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13.5g dreamer tank!


BubbleTrouble

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BubbleTrouble

Start of this tanks journey! Some live rock, some gifted dead rock, and in the Fluval Evo 13.5 gallon.

 

I am planning on doing some corals, although I don't have my heart set of any specific. Tbh I want to do a pink themed tank after I fell in love with a bright pink frogspawn coral so maybe I'll follow through with that, budget allowing haha

 

Aquascape not set in stone yet, just letting it cycle for a while and seeing what happens. I am going to try Micobacter7 after seeing a lot of good reviews here

 

 

June 1, 2022

First day setup

20220601_204546.jpg

 

 

March 1, 2024

Most recent photo

 

20240222_184912~2.jpg

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Your aquascape looks pretty good to me. 

 

Zoanthids and palythoas are good options for pink corals. Make sure you find out whether the species you have is fast-growing. If so, isolate it on its own rock on the sandbed. 

 

You'll probably be able to find some Acan lords/micromussa lordhowensis in pink or pink-ish tones. You should also be able to find some nice blue ones, if you want some contrast. Which you should have! Contrast helps colors pop. 

 

Once the tank has been up for awhile and you've had LPS successfully for a few months, look for some nice rock flower anemones. SaltCritters has good ones, though you'll want to wait for a sale. They definitely have striped, pink-rimmed ones almost constantly, and may have some other nice ones in the WYSIWYG listings. 

 

As to fish, you might look into the pygmy possum wrasses. They can be pink or pink-ish, and I think one would work in that tank? Get some other opinions about that. Or there's always a purple firefish. They're pink-adjacent. Make sure the lid is especially tight-fitting for those guys! They jump even more than usual when startled. 

 

I strongly suggest a candycane pistol shrimp, and your choice of small shrimpgoby. Make sure your rock is firmly settled on the floor of the tank so it can't be unsettled by burrowing activity, and watch the pistol go to town. A high fin red banded shrimpgoby is tiny, and its black and white should look nice against pink. Yasha haze shrimpgobies are also nice, but I'm not sure their red would coordinate well. Or, if they weren't so rare in the hobby, a white-capped shrimpgoby would be incredible against all the pink. Solid black except for the white cap. Lovely fish. But rare, and expensive as gobies go. Expensive as non-angelfish go, really. 

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BubbleTrouble
14 hours ago, Tired said:

"

This is all really good recommendations, thank you!!

 

For the anemones, is the 13 gallons too small to have one? I don't want to squish em

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Shallow-water, non-ultra rock flower anemones get to about 5 inches across, if fed plenty. Ultra rock flowers are normally more like 2-3" across. If fed a lot, they can get up to 4", but they don't need to be fed that much. They also don't mind being smushed up together with each other (in fact, they seem to like it), they have a mild enough sting that they shouldn't be able to catch fish, and they don't normally damage corals they happen to brush against. Oh, and they rarely move very much, once put in place. They tuck their foot into a crevice and just hang out, without really tending to go wandering like some nems do.

 

They're great. I highly recommend them. Pick a spot to make a little garden in, and you should be able to fit several quite happily into a fairly small space. They do need a reasonably established tank, but they're pretty hardy as nems go. If you have LPS happy and growing, you should be able to keep rock flowers. Heck- if you have soft corals happy and growing, you might be able to keep rock flowers. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 2 weeks later...
Sturgi_0225
18 hours ago, BubbleTrouble said:

Thank you!!!

What lights are you using? 
I don’t know much about the fluval stocks lighting but I wonder if par is enough to support lps corrals like your hammer. 

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BubbleTrouble
22 minutes ago, Sturgi_0225 said:

What lights are you using? 
I don’t know much about the fluval stocks lighting but I wonder if par is enough to support lps corrals like your hammer. 

It is currently the stock light, do you have recommendations? (I'd likely to have to get a different lid to get a different light eh?)

19 hours ago, Tired said:

Cute little guys, and nice aquascape. Looks a lot bigger than 13 gallons.

thank you!! That was the goal haha, and until the clowns grow bigger it'll look huge

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Stock lights were enough for Bubble Tipped Anemones in my experience so would assume that LPS would not be an issue. 

 

You can also boost the current lights with some strip LEDs or LED bars as @DevilDuckdid on their reef. That's if you want to keep the hood of course

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BubbleTrouble
1 minute ago, Ratvan said:

Stock lights were enough for Bubble Tipped Anemones in my experience so would assume that LPS would not be an issue. 

