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Snow's 10G Underwater Tropical Jungle Retreat (365 Day Challenge) - Taking It Down.


Snow_Phoenix

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Snow_Phoenix
3 hours ago, Ratvan said:

Your Caulerpa always looks amazing. I don't get it. Every time i try it just pales out and then goes sexual within the first 3 days. 

 

As annoying as these little maintenance tasks are they make the whole tank look much for finished. I wouldn't have noticed the new mushroom position if you hadn't pointed it out. What sort of glue was it on the plug? Looks like Hot Glue Gun Glue to me?

It was regular coral glue - the problem was I kept layering a new layer of glue on the previous layer on and on again every time I had to re-glue the frag to the rock. It hardens and encrusts into a very ugly thick white layer, which can only be cut off using bone cutters (or maybe chiseled off as well). 

 

So this time I trimmed off the excess glue until only the mushroom and the tiny piece of rock it was attached to remained. Then I added a fresh layer of glue at the bottom of the frag and stuck it back to the rock. 

 

Derp keeps picking at *all the frags though. I thought he was originally foraging for microalgae or something, but now I have a sense he's just doing it to annoy me, the little jerk. :sideeyes:

 

As for the caulerpa - it has always been a hit or miss for me. But I think the *source of the caulerpa matters. I noticed that the macro I get from one of my stores is healthier than the second store. It's greener and comes with a lot of tiny hitchiker microbrittlestars and snails - and even sponges etc. Not sure how this info might help, but maybe you could try getting your caulerpa from a different source/store and compare. 

 

Also, the caulerpa you see in this nano is taken directly from the refugium of my 60G. It's full of hitchikers and quite healthy - but I think that's because there's a balance in the nitrates/phosphates ratio, and having an overstocked tank helps the macro flourish. Any macro will die quickly if there's not enough nutrients for it to absorb (I *think). 

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3 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

It was regular coral glue - the problem was I kept layering a new layer of glue on the previous layer on and on again every time I had to re-glue the frag to the rock. It hardens and encrusts into a very ugly thick white layer, which can only be cut off using bone cutters (or maybe chiseled off as well). 

 

So this time I trimmed off the excess glue until only the mushroom and the tiny piece of rock it was attached to remained. Then I added a fresh layer of glue at the bottom of the frag and stuck it back to the rock. 

 

Derp keeps picking at *all the frags though. I thought he was originally foraging for microalgae or something, but now I have a sense he's just doing it to annoy me, the little jerk. :sideeyes:

 

As for the caulerpa - it has always been a hit or miss for me. But I think the *source of the caulerpa matters. I noticed that the macro I get from one of my stores is healthier than the second store. It's greener and comes with a lot of tiny hitchiker microbrittlestars and snails - and even sponges etc. Not sure how this info might help, but maybe you could try getting your caulerpa from a different source/store and compare. 

 

Also, the caulerpa you see in this nano is taken directly from the refugium of my 60G. It's full of hitchikers and quite healthy - but I think that's because there's a balance in the nitrates/phosphates ratio, and having an overstocked tank helps the macro flourish. Any macro will die quickly if there's not enough nutrients for it to absorb (I *think). 

I'm going to try the fern type again, will wait for the weather to improve (snowing again) and give it another go. I get it shipped to me as my LFS's nearby only sell Cheato. Pele really loved hiding in it. 

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Snow_Phoenix

A little update on the red finger leather - it turned to mush and melted pretty badly by late evening today. 😞

 

I don't think there'll be any of it left by tomorrow morning. This is a little bit heartbreaking because this coral was originally a very large, thriving colony which was actually a birthday gift from my mother in 2018. It was fragged twice - and on both occasion, the frags only thrived for a short while before withering away. 

 

I don't think I'll be able to get a colony of that original size again. I'll try my best to see if I can get a frag of it in the future however, because it's actually a very beautiful coral once it grows out. 

 

And here's the bane of the Jungle: Derp. 

 

 

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Snow_Phoenix
5 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

I'm going to try the fern type again, will wait for the weather to improve (snowing again) and give it another go. I get it shipped to me as my LFS's nearby only sell Cheato. Pele really loved hiding in it. 

Try getting seagrass or blade caulerpa (caulerpa prolifera) if you can. My previous filefish, George, loved sleeping in the blade caulerpa. I remembered reading somewhere that these fish actually do sleep among the seagrass and let themselves 'drift' about to give the illusion they're also part of the sea grass - a way of avoiding predators, I think. 

