Waterbox Peninsula Mini 15G Renaissance - Photo heavy

[rimga123]

New ricordeas

 

 

Feather duster

 

 

Jawbreaker ( awkward spot, hard to take a photo of it)

 

 

Boxer shrimp

 

 

Porcelain crab

 

[rimga123]

You cant park here sir

[rimga123]

A picture-less update. hopefully i will take some this afternoon.

 

I finally got my hand on a All For Reef 250ml bottle to try it out. currently dosing 4ml a day, broken down into 4 doses throughout the day and that keeps my KH from going down, but seems like Ca is creeping up slowly, But water changes will take care of it.

Scored myself a free 5 channel barely used Jebao dosing pump, so I am using it instead of the ATI. Just because it is a bit smaller. Effectively I have 9 dosing heads, possibilities are endless. Been thinking of dosing some sort of wet fish food or something like that, maybe a coral food as well. Any recommendations?

 

I gave away Peter the clownfish, he was way to aggressive, harassing me, other fish and cleaner shrimp. I Have never seen such an aggressive clownfish.

 

Clowngoby passed away, Clownfish did a number on him, i separated him for a week to target feed him because he became nearly white from the stress and his fins were nipped to pieces. after he got his color back and became more active I re-released him into the tank but then Goldstreak blenny was super aggressive towards him and then he was gone the next day.

So I am left with two fish, goldstreak blenny and an engineer goby. I am thinking of getting a pair of firefish or something like that, a bit worried that blenny might be too aggressive towards them as well.

 

New additions.

An orange hammer and a gold hammer, at least thats what I bought them as, but its more like brown hammer and very pale yellow hammer.

I have also added a forest fire digi, glued it just beside stylophora, it has lost a bit of color since I introduced it, but I did broke of a couple of pieces of it while glueing so its probably just stressed out. And it being just beside stylophora i think that its not getting enough flow, so i have ordered a jebao SLW20 to go along my slw10.

slw 10 seems to be very weak in comparison to my tunze even though they should be pushing a very similar amount of flow. But with two jebaos I should be ok and some wave action should in order. 

 

Other news,

I am really happy with the ricoredea florida growth, green one already has split once. All the feeding must be helping

Dragon soul torch seem to be very happy as well, looks like it will be splitting. 

But i am not sure if Purple torch is doing too well. it has spawned before but its tentacles are way shorted than other torches, maybe that's just the way that it is.

Stylophora has recovered very nicely in my tank, but polyps extension is not great since the anemone shrimp took residence in it, but i don't mind.

Now that the clownfish is gone, porcelain crab took residence in the bubble tip, which is pretty cool as well.

green and red acans shows signs of new head growth which is exciting.

Firework clove polyp did not make it, I am not sure why because everything else is doing fine. I think that there is one polyp that still extends a little bit, but I am not hopeful that it will pull though. Might get another frag to try out.

 

I have no other additions planned, equipment or coral. Unless a good deal for a nice hammer pops up. So far i got all of my hammers very cheap.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[rimga123]

I find it super difficult to find some time to get the DSLR camera out, so phone pictures will do for now!

 

So lets start with a full tank shot.

 

Some corals are not fully extended as I just did a water change an hour ago.

But

Some good news and some bad news.

 

Bad news first.

My purple torch has decided to bleach and my favorite ricordea has decided to bleach as well.

I dont think that there's much hope left for the torch. All the other torches are doing super fine.

I have dimmed the light in case it bleached because of it.

 I think that it looks a bit better in the photo, than it actually does.

It retracts and extends a little bit, but if i kill the flow, the tentacles look super deflated and lifeless. It has been like that for a week or so. It doesnt really react to food at all.

If anyone has any ideas what may be causing it or how to save it, please let me know.

 

And the the ricordea as well.

 

I Cant imagine that it got too much light as it was situated just under the gorgonian, so it was shaded a little bit. And other rics look supper fluffy in even more light.

It does react to food though and happily munch on artemia and mysis. I have moved it even further down in a partial shadow. 

