Amp's 35 Breeder

[A.m.P]

2 hours ago, Zer0 said:

Question: How is your cleaner shrimp with your SPS? Mine seems to like bothering my montis, though I’ve never seen him actually pick at them, he just likes to cling to them often. I suppose maybe it’s because my tank isn’t big so there’s only so many places for the skrimp to be lol. 

Yeah, whiskers likes to pick at the monti and acro fluff, somehow this tank turned into an SPS dominant mixed reef so he has plenty of targets. You already know, but they're largely just looking for scraps, old tissue, or just goofing around/ making themselves visible and available at a "cleaning station".
It probably helps that the big basslet fusses at anything hovering mid-tank persistently enough to keep the shrimp confined to one or two caves.

You might try getting yours to eat a few pellets out of your fingers in a corner of the tank well away from his preferred SPS perches, maybe that'll condition it to hang out elsewhere, maybe get it a big column or overhang to chill out in somewhere away from the corals?

[A.m.P]

A handful more dark practice shots with the old M43, at some point I'll stop refusing to actually correct how little light I'm bringing in, but for now compression's going to mess with the values anyway so eh...

 

 

 

 

 

[A.m.P]

The wave action in this tank probably's not the best for seam lifespan, this is just the horizontal (the left side gets mini "swells")...

30 second Gif for fun.

 

[A.m.P]

I believe this acro is trying to tell me something about my flow, I think I need more going from left to right because its just not got enough of a "windswept" vibe yet.

 

One day I will lower my Fstop further and get these pictures to be a bit brighter, today I forgot to try.

 

The Basslet sat still for a moment (in the usual dark corner though)

[A.m.P]

OH, right I'd wanted to do a bit of a mini update.
Everything's plugging away more-or-less pretty well with a few exceptions.

Half the monti's are growing well and colored-up, the other half are pouty, the sunburst is half-bleached with normal colors on the growth ring.

The acro's are colored up and growing quickly enough to surprise me honestly, so is the sinularia, but the blasto's have kind of stalled out.

The Lobo has apparently been receding for a bit, I have a theory on that and the monti's actually.
(I'd show a picture, but it looks normal until you pick it up and look under the rim)

 

I think this tank is officially out of nutrients and I'm struggling a bit with that. I managed to kick the odd lyngbya slime cyano using Tim's waste away and series of waterchanges, but I noticed that dosing waste away causes algae growth on the tissue of a few montis and even causes STN on a pair of them.
My working theory is; my phosphate test kit is junk, dosing waste away bottoms out nutrients or even starts to actively-eat certain vulnerable corals (the monti caps -except the spiral for whatever reason- lose tissue overnight), the combination of the macroalgae and a new obnoxious hair algae are crushing my phosphates.

 

I'm a bit stumped on this one, I've been dosing peroxide and that seems to have really kicked the acro growth and color into overdrive, but I'm concerned this tank is no longer suitable for LPS. I've started feeding the Lobo, but I've never had much luck in this system once animals start to seriously recede. 
 

I'm also bit hesitant to dose phosphates, I've been having to manually remove this obnoxious damn hair algae with some level of firm-ish attachment to the rocks nearly once-a-week as-is, though I have a feeling it might vanish if I bring things back up (but I don't want the damn lnygbya cyano to take over again).

 

Maybe I'm just stuck in decision paralysis, but my light schedule is already basically built around avoiding excess photoperiod, avoiding excess whites, and basically sticks 100% to what studies have found to be the photo-inhibition period for acropora.

[banasophia]

13 hours ago, A.m.P said:

I believe this acro is trying to tell me something about my flow, I think I need more going from left to right because its just not got enough of a "windswept" vibe yet.

 

One day I will lower my Fstop further and get these pictures to be a bit brighter, today I forgot to try.

 

The Basslet sat still for a moment (in the usual dark corner though)

The windswept acro is very cool!

[A.m.P]

Colors are coming back, been "educated" blind dosing seachem part 1 and iodide alongside the chaetogrow, I guess that -combined with not doing a waterchange for the last couple months- has helped the two pissy monti's bounce back. Weird.

Since I moved and started feeding the Lobo its' looking much better, figured I'd start feeding the blastos and the duncan too, tossed the acan in here because one of the clowns is a little sh*t.

 

The tank's also a year old or so now, been a real joy to have around, barring some of the issues early-on this has been a much more pleasant experience than the 20 long and I'm really hoping it stays that way. Oddly enough waterchanges right now stress the pouting monti's out and fuel the green hair algae, that said I may try my luck with a 5 gallon water change next week.

Here's a quick phone top-down snapshot of things.

 

1 Year Notes:
-The basslet's a pain but our favorite fish; constantly stealing shells and macro algae to throw in its' cave, kills snails, spooks the other fish for fun (seriously it will stalk along the bottom of the tank until it finds the wrasse or molly and then dart up at them and just watch them scatter)
-Pink Streaked wrasse are adorable and I should have just stocked the tank with a trio of them.

