GregBox's 5.5 Macroalgea Experiment

[GregBox]

Keeping this mostly for myself as a way to track progress on an experiment. Happy to help anyone else thinking about going the SW planted route.

 

Long story short, my reef crashed years ago from an HVAC failure while on vacation and our house got 95 degrees for a week, life got busy, and I was pretty defeated from the crash. I was able to keep my fish alive somehow, and just lost interest and did the bare minimum to keep them happy. I always thought I was more successful with my high tech planted tanks and stumbled across some incredible Macro tanks. I thought I would take a chance at this type of tank, using mostly equipment I had lying around. Going to see how I like this type of tank before making a final decision on how to revamp / reboot the 20G. 

 

• Equipment: 

  • AGA 5.5

  • Aquaeon 50w heater

  • Koralia nano 240

  • AquaClear 20 

  • 5lb Caribsea live sand

  • 0.5 live rock rubble

  • Dry Rock (circa 2014) from my basement. 

  • DIY CREE XP3 LED (Red- Royal Blue - Natural White - Green - Red)

    • Tank gets a boat load of natural sunlight too

• Events

  • Wet & Live Sand: 1/5/22

  • LR Rubble: 1/8/22

  • Chaeto & Green Grape Caulerpa 1/8/22

  • RED GRACILARIA & Gorgonian: 1/14/22

• Macro Algae

  • Caulerpa Racemosa (green grape) 

  • Caulerpa Var. Peltata (saucer algae)

  • Red Gracilaria

  • Chaeto

• Coral

  • Gorgonian 

• Live Stock

  • Neon Cleaner Goby

 

Current Routine: Daily top-off, 6 drops Chaeto Grow, 6 drops Kent Purple up. 

[GregBox]

It's been about two weeks since I added the green macro algae. It seems like I have one mystery green caulerpa. I thought it was all green grape, bit this one stringer is growing almost like lily pads. 🤔 EDIT: I think it's Caulerpa Var. Peltata

 

Anyways, neon cleaner is super happy and eating. The red gracilaria is really filling in, bit growing differently under the different LED zones. The red and blue zone is growing more vertically, where the green white zone is growing more horizontally. Grape is outta control, but cool to see new grapes forming daily. Mystery macro doubled overnight.

 

Super happy with all the growth, going to add some more macro this week. I should add that I'm just buying the "macro feed" packs from my LFS (tang food). So I just get what I get and see what grows.

 

 

[GregBox]

Well, my little neon goby has ich... honestly my first petco fish to have it so I can't complain too much. My two petco clowns in the 20G are both 10 years old . So chapter two of this is experiment is now going to include hypo salinity. 😯 

 

I'll do my best to document how this impacts the Macroalgea; have a feeling that I will probably loose the gorgonian, which is a bummer. I'm not going to risk moving anything into the 20 gallon that might impact my two clowns, if I loose a $20 gorgonian, so be it. 

 

Quick video of the tank with no natural sunlight, really got figure out how to hang the fixture to get more spread. 

 

 

[GregBox]

Houston we have Hyposalinity. Refractomer has me at 14ppt. Going to try and keep it there and go as low as 12ppt if I need to.

 

Note: going from 35ppt to 14ppt is about 4gallons of fresh water in the 5.5

 

Goby seems totally unfazed, gorgonian is furious, and macro algae is looking okay .  Fingers crossed the caulerpa doesn't go sexual over night.

 

Edit: 6h into hypo: caulerpa v.peltata looked soft and darker green than I've ever seen when doing my after dark check. Usually at night I can see the new plates forming, and it just looked off. Decided to pull all the caulerpa. Chaeto looked and felt normal, Gracelaria seemed normal as well.

[GregBox]

Four days into hypo and the goby looks great, eating better then ever, & much more active then ever. Majority of ich has fallen off, color has improved. Keeping up with the evap is a chore bit worth it.

 

Gracelaria and chaeto looking good, gorgonian is getting skinny 👎but what I expected.

 

Hypo has unintentionally had me start the process if getting my 20H planted. Added some dragon's tounge, red gracelaria, and pulsing xenia.

[GregBox]

Back from hyposalinity, goby is looking good, family got attached to him quickly so happy he seems better.

 

Gorgonian didn't make it, caulerpa didn't make it. Chaeto grew somehow? Red gracelaria was pulled and put in a Mason jar in the window at 35ppt (old wc water from the 20h).  Some of the tips started turning white so I pruned it and stuck all of it under the red and blue zone. Added a clipping of dragons breath from my 20h to see how it does under this spectrum.