Nano Reef Project - Going Marine!

Sleepy

A quick google and I'd be certain that's what it is. Looks incredible under the actinic lighting (though it's making me realise I need a stronger blue light!)

Having some problems with salinity at the moment. It was reading towards the high end of the acceptable parameters at the weekend so I added some RO during my water change and over-did it which now has my reading right on the edge of the bottom. Lesson learned: when dealing with salinity, the stick on hydrometer needs to be given time to show changes. I have a proper refractometer on order but it'll be another while before I have it.

Planning to do a water change tonight which should move it more towards acceptable levels.

Sleepy

A big day for the tank today... I was out with Gavin in Newlands to get salt and RO water and a few platys for the freshwater tank and he offered me an incredible deal on aFluval Marine & Reef LED strip. Didn't have it in the budget for this month at all but couldn't refuse it at the price so I now have an open top tank and should have plenty of light for corals... the nephtea is opening up much more already.

The only planned expenditure over the next while will be some more soft coral frags that I'm meeting a guy of the irishfishforums about some time on Monday...

So here's how she looks now. Gravity is still on the low end but that should improve via water changes. Did some rock-scaping last night too which adds an extra dimension of depth which I'm really liking.

front view:


an an angle:


The Green Nephtea


My Bengai with the Zoanthids. The few white closed polyps are my only real concern in the tank at the moment. The other side of the clam is covered in open polyps. The rock-scaping was initially done to provide these with more light but even with the new LED bar, they're not opening (yet?)...



Will grab a pic with the night mode lighting on tonight. Really happy with how it's looking under the new lights

Jen Pigs Fly

Looks very well the fluval sea do a great led strip.

I will second what I said, out the Zoas up higher, you've lost some already, the specific gravity fluctuating doesn't help In The slightest - corals are not at all forgiving, I would fix it ASAP.

What I do is, I mark on the tank very faintly where the water line is for perfect salinity level 1.024, and if the water level lowers due to evaporation I refill up to the mark. Obviously I use my hydrometer etc, but it's a great method to give you an idea as to salinity.

When I was away for a month, I told my mam to use this method when she minded the 600l, she does not know anything about marine. She just kept the water level to the mark with RO/DI water and when I came back salinity was the same as when I left.

Insider tip there for you

I'll be setting up my Red Sea max in the new few weeks and cannot wait to get back into it!

Sleepy

Just got woken up to deal with exactly the reason I've always been reluctant about open top tanks: female clown completely dried out on the carpet :-(

Sleepy

Jenny, the zoa has attached itself to the rock it's sitting on so moving it will likely cause further trauma...

Also, since their location now gets slightly higher flow and I've put on much more intense lighting, isn't that effectively like moving them up inot the water column?

Curious when you say I've already lost some. Do you mean those polyps are definitely dead? They seem to still have some movement so I was hoping to see them open again.

Jen Pigs Fly

Sleepy wrote: »

Jenny, the zoa has attached itself to the rock it's sitting on so moving it will likely cause further trauma...

Also, since their location now gets slightly higher flow and I've put on much more intense lighting, isn't that effectively like moving them up inot the water column?

Curious when you say I've already lost some. Do you mean those polyps are definitely dead? They seem to still have some movement so I was hoping to see them open again.

Ahh fair enough so, with the leds they may be happier. Leave them and see!

Normally when they turn very white like that they rarely open up again, now that's just from experience, if you can still see movement then they may be ok and open again, I'm just going from a picture the other poylps looks great, the 10 polyps or so in the middle are the ones I'm on about.

Sleepy

Ended up having a bit of a spree out in Newlands Garden Centre to cheer myself up over the jumper...

Picked up a second Bengai Cardinal, a Fireball Angel, a sea urchin and a feather duster for the tank.

Jen Pigs Fly

Sleepy wrote: »

Ended up having a bit of a spree out in Newlands Garden Centre to cheer myself up over the jumper...

Picked up a second Bengai Cardinal, a Fireball Angel, a sea urchin and a feather duster for the tank.

Are they male and female cardinals? Otherwise they'll fight.
Sea urchins are great they pick up loads of bits of corals and live rock and carry them around the tank.

Never bought a feather duster, my live rock was covered in them

kylith

Sleepy wrote: »

Just got woken up to deal with exactly the reason I've always been reluctant about open top tanks: female clown completely dried out on the carpet :-(

Oh no! That sucks!