-Mollies do an amazing job of keeping macro algae mostly clear of epiphytes

-My lights were turned up too high, fried a favia which is just now coming back. However they were great for macro growth, hasn't been the same since.
-Acros turn green in this system, phosphate, blue lights, IDK, the miyagi has stayed purple and that's nice at least; maybe I should try to make a green dragon or something next.

-More flow is fantastic, but makes it a real pain to find places for LPS. There are maybe two or three spots in the whole tank suitable for fleshy corals.

[debbeach13]

Congratulations on the one mark. Tank looks super.

[A.m.P]

So, someone was basically giving this 50W NiCrew away and I happened to have been looking for better coverage so now this level of jank exists.

 

[A.m.P]

Decided to risk a 5 gallon Waterchange, it'll probably brown and bleach the monti's back out so here's a phone shot of the halo, mind trick, and nauti just freakin' glowing.

No filter needed.
 

[A.m.P]

I remembered to account for the old preview screen being brighter than the photos this time, otherwise I felt like taking a few quick shots with the pumps on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This little merletti is like trying to take pictures of a reflector strip at noon.

[Tired]

Very nice as usual. That acan in the second-to-last pic is neat, lavender and off-white. Any idea what makes the polyps go all flat/candycane-coral-shaped like that? 

[mitten_reef]

10 hours ago, A.m.P said:

I remembered to account for the old preview screen being brighter than the photos this time, otherwise I felt like taking a few quick shots with the pumps on.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This little merletti is like trying to take pictures of a reflector strip at noon.

Your monti collection is looking really nice

[A.m.P]

10 hours ago, Tired said:

Very nice as usual. That acan in the second-to-last pic is neat, lavender and off-white. Any idea what makes the polyps go all flat/candycane-coral-shaped like that? 

It's just really, really inflated. I have no idea why because -while it's in an alcove- it's right next to some blistering flow and gets shook around from time-to-time, could be low light, but without a PAR meter I have no real idea, it gets fed three or four pellets twice a week and that's about it. You're better off asking some of the old-school Acan-heads out there, this is my first one.
My guess though would be, medium-ish par, medium-ish random flow, gets fed, short photoperiod.

 

10 hours ago, mitten_reef said:

Your monti collection is looking really nice

Thanks, I appreciate it, and really couldn't be much happier about it myself haha...
I need to get some shots of the starburst, its' gotten all the red back into the tissue, that and the cherry-tree/ FF.
I still have that Halofolliculina disease in my tank, but it really only seems to attack digitata and very specific caps.
For now the digi is out-growing it, but the disease is slowly taking over a branch and I can't decide if I should pull an otherwise healthy coral out (can't get a picture of it for the life of me, but I know damn-well the stuff's also growing on my rocks).

[A.m.P]

Quick shot of rapid growth on the no-name green acro, and also of the other half of the rockwork in general lol. Can only see the back of the star cap from this angle, the back of the cherry tree monti, but you can also see the deadspot on the FF (and even some of the fuzzy black flagellates causing the infection).

 

[A.m.P]

Nauti Spiral had started looking a touch pale over the last week, the duncan was closed yesterday.
Man I knew I shouldn't have done that waterchange lol, now I've got to dose 8 capfuls of Nitrogen just to get back to 5 ppm.

 

[A.m.P]

Things have been busy, so I haven't really taken any more pictures and I'm sorry for the lack of updates.

Controlled cell death is something else in simple organisms, I hope I don't encounter it too frequently with corals because it's bad enough with the Dragon's breath.
The nitrates must have been near-zero for a while, I dosed back up to 5 ppm as soon as a caught it, but somewhere near half of the macro whited-out and dissolved away. My nitrates are now closer to 30 and my phosphates are closer to 0.15-0.2.
The swing browned out the halo monti, paled out the cherry tree, and caused a new frag or two I was preparing for local packs to show a bit of STN, thankfully nothing too dramatic so far.

 

The Dragon's breath has yet to start growing again, takes the stuff a month or longer to stop pouting sometimes, meanwhile the damn basslet won't stop stealing what's left/healthy to stuff in its' cave.

 

I need more fish, but the wrasse and basslet are skittish at feeding, and otherwise territorial, so I have absolutely no idea if I could get away with another animal.
The wrasse is shy enough that if my wife moves in the kitchen during feeding time it will go and hide, refusing to eat at all, plus it'll only eat from the water column at a very-specific spot.
 

The basslet was handily-outcompeted by juvie clownfish which got transferred for being little troublemakers lol...

[A.m.P]

Not sure why, but nearly all of the Dragons breath has died off, I'm used to some seasonal dieback but this was way more aggressive.
At this point I'm just hoping some of the holdfasts and last stragglers pull through.

