My Acropolis

[Bpb]

Crazy Lights

I have finally finish my light collection for my aquarium with the latest addition of OR3 light bars. Let me share about how my light system changes into the current form as I try to adapt to the animals I keep.

I started running this 4.5x2.5x2.5 aquarium with two Wyatt lights. The 240w light, a local enterprise, gives good spread, PAR and value for money. Since my aquascape is offset to one side, my two light sets are offset from the centre as well.

It worked well, giving corals plenty of light to grow, while largely stay off the glass and minimized algae growth. There is one problem, however. Since the light shines from the top, and shaded by the top corals and rock, the amount of light reaching the front is very limited. I dislike the pale underside of colonies; nor do I want my corals to grow steeply towards the light rather than plating out. I decided to provide an angled fill light near the front edge of the aquarium. I did not opt for a light bar or a lower powerwd light. This is because I need the fill light tobe equal in quality and quantity, so that the coral can color up evenly. 3 lights now.

The addition fo the third 240w light brings a lot more color to the viewing side. But soon I encountered a new problem. As I start to introduce clams to my aquarium, it is apparent that my open sand bed 2.5' down does not have nearly enough light to support them. Solution? One more light.

Moving on, the amount of light is sufficient at all depths. The coverage is good. Time to start to look into the quality of light. I become interested in the role of UV spectrum in growth and color of corals. I have since installed customized OR3 light bar, supplying 385, 420 nm radiation to the coral. The result is very obvious so far. Finally. Today the second light bar with 365 and 740nm diodes are in. My light is set.

How did you get custom OR3 bars made? Amazing setup you have

 

[J1a]

How did you get custom OR3 bars made? Amazing setup you have

I emailed Tommy and explain to him what I needed. He is very helpful.

And thank you for the kind words.

 

[J1a]

Little People Stories

If a reef is a city, then the animals we keep are it's citizens. While looking at the reef as a whole, we can appreciate it's structure and balance. Looking closer, however, we can peer into the intimate lives of ordinary reef dwellers. They tell so many stories of growth and demise, conflict and cooperation. As each polyp lives it's live, as each fins flutter in the wave, mesmerising stories are there, if only we look and listen.

Coincidentally, I have a story in my reef, which fits nicely into the Acropolis. It's the story of the mystical King Midas. The legend has it that whatever King Midas touches would turn into gold. The very same story is being told in my Acropolis.

The King Midas zoa (heh) is spreading and smothering some of the corals. What a befitting name of this zoa.

 

[jx.reef]

very nice tank! I'm very curious about your ammonium chloride dosing. I've started doing this myself and am wondering what your dosage is at. (I'm currently at just 4 drops a day on a 100gallon)

 

[J1a]

I do not have a fixed dosage, I add 10-12 drops per day in addition to some calcium nitrate.

I figured as long as I don't add too much in one go, the ammonium will be oxidized pretty quickly.

 

[J1a]

Growth Forms

For me, getting a nice colony shape is as important, if not more so, than getting coral growth. When it comes to acropora, the growth form is dictated much by flow and light.

In general, sps grow in such a way to achieve maximum efficiency for material exchange with surrounding, as well as achieving optimum (note, not strongest possible) light for their growth.


Flow and Light Contrast

This colony of pink birdnest perfectly illustrates the effects of flow and light.

The left side of the birdnest is exposed to strong flow and unshaded light (ca. 800 PAR) the shape of the growth is dense, and mostly upright. On the right side, the colony branches out irregularly. The branches tends to grow horizontally, and leaving plenty of space between them.

Developing the Plate

Exhibit two, the strawberry shortcake colony. Initially, the colony has a neat tabling shape. However, when I glue it on the rock, it was tilted. After exposing the colony to strong (900 PAR) light and strong flow, the colony starts to correct its shape. The new growths are generally vertical. I hope after more growth, the colony will assume a perfect plate shape.

 

[Miami Reef]

@J1a

Updates?

 

[J1a]

@J1a

Updates?

I'm sad to say the aquarium is undergoing a reset right now.

Long story short,

Tenetti tang decided to start pecking on lps suddenly.

I moved out the lps and clams, then decided to get some dwarf angels since there is only sps left.

Flame angel and multibar angel proceed to wipe out my sps collection.

The last fish purchase also brought in some parasites, many fishes died from bleeding.


