fenderchamp's 3.5 gal bow front

[fenderchamp]

[fenderchamp]

Looks like it’s starting a new plate

[fenderchamp]

11 heads now. Started with 1.

[brandon429]

hey great job updates for sure, can you remind me what is the feed your tank gets, we're rehabbing up another nano reef on rtr and we wanted to move beyond just mysis alone/what are  you feeding them 

[fenderchamp]

21 hours ago, brandon429 said:

hey great job updates for sure, can you remind me what is the feed your tank gets, we're rehabbing up another nano reef on rtr and we wanted to move beyond just mysis alone/what are  you feeding them 

The whole thing I've done so far I do is this.  I don't track anything exactly or feed every week exactly the same.

 

Very consistently 

1. I top off about 1 specimen cup per day of water from my oranda tank, which is prime treated tap water, 40 breeder with 2 Fish in it.  It's run bare with a sponge and a little air filter (it's fairly dirty) even though I change the water about %100 a week.   I think the reef gets some organics from this.  I've been doing this since the pico tank was probably  3 months old, when I figured out how easy it was, to simply dip a cup in the oranda tank instead of using RODI.

2. Cbalance alkalinity supplement A/B 1 ml each per day

 

Pretty consistently

3. live phyto a few drops 3-5 days a week, starting at about a year.  I would dose a little bit of phyto-feast prior to starting the live. 

 

As described.

4. frozen brine hikari cube 1/2 cube 2-4x a month.

5. PNS yellow snow 1-5x a month 5ml at night

6.Red Sea AB+ 5-7 times a month 3-5ml (this is huge dose for this tank).  I've done this as much as 2x a week before.  I've also done this at 1 ml dose a few a times a week for probably the first year after a few months.

7. not so much lately but an occasional dose of reef chili.  I usually give it a heaping provided spoon, in a 1/2cup of water, and when I'm doing this maybe 1x a week. 

 

Using Redsea coral pro salt I mix it my self with RODI I get at LFS: 'Fish Freaks' every week, and mix at 35.0 I'm changing water %100 a week more or less.

 

Additionally, I've dumped a variety of live pods into the tank a couple of times. 

 

and I forgot I give the crabs some (like 1-5) new-life-spectrum gold fish small sinking pellets, slightly more than once a week and have been since I first started up the tank.

 

 

[fenderchamp]

man oh man. 

 

I've been using 2ml (1 ml each) 2 part Two little Fishies C-Balance,  in this tank for a good while now.  I start at 12DKH with a fresh water change and usually end up at 10 or so at the end of the week or so, the 2ml seems to raise the DKH in the tank about 1DKH.   I haven't been measuring the Alkalinity much lately, so anyway I did yesterday.

 

 I think it's been 9 days since the 100%, when I measured the salinity according to my gizmo was 35, I have been adding the supplement every day except for the first.  

 

The alkalinity was at 7.4, that was in the afternoon after I added the supplement.  I don't think I want to add it 2x a day so I think it's time to do a fresh water change, measure everyday and see which way the wind blows and tweak my dosing volume, that's the plan in any case.   

 

What would happen, I'm sure it's been done, if I quit dosing,  stuck to weekly water changes (seems dumb) and let the alkalinity tank even more every week?  @brandon429 is that what you are doing now or do you still dose 2 part?

 

In any case, I'm not going to quit doing large frequent water changes, as I'm convinced of their effectiveness.

 

Any thoughts or comments about pros and cons of dosing, using a doser on a tank this small, what sorts of usage levels might be occurring with other elements supplied by this supplement that might be coming into play, water change frequency and volume adjustments.  I'd be curios to hear what people think. I do recall @Jon-Paul abandoning his doser and embracing the water change by itself. 

[brandon429]

I pretty much stopped dosing 2 part just bc over the years I got lazy and Maritza vase reef hasn't dosed her pico / is on year nine / so I decided to try and it has been ok for a few years now on my setup 

 

*that doesn't mean i think my alk isn't low at times I'm sure it is... my main focus is hq feeding + water changes = I focus on clean protein in and out export and keeping polyp mass growth pretty consistent. 

