2.5 Gallon Caribbean Pico

[FishProblem]

46 minutes ago, Tired said:

You don't need to worry about treating the rock. Observation is just fine. I'd set a couple bottle traps in there (with ventilation holes so the stuff in the traps doesn't die) in case there are any crabs or whatnot. 

 

API is not an accurate brand, having something else is generally better.

Awesome! Are there any bad guys beyond aiptasia I should be looking out for like worms?

Yeah trying to test in the beginning of my cycle with API was a total drag, and not worth the inaccuracy. I've got Salifert now for Ammonia, Nitrite, and Nitrate, and just got the Red Sea Pro Phosphate kit. I think that should tide me over for a while, at least.

[Tired]

Unpleasant worms are fairly rare. Eunicids scare people, because bobbits are a eunicid, but many are harmless enough. Parasitic isopods are possible, but also very rare. They look like a white roly-poly/pillbug/what have you, with very large black eyes. I would suggest having a turkey baster and a red light (or flashlight with red tissue paper over the lens), to check on the tank at night and quickly remove anything that looks suspicious. When in doubt, pull it out alive, put it in a cup of water, take a picture, and get an ID. Worms and other critters should be fine overnight in a reasonably large cup of clean tank water, if it's too late in the day for ID answers. 

 

You will probably see a lot of worms. Most of them are harmless. 

 

This is a good source to learn about what you're looking at. You'll probably never see most of this, but it's an interesting thing to flip through either way.  https://chucksaddiction.thefishestate.net/hitchhikers.html

 

When you get the rock, inspect it for corals and macroalgae. Make sure to place the rock with those exposed to the light. Look up "starlet coral" and "cup coral" for some of the more common hitchhikers. If you see what looks like a dead coral skeleton, put it in the light anyway- sometimes they're alive and just highly retracted. I accidentally put a live coral under an overhang in my tank because I saw a white skeleton and figured it was dead, and only noticed it had flesh months later. Chiseled it off the underside of the rock, and it's fine now. 

[FishProblem]

7 hours ago, Tired said:

Unpleasant worms are fairly rare. Eunicids scare people, because bobbits are a eunicid, but many are harmless enough. Parasitic isopods are possible, but also very rare. They look like a white roly-poly/pillbug/what have you, with very large black eyes. I would suggest having a turkey baster and a red light (or flashlight with red tissue paper over the lens), to check on the tank at night and quickly remove anything that looks suspicious. When in doubt, pull it out alive, put it in a cup of water, take a picture, and get an ID. Worms and other critters should be fine overnight in a reasonably large cup of clean tank water, if it's too late in the day for ID answers. 

 

You will probably see a lot of worms. Most of them are harmless. 

 

This is a good source to learn about what you're looking at. You'll probably never see most of this, but it's an interesting thing to flip through either way.  https://chucksaddiction.thefishestate.net/hitchhikers.html

 

When you get the rock, inspect it for corals and macroalgae. Make sure to place the rock with those exposed to the light. Look up "starlet coral" and "cup coral" for some of the more common hitchhikers. If you see what looks like a dead coral skeleton, put it in the light anyway- sometimes they're alive and just highly retracted. I accidentally put a live coral under an overhang in my tank because I saw a white skeleton and figured it was dead, and only noticed it had flesh months later. Chiseled it off the underside of the rock, and it's fine now. 

I have a headlamp with a red light setting. I cannot wait to drive my gf insane wearing it in the bedroom late at night to peer into the tank. I love catching creepy crawlies. It'll be like messing around in a tide pool, except I can do it inside in January 😛

I'll definitely give any poorly looking corals a fighting chance. Thanks for the reminder, I probably would have tossed one if I came across it!

 

 

[ReefCap]

Following along. I love the idea for this tank! 
 

I don’t know much about Caribbean tanks but I hope to learn a thing or two from you. Good luck!

[Tired]

 

That's a starlet coral I found. Most of the skeleton was covered in algae, so I thought it was dead. When I inspected it on the rock, the flesh you can see here was retracted completely into the skeleton from stress, almost completely invisible. I didn't realize at the time that one patch of the skeleton not being covered in algae meant it was alive, but that's a good indicator. If you find a coral skeleton that has a patch with no algae on it, that patch may still be alive. 

