1 Gallon acro-portrait - Final tank shot

[East1]

 

Pretty happy at the difference in colour already with this light! 

[East1]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

It's remarkable the change from switching lights, though hard to photograph. I've also been dosing NP-Bacto Balance from TM, overdone it a bit as you can seeonthe glass, but hte corals respond well.  

[East1]

In this tank even minimal carbon dosing removes a lot of nitrate, even when dosing it back or adding amino acids, perhaps there isn't enough surface area for bacteria to colonise and nitrify and I end up washing out the sliver of sponge pre-filter in my surface skimmer. Also, when the surface skimmer stops working perfectly (often) I get a thick oily film on the surface. There's a fine balance between surface skimming and it sucking in air to the pump, stressing the corals.  

 

To combat both these issues I found this 

 

 

Intention is to cut it and use it upside down with an inlet for surface skimming, and us the larger more robust tube diameter so I can make a cut and allow surface water to fall in, and further it's large enough in diameter to allow me to put in 3-4 noodles of siphorax, probably in a staggered arrangement to slow laminar waterflow a little and stop air getting sucked in. Hopefully this should help clarify the water with a prefilter sponge, as well as allowing nitrification so the corals don't get too pale - at the moment everything has gone pastel in a matter of days and I'm not entirely sure it's just down to the increase in light. 

[Reefkid88]

Could be an increase in light and not enough nutrients. Give it time everything will color up nicely. 

[East1]

[Reefkid88]

Have you thought about running a AquaClear 20 or and Azoo mini hob filter with just some carbon and a sponge ? 

 

 Even a AquaLifter with their little pre-filter attachment with a few pieces of carbon would work. Or toss a 1-2" piece of live rock to feed the bacteria in the frag plugs to essentially create "live rock". 

[East1]

10 hours ago, Reefkid88 said:

Could be an increase in light and not enough nutrients. Give it time everything will color up nicely. 

 

38 minutes ago, Reefkid88 said:

Have you thought about running a AquaClear 20 or and Azoo mini hob filter with just some carbon and a sponge ? 

 

 Even a AquaLifter with their little pre-filter attachment with a few pieces of carbon would work. Or toss a 1-2" piece of live rock to feed the bacteria in the frag plugs to essentially create "live rock". 

 

The issue I face now isn't really that nutrients are uncontrollable, but rather that I need to dose phosphates and currently the tank is filtering itself purely off water column bacteria that's then skimmed out, and fed carbon, adding phosphate to that mix when there's undetectable nitrate will cause dinoflagellates to break out pretty fast, so I need a source of nitrate. That's the purpose of some siphorax, given the tiny volume I'll need perhaps 4 rings and it should result in some level of nitrate against which phosphate can be dosed to find a balance,

 

Though at this point I'm strongly considering adding another fish instead of just dosing Easylife Fosfo, but either way there needs to be an efficient aerobic site for bacteria to nitrify the water, that won't get clogged (a HOB would reduce effeciency pretty fast once clogged with bacterial mulm) 

 

I did add a small piece of rock but it's mostly encrusted in sponges, I doubt it'll make much difference - that said the sponges did turn the water all cloudy resulting in a big waterchange. 

[Reefkid88]

Why not feed something like ReefRoids or some type of plankton or copepods to dirty up the water ?  

 

 Maybe go a little longer without a water change ? 

 

 Or even with the mulm that is trapped in the sponge,shake it back into the tank or something. I feel like dosing po3 or no3 in such a small tank could be a terrible idea and easily be overdosed. But that is just me. 

 

 In my 2g I never had an issue with any nutrient levels and always had good growth and amazing colors. I had an easy 20+ acro's in that tank too. 

[East1]

 SPS corals show t hat are two discrete ways to feed - one is to feed their polyps with something suspended, Reef Roids etc are good for this, and it ensures the coral won't starve, the other is to feed the water directly with a biologically available form of Nitrogen and Phosphate, so KNO3 for example, this allows you to manipulate the amount of zoox in the coral skin. To feed something like Reef roids any unconsumed particles get incorporated into the food chain, and in my system would result in bacterial biomass and skimmed out. Left to their own devices, SPS corals will control the amount of zoox in their flesh relative to the tank water - they can't increase the populations within their flesh if there isn't nitrate available to them, however they also can't decrease the poplation of zoox when the external water concentration of nitrate is higher than within their flesh, and it's why you see so many SPS tanks having a huge export mechanism such as carbon dosing and skimming coupled with a large fish load, to ensure that nitrate is always present but at a low level within the tank. Most SPS tanks rely on that balance of export and import to allow the corals the opposite end gradients that maximise photosynthesis and coral colour. 

 

Because my No3 and Po4 is basically non-existent, I can't manipulate the zoox concentrations and just have really pale, although really colourful corals. As there's no substrate for nitrification, any nitrifying bacteria are removed along with nitrogen compounds, but adding some siphorax to the tank allows the nitrification process to complete out of the water column ensuring an increase in nitrate relative to talk water, which is what I want, then phosphate can be dosed without any risk of overdose (relatively speaking in fractions of droplets), as it forms part of the bacterial chain. 

 

The reason such a balance exists here is that even without dosing carbon, adding Calcium Acetate results in some carbon in the water column and prioritises water-column bacteria populations which have to be skimmed out, or the water gets cloudy, for as long as I rely on this method for alk/cal dosing I need to supplement NO3 and PO4 directly. a filter sponge would do the same however as it clogs up you lose effeciency, which is why something like sintered glass (siphorax) that has tiny pores and can't really clog up in good flow, is ideal. 

