sure. I find some corals are like that though, where they just don’t look the same under these lights, while others look awesome. I bought a torch when I first started the 16 that looked yellow at the LFS, but green under the Biocube lights. 

 

[debbeach13]

I like all your new additions. I hope the damsel does well for you. I like damsels usually not expensive, very colorful, almost always swimming around if the lights are on, and pretty hardy.  I even like plain old style clowns. 

[A.m.P]

I'd definitely give the acro a little while to color up under your lights, definitely not a ton of actinic glow going on under biocube lights but you never know.

[banasophia]

10 minutes ago, debbeach13 said:

I like all your new additions. I hope the damsel does well for you. I like damsels usually not expensive, very colorful, almost always swimming around if the lights are on, and pretty hardy.  I even like plain old style clowns. 

Thank you!! So far so good with the damsel, but we’ll see over time as it gets bigger and more comfortable in its new home.
 

I really like standard ocellaris and percula clownfish as well... I only went for the snowflakes in this second Biocube to differentiate my photos. My clownfish pics I post from the 16, showing the tank under white lights, are always my most popular pics on Instagram too... surprised me at first, I would have thought my mandarin and yellow clown goby pics would be favored. 

 

Check out these cute pics I just snapped of Brienne and Jaime swimming around the castle together:

 

 

 

 

 

 

[twofishys]

2 hours ago, banasophia said:

Yeah I hope between the pink streak and the damsel they’ll scarf up all these nasty little pods messing with the corals and the corals will recover.

Yeah, that’s what I often hear about damsels... what kind was yours? 

Yellow tail 

[banasophia]

9 minutes ago, Amphrites said:

I'd definitely give the acro a little while to color up under your lights, definitely not a ton of actinic glow going on under biocube lights but you never know.

Yeah, you’re right...I should give it a chance at least, to recover too... I was pretty rough with it when I was removing it from its rock and attaching to the scape... 

 

The first acro I added has really changed since its addition... at first I thought it was turning brown but then I remembered it is a wolverine... it was pretty green when I first got it from the LFS, but now it looks more like some of the pics I’ve seen of wolverines. Seems acros can really vary in appearance from one tank to the next. 
 

I haven’t started using any of the Red Sea supplements besides alkalinity yet... my calcium and magnesium have been running high and many of the other supplements are added in proportion to the calcium. 

[A.m.P]

Purple-green splattered corals have a tendency to look brown in some lighting, definitely found that one out the hard-way myself.

[banasophia]

More SPS pests! This little bugger seemed to be mocking me, too, popping it’s little head up after I tried to suck it up with a turkey baster. 😤😂

 

 

 

 

 

The damsel was so cute last night, swimming between the branches of the digitata like it was crossing a finish line. It did it once and I thought to myself that I wished I’d gotten a picture... then it did it again!! Perhaps Hank has some competition! #blueandyellowsteel #zoolander

 

 

And the digitata is looking better today... I think my little pest eaters may be eating the evil pods.
 

 

 

 

[A.m.P]

Damsels have such great personalities lol.

[banasophia]

1 minute ago, Amphrites said:

Damsels have such great personalities lol.

Yeah, so glad you talked me into one, I love this little guy! So far anyway... I may hate you in a year when it transforms into the evil fish from hell haha. 🤗😁

[A.m.P]

5 minutes ago, banasophia said:

Yeah, so glad you talked me into one, I love this little guy! So far anyway... I may hate you in a year when it transforms into the evil fish from hell haha. 🤗😁

Mine's a little hussy already, the beatings from the larger really changed her personality.
Aggressive fish and predators tend to have the most interesting personalities and routines, unfortunately for us that means engaging in a constant dice-roll of "compatibility" in our small systems. For every damselfish aggression thread out there, there are also countless threads about angels eating coral, blenny's killing clams or other fish, clown gobies ripping up lps and sps, clownfish killing mates or shredding corals "just for fun", chromis engaging in lord-of-the-flies roleplay, tangs or wrasse terrorizing everything and decimating cleanup-crews, etc.

I guess the moral is, be mindful and attentive, otherwise trouble finds plenty of people just-fine even if they do things "right" lol, I wouldn't go asking for it =p

[banasophia]

1 minute ago, Amphrites said:

Mine's a little hussy already, the beatings from the larger really changed her personality.
Aggressive fish and predators tend to have the most interesting personalities and routines, unfortunately for us that means engaging in a constant dice-roll of "compatibility" in our small systems. For every damselfish aggression thread out there, there are also countless threads about angels eating coral, blenny's killing clams or other fish, clown gobies ripping up lps and sps, chromis engaging in lord-of-the-flies roleplay, tangs or wrasse terrorizing everything and decimating cleanup-crews, etc.

Oh yeah and the horror stories about emerald crabs, too, but emeralds are some of my favorite things to keep!

[A.m.P]

Just now, banasophia said:

Oh yeah and the horror stories about emerald crabs, too, but emeralds are some of my favorite things to keep!

Oh man, yeah when they turn bad they seem to turn really bad, coral banded shrimp and even skunk-cleaners too.

[banasophia]

Aaarrrggghhh... more SPS pests!! Found a teeny tiny crab in my new indo acro. The coral’ s looking pretty rough from this side at this point... lemme know if you have suggestions. Looks like I should remove the crab, which could be a tiny gorilla crab and I think it may be eating the coral tissue... and what about the brown stuff? Not sure what it is. 

 

Here’s a pic of the other side, looks better:

 

 

Oh yeah, and here’s an article I found about de-crabbing cultured indo acros:

https://reefbuilders.com/2020/02/11/remember-to-de-crab-new-cultured-acropora/

 

 

 

[TatorTaco]

I wish I had an LFS that was ordering these new acros!  I'm glad you caught the little fella before he really made an impact on the colony. 

[banasophia]

28 minutes ago, TatorTaco said:

I wish I had an LFS that was ordering these new acros!  I'm glad you caught the little fella before he really made an impact on the colony. 

Oh yeah, all my LFSs are getting them... they don’t really look too pretty color-wise though... not sure if that’s normal, and then they color up over time? Indo has been closed since I’ve been in the hobby, so this is new to me. One LFS is selling whole colonies for $69 (where I got mine) and another is cutting them up and selling for $45 or more for a small frag. 

[banasophia]

1 hour ago, TatorTaco said:

I wish I had an LFS that was ordering these new acros!  I'm glad you caught the little fella before he really made an impact on the colony. 

I didn’t get him out yet... I guess I should 😬😬😬

[TatorTaco]

I read the reefbuilders article you linked where he suggested you "spear" the crab.  That just makes me feel so sad for the little fella.  I have a guilty conscious when I see amphipods getting tossed in the trash with my dirty filter floss.