I chiseled this piece off the underside of the rock, and it's been (very slowly) growing for awhile now. Starlet corals aren't flashy, but they're neat, and somewhat rare in the trade at this point. They aren't legal to collect from the wild, unless it's one that has settled on a rock someone placed out in the ocean for maricultured live rock. Like this one. Legal to have once you get one, just not legal to go and get. With the increase in dry rock use, these are getting rarer and rarer to find. 

[FishProblem]

On 1/6/2021 at 2:04 AM, ReefCap said:

Following along. I love the idea for this tank! 
 

I don’t know much about Caribbean tanks but I hope to learn a thing or two from you. Good luck!

Well I don't know much about reef tanks at all, so we can learn together! Thanks!

 

 

On 1/6/2021 at 10:53 AM, Tired said:

 

That's a starlet coral I found. Most of the skeleton was covered in algae, so I thought it was dead. When I inspected it on the rock, the flesh you can see here was retracted completely into the skeleton from stress, almost completely invisible. I didn't realize at the time that one patch of the skeleton not being covered in algae meant it was alive, but that's a good indicator. If you find a coral skeleton that has a patch with no algae on it, that patch may still be alive. 

I chiseled this piece off the underside of the rock, and it's been (very slowly) growing for awhile now. Starlet corals aren't flashy, but they're neat, and somewhat rare in the trade at this point. They aren't legal to collect from the wild, unless it's one that has settled on a rock someone placed out in the ocean for maricultured live rock. Like this one. Legal to have once you get one, just not legal to go and get. With the increase in dry rock use, these are getting rarer and rarer to find. 

This is getting me so excited about my live rock! It should be shipping out today or tomorrow, and I can't wait to get it.

 

I've got some big updates, but I'll try not to ramble.

 

The tank had been reading 0, 0, 50 and then five days later 0, 0, 25. So...

On Saturday, I started building my cleanup crew. I found a shop in Manhattan that had ceriths listed on their site, so I bought six to start for pickup. While I was in Manhattan anyway, I stopped at my usual LFS and the Petco in Union Square, which has an absolutely awesome aquatic section, and looked for scarlet hermits and virgin nerites. I wasn't surprised that I couldn't find the nerites anywhere. I did pick up a little scarlet hermit from Petco though. It's adorable and I'm totally enamored. I ran into Manhattan Aquarium quickly to pick up the ceriths, and then got right back to my double parked car. I did my first water change - two gallons to clean things up and bring my salinity up to 1.025. Everything acclimated well. I got the Innovative Marine AccuDrip acclimator and it's awesome. I'm usually fumbling with airline hose like a fool when I drip acclimate livestock and this made it pretty much enjoyable.

Some pics of 'em cause they're all adorable:

 

 

 

But as I gazed happily at my ceriths, I realized something was off. They're the wrong snails. The ceriths pictured on the Manhattan Aquarium store page are the Caribbean dwarf ceriths I want. But these are larger - and even worse - Mexican ceriths. The biotope is off to a rocky start. I'd been daydreaming about ultimately building a pico reef bowl too, with the live rock that I'm going to seed the tank with. But now I'm thinking that's a solidified plan, cause my gf already loves the snails and I won't sacrifice the integrity of this tank's biotope concept. So eventually, the Mexican ceriths are getting the boot and moving to the bowl. Then I'll replace them with the right snails. Unless! Can anyone confirm or deny the distribution of this species? I've spent a good deal of time trying to figure out what species they are, but I'm coming up short.

In the meantime, the ceriths are doing a killer job mixing up the sand bed, and I already have a few gleaming white patches on the rock. They're great little helpers.

 

As if I weren't excited enough about having animals in the tank, on Sunday I GOT MY FIRST CORAL. Do I sound excited enough? I am very excited. A girl on the local forums was selling Utter Chaos Zoa frags for $10, and I sorta couldn't help myself. I wore glasses and a face mask (thanks covid) and used my aquascaping tweezers to move the frag from container to container cause I've got a few cuts and didn't have gloves on hand. They were pissy, but started opening up when I dipped them in Coral RX. By Monday morning all but one of the five polyps were fully open. The one is still being moody, but I'm going to give it some time. I am SO absurdly excited. It's gorgeous in every light, blues, mixed, even lights off. I can't stop looking at it. I do need to get myself some latex gloves so I can break the stem off the frag plug and actually mount the frag. The plug is just too big for my tiny rock work.