Ive read about rics bleaching for no reason and disappearing. So that must be whats happening.

 

Onto the good news.

So new additions

Another gold - yellow hammer

 

Forest fire as per previous post.

 

Orange hammer on the left and yellow hammer on the right.

 

and two unexpected fish additions.

a super tiny blue tang and a azure damsel.

Got the tang for a price of a damsel.

It was super beaten up and as you can see, his spine is a bit deformed.

But he is a great eater and has recovered tremendously. Especially color wisw

Ill keep it in my tank for a while, but will rehome it fairly soon, depending how fast it grows.

Got the Azure damsel to keep him company and they are the best buds now. Zero aggression from either.

 

Blue tang also kicked out the anemone shrimp out of the stylophora and took permanent residence there. I have never seen a tang live in a coral before.

 

I have also added a frosted film to the back of the tank. And i'm looking into getting some LED's to add there too.

[A.m.P]

I'd double check to make sure your Phosphates and Nitrates haven't dipped.

[rimga123]

1 hour ago, A.m.P said:

I'd double check to make sure your Phosphates and Nitrates haven't dipped.

I actually dont have a test for either. As i was never worried of having higher phosphates or nitrates.

And i feel like the salifert or red sea test are hard to read and would not show real values. Dont want to splurge on a hannah either. But my local LFS has mentioned before that if i want they could check my phosphates with their hannah checker, i have mentioned to them before that i had a bit of hair algae growing. So i might take up their offer.

I do feed quite heavily and i dose red sea AB+ every two days. 

Seems unlikely that they might have dipped, but of course

Cant know without testing.

I actually havent thought about them two dipping, thank you for the advice!

[A.m.P]

Angry torches, bleaching shrooms, and some weird stuff on the sand, plus a bunch of Xenia and Macros (which can suck allot out of the water quickly) made me suspicious enough to mention something. Never hurts to bring in a sample to your LFS and have them check your nutrients and make sure you've not run out.

[rimga123]

Dead right, phosphates and nitrates both at zero

And i thought that i feed my tank a lot..

So i turned down the skimmer so it would only aerate the water and took rowaphos out. I will keep the filter floss in it longer than usual. I will keep the carbon in i guess that it should not impact nutrient levels too much.

Fed a good bit of AB+, just eye balled but dumped way more than usual, full cube of mysis and some reef roids. That should do it for now.

Will get my phosphates and nitrates checked again this time next week.

Good spot A.m.P!

 

[rimga123]

On the brighter news while i am getting my nutrients in chech

Have a look at the growth of the stylophora that i got around 2months back or so. It was in quite a poor shape but it recovered nicely. Since the anemone shrimp declared it home and blue tang after, it has not had the best polyp extension. But beside that I love the way it looks, maybe once i get the nutrients in check it will become purple again instead of brown.

 

 

[rimga123]

Hi all!

Got my nitrates and phosphates checked again and they are not 0 anymore!

It seems like bleached corals are not doing worse, so hopefully theyswill start to gain their color back soon.

I feed two cubes of frozen food per day now and try to target feed corals every other day, the purple torch coral that has bleached, he seems to catch food but i can never see him eat anything, it seems like he just lets it go after a while. Tentacles are still very deflated but the body itself puffs up quite a bit now after feeding, it did not do that before.

and the ricordea mushroom that has also bleached, completely stopped taking food, but it think that its starting to gain some color back, or at least it looks more puffed up than it was two weeks ago but still not looking great overall not sure if there is much hope left for either if these corals.

 

Ill try to get the good camera out this weekend and write up a more proper update.

[rimga123]

So there has been further development with the bleached coral. I soaked some fish pellets and reef roids in Red Sea AB+ for couple of minutes

And then tried to feed the corals and it was the first time that i've seen them take food so aggressively. I think this should do it. Hopefully now that i figured out how to make them take food, they will start to recover quicker.

Green torch and dragon soul has a noticeably better polyp extension. Love having nutrients in the water.

I also picked up magnesium, nitrate and phoshpate salifert kits. 