All that dead macro spiked Nitrates from 0 to 50, so I did a 50% waterchange to get things back to more reasonable levels.

The monti's are growing but browned out (some more than others), the acro's didn't seem to notice and the LPS are the happiest they've ever been lol.
 

Some quick shots from this AM.

 

It dawned on me that I've talked about, but never really tracked, the growth of the two other acros in this system. Here's a miyagi which I bought on a discount rack as a single branch a few months back, it seems dead-set on becoming a mat rather than growing vertically.

 

And this is a very, very green Cali tort lol... The tips are actually fairly dark-purple, but it's difficult to get it on camera, especially shooting from the far-end of the peninsula like this.

It is clearly nowhere near as happy as the miyagi, but that might also be from me accidentally breaking and having to re-glue it. That said the base has fused and it's growing.

[A.m.P]

I didn't realize how much more mellow and brown the nauti looks until I scrolled up my own journal lol. That said I moved it an inch away from that rock two months ago.

 

The forest fire has been growing quite nicely at least.

 

Still don't know what this acro is, but it's happy so I'm happy lol...

[A.m.P]

Some really terribly unfocused quick shots from this morning when I had a minute. The Miyagi is basically just tabling instead of growing vertically at all, looks pretty strange.

 

 

 

 

[banasophia]

Looking good. Are you dosing/feeding anything special to help the corals color back up? I am trying to nurse mine back to health myself right now. What’s that square in the pic? Oh and that green Cali tort is awesome!

[A.m.P]

5 hours ago, banasophia said:

Looking good. Are you dosing/feeding anything special to help the corals color back up? I am trying to nurse mine back to health myself right now. What’s that square in the pic? Oh and that green Cali tort is awesome!

Lol, they're liable to be brown and such for quite some time. Nitrates bottomed out and then swung up to 50ish after the dragon's breath all did its' seemingly-seasonal dieback dance.

That and making sure everything's in the right range -calcium had somehow snuck down to 340-ish in both systems, I'm blaming some shy batches of IO- is all they're getting from me right now.
I have no clue why the Miyagi is suddenly so bright, but felt like sharing haha.
That cali tort weirds me out, it's growing super-spindly and thin, the tips have an almost-black purple color but the rest is greener than the miyagi.

 

I have no idea if the forest-green/off-teal nameless acro will do well back with the rest of them, I think that spot gets considerably less light than where it was previously.
 

Oh, and it's just a frag tile for that piece of mind trick to grow onto.

 

@mitten_reef 

Hate to tag folks, but do you think the miyagi is trying to fuse into a solid carpet because I have too much flow in the top of the tank?

[mitten_reef]

7 hours ago, A.m.P said:

Lol, they're liable to be brown and such for quite some time. Nitrates bottomed out and then swung up to 50ish after the dragon's breath all did its' seemingly-seasonal dieback dance.

That and making sure everything's in the right range -calcium had somehow snuck down to 340-ish in both systems, I'm blaming some shy batches of IO- is all they're getting from me right now.
I have no clue why the Miyagi is suddenly so bright, but felt like sharing haha.
That cali tort weirds me out, it's growing super-spindly and thin, the tips have an almost-black purple color but the rest is greener than the miyagi.

 

I have no idea if the forest-green/off-teal nameless acro will do well back with the rest of them, I think that spot gets considerably less light than where it was previously.
 

Oh, and it's just a frag tile for that piece of mind trick to grow onto.

 

@mitten_reef 

Hate to tag folks, but do you think the miyagi is trying to fuse into a solid carpet because I have too much flow in the top of the tank?

is it possible that it isn’t a miyagi?  The branch structure looks very different than a typical tort, but I never had a miyagi either, only cali and Oregon tort.   But yeah, flow can be a factor in overall growth shape for sure. If you look up @teenyreef IM40 in totm library, you’ll see all his acros grew very flat across the line where his powerheads are. 
 

re:cali, dark blue tip is good. More light will make it even more blue down the stems. Lower light, you get some green. 

[A.m.P]

1 hour ago, mitten_reef said:

is it possible that it isn’t a miyagi?  The branch structure looks very different than a typical tort, but I never had a miyagi either, only cali and Oregon tort.   But yeah, flow can be a factor in overall growth shape for sure. If you look up @teenyreef IM40 in totm library, you’ll see all his acros grew very flat across the line where his powerheads are. 
 

re:cali, dark blue tip is good. More light will make it even more blue down the stems. Lower light, you get some green. 

It's possible that I ended up with a different acro, it's almost all from locals. I don't know if I'd be comfortable with much more PAR, it may just have to stay green lol. I think it's sitting in over 350 right now, I really need to rent a meter again and check.

[jservedio]

Man, I hadn't checked in on your tank for a few months and it's blowing up! Those look like some very happy acros!