 

 

I haven't tested since before I did the WC, so I'm going to test again tomorrow morning, including for phosphates with my new Red Sea Phosphate Pro kit. I'm mixing up a batch of new water overnight just in case I need it. My water level is a little low from using some of the tank water for acclimation, so I need to add some saltwater back in anyway.

 

That's all for now!

 

 

 

 

 

[Tired]

Oh, Utter Chaos are nice. They can morph really easily (change colors and patterns) under different lights, so yours may change a little. Nice price on those, too, and good job on the palytoxin safety. Utter Chaos are one of the definitely toxic ones- some people have had reactions after not taking proper precautions. Really nothing to worry about with some basic sense and PPE. 

 

Make sure to have plenty of empty shells for your scarlet hermit. They prefer a specific kind of shell: heavy ones. You can look them up online to see what they like, every result is wearing the same idea of shell. They can be fussy. They also like to flip small objects to look for food underneath, which is really cute until they get big enough to flip any frags you don't have glued down. Then it's still kinda cute. 

 

Are your ceriths these? https://www.reefcleaners.org/store/out-of-season/stocky-cerith-detail 

Because, since ReefCleaners sells them and doesn't mention them being imported, I would assume Florida has those ceriths. I'd be a little surprised if they were in Florida, but not in the Caribbean. 

[FishProblem]

1 hour ago, Tired said:

Oh, Utter Chaos are nice. They can morph really easily (change colors and patterns) under different lights, so yours may change a little. Nice price on those, too, and good job on the palytoxin safety. Utter Chaos are one of the definitely toxic ones- some people have had reactions after not taking proper precautions. Really nothing to worry about with some basic sense and PPE. 

 

Make sure to have plenty of empty shells for your scarlet hermit. They prefer a specific kind of shell: heavy ones. You can look them up online to see what they like, every result is wearing the same idea of shell. They can be fussy. They also like to flip small objects to look for food underneath, which is really cute until they get big enough to flip any frags you don't have glued down. Then it's still kinda cute. 

 

Are your ceriths these? https://www.reefcleaners.org/store/out-of-season/stocky-cerith-detail 

Because, since ReefCleaners sells them and doesn't mention them being imported, I would assume Florida has those ceriths. I'd be a little surprised if they were in Florida, but not in the Caribbean. 

I didn't know that about the color changing! That's pretty cool. I wonder if these will - I asked the seller about her lighting and it's really similar to mine. I was pretty thrilled about the deal I got - now I just hope I do right by them. Good to know they're on the definitely toxic list, too. I'd been seeing conflicting info, but have decided that any zoas I ever mess with are going to get the hazmat treatment.

I've been looking for the shells so I have them in the tank sooner rather than later. Found a couple decent options online, so I'm going to explore further and order some tomorrow. I saw that ReefCleaners helped some people out by hand selecting the shells for them, so I might email them to see if I can take that route.

 

Unfortunately, no. They're these (the Mexican, not Caribbean, of course): https://www.liveaquaria.com/product/1159/?pcatid=1159

 

Every site I've found them on lists them just as Cerithium sp. , and many describe them as being from Mexico. I can't remember the page I saw it on, but I'm pretty sure I saw it implied that they're from the west coast of Mexico, not the east. I spent a lot of time yesterday pasting all the "cerithium" hits on WoRMS into google image search and did not have any luck. There's an ID site I'm going to try too, as soon as I find the bookmark.
 

[ReefCap]

I’d do the pico tank sooner than later if you want to keep your biotope true. They bread quick usually spiral pattern eggs on the glass.

 

Also I could be wrong but I don’t think utter chaos Zoas are a type from the Caribbean, I think they are Pacific Ocean.

 

I do love the red sea PO4 test kit, the Hanna PO4 kit is easier to read because it’s digital, but make sure you don’t try and read it near your reef lights. I read my red sea tests in another room with zero blue light because blue lights with a blue test makes it impossible to read accurately.

 

Keep up the good work, can’t wait to see more! 
 

P.S. if your in NYC my buddy says Manhattan Reef is the only place they go locally and I trust him for all things reefing.

[FishProblem]

9 hours ago, ReefCap said:

I’d do the pico tank sooner than later if you want to keep your biotope true. They bread quick usually spiral pattern eggs on the glass.

