Amp's 35 Breeder

[A.m.P]

30 minutes ago, jservedio said:

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!

Been rocky, but thankfully the animals have been forgiving and I've been lucky. 

At some point I hope to stop swinging nutrients and ALK around like a kid trying to hit a piñata. 

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, A.m.P said:

At some point I hope to stop swinging nutrients and ALK around like a kid trying to hit a piñata. 

Don't we all...

 

It could be worse though:

[A.m.P]

I had moved the halo monti because I thought it was getting too much light, it was browned, upset, and a little bleachy. 

Turns out I somehow introduced the tiny plague vermetids into my system on idk what, the underside was covered, now it's covered in glue. 

Not looking forward to this fight, may be time for a pair of bumblebee snails.

[debbeach13]

Nice if they work for you I will get some for the 20 when I get a CUC for the 10. They get mixed reviews but some members have had good luck with them. 

[A.m.P]

1 minute ago, debbeach13 said:

Nice if they work for you I will get some for the 20 when I get a CUC for the 10. They get mixed reviews but some members have had good luck with them. 

Yeah, it's probably different locations, species, or what have you which determine whether they work or not, I'm thinking they may be handy to help control these dove snails too. We'll see, I'm still trialing the big-dumb-monkey control program right now.

[jservedio]

1 hour ago, A.m.P said:

big-dumb-monkey control program right now.

As long as you keep them from growing directly on small and slow growing corals corals, they are actually really good at cleaning particulates out of the water and I actually like having them in the sump. I know some people say they can kill corals but it's definitely not true and I suspect it's just people looking for an excuse for why their coral died. I watch my LPS and nems steal food from them all the time and nearly all corals grow right over and kill them without any issue - have yet to see a vermetid win in a growth race vs any SPS coral. Their biggest drawback is that they just look really weird once they get covered by skeleton if no branch grows out in that spot. I've got to have at least a three or four dozen ex-vermetid tubes living under the handful of corals on my top SPS shelf rock and most of my larger LPS have vermetid tubes in their skeletons. They are still snails!

[A.m.P]

1 hour ago, jservedio said:

As long as you keep them from growing directly on small and slow growing corals corals, they are actually really good at cleaning particulates out of the water and I actually like having them in the sump. I know some people say they can kill corals but it's definitely not true and I suspect it's just people looking for an excuse for why their coral died. I watch my LPS and nems steal food from them all the time and nearly all corals grow right over and kill them without any issue - have yet to see a vermetid win in a growth race vs any SPS coral. Their biggest drawback is that they just look really weird once they get covered by skeleton if no branch grows out in that spot. I've got to have at least a three or four dozen ex-vermetid tubes living under the handful of corals on my top SPS shelf rock and most of my larger LPS have vermetid tubes in their skeletons. They are still snails!

I'd noticed the monti constantly covered in mucus and never opening up, my guess is that it wasn't the monti's mucus as everything else around it was doing fine and mucus-free. I think there are certain species which become more or less of an issue in systems and create the a bunch of cacophony in the hobby stemming from genuinely-different experiences.

In the same vein there are dozens of different species of bryopsis, dinos, green hair algae, and cyano but we tend to lump them together and assume different experiences result from other people's failures or lack of experience operating "not in house".

In fairness to people who struggle with them, the last reef convention had sanjay as a speaker and apparently you really can lose frags to vermetids, even the oldschool trailblazers seem to on occasion. 

In any case I appear to have been too cavalier with the monti and kept it out of the water too long, came home to it covered in brown slime and only patches of tissue left once I cleaned it off. Distracted reefing is dangerous, what a careless shame I put that animal through such a rough spot, guess we'll see in a month or two whether it can bounce back.

[debbeach13]

1 hour ago, A.m.P said:

In the same vein there are dozens of different species of bryopsis, dinos, green hair algae, and cyano but we tend to lump them together and assume different experiences result from other people's failures or lack of experience operating "not in house".

In fairness to people who struggle with them, the last reef convention had sanjay as a speaker and apparently you really can lose frags to vermetids, even the oldschool trailblazers seem to on occasion. 

Thanks for posting this.

[jservedio]

2 hours ago, A.m.P said:

I'd noticed the monti constantly covered in mucus and never opening up, my guess is that it wasn't the monti's mucus as everything else around it was doing fine and mucus-free. I think there are certain species which become more or less of an issue in systems and create the a bunch of cacophony in the hobby stemming from genuinely-different experiences.