Sleepy

Yeah, we're pretty certain the Cardinals are male & female. Been warned to keep an eye on them though.

Lucky you getting free dusters! They're not expensive but any free stuff in is cool. All Is seem to have gotten on my live rock is the world's slowest growing chilli coral!

Jen Pigs Fly

Sleepy wrote: »

Yeah, we're pretty certain the Cardinals are male & female. Been warned to keep an eye on them though.

Lucky you getting free dusters! They're not expensive but any free stuff in is cool. All Is seem to have gotten on my live rock is the world's slowest growing chilli coral!

That's grand so! You see a lot of people getting them and no realising not to mix same genders. I bred banggais for years they're brilliant characters.

After a few months you'll find loads of freebies don't worry!

él statutorio

Just saw the update on the jumper

head to B&Q and get a sheet of acrylic and stick it on top of the tank, raise it up an inch or two from the top. I've used a litte blob of Sugru on mine, the acrylic overlaps the tank by about an inch all the way round.
It isn't a pretty as an open top but it's cheap and functional.

I learned that the hard (and expensive) way.

Sleepy

Attachment not found.Luckily, my hood still just about fits over the lighting bar. I'm going to take a dremel to it to make it fit more neatly but for now, it's going on at night and when there's nobody home.

None of the other fish seem to be jumpers. Think the male clownfish is mourning because he's just nesting around the top right corner instead of swimming around the entire tank as he used to.

Got some new soft corals from a guy I found on Irishfishforum and added them to the tank tonight. Some green star polyp, a toadstool and some button polyps

Sleepy

The gravity issue is taking care of itself via evaporation. Hydrometer is reading a steady 1.021 now but I'm still waiting on my refractometer to arrive to confirm.

The zoanthids seem to be coming back quite nicely, getting a lot more of the polyps on the right side of the colony opening and those that aren't are half-open. Think I've gotten a couple of new heads too

Really feels like the system is maturing as I'm noticing more colour on the live rocks too. Need to pick up some coral glue at lunch though as the shell the duster is in keeps falling over when the hermit crabs climb on it.

Sleepy

And of course as soon as I think things are going well, I come home to find that three of my zoanthid polyps are pearlescent and look almost like they're melting away!

The ones on top of the clam here:



Did a full set of tests. My parameters are reading as follows:

Temperature: 24
Density: 1.021
KH: 8
PH: 8

Ammonia: <0.05 (lowest on the JBL test)
Nitrite: 0.05 (been steadily reading this on my test kit, Newlands tested this as 0, going to get it double-checked on Sunday)
Nitrate: 1
PO4: <0.02 (lowest on scale)
Calcium: 480

Lights are on for 5 hours with a further 1 or 2 of actinics only.

Any ideas?

él statutorio

Did you move them up higher in the tank as was suggested earlier in the thread?
*edit* just saw that they've set up shop where they are.

If it was me I'd have the lights on for longer. I do 12 hours in my tank, 7am to 7pm.

I'd imagine between 5 and 7 hours isn't near enough.

Sleepy

The room they're in has reasonable ambient light so I was afraid of overdoing it. Will update the duration gradually over the next few days and see how I get on.

Jen Pigs Fly

Corals prefer a salinity of 1.023-1.024

Not much can be done for the polyps, chances of recovers are slim unfortionately.

Sleepy

Yeah, I'm trying to raise the salinity via water changes and evaporation but AFAIK any addition of salt etc would shock all livestock in the tank?

Jen Pigs Fly

Sleepy wrote: »

Yeah, I'm trying to raise the salinity via water changes and evaporation but AFAIK any addition of salt etc would shock all livestock in the tank?

Do it sowly and top up evaporated water with salt water who's salinity is 1.023/1.024.

Don't add salt directly to the tank, pre mix it and then add it slowly through out the day.

(That being said I've often lowered/raised salinity quite quickly with no live stock/coral losses, wouldn't recommend it though Ive been doing this for years so I recognise signs of stress very quick.)

Best way to do it is mix up a large tub of salt water, heat it up to the right temperature, get it to 1.026 as there is no livestock in this bucket. Then over the course of a few days, remove 5-10l of water from the tank and then add 5-10l of the higher salinity water. Every few hours do this, eventually the salinity will rise. Top up evaporated water with this salt water.

Sleepy

So, just back from a couple of days away for work and one of my corals had fallen down the back of the tank.

