My 65G Shallow Reef Tank

[trout]

Back to the present day: the video recording below provides a short summary of corals in my tank. I will follow this up and will provide growth history of some of them.

 

[trout]

Acropora sarmentosa (10" X 9" x 6")

This is one of my established corals. I bought it as a small sub-colony back in March 2016. It was wild-collected from Fiji. Since then it has been fragged up to three times. It is a vigorous grower. At the last count, it hosts at least two Acropora crabs.

April 2016 (Wild-collected from Fiji)	December 2016
October 2017	November 2018
October 2019	December 2020

 

[trout]

Some recent top-down photos:

Acropora desalwii (pearl berry acropora)

Acropora granulosa (wild-collected)

"Pinky the bear" Acropora (anyone knows its proper name?)

 

[BranchingHammer]

Wow, amazing corals! I wish I would have found this sooner!

 

[trout]

Wow, amazing corals! I wish I would have found this sooner!

Thanks.

 

[trout]

Here are some lateral close-up photos:

Acropora microclados

"Hurlock Acropora"

Acropora efflorescence

 

[Zach B]

Beautiful reef! Definitely following along

 

[trout]

Beautiful reef! Definitely following along

Thanks for your feedback.

 

[trout]

I feed my fish solely on frozen food (RS/PE miss, mysis, chopped mussels, red plankton, brine shrimp) and red seaweed. I thaw enough frozen food to last for two days and enrich it with vitamin supplements and lipid fats. I use three different products for this purpose. Tropic Marin Immuvit, Tropic Marin Lipovit and Selcon. I use both Immuvit and Lipovit at the same time. I alternate them with Selcon on a weekly basis.

The fish are all healthy and eat vigorously. I feed them four times a day (approx. 2.5 ml thawed food at a time). Nutrients levels are pretty much stable at NO3 = ~ 2.5 ppm and PO4 = ~ 0.092 mg/L. I do not use any PO4 adsorbers. For nutrient export, I rely on Tropic Marin NP-Bacto-Balance and fortnightly water changes (~15% at a time). I have 7.5 litres of siporax media (15 mm) to provide housing for heterotrophic bacteria.

And now here are some fish photos. In my next post, I will write about my past failings with fishkeeping and lessons learned.

Pyramid butterflyfish

Regal angelfish

Copperband butterflyfish

 

[trout]

This short video was recorded on 28th February 2021.

 

[ShepherdReefer]

Looking super nice.

 

[DaveC]

Hello, I've read through your FB notes and didn't see it mentioned. Have you researched np-bacto-pellets as an alternative to Reef Actif. Was this ever a consideration?

 

[trout]

Hello, I've read through your FB notes and didn't see it mentioned. Have you researched np-bacto-pellets as an alternative to Reef Actif. Was this ever a consideration?

Hi, thanks for reading my FB note on Reef Actif. I hope you have found it useful.

I have never used NP-Bacto-Pellets, which are essentially an organic carbon source for heterotrophic bacteria.

I do not think that Reef Actif and NP-Bacto-Pellets are interchangeable as they serve a different purpose. Reef Actif is essentially a transport mechanism for providing organic nutrients to symbiotic bacteria, which are different to heterotrophic bacteria, by binding inorganic nutrients to their organic forms. If you look at "Frequently asked questions" in the FB note, you will see that both products target different bacterial population. Reef Actif directly targets zooxanthellae.

I hope this helps.

 

[trout]

I was always lucky with my fish purchases for many years. I never quarantined my fish. Eventually, I ran out of luck in December 2018 when a yellow long nose butterflyfish introduced what appeared to be a variant of marine velvet.

Even though I managed to move all my fish to a separate hospital tank for CP treatment, mistakes I made as a novice halfway through the treatment resulted in large fish losses. I managed to save two fish (a filefish and the copperband butterflyfish, which is still with me). This dented my confidence and as a result, I did not get any new fish until November 2019.

The video recording below shows some of the sick fish in the hospital tank, which sadly later died due to simple mistakes. As you can see at the time of recording, velvet had already cleared.

 

[DaveC]

Hello, Thank you very much for taking the time in your response.

I have found your information extremely useful as I am in the process of upgrading my 40 breeder to a 150 and will be switching over to TM Carbon dosing. I will be using & referring to your notes as a guide. Thank you for compiling & sharing this very through information.

