100 gal IM Mangrove Bonsai Reef

Rubymoon286 · Nov 8, 2023

I believe I've leveled up! My collective is working, and got the app all set up. I need to re-calibrate the pH probe, when I saw it under 8 I tested manually and it's 8.3 which is average for this time of day. I brought alk on up to 9 which is where I think I want to shift to run vs 8.5. My coral and clam seem to be happier in 9dkh

Speaking of, clam is recovering very well, and was quite happy today. I'm going to keep monitoring it and go from there.

Gumbies R Us · Nov 9, 2023

Rubymoon286 said:
I believe I've leveled up! My collective is working, and got the app all set up. I need to re-calibrate the pH probe, when I saw it under 8 I tested manually and it's 8.3 which is average for this time of day. I brought alk on up to 9 which is where I think I want to shift to run vs 8.5. My coral and clam seem to be happier in 9dkh

Speaking of, clam is recovering very well, and was quite happy today. I'm going to keep monitoring it and go from there.

Glad to see the clam is recovering well!

Rubymoon286 · Nov 9, 2023

Gumbies R Us said:
Glad to see the clam is recovering well!

Me too! It was a little touch and go there for a bit, but I'm happy it was a simple fix and not a slow decline.

Rubymoon286 · Nov 12, 2023

Been a while since my last FTS. Had another outbreak of brown jelly recently, lose my bright yellow goni to it sadly, and half of the wall hammer. Cut it in a last ditch effort to salvage what still looked healthy today and did the peroxide treatment. Hopefully it'll recover well enough, but as a wall, I'm just gonna wait and see what happens with it.

My clam is still recovering well, and I've got CAL and ALK tuned in for dosing. Also got my salinity probe for Hydros in and calibrated. Waiting on the Hydros calibration solution for pH to recalibrate that since the Hanna solutions aren't the same pH as the Hydros specific ones. Hanna monitor has been moved to my water barrel and I'm very happy that I can just peek right at the top of the can and see where we're at with it.

My trees are due to arrive tomorrow finally, but will spend a couple of months in substrate trays and slowly increasing salinity to match the reef numbers And hopefully when it's transplant time, they'll go easy. My plan is to use miracle mud as a substrate.

Rubymoon286 · Nov 21, 2023

Had an "environment" check yesterday ahead of starting an online dog training job, and the person clearing me complained about how cluttered my supply shelf looked and asked if I could throw a sheet over it or something. I chose to get little cafe curtains so I can still access my shelves.

Rubymoon286 · Nov 26, 2023

The tiniest blackwater tank got an upgrade after BRS had a 9.6 gallon bookshelf on sale. This was just after swapping all the live stock after it'd warmed up, I'm making catappa extract tomorrow to darken the water. But very excited. my mass of cuttings will soon be traded for starts of other plants, and I even got myself a little bonsai driftwood that I'll be attaching either the peacock moss or some monte carlo moss to.

With this upgrade, I finally get to keep a species I've wanted to for a long time - Blue Axelrodi rasboras. I have a small school coming along with some shrimp from flip aquatics, and I think they'll balance nicely with the Meerah's I have in there currently.

With that, I am weak, and gave in. My low tech tank is now over filtered (with a canister rated for 30 gallons,) over tested, and will have an auto water change system on it. I guess reef tech took away my love of little low tech tanks (or perhaps it's the Sjogren's and not being able to do as much finnicking as I used to.)

Either way, I've got a nice little rebeginning, and I'm happy to more ethically keep a little slice of swamp/creek in my living room near my much larger slice of ocean.

Rubymoon286 · Nov 30, 2023

She's coming together again. I've got a bonsai driftwood skeleton coming that will have some montecarlo attatched But I'm very happy with the progress. Got me some more shrimps and a trio of otocats. I added a gate valve to the canister filter and now my fountain is tunable to be less noisy. Axelrodis are in qt right now, so it'll be probably six weeks before they go in since they are a wild caught species, and I'm training them to accept live food from my whiteworm and daphnia cultures along side some dry pellets. The tank itself will have a decent population of daphnia by the time they go in, so between that and the pelets they should get a well rounded diet.

Rubymoon286 · Dec 19, 2023

It's been a while since I updated - things are still going pretty smoothly, though I'm dealing with a little bubble algae outbreak right now. All in all it's going well. My clam is totally recovered from the issues I was having with it and has grown quite a bit. I still can't get great photos of all the details, but maybe one day I'll figure out the trick.

I need to clean my glass on the blackwater tank, but it's coming right along and finally getting some nice tint in the water. I've got my first batch of baby crawfish too, no baby cardinias yet, but hopefully they'll breed in time as well.