A 60 Gallon Cube Doesn't Fit in a Model 3

[glmory]

Made an order to Top Shelf Aquatics to try and get a clean up crew started. Got a:

Giant Bali Xenia
Live Mixed Copepods (Tisbe & Apocyclops)
Collonista snails
Micro Brittle Starfish

They also gave me some free Red Ogo Gracilaria Macroalgae which shipped with the brittle starfish.

The starfish disappeared into the rockwork within a day, but I presume it likely they will show up in force in a few months. The Collonista snails need to multiply before doing anything so I went to the LFS to pick up some Trochus snails. I was getting a ton of diatoms and they put a good dent in them. Then after about two weeks the copepods started appearing in force and I appear to be over the worst of the diatoms.

Getting close to adding fish, wanted a large copepod population before I make an ORA or Biota order though. Amazing how often what is in stock changes at those suppliers so keeping an eye out for a batch of fish worth paying shipping on. Whenever I like the list I will make an order.

 

[glmory]

Finally got some fish in the aquarium. Made an order to Biota for the following:

Orange Ocellaris Clownfish
Black Darwin Ocellaris Clownfish
Tessellated Blenny (Hypsoblennius invemar)
Upside Down Goby (Trimma striatum)
Royal Gramma
Court Jester Goby (Koumansetta rainfordi)

After about five days I still haven't seen the Blenny who immediately hid never to be seen. The rest of the fish are out and seem to be doing alright though. Suspect the Blenny is just hiding and will show up in the next few days or weeks but his fate remains unclear. The fish haven't eaten much, but they don't appear to be starving and with the massive population of copepods they might just consider the pellets beneath them. Have an order in for some better pellets and will make some frozen food this weekend.

After hearing how tiny captive bred fish, was surprised how large these all were, except for the upside down goby which at any age is a tiny fish these were about the size I would expect from wild caught fish.

Will see if adding six at once comes back to bite me, but ghost feeding two months and building up a good algae population I feel like odds are on my side.

Corals seem to be holding up. Added a Florida Ricordea which seems to at least tolerate conditions. The gorgonian is a bit moody but at least alive. The leather seems to be growing slowly and the Bali Giant Xenia is growing rapidly. When i got the Xenia, I spent a few days deciding if it was dead or not because shipment was a few extra days but clearly he shrugged it off and started growing like crazy. Will probably add one more gorgonian and a few more varieties of Florida Ricordea and Rock Flower Anemones but am mostly done stocking the aquarium.

Don't think I have gone this long with an aquarium keeping everything alive before. All the snails, corals, fish and a cleaner shrimp seem to be in good shape. Likely this is more selecting tough inhabitants than anything special I did.

 

[glmory]

Jayden the black nemo clownfish.

Jayden and Nemo

Cobie

Jacob

And a Giant Bali Xenia not cool enough for the kids to name but exciting how much larger it got since the last photo.

 

[glmory]

Decided to make frozen food. Bought some tiny ice cube trays, went to the store, got a seafood mix of shrimp, squid and mussels, a bag of oysters and a bag of dried seaweed.

Tried to quickly get it into the blender when my wife left the room.

Sure enough within thirty seconds, the blender died. Now I have a smelly kitchen, an angry wife, and am waiting to see if after 45 minutes the blender will reset and work again.

What luck, never had that happen before, so much for cleaning up quickly before I am in trouble.

 

[Grant_J]

Decided to make frozen food. Bought some tiny ice cube trays, went to the store, got a seafood mix of shrimp, squid and mussels, a bag of oysters and a bag of dried seaweed.

Tried to quickly get it into the blender when my wife left the room.

Sure enough within thirty seconds, the blender died. Now I have a smelly kitchen, an angry wife, and am waiting to see if after 45 minutes the blender will reset and work again.

What luck, never had that happen before, so much for cleaning up quickly before I am in trouble.

Ha! I'm loving following your journey. I also had to rent a vehicle last minute to get my tank. Keep it up! The angry wife thing also seems to be going around. I spent a few days in my home office with windows open at 35-40 degree temps because of the smells. Hang in there...

 

[glmory]

Well, that was a complete fail. The Vitamix just couldn’t handle the seaweed. Ended up with a lumpy paste not quite fine enough to easily fit into the trays.

Might try and grind a bit more tomorrow once the first batch of cubes is frozen but the blender overheats then won’t work for an hour or so.

Apparently less seaweed next time.

 

[glmory]

Upgraded assessment to sort of worked. The ice cube tray actually worked really well. Once the food was frozen the seaweed broke and left behind reasonable cubes. Probably too much seaweed for these fish, but feeding the clean up crew seems reasonable.

 

[glmory]

Progressing slowly along.

The Bali Giant Xenia so far has been the star, from two polyps in March it grew a ton. Also got some clove polyps which are growing rapidly. The leather coral, gorgonian, and some Ricordea florida have stayed alive but not really grown.