In the same vein there are dozens of different species of bryopsis, dinos, green hair algae, and cyano but we tend to lump them together and assume different experiences result from other people's failures or lack of experience operating "not in house".

In fairness to people who struggle with them, the last reef convention had sanjay as a speaker and apparently you really can lose frags to vermetids, even the oldschool trailblazers seem to on occasion. 

In any case I appear to have been too cavalier with the monti and kept it out of the water too long, came home to it covered in brown slime and only patches of tissue left once I cleaned it off. Distracted reefing is dangerous, what a careless shame I put that animal through such a rough spot, guess we'll see in a month or two whether it can bounce back.

I probably could have chosen the words in the first couple of sentences a little more carefully and Sanjay is definitely right that some of the particularly large or tightly packed species have at least the potential to kill small frags (mainly in lower light in areas that are already heavily established with vermetids). There is no question they can temporarily annoy frags (they eventually adjust and don't react to the mucous web after some time). That said, I've never once even read about an established coral being killed by any species. I think you are going to be totally fine casually removing any you see in an area you don't want.

 

I 100% agree with what you are saying about bryopsis, dinos, cyano, etc. because most people only deal with one or two species out of hundreds or thousands in their entire reefing career and because different species are so wildly different (particularly dinos). Valonia is another good example where you can have an absolute hellish experience with a few species or just have a super cool giant cell to enjoy for years without ever spreading, and they all just get lumped under "Bubble Algae". But after my rather unique experience with a few dozen species across many of the vermetoidea genus, I tend to disagree with that sentiment in regards to them in particular. At worst they are a nuisance and are not something you absolutely need to take real action with like byopsis, dinos, chysophytes, AEFW, MENS, etc. - I've yet to see any evidence of a particularly damaging species like you see documented all the time with dinos.

 

When I say I had a rather unique experience with many of the different species, what I mean is I had more than a dozen different species in my tank at any given time and cleaned scenes like this out of my overflow every single year. Just in this tiny area after less than a year of growth when I last broke it down I counted at least 7 species across 3 genus and two entirely different growth forms! I've seen tons of em'!

 

 

 

Also, I really hope your monti recovers! I got lucky a few months ago with my red planet doing the same thing and leaving it on the desk a couple hours so hopefully it recovers, too.

 

PS: If you want me to pull this all out and put it in a different thread I'll gladly pull it out - this is your house!

[A.m.P]

Nah man, you're good -love conversation-, that overflow is impressive honestly that's exactly where you want them to be. Thanks, I don't have high hopes for the monti, RTN and Brown Jelly Necrosis have stopped but it's still sloughing tissue off and bailing out polyps. At this point I'm just hoping there's more than skeleton left in the morning.

[A.m.P]

Visual Update, this is the side which still has tissue.

It's more obvious how little is left under blues, looks much better under whites.

[A.m.P]

Well the Halo survived, still doesn't extend polyps over most of the tissue, but there's still tissue.

 

In other news the basslet now has its' own tank full of problems and sass and I'm thinking of going a different direction with the stocking in the big system (Nitrate is plummeting).

Anyone have experience with pink streaks and red-lined wrasse? I know they eat similar small inverts and occupy similar niches/areas of the tank, but there's a fair bit of rockwork and A LOT of pyram, limpets, and baby snails of all kinds in the tank which are more suited to a halichoeres than the tiny mouthed pink streak.

Wouldn't mind getting a fairy as well and just having a trio of wrasse in the system, maybe add a molly miller now that they've had their genus shifted out of salarias, but I'm not certain how well they would all get along. Especially since the pink streak is a pyscho spazz who only eats in a single corner of the tank and tries to fight its' reflection and the clownfish all day.
Any thoughts?

[A.m.P]

Crappy Pic, but this Stylo keeps on sprawling out and I love watching it.
 

[A.m.P]

So, I never really talked about the intention for this system past the superficial goal of it being "easy and low maintenance". After getting lucky for nearly two years, and hopefully a bit more to come, I wanted to explain a bit more about the PAR and mentality in the system.
 

Quite a bit of trusted media has moved towards the concept of it being "almost impossible" to underlight most coral with modern fixtures and also towards "dirty stability". 