 

My reef is simply ok not being at stellar sps alkalinity

[fenderchamp]

4 hours ago, brandon429 said:

I pretty much stopped dosing 2 part just bc over the years I got lazy and Maritza vase reef hasn't dosed her pico / is on year nine / so I decided to try and it has been ok for a few years now on my setup 

 

*that doesn't mean i think my alk isn't low at times I'm sure it is... my main focus is hq feeding + water changes = I focus on clean protein in and out export and keeping polyp mass growth pretty consistent. 

 

My reef is simply ok not being at stellar sps alkalinity

I wonder what the swing is before/after water change on a typical week.  How long to do you stretch it sometimes?  do you ever feed 2x before the change?

[fenderchamp]

1 minute ago, fenderchamp said:

I wonder what the swing is before/after water change on a typical week.  How long to do you stretch it sometimes?  do you ever feed 2x before the change?

I'm more interested in what we can get away with than what we should always do, not that I have any intention of changing my routine much, but... you know life happens, and our picos, the ocean are not.

[fenderchamp]

What’s going on with this cyphestria?

[fenderchamp]

[fenderchamp]

[fenderchamp]

so the reef has been up just over 2 years now.  

 

I've enjoyed it so far and I'm pretty happy with how it's gone, but I'm thinking that I really am going to have to do something about the duncan and the hammer.  

 

I have had a setback with those dark purple/black zoas. they were overgrowing a little orange zoa colony that were had put in the tank early on. so I popped them off (the little orange guys) and put them on a frag plug in the other tank, they are doing fine in there. 

 

I harvested some of the black zoas at the same time and glued them on a frag plug, and they are doing fine as well. 

 

 It seems like all of the black zoa colony closed up after that, they are starting to open now, I think, but looking at the picture they seem to have lightened up quite a bit, or they have dissolved and I'm seeing more star-gazers?  I'm not really sure at this point. 

 

I reglued a bunch of rock around this same time, and relocated the hammer to where it is now.  I had the whole rock on a cookie sheet for probably 30 minutes.  Everything seemed fine with the stress except the cyphestria which got some dark spots, which have since cleared up. 

 

The hammer is stinging and shading the rainbow monti, there was chunk (the original frag I bought) that it was really going after, so I popped it off the rock and glued it on a frag plug and it's recovering in the other tank. 

 

The duncan is shading the cyphestria under it and crowding and obscuring the bright green monti that's behind it and it seems to be shading out some of the zoas too.

 

That's kind of where I'm at.

 

In my mind if I were to try to prune off some the duncan it would look like hell, same with the hammer (I'm not sure for how long). Plus, having never fragged anything, If were to cut some arms off the duncan and or the hammer, would it slime up and "bleed" or whatever to a big enough degree to foul up my water to point of killing the whole tank off?

 

I could pop them out of there, cut a bunch of frags off, glue em onto plugs and then glue a couple new little frags back into my tank and start them over I guess?

 

Suggestions, stories and strategies are welcomed.

 

. 

[Merthynia]

I would suggest fragging outside of the tank by popping the colony off of the rock if you can. You can frag a few and then glue what size you want back into the tank. I usually make sure to run some carbon after I frag corals or do a nice water change the next day. If you do frag some, there are always people on our local facebook group looking for frags so you could probably trade a few for things you might be after. 🙂 Your tank is looking nice and filled in.

[fenderchamp]

About An hour after breaking down the tank scrubbing it out and replacing all the water

[fenderchamp]

[fenderchamp]

I don't really like how superglue seems to let go when soaked in  salt water for months.  Yesterday when water changing the Duncan and the hammer and the brown and yellow encrusting rocks all fell off of the main rock.  I only had an already opened fairly old tube of krazy-glue gel.  I need to make sure that I have some glue on hand before I lift the rock.  