 

Also I could be wrong but I don’t think utter chaos Zoas are a type from the Caribbean, I think they are Pacific Ocean.

 

I do love the red sea PO4 test kit, the Hanna PO4 kit is easier to read because it’s digital, but make sure you don’t try and read it near your reef lights. I read my red sea tests in another room with zero blue light because blue lights with a blue test makes it impossible to read accurately.

 

Keep up the good work, can’t wait to see more! 
 

P.S. if your in NYC my buddy says Manhattan Reef is the only place they go locally and I trust him for all things reefing.

Yeah I've seen pics of the eggs... I don't mind removing them for the time being but you're right that I don't want that to become a long term issue.

I am worried about the Utter Chaos not being Caribbean, but I did some research and so far have found that DNA testing has shown it's one of a pair of "sibling species" that are genetically indistinguishable outside of identifying the collection location. These species were split up by the Panama isthmus so recently that current DNA technology can't differentiate them. Soooo I feel pretty comfortable right now letting that one slide. I'm going to be more diligent about IDing the species of the zoas I add in the future, and if I decide the Utter Chaos don't belong, well. Into the bowl! Tbh I could kick myself for not having looked into it earlier.

Good advice! I've been reading all my tests away from the reef tank either by a window or under one of my white planted tank lights for accuracy.

Thanks! I've hit a couple snags already, but I'm learning through it, so I don't mind too much.

P.S. Good to know! I'll keep that in mind while I explore the shops in the city. 🙂

 

[ReedJM]

Really interesting build, and I'm excited to see how it evolves. I just set up my first reef tank (11.8 g) and have the same light. What settings do you have yours set to? I'm curious about timing and also what you have your individual channels set to. Thanks in advance!

[FishProblem]

On 1/24/2021 at 9:37 PM, ReedJM said:

Really interesting build, and I'm excited to see how it evolves. I just set up my first reef tank (11.8 g) and have the same light. What settings do you have yours set to? I'm curious about timing and also what you have your individual channels set to. Thanks in advance!

Hey thanks! I've got it on stock settings with the additional Nicrew dual channel timer. It turns on at 8am-11am blues only, then mixed from 11-2, then back to blues from 2-4pm. So far, I only have three frags in there, and it hasn't been very long.

[FishProblem]

Alright folks, no big picture update today, but hopefully soon! I just wanted to give a bit of an update, as some things have been moving along and I'm learning more and more how much I don't know. Hopefully someone reading along can learn from my noob-iness someday.

 

So, my experience with my first coral wasn't exactly smooth sailing, but I think everything's balanced out now. One polyp never opened, then melted away and took its buddy with it. That left me with three polyps, which were doing well! Until the two smaller ones came unglued. I reattached them to the frag plug with gel super glue (and mounted the plug!) but smothered a polyp in the process. And then there were two. Both polyps seem happy and healthy now though. They open up right at lights on, are vibrant, not stretching. That's all I can say, really. They have morphed color a bit. There's much more orange now than when I first brought them home. 

 

Since my last post I received my rock from Gulf Live Rock in the mail. It took three days to arrive via fedex, and was in great shape when it got here on January 21. I took the two smallest rocks out and didn't even look at the rest before I dropped it off to the local reefer who'd bought my extra off me. It was still wet in the paper towels and smelled like fresh clean ocean. I immediately rinsed it in saltwater and then put it in the little QT I put together, pictured here without the pump I had in it:

 

A bunch of worms and creepy crawlies fell off the rock, but there appear to still be quite a few left, and some really cool bivalves that are still going strong. There was also a tiny coral skeleton that ended up bouncing back a bit, that I moved to the display to fully recover. It looks maybe like a rose coral or a flower coral? The colors under blues are getting kinda nice. It's amazing the way its recovered, and I've had a lot of fun watching the skeleton get covered up, and the color coming back. I plan on taking photos soon for an ID, as I really have no idea how to differentiate between a lot of these corals.

 

I also got more zoanthids from WWC that were a Christmas gift. They seem to be doing okayish, but haven't fully opened up yet. They keep the "fringe" tucked in during the day.