[rimga123]

Woah, 8 months of no updates?? Shame on me...
soooo
I had some personal life problems that left the tank neglected. And long story short, all the bleanching corals that I had completely died. ricordea RIP, purple torch RIP.

On top of that i had some sort of weird problem which made my torch corals look like duncan coral. at that stage I decided that I should probably pull up my weight.

I didn't get my water tested, But i just i performed a 100% water change and that eventually fixed my torch. unfortunately Dragon soul torch did not make it.

 

So after one problem got "fixed", my tank became completely overrun with ciano and aiptasia. I couldn't get rid of ciano no matter what. I partially blame it on poor biodiversity. Because in my pest tank where I have some actual live rock, lots of pods, all sorts of plankton and so on, Ciano just went away on its own without any water changes or anything (at least that's my theory)

But for my main tank i used chemi clean and it did the job.

And for the Aiptasia, my local LFS posted a video of a new peppermit shrimp delivery that ate aiptasia as soon as they were dropping them (aiptasia) in the tank.

So i got a few and they did a really good job at keeping aiptasia at bay, i still find a few here and there but I just douse them with aiptasia X. 

Another two problems fixed'ish.

 

I have also started dosing ATI nutrition N and feeding more heavy with dry foods and it seems like that fixed the rest of the corals that were unhappy after I bottomed my nutrients in the past. Days after I started dosing it all the hammer became much much puffier and my golden hammer that was slowly wilting away started to recover.

 

Some fish also decided that they don't like living anymore.

Tail spotted blenny - Jumpep

Engineer goby - Jumped

at some stage I got a six line wrase to help with flatworm problem, but it jumped shortly after.

My cat broke my glass lid twice now so a tank had to live without one for a while and fish took it as unpassable opportunity to kill themselves.

 

SO more on the flatworms. I purchased a coral, didn't dip it and now I got them. they are gold-brownish in color and they sit on my hammer corals.

if you look closely, you can see one on the right in the photo bellow.

 

I also purchased a red starfish and it has been doing really well ( I think) for the past 6 months. I was hesitant to get it first because I knew that they usually don't do well in tanks, but I got it for so cheap that I thought it was worth the risk. it did get his legs into my powerheads a couple of times, so thats why some of his leg s are a bit shorter.

 

I also sold a good bit of my green torch to purchase a 24k indo gold torch. My local LFS offer them at a super good rates. from 100quid a head.

I have promised myself that if I kill it, I will give up on this hobby.

 

after months of not performing a waterchange I felt that my tank was looking really good and I didn't want to disturb it with one.

but I thought to myself, I'll test the water (which I also didn't do in months), just to make sure that everything is fine.

and oh boy

KH - 5

Calciusm - 330

Magnesium -1180

Sal - 35ppt

 

So apparently something happened to my jeabo pump and it went completely out of wack

time and date was completely wrong and it was only dosing 3ml of All for Reef instead of 10ml.

But now I am back on track.

KH- 7.7

Calcium - 440

Magnesium - 1400 (i like it higher, LPS seem to do better)

Sal - 35ppt

 

So there is that.

everything seem to be doing fine. Zoas exploded in growth. water is clear.

I have added a couple more hammer and a fighting conch to help turn over the sand as I am getting some algae growth on it.

Future plans.

I would like to upgrade my lights. was looking at AI primes or a hydra, i can get them really cheap second hand, but not sure if one would be enough for a tank (i am sure that one hydra would be enough).

I am also consider and xr15 g5 second hand or a g6 if i cant get my hands on second hand unit. It just seem to have really good spread and all the controlability in the world.

Would love advice on it, maybe I am just overthinking it. my chinese blackbox is growing corals well but i would love to extract nicer colors our of corals and would love some sort of sunrise-sunset function instead of the on and off that I have right now.

More photos in the next post

 

 

[rimga123]

It's that time of the year again when My tank get some direct sunlight in the morning and I absolutely love the way it looks.

 

also, bonus photo.
Some weird sponge that is rapidly growing on the skeleton of my green torch coral.

I'm not sure if i should be worried about it.

