Griev's IM-200 Mangrove Lagoon

[Griev]

One of the unexpected fringe benefits of my approach of buying multiple frags of the same coral is that you get proof that sometimes it's just the coral, not you or your tank.

Both of these cynarinias were shipped, handled, and acclimated exactly the same. Then they sat in the same par and flow for 3 days. One is thriving, getting super puffy and the other is melting away. C'est la reef?

 

[Griev]

I thought tangs were supposed to be aggressive? These guys are already best friends, lol.

 

[Griev]

 

[Griev]

I had an extra little mini fridge laying around, so I decided to try live phytoplankton dosing. I can get it locally for a very good price, so I figured why not.

 

[Griev]

Terrible picture, but I think these two Rainfordi are pairing up. They're starting to hang out together instead of defending their territories. Really entertaining little guys.

These two have definitely paired up, but then the biggest male got aggressive and kept chasing the other two remaining, even with 200 gallons of room. Such a shame, I would have liked to have had a dozen in my tank. Very fun little guys (until they go murder hobo for love).

 

[TheWB]

These two have definitely paired up, but then the biggest male got aggressive and kept chasing the other two remaining, even with 200 gallons of room. Such a shame, I would have liked to have had a dozen in my tank. Very fun little guys (until they go murder hobo for love).

That's a bummer. How many of them did you start with?
Is that small herd of Black Cap Basslets still getting along?

 

[Griev]

That's a bummer. How many of them did you start with?
Is that small herd of Black Cap Basslets still getting along?

Started with 6.

The Black Caps are all doing great. Still getting along fine.

 

[ty12]

Looks awesome!

 

[Griev]

I'm dosing around 150 ml of phyto per day and my corals seem to enjoy it. Seeing more PE on my SPS and LPS seem happier and have their feeders out more during the day.

 

[Griev]

These two are hilarious. They'll take turns chasing each other in loops like this for minutes at a time. Every now and then the Achilles shows off with a burst of speed to remind the Blue who's in charge, but no real aggression between the two.

 

[Griev]

Haven't posted in a while but that doesn't mean things haven't been happening!

About two weeks ago, my left side MP60 started getting stall errors, but it would work fine after a power cycle. Then after a couple days of that, I couldn't get it out of the stall status. It would do 2-3 little jiggles then nothing. I went through the troubleshooting with Ecotech and they said it was the dry side motor.

Ordered a new dry side ($$$) and waited about a week for it to show up. Plug it in and get the exact same error. At this point I'm about to chuck the whole thing out a window. So I do extra troubleshooting, substituting my working controller for the one that seems to be defective, and somehow the same stall error? At this point the only possible issue could be in the extension cable between the controller and the new dry side. Sure enough, one of the pins had corroded inside the far side connection in a way that failed slowly and made it seem like the motor. After removing the extension, everything worked fine again, including the old dry side.

Oh well I guess I've got a backup dry side now for when the bearings go.

 

[Griev]

So the next mishap was that the "extra" mini fridge I had died about 5 days into using it for phyto. So I ended up buying a new fridge, but the dimensions were different and the magnetic stirrer I had didn't fit.

Me, being completely normal person, decided to design my own housing that would fit instead of returning the fridge for a different one.

 

[Griev]

Minor rescape! I added some rubble at the front and back to convert about a third of the tank to having a sandbed. The gobbies and the wrasses love it.

I also ripped out the forest fire digi because the reduced flow caused a few dead spots to form, it was difficult to trim, never growing quite the way I wanted it to, and I couldn't give away the frags. So I replaced it with some blue stag and pink millepora. There's still a little of the digi, so maybe it'll come back a little between the millepora.

Lastly it looks like I have an ultra rare grafted sunburst anemone. Three tentacles definitely have streaks of bright green the others don't. These are worth millions, right?

 

[Griev]

The largest female anthias got bigger than the male and started turning. I thought for sure they'd fight to the death, but they're just cool with each other? I've seen almost no aggression between the two of them. I wonder if it'll last.

 

[Griev]

They're still both just hanging out together. No idea how but it's working.

 

[Griev]

Alas after 3 months of peace, the new Alpha anthias decided to eliminate both the Beta and the interloper males.

Added 6 more anthias to bring the school back up to 14, and two Pearl/China wrasses. I thought for sure one of the two wrasses wasn't going to make it. Lying lifeless on the floor of the observation box, drifting with the current. Wasn't until I released the other one that it dropped the act and started swimming around so it could be released too. I couldn't believe it...

 

[TheWB]

It’s been a while. How’s the tank doing?