[UNS "5gal" nano] A Disqualified Pico [WiP]

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

Small update: Set temperature lowered to 69°F. I think I may have overfed one week and all but one margarita snail is alive. Woops.

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

 

I'm worried that this may be a case of brown jelly. I'll be dipping this coral to see if we can get some progress on this. In the meantime, another total weekly water change and I've decided to change my temperature set point to 71°F, similar to a previous reef aquarium I've had. Green diatom and green hair algae is really starting to take place even on the colony itself. Unfortunately, I've been particularly busy with work this week that I haven't had the time to get a solid cleanup crew yet.

 

Of course, I'm not thrilled if I do end up losing this really nice colony, but I did have a couple other concepts in mind when I was building this tank.

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

 

This goose is cooked.

 

Yesterday I took this colony over to work and had it sit in our quarantine system. Prior to introduction I dipped it in Revive hoping it would do something, but it appears that the jelly is spreading fast and the colors are bleaching out; basically it's a dead colony walking.

 

I chatted with my boss on how to better execute this tank and for the future I'll have to take months to progress this tank to a sub-tropical system. However, first thing first is to clean up the tank. Fortunately, to do a deeper clean wouldn't be terribly difficult as I didn't commit to gluing the entirety of the scape. In the meantime while I financially recover, the prudent thing for me to do is pay off my Paypal credit for this coral above and just run the tank blank for now. Going forward, I'll do some scrubbing of the rocks and glass and rinse the system through some new water giving us a really fresh restart. As for temperature, we'll have the heater set to 76°F and live there for some undetermined amount of time.

 

I'll actually get an appropriately sized clean-up crew in a more timely manner.

[DevilDuck]

Can you frag the healthy tissue?

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

On 12/14/2021 at 2:31 PM, DevilDuck said:

Can you frag the healthy tissue?

Unfortunately, I couldn't the colony smoked out in less than 24 hours. 😞

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I decided to get something more (seemingly) precise and in a smaller form factor. I bumped the Eheim heater to my freshwater tank next door. I didn't like the wider tolerances on the Eheim heater as if I did set it to a certain temperature it wouldn't kick on until it got well below it, about 3ish degrees F. This off-brand from Amazon has been featured in some builds on the forum here and I do like the tighter tolerances of 1 degree. If there's a 2 degree departure it'll fully kick in the heating element.

 

Now having a more controllable heater can make this tank a little more consistent in regards to temperature and can make the acclimation to subtropical temperatures probably more quantifiable by just a press of a button. I have a sense that I moved the coral too quickly down to a colder temperature. The next coral that would be coming in will probably see a decrease in temperature over a span of months. I'm guessing a 1 degree decrease every 30-60 days...should be safe right?

 

Well...no coral until I pay off a couple medical bills. MRIs are not cheap.

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

Hope everyone is doing well during this holiday season and reefing Santa came to visit. If not, then there's probably a couple coupons on LiveAquaria still floating about.

 

Not a big update, but I finally got time to round out the CUC assortment. I added one margarita, so now a total of 3. I introduced 6 red leg hermits. The heater is working pretty well and does a good job maintaining temperature even during a very cool winter here in Monterey. It is a challenge however for the heater to climb from cold water to tropical water. I did a 120% water change and a rock scrub since I had a lot of GHA going on. Whatever I did to scrape away what looked like Bryopsis turned into this stage of aquarium puberty.

 

Since my aquarium nets to 4 gallons and any honest tote is about 5 gallons, it allows me to drain most of the tank and give total refill. When you refill you don't necessarily get it all and you find new chunks blowing about. What I do is draw out another gallon or so to capture more detritus. Then I pour the last gallon. I purchased the Seachem Hydrototes again and I forgot how much of a pain they are to pour because there's no way of bleed valve to equalize air pressure from inside versus out. However, having a small 10L tote just for DI water feels luxurious. I use it to top off both fresh and salt tanks.

 

On a separate note, I am converting my 29 gallon to an unheated tank, so I'm planning part ways with my cories and angelfish for a big school of white clouds and possibly one blue paradise fish. I would do a single fancy goldfish knowing my wife likes them but I don't want to be doing that many water changes...and chunky goldfish may get stuck with the manzanita scape I made.

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

 

Quick cleanup. Be glad I didn't take a "before" photo. It was pretty sad. You can see some crabs and snails milling about. I also bought some nice washcloths to help clean my messes. I just purchased a Tidal 35 because I like the security blanket of a filter...and it added another .2 gallons of volume.

 

A coworker offered me to take on some extra corals in our show tank. Kinda luxurious no?