Finally! I'm still having a heck of a time with my parameters. I've been made aware (thanks @Tired !) that my nitrate and phosphate should really be higher, as I've been totally unable to get either reading above undetectable. I have been feeding the utter chaos and the mystery coral about every 2-3 days (both have been responding to Reef Roids and I'm pretty sure are eating, though I know the zoas don't have to).  Here's the thing - in what I now think has been a really misguided attempt to get any kind of readings for nitrate and phosphate, I also haven't changed the water since adding my cuc on January 12th. I think this has been a mistake, but not a dire one (yet). I'm doing a 1 gallon wc today. I've got cloudy water and a slight algae bloom, so I think that regardless of the PO4 and NO3 readings, I've got too many nutrients in the water column. I'm hoping the wc clears things up, and will hold myself to a weekly large water change moving forward to maintain more stability. I am considering dosing PO4 and NO3, but I'm a little wary of messing it up.

My live rock is still quarantining, but has grown some algae that I want to rid it of before I move it to the display (some of which is on view in the current photo contest, so there's a silver lining I guess). Nearing the end of QT, and no aiptasia sightings anywhere. I don't want to jinx myself, but I'm taking that as a good sign. I've moved the LR to a more attractive location and container, since the mexican ceriths will go in there with it eventually once I've used it to seed this tank.

I've got a set of different orange gels to try out while photographing the tank, and I'm figuring out how to use my new camera, so hopefully I can post a great photo update in the next few days!

 

[FishProblem]

Who would have expected an update so soon? I've been doing some thinking and reading and staring at the tank with my nose against the glass, and I'm 90% certain I have dinos, not algae. It looks just right, and I've got the dreaded 0 nitrates and phosphate. I'm not going to panic, because it's not too bad right now. I manually removed a lot of it by vacuuming it up off the rocks and gravel, and wiping the glass, and will continue to do so. As soon as I realized this could be dinos, I ordered Brightwell Aquatics NeoNitro and NeoPhos to dose, but I'm wondering if I need anything else. Off to the beginners discussion!

[Tired]

That's pretty much what you do. Nutrients up, dinos out. Adding biodiversity is ideal. Does your live rock have any little bits you can put in the tank? Heck, is it ready to go in the tank entirely? Don't bother trying to get rid of algae on the live rock- that's what you want. That helps overcome the dinos. 

[FishProblem]

6 hours ago, Tired said:

That's pretty much what you do. Nutrients up, dinos out. Adding biodiversity is ideal. Does your live rock have any little bits you can put in the tank? Heck, is it ready to go in the tank entirely? Don't bother trying to get rid of algae on the live rock- that's what you want. That helps overcome the dinos. 

I've got a couple little LR pebbles that I think I can toss in right now without sweating it. It's a lot of pest algae! I wanted to employ a little QT cuc to clean things up a little before I add the large pieces, but do you really think I should just add it in? I've got every kind of bubble algae and a few green hair/string algaes. I'm not worried about aiptasia anymore - haven't seen a single one since I got the rock into water.

[Tired]

I'd be more inclined to pull off the bubble algae and the worst of the filament algae by hand and put it in the tank. Dinos are a MUCH worse pest and a much bigger deal than algae. Algae, you just add snails and maybe do some manual removal. You'll see a big surge of it onto your nice clean current rocks, but that's what you want. And it's inevitable with dry rock- the first algae to get in is going to have a party. Let it have a party, it'll sort itself out on its own with proper cleanup crew. Don't add any cleanup crew now, dinos are toxic to snails that eat them.

 

Unless the live rock is absolutely covered in filament algae (which it shouldn't be, coraline is resistant to other algaes), I'd just plonk it in. 

[FishProblem]

Well folks, it's happening. Finally, an update. I moved from NYC back to Providence in March, along with eight fish tanks, a dog, a rabbit, and my girlfriend. To say that I overestimated my ability to get my tanks up and running in short order would be a vast understatement. Turns out, it took me five years to get where I was for a reason! This is all to say that I have had no updates for you all, because nothing has happened, for the most part. I've got two aiptaisia that I think I've finally murdered, and I have had a terrible dino outbreak (bottomed out nutrients in a dead rock only display, who saw that coming?), but I hope to have it squared away with a big tank reboot tomorrow.