Hence, a reset.

I will continue to update the new setup journey.

 

[J1a]

Acropolis 2.0

Having tried different ideas with the old Acropolis, I'm taking the chance to make some changes to the setup.



Diversity

Diversity in the aquarium ecosystem has many benefits: it provide food at different levels. It also provide some innate robustness against pathogenic and nuisance organisms.

Therefore I would focus on the diversity of bacterial and algal populations first. And hopefully, this will lead to more substantial benthic and planktonic microfauna.



Simplification

This time, I will endeavor to run the aquarium with as little equipment as possible. For every piece of equipment used, often there are draw backs as well. I elect to stop using the fleece roller to allow better resident time of coral food. I also decided to stop using the UV to try and improve planktonic flora. Will these help in establish a balanced aquarium? Only time will tell.



Optimization

When an aquarium is running, it is difficult to make big changes. One aspect is the flow.



The diagram above is my old set up. The return (orange) and wave maker (green) provided reasonable flow. However, there is always a layer of surface scum trapped on the right side of the aquarium. This necessitate installing an additional wavemaker (blue) to disrupt and disperse the biofilm. The additional wavemaker obstruct the view from the side. Taking away the peninsula kind of charm.

With the new setup. A small tweak solve the problem.



The outlet of the return pump is turned downwards. This results in a "reverse" gyre, the surface layer is pushed into the overflow, results in perfect surface skimming

 

[J1a]

To Fill the Void

Starting an aquarium from scratch is a very interesting problem. Namely: how do we fill up an almost sterile aquarium, while avoiding nuisance organisms from taking hold. Fishes may perish if the nitrogen cycle is not established; corals may suffer when there is insufficent nutrients in the system. However, if there is a lack of desirable organism occupying the free real estate, then it's very likely that nuisance species will take over.

So what shall I fill my aquarium with, for a start? I elect to do it in a very unconventional way. Let me explain



Friend or Foe

Diatoms.

In my opinion, diatoms are the single most underrated organisms in our reef aquarium. Ugly as it may be, diatoms serve the reef aquarium in many ways. It fixes nitrate and phosphate from the water column; it provides food, directly to the corals, and support a pod population. Most importantly, it takes up precious real estate, and denies them to likes of cyano and dino.

I kick start my aquarium cycle by adding live diatom.



Bacteria.

No, I'm not talking about nitrifying bacteria, I'm referring to the variety of hetero- and autotrophic bacteria: photosynthetic bacteria (PSB), bacillius, acidophilus and other families of bacteria. By having a diverse and thriving non-pathogenic bacteria population, I hope it will be more difficult for the pathogenic bacteria to take hold.

I added freeze-dried mix of different bacteria as part of my start up cycle.



Corals

Some corals are added in after a few days (first residents are the left over torch since the previous build)

Diatoms are food, bacterioplanktons are food. all that's left to do is to feed all these things. I started to feed freeze dried plankton once the corals are in. I also added some ammonium chloride daily to feed the diatoms.



Not many people starts a cycle by using diatoms. I shall report on how this experimental technique turns out.






Meanwhile, a bacteria bloomed (which is harmless and in fact beneficial now) photo of the aquarium and its first few residents.

 

[chipchipbro]

well that all sounds like a pretty cool experiment
im excited to see what happens!

Have you ever checked the freeze-dried bacs from fauna marin? ReBiotic I guess they call it.

 

[J1a]

well that all sounds like a pretty cool experiment
im excited to see what happens!

Have you ever checked the freeze-dried bacs from fauna marin? ReBiotic I guess they call it.

I did actually. But the down side is I would have absolutely no idea what are inside. Probably good, but no idea at all.

On the other hand, the freeze dried bacteria I bought is from aquaculture supplies. They stated clearly to the species level the bacteria inside.

 

[chipchipbro]

I did actually. But the down side is I would have absolutely no idea what are inside. Probably good, but no idea at all.

On the other hand, the freeze dried bacteria I bought is from aquaculture supplies. They stated clearly to the species level the bacteria inside.

yeah man.. i understand.. i know thats the problem..
ive talked to a guy which is pretty close to claude schuhmacher and he told me that stuff is pretty potent. Dont know if you know Oly the reef artist from switzerland.

i have never seen any other freeze-dried bacteria products here in switzerland though.
by any chance do you have a link to the product?