 

It's quite interesting to see how different fish types rest for the night. (eg. like how mandys go pale, scooters bury themselves in the sandbed, gobies dig burrows, blennies have camo-stripes/blotches etc.)

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3 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Try getting seagrass or blade caulerpa (caulerpa prolifera) if you can. My previous filefish, George, loved sleeping in the blade caulerpa. I remembered reading somewhere that these fish actually do sleep among the seagrass and let themselves 'drift' about to give the illusion they're also part of the sea grass - a way of avoiding predators, I think. 

 

It's quite interesting to see how different fish types rest for the night. (eg. like how mandys go pale, scooters bury themselves in the sandbed, gobies dig burrows, blennies have camo-stripes/blotches etc.)

caulerpa prolifera is what I have been trying, with no success so far.

I can grow Red Macro like weeds, Green. Nope have to pull before it goes sexual 

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Snow_Phoenix
26 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

caulerpa prolifera is what I have been trying, with no success so far.

I can grow Red Macro like weeds, Green. Nope have to pull before it goes sexual 

I wish I could get a hold of some red ones here. Am dying to get my hands on a clump of red grape or a rock full of galaxaura. 😞 

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1 minute ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

I wish I could get a hold of some red ones here. Am dying to get my hands on a clump of red grape or a rock full of galaxaura. 😞 

damn, i'm desperately giving away Botryocladia and Gracilaria Mammarillis to locals to keep the 5G under control

Might have to start thinking about eating it or selling it on and posting it out lol

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Snow_Phoenix

So a lot of updates! 🙂

 

I managed to collect enough money to pay off my torch coral, *and collect it from the store today:

 

 

To top it off, I was given a small green alveopora frag for only RM 10. 😄

 

But...the best bit is my LFS gave me a *lot of freebies today. I told them the torch and alveopora will be going into the nano, and my manager told me the store supports me fully in this contest. 

 

So they gave me 1 pom pom xenia frag (with a hitchiker blasto (?) attached to the frag - the blasto is very unhealthy/retracted though, but I *think it can grow back), 1 common toadstool leather frag (came with some partially melted acan polyps attached at the base - but it also had a pink tunicate/sea squirt and a tiny duster worm as hitchikers), and 2 zoanthid sticks (the original zoas which was supposed to be the first corals in this tank! They found them in one of the frag tanks at the back of the shop). 

 

Everything looked annoyed when I first added them to the tank:

 

 

This was how the tank looked like today afternoon after adding the torch and all the other frags:

 

The torch looked amazing, but it was also not placed stably in the tank, and kept slipping off the rock to hit the glass. I was quite tired when I returned from the store (even met a nice, new Singaporean reefer there and we chatted for quite a bit), so I left everything as it is.

 

After I rested for a bit, I decided to do a 3G WC and add an extra bag of carbon in the mini sump. I also realized it was impossible to place the torch on the LR without it slipping off, because the LR piece on the right side of the tank slopes down. So my only option was to directly place the torch on the sandbed. But to do that, I'd have to modify my scape so that there'll be enough room for the coral. 

 

So instead of altering the scape completely, I simply *shifted it to the left of the tank, and brought the right LR forward. That way I had a nice patch of free sandbed next to my chaeto in the back. Placement was still tricky, and I think I severely pissed off the fifth head of the torch because I *might have handled the coral too much. 😞

 

But the other four heads were okay and slowly extended their tentacles:

 

 

Bright green with pink tips. 🙂

 

Even the new tiny toadstool extended a *few polyps, but I think it'll take a while to adjust properly to my tank. It was faring poorly at the LFS and very shrunken there:

 

 

But the coral was intact and not disintegrating. 

 

These are the hitchiker 'blastos' (?) that came with my xenia:

 

They are skeletal, but still have a bit of flesh left. 

 

The Xenia was pulsing very weakly in my tank - I think they're not too happy being in a high-flow, high-light area. Might consider moving them in the future: 🤔

 

This is one of the two 'sticks' covered in zoas which were my original freebies from the store:

 

So I guess I'll still have my 'zoa towers' in this tank, as I did in the Old School Pico Reef last year. 😄

 

Some good news though regarding the older frags I've added to this tank:

 

One of the red fungias appeared to have survived and has bounced back intact (that was quick!):

 

A frag of partially melted zoas that I added surprisingly began to open up today as well:

 

A very, very tiny part of my leptastrea has grown - just waiting for it to encrust. It seems content to be perched on Coralline Ledge, directly under both my LEDs:

 