I wanted to see if there was anything to that, so this tank had been largely hands-off save for ALK corrections. I keep the skimmer clean, I keep the C02 media fresh, I swap out carbon/floss monthly, there's enough flow to make sure I don't have to blow anything off, and now I have a small Kalk drip to supplement my DiY All for Reef, and that's really it.
The system stays, and will stay, at fairly high nutrient levels 20+ N03 and 0.1-0.2 P04.

 

But what I wanted to get into was the lighting, this tank is dim, not dark, but dim.
Dim as in I've been growing acropora in 90-100 PAR and monti's in 65, the slow growth rate/sub-par coloration matches it.
The schedule is also quite brief compared to "normal"; 1hr ramp up to "full", ramp down 20% over 4.5 hours, ramp down to negligible PAR for viewing over two.

 

In any case the main reason I wanted to bring things up is that I thought it might help folks make judgement calls on their own systems and I've decided to test my luck and bump the lights up a touch.
Still not what most would call "High Light", but a solid 20-30% more PAR than I've been running.

 

 

Anyway, thought I'd share, hopefully I'm not pushing things too far and frying everything in the process. Two months-in and the lights are ramped up to where I wanted them and the Kalk drip is still a royal, clogging PITA.
Thought I'd share, hope everyone's been doing well!

[debbeach13]

Nice update - great info.

[A.m.P]

Calcium really likes dropping off without Alk in this system.

Three months or so back it was down at 300, this time I caught it at 340. Both times I just swung it back up to 400 over three days and corals seemed to respond well.
This time around I noticed the cherry tree monti getting cyano and dying back, alongside less axial corallite extension on the acropora, maybe just a coincidence.

 

I think I'll need to up the weekly dose of additional Fusion Part 1 to (2)ml.

 

Now dripping around a half gallon of kalk a week into the system, not enough to keep up with demand by a long shot (I don't know what's using it + the 3ml of AFR nightly), but it's just about right for my evaporation rate.

 

Thinking of doing the first waterchange in 7 months, but the cyano (it's only on the macro's again) is going away and I don't want to invite it back in with some fresh fuel.

[Zer0]

It's kinda crazy how much elements these corals suck up.

 

What do you keep your phosphate and nitrate levels at, if you don't mind me asking?

[A.m.P]

5 hours ago, Zer0 said:

It's kinda crazy how much elements these corals suck up.

 

What do you keep your phosphate and nitrate levels at, if you don't mind me asking?

Nitrate is 50 or so because of the dragons breath dieback, apparently phosphate is .02 (basically margin of error for 0 on a hannah bulb I grabbed for $15), explains why things are looking pale and a bit sad, I'll be dosing back up to around (0.1).

[Zer0]

And 50 nitrate is okay? That seems, kinda high, no? 

[A.m.P]

17 hours ago, Zer0 said:

And 50 nitrate is okay? That seems, kinda high, no? 

Nitrate isn't toxic in saltwater until 200+ PPM, with the exception of a select few very-sensitive animals, because it becomes an ion.

 

But honestly the PPM ended up that high because Nitrate hit 0 and killed off dragons breath to begin with, just haven't done a waterchange since and it's not really been moving.

[A.m.P]

Some 7-month-young water right there, cannot believe how clear it came out.
Took the big head off the python and just let the suction rip through the tube, tried to hit every spot where anything at all looked to settle and got the rocks... It's mostly empty shells in the bucket at that.
High flow barebottom tanks are so wonderful.

 

Moved a few rocks around, might regret it or keep having to play with things. Honestly how clean things are right now almost makes me regret moving toward getting more stock in here, but the additional characters will be worth the effort.

 

[A.m.P]

Still haven't gotten the proper camera out in a while, here's a quick phone FTS.

Happy day-after national Cocktail day!
 

[A.m.P]

Hello, hello!

Been a minute and life has been absolutely insane, tank's been chugging along well-enough though and continues to be an absolute joy.

Hope everyone's been well!

 

[A.m.P]

Aloha, from a Lazy reefer's 35 gallon science experiment, had to bust out the handled scraper to clean up the glass.

Figured I'd share the view.

 

[Snow_Phoenix]

3 minutes ago, A.m.P said:

Aloha, from a Lazy reefer's 35 gallon science experiment, had to bust out the handled scraper to clean up the glass.

Figured I'd share the view.

 

Whoa. Look at all those healthy colonies!