As far as trying to get a self-reproducing clean up crew. The Collonista snails disappeared. Possible they are just hiding as there is a lot of surface area and a lot of food but think it likely they didn't make it. The brittle starfish have survived but I have not yet seen signs the population increased. I did however find two baby Banded Trochus snails of different sizes. Wouldn't be surprised if another dozen were hiding in there somewhere. A breeding colony of those seems perfect to expand to the food level.

The Blenny never showed up. Must have died during acclamation because I didn't see him once.

 

[Kodski]

Looks like everything is progressing nicely! Don't forget, a few months is the equivalent of a few minutes in reef tank time. Don't be surprised everything is taking a while, the most difficult part of this hobby is being patient! I find it takes most corals 4-6 months to really settle into the tank, but once they do, you'll see growth really pick up. Inverts may be difficult to breed successfully, just because so many are egg based reproduction. All the other inverts and fish tend to eat the eggs before they usually get a chance to hatch. Its really cool that you've already seen baby trochus snails though!

 

[glmory]

Starting to get some hair algae which seems likely to be related to the fact that even set to minimum feed once a day the automatic feeder just feeds too much.

Went through my testing, honestly expected worse. Does seem like hard coral is not in the cards but I am lazy enough to not want to try.

Temp 78 degrees
Salinity 1.025
pH 7.9
Ca 380
kH 9.0
Phosphate 3.0 ppm
Nitrate 15 ppm

Will probably just leave everything another month or two, some of the corals are exploding so maybe nutrient use will increase enough to not be an issue.

Trochus snails doing very well. Must be at least twenty babies and they are growing fast.

 

[glmory]

Always winning some and losing some. Hair algae has got a bit out of control. It is interesting though, the boundaries which are covered with it seem to be pushing back. Now the rock is either cleaner than I would like or covered in 1-2cm hair algae.

The winner in this scenario is the baby trochus snails. They are now everywhere, most are around 1cm diameter but a few are almost twice that. I just tried to count them, and without getting out of my seat counted 25. So there may well be 100 or more in the tank.

I was told they won't eat long hair algae, but at the back of the tank this is very clearly not true. They have been pushing back the boundaries of the hair algae where they like to hang out.

Still, will probably have to manually pull a bunch from the tank but may wait and watch before trying anything drastic since they seem to be starting to win.

Never seen proof they are breeding, but see three micro brittle stars from where I sit. I only bought five so with how cryptic they are I can't imagine all moved to right here, it seems more likely they are breeding or splitting.

Other big change was bought a DMP 20 knock off Jecod pump. Flow was too low for the gorgonian so I kept having to clean off algae. Took a while to understand the app but appears to do what I want. Just have it set on 30% random most of the day which sems as much flow as they want. Then run 15 minutes at max twice a day to try and clean it out.

 

[glmory]

Starting to get opinions on the reborn media as substrate.

It definitely achieves my main goals, it looks better than a bare bottom and has been reasonably successful at preventing scratches on the acrylic which come from sand. I have put some unexplained scratches on the acrylic but they are all tiny and even wet should be removable if I ever get annoyed with them.

The detritus trap is no joke though. Vacuumed it out the first time into a filter sock. It was crazy how much came out. Had blown it out a few times which helped but most the detritus fell back down rather than through the overflow. Vacuuming into a filter sock was way more successful.

Not sure detritis is really a problem, a high nutrient soft coral tank should be fine with the food source. It may take me some time to have enough corals to use it all though. Once it gets to be an eyesore it is easy enough to vacuum and it takes a long time before there is so much detritus you see it.

Making just a really thin layer which barely covers the sand is definitely smart. I may have made it a bit too thick.

Definitely true reborn is more appropriate for high flow aquariums. Detritus hides in the lower levels even with flow but it doesn't become very visible. The one DMP20 helped flow a lot. Thinking I will get a second at some point though because there are still some dead spots. Since I wanted gorgonians anyways making this a high flow soft coral tank doesn't seem like a bad thing.

 

[glmory]

Was away for two weeks. Nothjng worse than a dead snail seemed to occur when I was gone.

Finally gave up on the auto-feeder. I was hoping the clean up crew could eventually handle the Jebao AF-500 on minimum feed size. It cannot, the feeder really only makes sense for an aquarium four times as large as mine. Replaced half of the pellets with seaweed granules and set it to every three days. Hopefully that will get detritus and nutrients more under control.

Also went ahead and ordered a second DMP-20. That seemed like a perfect choice. Two of those should be high enough flow to handle the reborn media as a substrate. Am only soft corals but suspect the gorgonian in particular could use the high flow.

Fish and invertebrates seem to be doing well, corals are hit and miss.

Growing quickly:
Clove polyps
Bali giant Xenia

Healthy but not obviously growing:
Finger leather
Rock Flower Anemone
Gorgonian

Not looking healthy:
Florida Ricordea

Testing from today was definitely not hard coral parameters but seems likely to be good enough for soft corals:

Salinity 1.025
pH 7.9
Calcium 400
kH 8.0
Phosphate 3.0
Nitrate 40ppm
Temp 80F

 

[glmory]

Taking photos of the three sides really drove home that the aquarium has far too little coral.