I also repositioned my blade caulerpa and 'rooted' it into the sandbed. Derp immediately beelined towards it and tried to undo my efforts for the past 5 minutes. We had a battle of chopsticks-versus-claws, but he won. :unsure:

 

Pisces is doing quite well in this tank after the damsel was booted out:

 

I decided to pair him up with another clownfish, and cap it at that as far as fish additions go. Found a very playful frostbite clownfish going for a steep discount at the store (I personally believe the fish is mislabeled because it looks more like a snowflake to me, but it does have 'holes'/'dots' on its sides, so I'm a little confused. 😕) so I put a deposit for him. I'll probably pick him up some time next week, or the week after. The earlier the better, actually, because it limits the risk of the fish dying at the store. 

 

There was also a second clown which looked a bit like a Panda - but the frostbite had more personality, I felt.

 

Both of them are aquacultured and from Thailand, if I'm not mistaken. 🙂

 

Also, I'm picking up a very small 2.5" rainbow brain for this tank - just to add more color to it:

 

 

It was also offered to me at a very good discount, and I think it'll make a rather colorful giant toadstool for the tank. 

 

This was how everything currently looks like, right after I did the WC:

 

I'm hoping the torch opens up fully tomorrow/day after. I'll still keep nursing the unhealthy/dying frags back to life. With any luck, all of them will bounce back and grow out, and I'll have a full, colorful tank within a year or two. :happy:

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Snow_Phoenix

Things look much better today morning. 

 

Here's the torch in the morning:

 

And here it is in the evening (all pics taken under yellow filter lens):

 

The Xenia also finally opened up:

 

Hitchiker Tunicate:

 

One of the baby bullseye rhodactis shrooms is finally developing some color and 'bumps' on the surface:

 

Part of the alveopora polyps have extended:

 

This toadstool leather is still very sulky and sometimes flopped over: 😕

 

 

The green/teal discosoma has developed some mysterious 'bumps' on the surface: 🤔

 

Do you guys think I should just frag off the healthy bits of this monti, and throw out the dead bits? To save the coral, I mean? Not sure. 🤔

 

Three quick shots of Dusky up close - he's so curious about everything I do behind the glass: :lol:

 

Brittlestarfish still lurking under the rocks:

 

I also love how I have 'jungle vines' a.k.a. Fern Caulerpa strands all over the place - my favorite part is the bit wrapped around my torch coral, which was supposed to pass off as a 'tree':

 

And I managed to capture 2 feeding vids today evening: :happy:

 

And of course, Derp-Ever-Invincible is still here: :rolleyes:

 

 

I think some pieces - like the montis and the pavona most likely cannot be salvaged, but I'll try my best. But based on my limited observations, everything else looks like it has a chance of regrowing in time, with a lot of patience and effort on my part. I'll still keep up with the WCs - tomorrow I'll be feeding the torch a *bit of reef roids and zooplankton. 

 

Once the new clown, Stardust, is introduced to the tank, I'll add frozen food like brine, mysis and diced shrimp dipped with Selcon to the menu. 

 

I actually can't wait to bring Stardust home. I'm not sure why, but I really fell in love with that little clownfish at the store. Hoping the pairing with Pisces (my current clown) will go smoothly. Stardust is slightly larger than Pisces (by half an inch), but she's feisty. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Snow_Phoenix

Hey everyone, I have some pretty large updates - so please bear with me.

 

1. I had some issues with my large reef recently - mostly battling a lot of cyano in my sump tank. When I cleaned up the cyano (manual siphoning), I agitated a lot of debri which made the water column very cloudy. Something went wrong somewhere, because the very next day I lost one of my banded pipefish that lives in my refugium, and also melted several pieces of coral in the DT. 

 

I couldn't do anything over the loss of my pipefish, but I could still save the coral pieces that were still alive (but dying). 

 

I pulled out 3 coral frags from the 60G and transferred them to the 10G around half a week ago: 1x green leptastrea, 1x mini blasto colony & 1x mini blasto merletti colony:

 

In the case of my merletti, it was dying because I watched Thanos actually pick it up in his mouth and toss it to my cynarina. The cynarina wasn't injured, but the merletti melted in some areas. 

