muntwo
Community Member
Four weeks ago, I started establishing a bare-bottom, peninsula-style reef tank that is destined for a spot on my desk at work. In the past, I started a couple of these tank journals, lost interest, and never kept them updated, but here goes.
I tried something different about the initial set up and while it didn’t totally work the way I wanted, I thought I’d share the idea for someone else to follow up on and leave feedback. The idea was to establish a thriving population of coralline algae early, on the bottom of the tank to out-compete nuisance algae on the live rock. This was achieved by pouring a viscous solution of kalkwasser (calcium hydroxide) on the bottom of the tank, allowing it to react with atmospheric CO2 and dry overnight, leaving a base layer of calcium carbonate with high surface area for coralline colonization. The next day, the bottom was dry, so I slowly filled the tank and seeded the tank with crushed coralline particles from an established tank. A week later I added some live rock. Success! Well, sorta. Coralline was starting to grow, but 2 weeks after filling the tank, I threw in a turbo snail to work on the nuisance hair algae that was growing on the live rock and once it reached the bare bottom, it gouged out holes in the thin layer of calcium carbonate along with whatever biofilm it was consuming. Bummer. Coralline has since been growing much faster than I anticipated across the tank bottom, but adding the snail was clearly a mistake. Also, adding a second layer of calcium hydroxide might have helped, but please let me know if you try this and whether it works for you by posting below!
Now for some photos of the aquascape, starting from 4 weeks ago to present:
Framing the basic scape, scrubbing nuisance algae off the rocks, and killing aiptasia with the same kalkwasser that I used for the tank bottom.
Tank filled with live rock and bits of coralline over the thin layer of calcium carbonate. The tank was seeded over the next couple weeks with a variety of copepods, isopods, stomatella snails, keyhole limpets, collonista snails, spaghetti worms, brittle stars, cerith snails (one Caribbean and one Mexican), one trochus snail, and one turbo snail.
Aquaclear 50 filled with a filter sponge and topped with some assorted rubble.
Turbo snail tearing up the calcium carbonate layer on day 14.
Two female sexy shrimp, a maxi mini anemone, and some different corallimorphs and zoanthids were introduced on day 15. Calcium carbonate base layer is getting torn up in patches.
Added a bubble tip anemone and a couple pieces of rock to complete the aquascape. The base layer of calcium carbonate is clearly gone, but coralline speckling the bottom has taken its place. At 3 weeks, I have loads of new copepods covering the glass.
Four weeks in. The tank is topped with a sheet of glass, but I made a mesh screen top for kicks. I threw in a nimblenano magnet cleaner, but I like seeing the abundance of copepods on the glass, so they haven't been disturbed much. The tank is running heater-less because the room temp is warm, well ventilated, and very stable. I need to learn how to take decent reef tank photos with the correct white balance. A video might help give a sense of depth to the scape... I'll have to figure that out too.
I tried something different about the initial set up and while it didn’t totally work the way I wanted, I thought I’d share the idea for someone else to follow up on and leave feedback. The idea was to establish a thriving population of coralline algae early, on the bottom of the tank to out-compete nuisance algae on the live rock. This was achieved by pouring a viscous solution of kalkwasser (calcium hydroxide) on the bottom of the tank, allowing it to react with atmospheric CO2 and dry overnight, leaving a base layer of calcium carbonate with high surface area for coralline colonization. The next day, the bottom was dry, so I slowly filled the tank and seeded the tank with crushed coralline particles from an established tank. A week later I added some live rock. Success! Well, sorta. Coralline was starting to grow, but 2 weeks after filling the tank, I threw in a turbo snail to work on the nuisance hair algae that was growing on the live rock and once it reached the bare bottom, it gouged out holes in the thin layer of calcium carbonate along with whatever biofilm it was consuming. Bummer. Coralline has since been growing much faster than I anticipated across the tank bottom, but adding the snail was clearly a mistake. Also, adding a second layer of calcium hydroxide might have helped, but please let me know if you try this and whether it works for you by posting below!
Now for some photos of the aquascape, starting from 4 weeks ago to present:
Framing the basic scape, scrubbing nuisance algae off the rocks, and killing aiptasia with the same kalkwasser that I used for the tank bottom.
Tank filled with live rock and bits of coralline over the thin layer of calcium carbonate. The tank was seeded over the next couple weeks with a variety of copepods, isopods, stomatella snails, keyhole limpets, collonista snails, spaghetti worms, brittle stars, cerith snails (one Caribbean and one Mexican), one trochus snail, and one turbo snail.
Aquaclear 50 filled with a filter sponge and topped with some assorted rubble.
Turbo snail tearing up the calcium carbonate layer on day 14.
Two female sexy shrimp, a maxi mini anemone, and some different corallimorphs and zoanthids were introduced on day 15. Calcium carbonate base layer is getting torn up in patches.
Added a bubble tip anemone and a couple pieces of rock to complete the aquascape. The base layer of calcium carbonate is clearly gone, but coralline speckling the bottom has taken its place. At 3 weeks, I have loads of new copepods covering the glass.
Four weeks in. The tank is topped with a sheet of glass, but I made a mesh screen top for kicks. I threw in a nimblenano magnet cleaner, but I like seeing the abundance of copepods on the glass, so they haven't been disturbed much. The tank is running heater-less because the room temp is warm, well ventilated, and very stable. I need to learn how to take decent reef tank photos with the correct white balance. A video might help give a sense of depth to the scape... I'll have to figure that out too.