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

Happy New Year

 

If you're wondering, the Christmas favia started off as a frag and grew out to that size after 3 years. My coworker attached it to some old tube worms. The meteor shower cyphastrea began from my CFO's reef early on when this species was new to the industry.

 

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

Tidal 35 came in on Monday and was set up yesterday.

 

Unfortunately, the cyphastrea colony is starting to bleach at the top and its starting to expand its way down. I have had this species bleach then restore itself before based on feeding. However I don't have the luxury of a 20 long anymore. I did dose 2mL of Red Sea AB+ and Friday morning I'm planning on a light dash of Reef Roids. Otherwise, the Xmas Favia is doing pretty well and the polyps are fleshy. My wife has been complaning about how the hermit crabs are tumbling around and hitting the glass.

 

Whether or not I'm going to continue on this biotope is another story. I'm still juggling in my brain.

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

It's been a very long time since I gave it an update.

 

I'm beginning to suspect my light spectrum isn't up to snuff. That large cyphastrea colony bit the dust in about 2 weeks and I was very diligent on water changes and maintaining temperature at 75°F. However the favia colony is doing pretty well and has puffed up in some occasions.

 

I've decided to shift gears and make this tank a soft coral dominant tank. It'll mostly feature clove polyps since xenia will probably overtake the tank too quickly. I am looking to get a colt coral, sinularia, and a sarcophyton. Eventually I want this tank to have multiple color morphs of the firework cloves. As for temperature range, I've moved this tank down to 72°F without any issues.

 

I'm planning to try out Corals Anonymous as they do have colt coral in stock. It's surprisingly a little hard to find.

[Tamberav]

I will be interested to see what the frags of the coral look like from there. Never heard of them!

 

Alternatively I did see one colt coral on DD: https://www.liveaquaria.com/divers-den/product/579709/paralemnalia-leather-coral-indonesia&s=nlh&r=

[Squid_reef]

What was your lighting schedule like? 

I'm running the same and wondering if it could have been the issue here. 

 

At 100% The top of my tank receive an average 250/380 PAR while the bottom bits received about 130/180.

 

 

 

 

 

 

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

On 1/29/2022 at 12:11 AM, Squid_reef said:

What was your lighting schedule like? 

I'm running the same and wondering if it could have been the issue here. 

 

At 100% The top of my tank receive an average 250/380 PAR while the bottom bits received about 130/180.

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have the lights ramp up at 0545 starting with 10% cyan 15% blue 20% violet but it'll gradually increase to 60 red 84 cyan 88 blue 90 violet 76 white at 1100. It'll keep that light level until 1310 and it'll ramp down to the low blues like I had in the morning at 1850. Another 30 minutes later it'll just be 5%. Add another 30 minutes it's lights out.

 

I don't have a PAR meter

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

On 1/28/2022 at 5:48 PM, Tamberav said:

I will be interested to see what the frags of the coral look like from there. Never heard of them!

 

Alternatively I did see one colt coral on DD: https://www.liveaquaria.com/divers-den/product/579709/paralemnalia-leather-coral-indonesia&s=nlh&r=

Corals Anonymous is a really friendly family that does reefing as their side hustle. They're local enough for me (if I'm at my parent's place) that I can do a pickup at a coffee shop then drive 6 hours to my house without any losses haha. They gave me a free small frag of green mushroom. I don't know what to do with it beside having it on a tiny island.

 

Photos were taken 2 weeks ago.

 

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

It's been awhile! That's because paying medical bills in installments isn't fun! I also paid for the soft corals in installments too!

 

Since the coral stock has changed, I've found it a little less necessary to do total water changes on a weekly basis rather now I do them once or twice a month. Chances are that there could be some chem war down the road, but at that point I think some of these soft corals would be candidates for cutting, fragging, and sharing, and I would be adding a small pouch of activated carbon on a regular basis.

 

I've been also seeing crab bits here there, so all the more likely they're getting mad or hungry at each other. I should probably feed them more.

 

If you're wondering, I have a gold clove, yellow firework (yeah i know), and a papaya clove. I'm trying to get rid of the kenya tree...

[DISQUALIFIED-QQ]

I also need to make mention I'm moving to a new place within my city. It was a lot easier for me to have aquariums in the same room you typically hang out in whether its a personal office, bedroom desk, or living room. Currently, I'm separated from my tanks, so I don't necessarily have eyes on it all the time. Hopefully, with the new place I'm placing the reef next to my desk so I can just endlessly stare at it.

 

Meanwhile the larger freshwater tank I'll place in the living room since my wife sometimes interacts with the angelfish.