[rimga123]

And some more photos under the artificial lights

Bonus pic

My pest tank.

[demonclownfish]

My inner policeman is screaming to get out 😂.

 

Looks good. 

[rimga123]

Oh yes! Completely forgot to mention

Blue tang has grown quite a bit and its definitely time for him to go.

Im planing on swapping it for a pair of bangai cardinals, he should be gone within couple of weeks i hope

[DNR88]

Great little tank, looks very mature! 🙂

[rimga123]

Thank you!

[A.m.P]

I wouldn't worry about replacing your light. PAR is PAR, enjoy what you have and the simplicity of it.

If you do feel the need to upgrade the new 16hd primes melt lenses regularly. Second hand maxspect, or AI are great, so too are kessil (don't go for the A80 imo), but even PAR bulbs do a fine job if you get the right ones these days.

[rimga123]

If my lights had a sunrise and sunset feature, I would probably stick with it.

Bit annoying in the evening how strong the light is, im runing my lights till 10:30pm. If it faded away slwoly i would enjoy it a lot more. Also blue channel has dtarted to flicker for a minute or so after tuning on, which is annoyong

But I cannot complain, I believe that i had this light for nearly 6 years and it has served me great

[A.m.P]

Yeah, that's a fantastic lifespan for a black box. The sunrise and sunset are definitely nice to have. If you swap I'd rent a PAR meter for a day and try to match values.

[rimga123]

Getting a Par meter would probably be ideal once i change the lights. Right now I have NO IDEA what kind of par I am running. Back box only has two channels so I run whites on the lowest setting and blues at 50% or so and it seem to be ideal for my tank,
Seems like similar never nicrew lights have functions that I am looking for, but not sure if I want to risk it with cheaper options again even though it did work out for me well first time.

Another piece of equipment that I would love to acquire is a low range phosphate hanna checker. That would make my life a lot easier. I am ok with testing everything else with salifert tests as I do believe that they are very accurate. When my parameters were out of wack I have crossed tested them with a ATI reference solution just to see if I am doing my test right and the result came very very close to what they should be and it only takes me 5ish minutes to get everything tested.

and I would like to upgrade my doser, something with single head would do, not sure what to get though I still need to do some research.
I don't have much trust in my Jebao unit anymore, time keeps changing which is super annoying. At least its dosing right amount for now. I am only dosing All for reef right now and try to dose other "ingredients" manually, forces me to observe the tank more.
I started dosing aquaforest reef elixir, which i find to be much much better than red sea AB+, it improved the colors and growth of the corals lie red sea couldn't.

And i try to dose phyto every couples of days.

 

[A.m.P]

The NiCrew grow coral and put out more PAR than you might think IME. The spectrum can be clumsy, but looks good, you also need a kessil spectralX if you want to program them. I've kept mine on a simple on-off timer. They do not seem to have a good spectrum for running longer than 6 hours, at least ime, tends to overexpose corals.

[rimga123]

I have looked into those before. but if lets say i get a 150quid nicrew light and if i spend another 130quid on kessil spectralX. I am nearly in hydra 34 territory, or could definitely find one that's second hand for a very similar money. or maybe even an xr15 or hydra 24. Id like a bigger unit instead of a prime, just so i could have a better spread and less shadowing. 

But then again. whats better? getting a brand new Chinese light which people seem to use and love or a well know brands second hand unit which gods know how long has been used already. I don;t want to spend a massive amount or money, but I want something quality that I wont need to replaced in the next year or so.

 

 

[A.m.P]

I went the cheapskate route and got second-hand NiCrew which were largely open-box or used for half-price or less honestly lol. I haven't paid retail for them, at the retail+ controller you're spot-on, though you get more wattage per dollar regardless.

Since your tank is only 15G it may be worth looking at getting a pair of the 30W second hand for really great coverage and not worrying about sunrise or sunset. Even better you could buy a cheap, dimmable, blue-bar for nightlight and just have it run on an inverse timer from the main pair, using a cheap programmable multi-outlet from amazon would do it.