I don't like the loads of frags look though and I am cheap so I think I will mostly just wait for what I have to grow out. Might frag the Bali Giant Xenia. Think three big ones would be a good look.

 

[glmory]

Got a call warning about a 12 hour power outage. After a couple minutes of panic I realized I could get an Ecoflow River 2 with same day delivery.

Hooked it up, turned it on, tested it worked by unplugging and plugging it in.

Seems a fantastic choice. Runs the power strip that has a heater, return pump, and lights. In a real outage I would probably turn off the lights amd heater though.

 

[glmory]

Decided to make another order to Biota. After three months still not seen my tesselated blenny so decided it time to declare him dead and order a new one.

The order was for:
Tesselated blenny (Hypsoblennius invemar)
Yellow neon cleaner goby (Elacatinus figaro)
Two Pavo damselfish (Pomacentrus pavo)

That seems likely to finish my stocking. Now have filled a fully Biota tank, the other fish being:

Upside down goby (Trimma striatum)
Ocellaris clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris)
Darwin Ocellaris clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris)
Royal Gramma (Gramma loreto)
Court Jester Goby (Koumansetta rainfordi)

Generally happy with the new batch. Was definitely more expensive than the LFS but I would have been much more paranoid about disease. Also, generally prefer paying scientists to tinker than paying people to pull fish out of the ocean.

The new batch of fish was much smaller than the fish in the first order. The clowns and royal gramma do seem to be going after the damselfish more than I expected, probably should have gone with an acclimation box. Still, damsels are tough I am expecting them to pull through.

Of course, the blenny immediately disappeared into the rocks and I haven't seen him since. So, who knows, maybe I have two and they are just that secretive.

 

[glmory]

Ugh, appear to have injured the blenny vacuuming the aquarium. Still hadn't seen him yet, but vacuumed out the rock and noticed something swimming in the vacuum. Got him out and proceeded to continue vacuuming.

Thought it was the cleaner goby, so once I saw the cleaner goby was fine figured I was good.

Then a few hours later I see him struggling in the same corner. It is a little tricky to tell with a fish that perches so much but he does appear to be inable to swim well.

Don't have an acclimation box, debating if it is worthwhile trying to catch and separate him but as he doesn't seem to be attracting attention he seems as likely to survive there as anywhere else.

 

[glmory]

Appears the tesellated blenny is doing better today. Saw him dart quickly after food a couple of times and actually catch it once. He is so tiny it is hard to be certain but since he looks better rather than worse and is eating expect he is out of the woods.

He has taken up residence in a shell. Since flow usually drops food there I expect it is a good place for him.

Other challenge is my Giant Bali Xenia has closed up for few days. Not certain, but too much flow seems a likely cause. Turned down the flow to 30%, hoping that is enough to let him bounce back.

When I tested it wasn't great but seemed like good soft coral territory. Calcium was low alkalinity high which didn't seem likely to impact a soft coral. Phosphate and nitrate were high, but are coming down. Not entirely sure I trust the calcium test as it has bounced a lot.

78 degrees
pH 8.0
Calcium 360
Nitrates 20ppm
Phospates 2.0
kH 10
Salinity 1.025

 

[glmory]

Did some extra water changes because the corals started to look bad. The usual wet skimming out five gallons but a few times a week instead of once. That, combined with taking the lid off to reduce the temperature, seemed to perk things up.

Got water quality in a better spot:

• Nitrates 5
• Phosphates 0.25 although this test has such a poor scaling that I could believe 0.1 or 0.5. Not easy to read the color. Clearly getting lower though.
• kH 11, I think a failed experiment adding kalk, suspect it will come down but nothing seems to be consuming it.
• Calcium 420
• pH 8.2
• Salinity 1.026
• Temperature 80F/27C

That improved water quality seemed to have improved the look of the corals. While the water quality was bad I lost one Ricordea and the rock flower went into a power head. Now though all the corals but the Xenia are growing and happy looking. Either there is too much flow for the Xenia or the temperature is too high. It does seem to be improving rather than deteriorating at least.

Still have a hair algae problem. Got some emerald crabs and two turbo snails but seems I will be stuck with manual removal for a bit. Maybe now that phosphate is a bit lower it will grow a little slower.

Appear to have lost the blenny. The other fish all look great though.

Picked up a toadstool leather, the mother colony at Amazing Aquariums looked really good. So far it is just starting to open up though so might be a while before mine looks anything like that. Mostly just expect to grow out the corals I have for a bit. Might get a few more species of clove polyps though since they seem to be good at covering the rocks.

 

[glmory]

The scratches on the acrylic have been all small and clearly removable even with water in the aquarium if they really annoyed me. Got a really annoying level of crazing though. That might be enough to steer me towards glass on my next aquarium. Feels like with proper choice of acrylic thickness I might be able to avoid that problem. I am also not sure how much the tank was mistreated before I got it.

Seems like everything is continuing to grow. Imagine I will put a couple more corals eventually but feels like if I can just grow what I have to a large size I will be in a good place. Maybe a few more variations on clove polyps since they seem like they will take over with time.