 

You can also boost the current lights with some strip LEDs or LED bars as @DevilDuckdid on their reef. That's if you want to keep the hood of course

Okay sweet. I have this tank on my desk so I could easily integrate some LED strips

 

My cats are assholes with our fish tanks, they like to try to see if they can get on top or get the fish/water so unfortunately I can't ever go without a lid 

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Cats or no cats, lids are (IMO) not optional. All fish (except seahorses) can jump if startled enough or at the wrong time, and a lid saves them from a particularly slow death, suffocating on the floor for hours. 

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Sturgi_0225
7 hours ago, BubbleTrouble said:

Okay sweet. I have this tank on my desk so I could easily integrate some LED strips

 

My cats are assholes with our fish tanks, they like to try to see if they can get on top or get the fish/water so unfortunately I can't ever go without a lid 

There you go, I wasn’t sure about the lights!  thanks @Ratvan for helping out!! 

I go back 12 years and think about some of those stock lights, definitely couldn’t support anything. 
 

I’m personally a fan of https://www.reefi-lab.com/product-category/lighting/

made local (oregon) and they are amazing for the price. 

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  • 2 weeks later...

Unless the person wildly overfed, probably this algae is the continuation of the ugly stage. Don't do anything drastic- your rock is gonna have all sorts of algae on it until it matures and stops being white. Keep your nutrients up so the algae doesn't use it all up, pull out long tufts of hair algae by hand, and assess whether your cleanup crew needs help. 

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BubbleTrouble
9 hours ago, Tired said:

Unless the person wildly overfed, probably this algae is the continuation of the ugly stage. Don't do anything drastic- your rock is gonna have all sorts of algae on it until it matures and stops being white. Keep your nutrients up so the algae doesn't use it all up, pull out long tufts of hair algae by hand, and assess whether your cleanup crew needs help. 

I'm not sure how much was fed, but there was a small amount of algae in the tank beforehand and then a big boom when I came back because the lights had stayed on. Would you recommend lowering how much light the tank gets, or would that not help this type of algae? 

 

Also I currently just have two narssicus snails in there as cuc!

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fenderchamp

When my rock was newer, I ran with no whites for a few months.  After the algae started showing up, I went to straight blues.  After a few months I started to give it more whites, and I've never had algae issues in the tank.  As a matter of fact, I have another tank that seems to be getting a bit of algae, so earlier to day, I brought the overall light levels down a bit and additionally brought the whites and the red down.

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BubbleTrouble
3 minutes ago, fenderchamp said:

When my rock was newer, I ran with no whites for a few months.  After the algae started showing up, I went to straight blues.  After a few months I started to give it more whites, and I've never had algae issues in the tank.  As a matter of fact, I have another tank that seems to be getting a bit of algae, so earlier to day, I brought the overall light levels down a bit and additionally brought the whites and the red down.

(Sorry I'm a newbie) you are taking about color of the lights, right? So in theory I could run it on the blue light for the regular time for a few days and the hammer coral should be okay?

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fenderchamp
Just now, BubbleTrouble said:

(Sorry I'm a newbie) you are taking about color of the lights, right? So in theory I could run it on the blue light for the regular time for a few days and the hammer coral should be okay?

I'm kind of a noob too, but as I understand it, corals generally only care about the blue spectrum light, the white is all filtered off by the water.  So I think your hammer coral should be ok for... a long time... without white lights.  Green algae loves whites lights, as does the human eye.  I ran my tank with only blue spectrum light (other than ambient light) for months and the corals all grew.  I got tired of the windex look, but by the time I started to ramp up the whites again, it seems like my rock was mature enough that the green algae didn't grow aggressively on it anymore.   I think I documented it in my tank thread. 

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M. Tournesol

Some corals do well under white light, but such corals live in shallow reef and thus are high light demanding corals.

md_0FOqZhWhLX7W.jpg?1506023384

 

To prevent algae growth you should add a minimal amount of with light. Go full blue and slowly add white light until you found it pleasing for your eyes (but don't add any red light). 

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M. Tournesol
3 hours ago, BubbleTrouble said:

Also I currently just have two narssicus snails in there as cuc!

Nassarius snails are carnivores. They will eat the non eaten fish food but won't touch your algae. 

You should add some herbivorous snail like Cerithium sp or money cowrie 😍(Monetaria annulus).

 

Cypraeaannulus.jpg

 

Look at this guide to see the pro and con of common reef snails https://aquariumbreeder.com/saltwater-aquarium-snails-pros-and-cons/ 

 

Don't hesitate to add different species  😉 (attention! adding hermit crab may doom some of them).

 

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