༺ ᴀq͎ᴜᴀ ꜱᴘʟᴇɴᴅᴏʀ - ɴᴀɴᴏ ʀᴇᴇꜰ ༻

[Aqua Splendor]

Curious too, (spoiler alert, doing well so far) it was doing fine with my other tank where I don't even feed much, it had a great flow though, (you can see it in the video), the flow is less intense but same manner, the difference is the feeding, i'm curious, because sometimes it's close so it's freaking hard to feed him when I want gnnnn

[Aqua Splendor]

Episode 59

The Yellow Watchman goby is well known to have a symbiosis with pistol shrimp. For the past months, I was on the hunt for what could be the best possible goby to pair with my pistol shrimp: Alpheus Ochrostriatus
Those 2 species coming from the same area, same color, both being very active, about the same size, I thought the Cryptocentrus cinctus would be the perfect candidate. I hesitated to get this fish at first because of its size vs my nano but knowing their behavior I thought this could be acceptable.

[debbeach13]

Clowns hosting corals and shrimp with gobies, it just doesn't get any better than that for my viewing pleasure. 

[Aqua Splendor]

He's a bit shy at the moment, I see him navigate between the two rock.
I'm wondering if he could eat my masked goby hmmm

[Aqua Splendor]

Episode 60

 

 

My effort to achieve perfection is the hardest part of this journey. The importance of good husbandry with a nano reef aquarium is crucial.
After adding my 3rd Masterpiece coral, something along the way went wrong. After testing different hypotheses I found the reasons. 
Keeping everyone happy is an impossible task, but the challenge makes this journey enriching.

[Aqua Splendor]

 

Adding for historique reasons.

[Aqua Splendor]

Episode 61

 

Everyone wants a reef aquarium without maintenance. This is my effort towards having a nano marine aquarium that has less maintenance by using invertebrates such as feather duster and some reef mussels that capture organic matter.
No Skimmer, No Biomedia, and maybe one day, just simply, water...

[Aqua Splendor]

Episode 62

As part of documenting everything, here is my last batch of corals mostly taken from my other aquarium. Those new corals will face some adversity in different ways. It was a super messy addition with the glue, but sometimes, you do with what you have 😉

[Aqua Splendor]

Episode 63

All good things have an end, before I make some changes to my aquarium I wanted to record one last time. Beneath the beauty, it's filled with war, a reminder of every piece of life fight for space and light.

[banasophia]

Your tank is amazing and your videos are so beautifully done and moving… thanks for all your hard work to share this beautiful perspective and experience!

[East1]

3 hours ago, Aqua Splendor said:

Episode 63

All good things have an end, before I make some changes to my aquarium I wanted to record one last time. Beneath the beauty, it's filled with war, a reminder of every piece of life fight for space and light.

This is beautiful

[Ratvan]

Gorgeous tank, really interested in that Heliopora. Got any videos or images that show it with polyps extended?

[Aqua Splendor]

4 hours ago, Ratvan said:

Gorgeous tank, really interested in that Heliopora. Got any videos or images that show it with polyps extended?

No 😞 It's polyps are not extended yet, I highly suspect the flow being a problem. I also think it's still currently adapting to the nano.
It's one of those coral I might switch place one day.

[East1]

my heliopora is both bulletproof and sulks a lot, it'll slime up often and not show any polpys at times for months but still beencrusting and growing, and then one day it'll just be a big fluffy blob. I don't really know what causes that 

[Aqua Splendor]

Good to know!
I guess corals just need a good long adaption to their new environment.

 

When it was on my other aquarium I saw him incrusting over the glue, I guess once he feel well encrusted the polyp will pop (?)

A bit like some SPS like Acropora, nothing, nothing, than bam it start to grow 

[East1]

2 hours ago, Aqua Splendor said:

Good to know!
I guess corals just need a good long adaption to their new environment.

 

When it was on my other aquarium I saw him incrusting over the glue, I guess once he feel well encrusted the polyp will pop (?)

A bit like some SPS like Acropora, nothing, nothing, than bam it start to grow 

it's more like sarcophyton, they can grow and grow fast but if you change their position they will retract polyps quite dramatically - but still they are able to grow fast while slimed up.

Heliopora form a calcium base they respond much more sensitively than sarcophyton with the polyps as a result, probably cus there's net overall tissue relative to the size of the coenosarc because the sjkeleton is quite porous but nowhere near as meaty.

