Julian's Fourth

[jjbunn]

3/29: There is a muscly crab that seems to be running amok in the tank. Here he is lifting a piece of rock which the decorator crab is perched on. The decorator crab looks much smaller than it did a few days ago, so I wonder if he has been de-legged in a battle with the muscly crab?



My Reef Octopus BH90 skimmer arrived on Saturday, but the pump was fitted with the wrong veloute. After talking to CoralVue support, they are sending me the correct veloute, which should arrive before the weekend, hopefully.

Have reverted to the 24V supply on the Jebao - the 15V just wasn't powerful enough. I moved the pump further below the water level, and this has stopped the sandstorm.

The firefish has been missing for several days now. He must be holed up somewhere I can't see.

 

[jjbunn]

3/29: A photo of the Aquatrance 1000s pump that arrived with the Reef Octopus 90 ... showing the wrong veloute attachment.

 

[jjbunn]

3/30: pH 8.3.

Trying to catch the bad crab with a trap primed with small dried shrimp:

 

[jjbunn]

3/30: Well, I've caught one crab, but it's the wrong one: too small!

 

[jjbunn]

4/1: Have given up on the crab trap - it just catches the small ones.

The replacement veloute for the Reef Octopus arrived, so I fitted it, assembled everything, installed it on the tank, plugged it in, and ... nothing! Darned pump wouldn't start. After disassembling and removing the pin-wheel impeller, and cleaning it up a bit, the pump worked. So I put everything back together, and now it is all functioning correctly. Will need to wait a bit so that it breaks in.

 

[jjbunn]

4/2: Reef Octopus already pulling out quite a bit of foam into the cup - looks to be working very well. Playing around with some extension tubes for my DSLR:

 

[jjbunn]

4/2: Added a pair of Percula clowns and a bubble anemone, from Pasadena Tropical Fish https://www.facebook.com/Pasadena-Tropical-Fish-261735497188898/ (The owner, Steve, is very helpful, if a little taciturn ).

The clowns immediately took to the anemone, which was gratifying. I found an excellent article on Bubble Tip Anemones http://www.advancedaquarist.com/2010/6/inverts

These clowns are the last fish I'll be adding for a while.

 

[jjbunn]

4/4: A clump of Zoas I got from TampaBaySaltwater had never attached to any rock, and had since split into three smaller clumps. I took some old coral rock, smashed it into pieces, and glued the Zoa clumps to three of the larger pieces, using Super Glue. This worked better than I expected: here's one of them.

In other news, the bubble tip anemone moved itself onto the rock I'd placed it near. Here it is halway through its journey:

And here it is having inserted itself into the hole on the adjacent rock:

I managed to get a photo of the bad crab:

 

[jjbunn]

4/5: pH 8.3, SG 1.023, 79F. Dripped some Kalkwasser yesterday.

 

[jjbunn]

4/9: Added some Green Star Polyps, purchased from https://coralstore.com/ in La Canada. Stalked the bad crab, pounced on him with my long grabber tool, catching one of his claws, which detached! So, I fed the claw to the anemone

 

[jjbunn]

4/10: pH 8.4, 80F. Bad crab seems quite happy with only one claw, so I am stalking him in the hope of removing the other one. But, like the Black Knight, I fear his reaction may be "'tis but a flesh wound".

Green Star Polyps.

 

[jjbunn]

4/13: Received an API reef test kit, so set about measuring all the parameters. Some surprises:

• T = 82F (OK)
• pH = 8.5 (a tad high)
• SG = 1.025 (OK)
• Ammonia < 0.02 ppm (OK)
• Calcium = 360 mg/l (low - needs to be 380-450)
• KH/Alkalinity = 8 dKH (a tad low - needs to be 8-12)
• Phosphate = 0.25 ppm (way high - needs to be < 0.03)
• Nitrate = 100 ppm (way high - needs to be < 10 ppm)

 

[jjbunn]

4/15: Re-tested Nitrate: about 60ppm. Still very high!

Nice dusting of red coralline algae developing on the dead rock:

 

[mcarroll]

Replaced the two Hydor powerheads with a single Jebao WP-25 wavemaker.

In the short term I'm sure this is doing fine, but I'm also pretty sure you'll end up wanting more than one point source of flow in the tank sooner or later. No pump leaves zero dead spots....or simulates the flow of tides.

Tides are the main flow that corals always experience, every day, without fail. Water movement from waves and thermohaline circulation are important, but irregular contributors.

I like to set up some laminar flow for tides. Usually the randomness is taken care of by default with a propellor pump (random by nature) so I either do nothing more, or in the case of controllable pumps, try to combine functions so that mostly I get a tide function with a bit of additional random flow.

This is what you should see more of in most tank flows:

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_currents/welcome.html

(No you don't have to drop the level of the water in your tank!)

 

[jjbunn]

In the short term I'm sure this is doing fine, but I'm also pretty sure you'll end up wanting more than one point source of flow in the tank sooner or later. No pump leaves zero dead spots....or simulates the flow of tides.

Tides are the main flow that corals always experience, every day, without fail. Water movement from waves and thermohaline circulation are important, but irregular contributors.

I like to set up some laminar flow for tides. Usually the randomness is taken care of by default with a propellor pump (random by nature) so I either do nothing more, or in the case of controllable pumps, try to combine functions so that mostly I get a tide function with a bit of additional random flow.

This is what you should see more of in most tank flows:

http://oceanservice.noaa.gov/education/tutorial_currents/welcome.html

(No you don't have to drop the level of the water in your tank!)

Yes, I think you are right - I was hoping the random swirls caused by the Jebao "Else" mode would create enough eddies in the tank to remove dead spots, but I can see this isn't the case based on some accumulation of detritus in one corner. Probably even a small powerhead placed on the opposite side of the tank will improve the water movement - I'll add one later!

 

[jjbunn]

4/17: The anemone has positioned itself in an odd way, which divides its upper body and tentacles either side of the rock it's on. Perhaps it is in the process of splitting?

 

[jjbunn]

4/17: The anemone went walkabout: I managed to capture a time lapse video of it.

 

[jjbunn]

4/18: Bad news - the anemone didn't survive the night. Must have decided on another walkabout, and got sucked into the Jebao pump :-( Very sad. Assessing damage this morning ... but all fish are at least still alive so far.

 

[jjbunn]

4/19: After the anemone incident I turned the skimmer up, removed the pump/anemone, cleaned it up, and reinstalled the pump. I added 2 gallons of fresh distilled water. Now, a day later the water is clear again. Everything (apart from the anemone) seems fine, which is a relief. No more anemones for me, no sir!

 

[jjbunn]

4/22: Calcium 360mg/l. Added more Kalkwasser.
4/24: Calcium 380mg/l, Nitrate still at 60ppm. SG 1.025, T=80F. Will now start some vodka treatment, using 80 proof. From http://reefkeeping.com/issues/2008-08/nftt/index.php and using a tank volume of 50g, I need 2ml on the first day. All fish, zoas look good. Red sponge seems to be receding on one side, expanding on the other, which is more in shade. Possibly lights too bright?