 

 

In other tank news however my new acropora RTN'd after arrival, I think the heat pack didn't activate and shipping it cold plus my own hastiness resulted in a temperature swing that killed it, which is quite unfortunate. At the moment I struggle to find good sized SPS and I'm now in the market for another maricultured colony-sized piece to fill in the tank. 

[East1]

Some photos of the new filter arrangement, looks really nice and saves a lot of space in the tank IMO.

 

currently using 3 siporax rings, some black filter sponge that gets washed regularly and some poly filter which is to be changed roughly weekly, but pre soaked in RO water first 

 

[East1]

After a couple days using the new filtration arrangement, I'm finally seeing some green algae growth on the back wall of the tank, so I know now the tank is producing nitrate and working well, even without as agressive carbon dosing, so I can start to adjust coral colours with phosphate (actually probably just tap water, my tap water has something like 1.8ppm Phosphate with a freshwater test kit, so dosing a few ml of that is enough) 

 

Made a few further changes too, after loss of my acro I went acro-shopping and picked up a nice tenius, as well as a yellow belly damsel who's taken residence in the thickets of acropora. Due to the amount of coral in the tank flow was becoming an issue so I've added a harmonic timer program to the pump, currently it runs for 1.8 seconds off and 5.4 seconds on, set to a far higher flow than it was running previously. This seems to keep the water body in motion a lot better, too. 

 

some photos: 

 

[Leo_ian]

Wow just found this, will def follow along

[k4ndyk1ng]

Your tanks are always so cool, these sps picos are just incredible

[East1]

On 10/19/2020 at 10:34 PM, k4ndyk1ng said:

Your tanks are always so cool, these sps picos are just incredible

Thanks dude! Glad to welcome you to the latest thread! 

 

 

 

[East1]

I think home moving is the most stressful thing, with or without a tank - despite familiarity, having moved countries and homes every few years, it’s always longer and more stressful than anticipated! 
 

corals spent a night in a plastic tub and probably got a little colder than is ideal, but seem to be bouncing back so far. Fingers crossed!

 

it now lives on a bookshelf next to my computer desk 

 

[debbeach13]

Looks nice. Glad the move went well.

Personally I could never deal with maintaining a tank closed in like that. I make a mess with access from 3 sides and the top. Towels every where before I start because I am such a slob.

[A.m.P]

57 minutes ago, debbeach13 said:

Looks nice. Glad the move went well.

Personally I could never deal with maintaining a tank closed in like that. I make a mess with access from 3 sides and the top. Towels every where before I start because I am such a slob.

It's such a nice ideal/aesthetic to work towards though, but I'm the same way; I can't even figure out where all the salt streaks on the glass come from, I swear they pop-up after viewing sometimes.

[East1]

20 hours ago, debbeach13 said:

Looks nice. Glad the move went well.

Personally I could never deal with maintaining a tank closed in like that. I make a mess with access from 3 sides and the top. Towels every where before I start because I am such a slob.

Honestly, same! I think there's just enough space for feeding and moving things with tweezers, but not cleaning. Fortunately for the size I can lift it even while full to clean and perform deep maintenance. After taking all the coral out I found a thick layer of bacterial 'sludge' at the back corners, so I think I'll start doing a partial water change where I take the corals to a small tub, with half the tank water, then scrub and scrape the glass clean and replace everything with some fresh mixed water, the glass looks so much better clean honestly. 

 

Up till now I only really change 20% every 2 weeks or so, and the rest is just repalcing what the skimmer removes (about 20ml a day) 

 

19 hours ago, A.m.P said:

It's such a nice ideal/aesthetic to work towards though, but I'm the same way; I can't even figure out where all the salt streaks on the glass come from, I swear they pop-up after viewing sometimes.

 

Aha I totally feel that! I'm lucky that all the glass in this tank maintain an asthetic that I don't think is representatitve of my actual life, lol.

 

It looks so clean now, though! 

 

 

 

 

[farkwar]

Looks nice all cleaned up

[Craig.]

It's looking nice at the moment 🙂 Do you normally put a cover on the container to prevent the damsel being able to jump?

[East1]

21 hours ago, Craig. said:

It's looking nice at the moment 🙂 Do you normally put a cover on the container to prevent the damsel being able to jump?

Thanks! 
I don’t, I’ve not had any issues with the damsel or the goby either, I might just be lucky though.

 

 

the more I watch this on my shelf the more I want to create a second for LPS! 

[East1]

Not updated this a while, sadly I lost quite a few of the smaller corals after using some 2part epoxy in the tank to glue them, even with a water change the stuff clouded the water loads, and I think knocked out a bunch of corals. 

 

Been a bit of effort to get the tank back in balance, here's a small shot of how it looks so far - around 4 acros and the heliopora survived 

 

[Reefkid88]

Man that sucks..did you epoxy them in the tank or what ? 

[East1]

One of the frags I stuck to a rock fell off, leaving the stuff in full flow for a while before I noticed the tank was cloudy

[East1]

A few photos, since being restarted post epoxy-crash, only a few corals survived which I retained and tried to find a new balance - though bacterial blooms were going wild, since I've added a few acros and got back some great colours again

 

 

 

 

 

Happy new year!