 

2. When I transferred these three pieces to the 10G, I fragged off the dead areas of the mini blasto colony and separated it into three pieces using bone cutters. I then glued it on the rock and even though the corals were badly retracted, I figured at full health, they could pass off as colorful 'flowers' or giant 'toadstools' for this reef:

 

3. I had some issues with one of my freebie frags - the brown toadstool leather detached from the rock and kept flopping over. Despite my best efforts to slot it into a crevice, it'd always be tossed back on the sandbed in the morning - Derp's handiwork, I suspect. 😞

 

But the dying acans the toadstool was attached to was still miraculously intact half a week ago, so I kept it and didn't touch it:

 

4. The Frostbite clownfish I paid a deposit for (which I named 'Stardust' out of excitement) didn't work out. There was a miscommunication between the workers at the LFS and they accidently sold off my fish. I admit I was very upset because I put a lot of hope and expectation on this little fish (which is silly, I know), but my store apologized profusely for the mistake. I forgave them, and we moved on - I value my friendship with the girls at the store more than the fish and a human error. 

 

There were two last clownfish at the LFS: 1x platinum and 1x frostbite (but I think it's mislabeled and is a Snowflake). The frostbite was quite scared of me and my camera/phone, but the platinum was very bold. So I chose to bring the platinum home instead:

 

She was actually very, very feisty during acclimation. I named her 'Panda' because she has a black mask over her front between her eyes (which are strangely bright orange in color). She also has this unique black spot on her body, under her right fin. 

 

I didn't immediately mix her in with my other clown and blenny. She's been QTed at the LFS and Prazi'd, and was healthy/eating (poop was also brown), but I didn't know how she'd react towards Pisces, my Occy, because they're almost similar length. 

 

So I placed her in a breeder box for ~24 hours, so that both my clowns could see each other.

 

I originally planned on keeping her in the box for a few days, but I decided I might as well release her to give her more room to swim. All I can say is that both my clowns are ignoring each other for the most part. No fighting, nipping, chasing - but no submission, twitchy-jerky dances or pairing either. 😕

 

I've paired Percs and Occys successfully in the past, but the fish had quite visible size differences. In this case, my Occy, Pisces, keeps darting away whenever Panda swims close to him. He's a bit passive, but she's quite active and mostly chasing her reflection on the glass.

 

 

^(That's the little black spot on the body that I was talking about earlier - quite cool. It's like a birthmark or something. 🙂)

 

5. Back to my corals - I'm actually seeing some improvement in some pieces over the past few days.

 

The green kenya tree is shedding and regaining it's green color at the base:

 

 

The red fungias on the large zoa colony are actually making a comeback:

 

These were the newly fragged blastos yesterday (retracted):

 

Today (a bit puffier):

 

The merlettis have lost a few heads, but most of the mini colony is intact otherwise:

 

Also, remember the dying acans attached to the toadstool? It's actually bouncing back and growing back quite quickly:

 

The red pavona is also regaining its red coloration at the edges:

 

Of course, not everything is recovering smoothly. My purple encrusting monti is not improving, and my cyphastrea remains the same. 😞

 

But I thought I saw some green color and tiny polyps actually rim the edges of my green encrusting monti. I think there is still hope for this piece yet.

 

6. My inverts are doing alright - CUC is still hard at work, although pest algae is minimal in this tank:

 

 

And the brittlestarfish still scavenges for leftover food from under the rocks:

 

7. Here are some quick videos I took of the reef today:

 

Clownfish:

 

Pumps on:

 

Pumps off:

 

8. Some FTSes:

 

Will probably perform another WC tomorrow or the day after. Right now I'm dosing 1 drop of kH buffer every day to maintain a kH of ~8.3. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Panda looks bad ass. Seriously a mean looking grumpy clown. Love her. 

 

Hmmm, I had a big clean out of my tank yesterday and came in this morning to my Yellow Coris on the Carpet. I wonder if it is related?

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Snow_Phoenix
29 minutes ago, Ratvan said:

Panda looks bad ass. Seriously a mean looking grumpy clown. Love her. 

 

Hmmm, I had a big clean out of my tank yesterday and came in this morning to my Yellow Coris on the Carpet. I wonder if it is related?

Yeah - I love her 'frown' lol. But she's minding her own business so far, so that's good. 🙂

 

I'm not sure. I started having a lot - and I mean, a *lot of issues when I did a deep clean of my sump 2 WCs ago. That's when I started getting cyano (not sure how that's related) and the sump/fuge became clogged with a lot of dirt. I've been manually cleaning it out, but the macro is smothered with debri. I was thinking of stripping down the sump/fuge, and re-setting it, but I'm not sure how this would affect my DT. 🤔

 

I've been lucky enough to only lose one fish so far, and not more. I guess right now I'll be focusing on establishing balance again for the large reef. Once the reef matures, I'll start stocking up on larger coral pieces again. 