Had to move some liverock to get in at it and found something odd: a 2cm wide flat shelled crab.

I thought one of the clibinarius crabs I'd put in as cleaning crew had died but perhaps it was him hiding in the sand? He's dissappeared back into the sand again but it didn't look anything like I imagine the clibinarius would look outside of their shells. Much more heavily built... Could it be a hitch-hiker? And perhaps the reason the clibinarius and my goby dissappeared? I've heard that some crabs are pests in a tank?

Edit: just googled what clibinarius look like without their shells and it's nothing alike, much more like a crab you'd find on an Irish beach.

Sleepy

Looking at the Newlands website, I think I must have gotten a juvenile emerald crab in with my live rock.

él statutorio

Sleepy wrote: »

Looking at the Newlands website, I think I must have gotten a juvenile emerald crab in with my live rock.

*Caution advised*
Rarely, very rarely are liverock hitchhikers beneficial.
Try and get a picture of him so we can do an ID.

I had a "cute" teddy bear crab arrive in at one point a few years back. B@stard proceeded to eat most corals, hermits, a few fish and a load of shrimp. He burrowed into the liverock too, it was a pain in the hole to get him out but eventually I did.

My gut feeling with any non hermit type crab is to remove it.

Sleepy

My plan is to catch him and bring him back into the guys in Newlands. From everything I've read, keeping him in my tank would be a BAD idea.

él statutorio

Sleepy wrote: »

My plan is to catch him and bring him back into the guys in Newlands. From everything I've read, keeping him in my tank would be a BAD idea.

Good luck catching him!

I had to tear my tank apart to get him.

You could try a home made trap, a jar with a hole in the & some food in the bottom, crab falls in & boom. Or take a coke bottle, cut the bottle in half and stick the threaded bit where the cap goes on back into the the main body of the bottle, bait it and then it works like a mini lobster pot.

Sleepy

Got him out with a little effort yesterday. Brought him into the guys in Newlands who identified him as a gorilla crab and promptly fed him to a beautiful dog face puffer :-)

Sleepy

Not a lot to update, got a couple of frags of a lovely green candy coral (Caulastrea) last week out in Newlands and re-did my rock-work a little to accommodate them. My zoanthus really don't seem to be doing that well but I can't spot anything on them that could be irritating them. Beginning to wonder if they're suffering due to zero Nitrate levels? Or maybe they just haven't recovered from un-seen assaults by the gorilla crab I removed?

I've been getting some algae build up on the sand bed at the front of the tank which I've been using a tweezers to break up every evening (it releases some bubbles when I do this?). I'm guessing it's that the tank is getting too much ambient light from it's location in the room so I've reduced my lighting a couple of hours so that they're now running from 2pm - 10pm with an hour or two of just the actinic's afterwards.

I've been doing some research into skimmers and I'm going to order the Tunze Comline DOC Skimmer 9001 on payday. I know I probably don't *need* one since I'm doing twice-weekly 10% water changes but I like tank to look really clean and I'm seeing more stuff suspended in the water (and on the surface) than I'd like.

Sleepy

A few shots from tonight


The zoanthid has broken into three separate colonies now :


And a short clip to show movement:

Jen Pigs Fly

Candy cane is a LPS you sure your calcium/magnesium/iodide levels can handle that? Bit iffy on the lighting but see what happens. (Id worry that because the zoanthids arnt doing well it's a sign that harder corals may not do well)

But sure see what happens. Personally I wouldn't have put any harder corals in until I could keep zoanthids, xenia, mushrooms growing and full of colour. Could be that the water may be more suited to lps, time will tell.

The bubbles are just tapped air, happens a lot of sand and under the rocks, wouldn't worry too much about it.

I would get the skimmer and stop the twice weekly water changes, puts way too much stress on the tank and now that you have the candy cane it won't like you messing with the water. Water changes will alter parameters dramatically and hard corals such as the candy cane does not do well with these fluctuations no matter how small, which is why they're more for established tanks.

Jen Pigs Fly

Just noticed the flame back angel too .... They're not really reef safe, he'll munch on coral polyps, keep an eye on him, he'll go one of two ways - he'll ignore corals completely or he'll get a taste of them. I had one that destroyed my ricordea and acropora before I removed him.

Trick is good feeding, offer very varied diet 4-5 times a day, little and often, keep him fed and less chance the corals will become dinner.