Basically, I felt I had to get my freshwater displays back up to snuff and presentable first. Now that I'm 70% of the way there and working on them every day to get things perfect, the picos can get some attention. That's right! Picos. The "quarantine tank" for my live rock is thriving (of course, there's live rock in it) and since becoming the permanent home for my non-biotope appropriate ceriths, has become a full blown display with a lovely colony of cheap zoas. There are two chunks of gulf live rock in there. As of tomorrow, I'm moving one over to my freshly rebooted Caribbean setup to allow for the biodiversity I need to prevent dinos and have a lovely stable environment. Each pico will then get an additional piece of cycled rock from the LFS to accompany the gulf live rock.  

It's incredible to see the difference live rock has made in the two tanks. The smaller all in one tank (with live rock) is basically set and forget. I do a 100% water change when I remember to (roughly once a month). I've been using tap water and fluval salt, and just winging it with manual top offs. I've got a good amount of turf algae in there, but I think with more regular water changes that will ease off. The zoas are pleased as punch to be there, and the reefbreeders pico light I bought for the tank has been more than enough. Meanwhile, I moved my miserable utter chaos frag from the "main display" into the all in one tank and they've bounced right back, are happy and open, and any lingering dinos on the plug are gone.  For this reason, I cannot wait to get one of the live rocks into the Caribbean tank. The poor corals in there are desperate for help.

I'm going to have to start a journal for the all in one pico soon. I've been ordering corals like crazy, and not all of them are from the warm waters of the Gulf... and some of them definitely mean I need to up my water change game a bit. I'll post a more detailed breakdown of what I've done with the Caribbean build in the next day or so. But in the meantime, a small coral haul from Cultivated Reef came in today, and I feel compelled to share pics (though only one of these corals are destined for this build).  Aaaand one picture of my mistreated but recovering Utter Chaos zoas, on the awful clump of rubble I tried to superglue into some semblance of a future Utter Chaos rock.

 

[FishProblem]

A quick post to catch up on where the tank was before I just overhauled the entire thing:

Not much of anywhere.

I broke my zoomed canister filter a few months ago, leaving me in serious need of a fast and affordable solution. (I knew already that I was going to replace just about everything on the tank, so didn't want to over-invest.) I replaced it with a surface skimmer that provided a good amount of flow. I hoped that I could use filter floss in the skimmer to help some with the dinos. It did work a bit, but not nearly enough. Completely overwhelmed by the dinos, I ended up letting them totally overtake the tank, clearing them out periodically with deep cleans only to watch them rush back. Call me Sisyphus. I was too overwhelmed by my other tanks and the move to even consider a treatment plan. I most recently tried a really deep clean, tearing apart the whole setup, removing the substrate and replacing the rock with live rock from Petco. Peroxide dipped the corals. Thought I killed the corals. Thankfully didn't. It all didn't really work.

A top corner of my tank chipped. Who knows how, but it's at dog-face height, and both dogs love fighting over their super hard chew toys so I have my suspicions. It doesn't affect the structural stability, but it sure doesn't look nice.

The corals are sad!  Too much light? Overwhelmed by dinos? All I know is they've been puckered up and miserable.

In the interest of honesty, I'll post visual proof of how horrific the tank looked later today. It was so, so bad.

And that's how I've been living. I've been so bummed about the state of the tank, but with a million and one other priorities, I've just had to sit with it in my living room, shaming me. Until now! I had started collecting everything I need to finish the build I've been daydreaming about, but not very quickly. Finally bit the bullet and over the last month or so have collected almost all the parts for this setup to get rebooted (including a replacement tank). Next post will be the updated build!

[A.m.P]

If you're doing deepcleans and waterchanges then you're likely keeping your nutrients bottomed out and scrubbing away the competition for the dino's. 

You may want to stop waterchanges entirely and dose back up to detectable nutrients. 

[Ohmegg]

On 1/6/2021 at 7:53 AM, Tired said:

 

That's a starlet coral I found. Most of the skeleton was covered in algae, so I thought it was dead. When I inspected it on the rock, the flesh you can see here was retracted completely into the skeleton from stress, almost completely invisible. I didn't realize at the time that one patch of the skeleton not being covered in algae meant it was alive, but that's a good indicator. If you find a coral skeleton that has a patch with no algae on it, that patch may still be alive. 

I chiseled this piece off the underside of the rock, and it's been (very slowly) growing for awhile now. Starlet corals aren't flashy, but they're neat, and somewhat rare in the trade at this point. They aren't legal to collect from the wild, unless it's one that has settled on a rock someone placed out in the ocean for maricultured live rock. Like this one. Legal to have once you get one, just not legal to go and get. With the increase in dry rock use, these are getting rarer and rarer to find. 