 

Add-On: Also sorry to hear about the wrasse. That sucks. 😞 

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13 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

Be careful of what you wish for! You just might get it. :ninja:

(Yes. MOAR PICS! :tongueout:)

On a serious note, I wonder what it looks like when you change the top rock, pointing more forward.

 

I think it looks better. 😊

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Snow_Phoenix
28 minutes ago, DNR88 said:

On a serious note, I wonder what it looks like when you change the top rock, pointing more forward.

 

I think it looks better. 😊

I could, but it would overshadow my recovering green monti right underneath it. 😕

 

 

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23 minutes ago, Snow_Phoenix said:

I could, but it would overshadow my recovering green monti right underneath it. 😕

 

 

I mean (apparently) adjusting the top two stones.

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Snow_Phoenix
49 minutes ago, DNR88 said:

I mean (apparently) adjusting the top two stones.

Oh! 

 

I can, but then the fifth head of my torch coral on the far right will be in direct contact with one of the rocks and get scraped. 😞

 

I had to shift my whole scape to the left a little to accommodate the torch. Plus, there is a problematic hermit to take into account. He likes toppling things and rescaping the tank for me. 😕

 

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Snow_Phoenix

Dusky says hello! :happy:

 

Blasto is definitely bouncing back quite swiftly - here's how it looks today, under normal lighting (without yellow filter lens):

 

I also did a 3G WC (part of weekly maintenance), was happy and turned the lights off. Then I decided to check if everything was okay and Panda was fine with her first ever WC-experience in the tank. I flipped the room lights on, but not the tank lights. And what do I find? 

 

A giant, slimy white flatworm crawling all over my glass, just next to my Turban snail! EEK! :scarry:

 

I always keep a spare specimen container in the shelf right under the aquarium (the aquarium is mounted on a large black stool with a single deck, where I keep the fish food and extra containers for holding tiny critters/frags). So I caught the flatworm and put him in the container to take a better look at him:

 

I'll give the critter credit. He's *fast. I'm not sure whether it's a polyclad flatworm (I don't think so - color and general shape doesn't exactly match), but I'm uncertain if it'll harm any of my fish, inverts or coral in the tank in the long run. This is what I get for *not dipping any of my latest frags - dip, people! Always, dip, dip, dip!!! :sad:

 

There might be more lurking out of sight - I'm not exactly sure. Will keep an eye out - looks like these guys are nocturnal and are only visible at night (or at least when the lights are all off and it's pitch black).

 

Also, I checked up on my clowns to see if they had paired - caught these two goofs sleep-chasing their reflection on the glass. :sideeyes:

 

The good news is that they aren't fighting and I have two compatible fish. The bad news is I don't have a *paired-up pair of clowns. I think I'll give them more time. I have a feeling my Occy derecognizes my Perc as a true clown because she doesn't 'look' like a typical clown. Either that, or he's still content to remain a bachelor. Oh, well. At least, I tried. 🤷‍♀️

 

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Great photos as always and the corals look like they are making a good recovery as long as Derp keeps his claws off them 😛

 

 

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Snow_Phoenix
17 minutes ago, Tamberav said:

Great photos as always and the corals look like they are making a good recovery as long as Derp keeps his claws off them 😛

 

 

I think I've gone through easily 3 glue sticks trying to re-glue everything down in place. Every morning I wake up to one coral either facing the sandbed or just flopped upside down on the rocks. At this point, I'm starting to wonder even why I bother to keep him. 🙄

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Snow_Phoenix

It's amazing how some simple WCs can really improve the growth and health of corals. :happy:

 

1. The second red fungia is regaining flesh a lot quicker than I expected:

 

2. The torch coral is fully extended and actually looks much better after the WC yesterday:

 

3. The John Deere leptastrea appears more vibrant than before:

 

4. My clowns still haven't quite paired up yet. But there's still no aggression between them, so that's good:

 

5. I managed to get an almost-clear pic of Panda today evening. It was very difficult because she's super active. She does look mean up close, like @Ratvan mentioned much earlier, but she's actually pretty sweet. The tough, grumpy frown is slowly winning me over though: :wub:

 

6. Dusky is pretty amazing too. Now that he's used to me and the camera hovering near the glass, he actually 'poses' for pics: :lol:

 

7. Spotted a microbrittle lurking in the rocks:

 

8. And of course, Derp is here as always:

 

9. How the tank presently looks like:

 

10. The full set-up:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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