I do not think that Reef Actif and NP-Bacto-Pellets are interchangeable as they serve a different purpose. Reef Actif is essentially a transport mechanism for providing organic nutrients to symbiotic bacteria, which are different to heterotrophic bacteria, by binding inorganic nutrients to their organic forms. If you look at "Frequently asked questions" in the FB note, you will see that both products target different bacterial population. Reef Actif directly targets zooxanthellae.

I think maybe this is where my confusion sets in. If you watch the beginning of this video @Lou Ekus seems to talk about np-biopellets & Reef actif interchangeably ... And I just noticed your comment in the video.




But in your FAQ you ask the question to @Hans-Werner

What does Reef Actif offer that NP-Bacto-Balance doesn’t? NP-Bacto-Balance contains a carbon source?

It's my understanding, based on Lous video that NP-Bacto-Balance would be used in conjunction with either np-biopellets or Reef actif.

I'm really curious if it is just a preference between running it in a reactor vs dosing.

 

[trout]

Hello, Thank you very much for taking the time in your response.

I have found your information extremely useful as I am in the process of upgrading my 40 breeder to a 150 and will be switching over to TM Carbon dosing. I will be using & referring to your notes as a guide. Thank you for compiling & sharing this very through information.



I think maybe this is where my confusion sets in. If you watch the beginning of this video @Lou Ekus seems to talk about np-biopellets & Reef actif interchangeably ... And I just noticed your comment in the video.




But in your FAQ you ask the question to @Hans-Werner


It's my understanding, based on Lous video that NP-Bacto-Balance would be used in conjunction with either np-biopellets or Reef actif.

I'm really curious if it is just a preference between running it in a reactor vs dosing.

Your understanding is correct. In fact, I use Reef Actif in conjunction with NP-Bacto-Balance. You should also be able to use it in conjunction with NP-biopellets. I have obtained the image below from Tropic Marin to confirm my statement. Perhaps, I did not articulate my thoughts in my previous post concisely. What I meant by "I do not think that Reef Actif and NP-Bacto-Pellets are interchangeable as they serve a different purpose" is that they can be used together as they serve different purposes, but they cannot be used instead of the other.

 

[Lou Ekus]

I think @trout has answered this fully. But please let me know if there are additional questions about this.

 

[DaveC]

I think @trout has answered this fully. But please let me know if there are additional questions about this.

@Lou Ekus What is the difference np-biopellets & Reef actif other than media type? do they serve the same purpose?

 

[Lou Ekus]

@Lou Ekus What is the difference np-biopellets & Reef actif other than media type? do they serve the same purpose?

They are both gentle forms of carbon dosing. But they use slightly different components. You certainly get the convenience of the automatic method with the pellets. But over and above that, the different carbon dosing compounds will "target" different types of beneficial bacteria. It is very helpful to have lots of biodiversity in the beneficial bacteria in the tank. Targeting and promoting the growth of many different types ends up helping in the end by increasing the biodiversity and consequently, the broad range of the beneficial effects as well.

 

[trout]

@Lou Ekus I am going to beg to differ in the sense that Reef Actif is not a product that can specifically be used to control nutrients in a reef tank. In fact, I experimented with this product for many months to observe its impact on my corals and the water parameters. I did not observe any appreciable reduction in NO3 and PO4. However, there was an appreciable increase in coral growth. Increase in coral growth is due to the fact that Reef Actif is a very clever transport mechanism that changes the state of nutrients from unusable (i.e. inorganic) to useable (i.e. organic) by corals and filter feeders by allowing symbiotic bacteria to decompose bio-polymers which lock inorganic nutrients. Perhaps, the reduction in inorganic nutrients was so low that my test kits did not notice any difference.

I posed specific questions to @Hans-Werner about Reef Actif, which he kindly answered. His answers led me to the conclusion that Reef Actif does not target heterotrophic bacteria, which are responsible for reducing NO3 and PO4, providing that there is sufficient nitrogen, phosphorus and organic carbon in the water column. Instead, it does target symbiotic bacteria, which live in corals as well as in fish.

Readers can refer to my FB note to read all the questions I posed to Herr Hans-Werner and his answers. I think it is worth reading the frequently asked questions. Beware that the details of the experiment with Reef Actif may bore you to death.

I wholeheartedly recommend this product as long as you have the correct expectations from it top avoid disappointment.