[mitten_reef]

On 9/21/2021 at 11:18 AM, Aqua Splendor said:

All good things have an end, before I make some changes to my aquarium I wanted to record one last time. Beneath the beauty, it's filled with war, a reminder of every piece of life fight for space and light.

wait, what?  admittedly I haven't followed this thread very closely.  But this tank and journal is very deserving of a TOTM feature, @Christopher Marks.  

[Aqua Splendor]

1 hour ago, East1 said:

it's more like sarcophyton, they can grow and grow fast but if you change their position they will retract polyps quite dramatically - but still they are able to grow fast while slimed up.

Heliopora form a calcium base they respond much more sensitively than sarcophyton with the polyps as a result, probably cus there's net overall tissue relative to the size of the coenosarc because the sjkeleton is quite porous but nowhere near as meaty.

Do you have experience with High organic water and Heliopora? I have a feeling it prefer more "clean" water also.
My phosphate are a bit high, 0.1 to 0.25ppm
If something goes wrong algae will grow really fast on that coral, hmmm

 

@mitten_reef Thx 🙂  I don't think this aquarium can be TOTM since it was part of the nano-reef.com contest. It's the end of my series/documentation of the tank, couple more videos and I think I'm done, made the full cycle of reef aquarium with this one ;).

[banasophia]

35 minutes ago, mitten_reef said:

wait, what?  admittedly I haven't followed this thread very closely.  But this tank and journal is very deserving of a TOTM feature, @Christopher Marks.  

Great minds think alike… I just sent a note to CM earlier this week too!! This is such an amazing tank with great documentation and videos! I hope it will be considered; it would be so nice for more people to see.🤞🤞🤞

[East1]

On 9/23/2021 at 8:17 PM, Aqua Splendor said:

Do you have experience with High organic water and Heliopora? I have a feeling it prefer more "clean" water also.
My phosphate are a bit high, 0.1 to 0.25ppm
If something goes wrong algae will grow really fast on that coral, hmmm

 

@mitten_reef Thx 🙂  I don't think this aquarium can be TOTM since it was part of the nano-reef.com contest. It's the end of my series/documentation of the tank, couple more videos and I think I'm done, made the full cycle of reef aquarium with this one ;).

IMO high phosphate makes no material difference to corals, as long as nitrogen corresponds, mine responds when I dose phosphate (which at the moment is 24/7) but it doesn't show polyps when phosphate is too low / nitrate is too high. There needs to be balance. Algae just grows fast because it slimes over and the algae can grow on that

[Aqua Splendor]

Adding September front shot for historic reasons. 
 (Right before I cut some corals 😉 )

[Aqua Splendor]

Episode 64

 

It's inevitable. Maintaining a balance in a small aquarium can be hard. Each corals fight for space, fight for light. Eventually, some species are more successful than others.
This is where the gardener has to intervene and reestablish the balance. The corals have become too big, some of them started to spread and becoming invasive.
We all knew that day would come, this is my haircut.
 
I thought I was going to make one last episode, but, I might have to talk about that blue pill of algae i'm referring to and the "killers" of my tank hmmm
It feel very weird when you make so much cut, frag, and yet the tank look nearly the same o.O

[Aqua Splendor]

Episode 65

 

Life is about evolving, adapting, changing, what worked in the past isn't guaranteed to work in the future.

Territories are made, comportments are changed, habits are building. After few weeks I was able to finally record certain behavior happening in my nano reef tank.

I could see something suspect on my corner of my eyes, it was happening in a fraction of a second at times but after being patient, I was able to capture the behavior of my yellow goby and brown hermit crab.

[M. Tournesol]

Every time Butter finds a new chew toy you ever take it away or take him away.

Poor poor Butter 😢

[Aqua Splendor]

54 minutes ago, M. Tournesol said:

Every time Butter finds a new chew toy you ever take it away or take him away.

Poor poor Butter 😢

He's still playing with the Green Pocilopora (That FOR SOME WIERD REASONS have difficulty to grow)
I left that coral toy for him 😛

Butter is a pure race. I feel like I went from an extreme to another with Okinawae fish. (I had one before that was fine many years ago)

But what annoy me more is that brown hermit crab that during all this series was always sketchy.
Killing my only snail is not cool (they have big shell but I guess he wanted X-Large)
I raise that baby from sperm (not mine) to full adult size agnnn, he was like a children to me.
It's even more annoying when you can't find those snail at a good price anymore in my area.
I'm testing another type of snail in my frag tank (and hermit).