That's really cool! Grow it out and frag it! Who knows, maybe it's future progeny will help rebuild wild reefs devastated by SCTLD. SCTLD  gives me hesitation to get live rock from Florida at this point.  

[FishProblem]

On 12/14/2021 at 10:28 PM, A.m.P said:

If you're doing deepcleans and waterchanges then you're likely keeping your nutrients bottomed out and scrubbing away the competition for the dino's. 

You may want to stop waterchanges entirely and dose back up to detectable nutrients. 

You are fully correct! Unfortunately, I tried the alternative as well (no water changes at all for probably two months) and it ended in a slimy brown disaster. So far, so good with the reboot. I'm using one piece of gulf live rock and two pieces of live rock from the sump at Ocean State Aquatics, and everything appears super stable (also testing and dosing with NeoNitro as needed. Phosphate is present on its own now). I think the live rock made all the difference. Also trying to make sure I'm still feeding the tank to keep nutrients up and make sure my snails don't starve. I'm still tooling around to get my zoas to fully open, so there'll be a post about that upcoming. I raised my light and they opened up a good deal, but still not all the way.

[FishProblem]

Welp! It's been a while again! Progress moves slowly with this tank, possibly because I'm sorta dumb and bad at this. But! Progress is still happening.
I know, I still owe an FTS or two.

 

I got a cheap microscope to ID the awful brown slime about two and a half months ago. Took vids and sent them to the Dinoflagellates Support Group on FB. They ID'd it as a little bit of Prorocentrum dinoflagellates and a lot of chrysophytes a.k.a. golden algae. Take a look at them in the vid below. Accurate ID?

 

Conveniently, around when I got the ID, I also noticed that the tank may finally be maturing enough. I was leaving it all alone and hoping it would get dirty enough that the gross stuff would ease off in favor of nicer algae. It looked like places that I cleaned off, the chrysophytes weren't filling back in like they used to. And I was right! I did a lot of manual removal and used a pipette to remove a bunch of it and then filter the water back into the tank through filter floss. I've been keeping up with pipetting out little bits left over. And I've been dosing a drop of NeoNitro and a drop of NeoPhos every day or two. And the chrysophytes aren't coming back! I couldn't tell you the last time I've done a water change.

I've got a few palys, some zoas, and athe mystery acan-ish coral that came in on rock hanging out in there right now. All are doing well, to varying degrees. My Sour Lemon and Bob Marley zoas look less fully open than my Blue Eyed Girls, Pandora Palys, and my green palys, but I think they just need consistency and care. 

 

 

 

 

 

[FishProblem]

Things are starting to look reef-ey! I still need to figure out how to photograph the tank under blue light though. Took this in the morning today right after my order from Salty Underground arrived. I needed berghia to fight off the aiptasia in my other tiny tank that doesn't have a thread. Rather than spend $100 on shipping a couple of nudibranchs, I got some zoas and my first ricordea to qualify for free shipping. 

Trying to get all my existing zoas mounted on the rockwork, too. I'm excited that I can, now that it seems like I've beaten back the dinos/golden algea.

 

I know they're pretty average corals, but I love this green ricordea and I can't WAIT to get more colors.

Current livestock are a whole bunch of cerith snails and two blue legged hermit crabs.

 

Current coral stock is:
WWC Pandora Zoas
WWC Blue Eyed Girls Zoas

WWC Bob Marley Zoas

Cultivated Reef Sour Lemon Zoas

Caribbean Bright Blue Zoas (Salty Underground)

Kiss of Death Zoas (Salty Underground)
Green Ricordea (Salty Underground)

 

Now for the concerning. I have a LOT of bristleworms in this tank. I'm reading that they may attack coral? So far they seem pretty harmless, but I dont want them causing problems.

 

 

[Tired]

Normal bristleworms won't eat coral, unless the coral is dying or they're starving. Fireworms eat coral, but fireworms are pretty rare. Normal bristleworms may eat some soft macroalgaes, but other than that, all they do is eat otherwise uneaten food and serve as a reminder not to put your bare hands on any of your rock. Besides the bristleworms, it can have some really nasty bacteria, and that coupled with potential hidden sharp spots is a bad thing.