 

 

I wasn't able to glue the encrusted back on yet, so it's cooling its heels in my other tank.  

There were some aptasia growing among those zoas, Bergjia were employed but the zoas are still a bit iffy and I think a new anemone is blossoming too

 

 

[fenderchamp]

 

Looks a little shaken up and scrappy from all the abuse and gluing perhaps.

I'm hoping the spinning of the big corals and regluing might result in a little more light for all the zoas and that rainbow monty right in the middle of everything.  That Acans looked good this morning but it's closed now.

 

[fenderchamp]

[fenderchamp]

The big gold hammer and the duncan, finally got big enough that they were shading everything out and even shading themselves out a bit (which seems normal).

 

I was able to work out a deal with a local reefer who  bought them from me along with trading me a frag back from each colony and a few more frags too.

 

the trade was a couple weeks ago maybe.

 

anyway this is the new fts look, I'm excited to watch it grow again.

 

The tank shot is a little grubby, it's due for a rip-clean tomorrow!!

 

I kind of like to watch the copepods walk around on the dirty glass so I've been letting it get a little. bit dirtier.  Plus I was loath to handle those big colonies too much because it was hard to pick up the rock, and I didn't really relish regluing them too much. 

 

I came close to buying a bigger tank (maybe a 7 Gallon cube) adding a little rock and keeping them, but I really do enjoy this little tank and I like the maintenance ritual I have for it.

 

On thing of note @Merthynia , as you warned me, I looked over about a week ago, right after the fragging, and the thermostat on the flat coralife heater was stuck all the way up and the tank was heating up fast.  I took it off there and put another (different brand) of heater in there, I'm waiting for the ink-bird controller to come in the mail.  

 

I took the broken heater, soaked it in vinegar and cleaned it up.  I let it run in a mason jar for a few days, I had it sharing a plug with my toaster so it got turned on and off a  bit.  I looked over and the thermostat was stuck again!  I uplugged it plugged it back in, still stuck, so naturally I binned it.

 

It doesn't take long for a 50w heater to cook 3 gallons of water.  I got lucky and noticed it at about 83.  I haven't noticed any new stress in the tank, other than. the shaded out corals are still recovering.   /me knocks on wood

 

 

 

[fenderchamp]

 

 

👋

 

 

[brandon429]

Truly among the best of picos!

 

Can you let us know the last few months feeding routine that gets this growth?

[fenderchamp]

The last pictures were the colonies right before the fragging.  I had some on my phone still so I put them on here.  I've been doing the same old thing.   You can see the growth from about June-Nov if. you look at the dates of the posts.

 

When the Duncan and the Hammer were really shading everything out, and floating all over the water line of the tank, they were covering 70/75 percent of the waterline, the rocks was pretty difficult to handle and get in out of the tank without knocking the corals off, so I got tired of taking them out and I was skimming  water with a sample cup off of the top and sucking detritus off the bottom with a baster to the tune of a quart about of 3-7x a week, occasionally two quarts, and occasionally 1 quart more than 7x a week.  They got a bunch of algae barn live phyto for a couple of months in there and usually got Reef Nutrition Live phyo 1x a week as well.  Other than that  I've been feeding it mainly frozen brine and new life spectrum goldfish pellets with a little PNS yellow snow.  I have been dumping the food in fairly aggressively too.  it seems like the benthic life in the tank would chews it up pretty quickly.  Since fragging, I haven't been feeding it quite as agressively, but it's till getting fed.

 

 It was and is still getting topped off somewhat nitrate rich water from the goldfish tank the whole time too.

 

 

[fenderchamp]

[ml86743]

I love this little tank.

 

I had read you were having some issues with that cyphastrea, looks like it'd doing better to me.

 

I know you had mentioned you were dealing with some alkalinity variation and in my experience they tend to get thrown off by large swings.  I know I'm a day late dollar short haha.  

 

Keep up the good work!!