 

[J1a]

yeah man.. i understand.. i know thats the problem..
ive talked to a guy which is pretty close to claude schuhmacher and he told me that stuff is pretty potent. Dont know if you know Oly the reef artist from switzerland.

i have never seen any other freeze-dried bacteria products here in switzerland though.
by any chance do you have a link to the product?

Freeze dried bacteria is definitely potent. The amount of cells per scoop/gram etc is going to be way higher than liquid products (assuming they are viable of course)

The bacteria I use are not marketed to aquarist. It's for aquaculture. I bought it from taobao.com.

 

[chipchipbro]

Freeze dried bacteria is definitely potent. The amount of cells per scoop/gram etc is going to be way higher than liquid products (assuming they are viable of course)

The bacteria I use are not marketed to aquarist. It's for aquaculture. I bought it from taobao.com.

Ok well, then this is not a product I can get in europe.
So I gotta stick to the fauna rebiotic stuff.

thanks for sharin, my friend!

 

[J1a]

Diatom Cycled

It's been 2 weeks since diatoms and bacteria blend is added into the aquarium. They rapidly colonise all surfaces, as well as then entire water column. It's bloomy and brown, but I know the brown stuff are good. Why? Because my newly added tronchus polishes them right off, and does not die of toxin exposure. While I don't expect trochus to keep my aquarium spotless, this gives me a good indication that the bethnic Flora are of the harmless type.

I used my old bio media. Whatever organisms in them, and in the pipes probably died during the process of restart. When I tested the water, it registered 0.25ppm of phosphates. Well, just nice to feed my diatoms.

Fast forward, corals in, more corals in. Throughout the process, it's evident that bacteria, diatom and other microalgae are having the fierces war over the exposed surface. Walls turn brown, then patches white, then green, then brown again. The water column still blooms with bacteria. What a nice plankton soup for NPS! In goes some dendrophyllia, and they loved it.







To maintain the energy of the set up (without input, everything eventually dies, right?) I started my routine of coral food feeding. While continue to dose ammonium into the aquarium.



Detractors

One of the delivery of coral came with three mistakenly packed blue eye anthias. They goes in to the reef. Since I have some anthias, why not get a few more? In goes another 6 evansi anthias.

Now anthias normally would not be my first choice for first fishes. They are carnivorous, so they won't help a bit with controlling algae. They require more frequent feeding, especially since they can't just forage the algae. They would be generally more suitable for a more matured setup. However, I know my system can, at this stage, handle these bioload with ease, so I go ahead with it. They are fed with crushed fauna marine pellets, which they devour greedily.



Evolving Landscape

I have tested the phosphate again, it has dropped to undetectable using salifert kit. Some tiny tufts of hair algae startd to sprout from the bottom. I have introduced a white tail tang to graze. The coral polyps extends well so far. The outcome lf this cycle looks promising.







The plan is to continue to load up on corals. Starting from lower positions of lps, monti and nps. Then move my way up to the top of the aquascape. This is because I don't want corals getting in the way when gluing things down near the bottom.

 

[J1a]

The Unseen Warfare

It's easy to notice when a torch coral send out stinging tentacles to attack their neighbors. It's much harder to see how some other corals fight each other.

As I brought back some of my old corals before reset, one such silent fighter showed itself. When the aquarium just restarted, I have a black sun coral which opens happily every night.



However, when I transferred my corals back, the black sun coral stopped opening, at all times. It was very puzzling. Nothing changes in terms of food, flow, light and water chemistry. Eventually, I realised the problem is with gorgonians upstream from it, releasing allelopathic chemicals. I remove the gorgonian, within 10 minutes, the black sun coral opened fully again.



An Illusion of Control

The desire of wanting to control every aspect of the system leads to many opportunities to make mistakes. I have made a big blunder during this experimental diatom cycling process. In the previous post, I concluded the ecosystem is somewhat established. However, I forgot that diatoms needs silicate supplement to thrive. Without dosing silicates, the diatom population stalled. Guess what fills the void? Dino. To be more specific, prorocentrum. Over night the surfaces are covered with stringy mat, entangling everything.

Lesson learnt, small missteps lead to huge problems.

Out comes remediation kit: blowing dino off corals, use fleece to trap and remove as much as possible, continue to feed the tank to avail some nutrients to corals, adding silicate to bring back the diatom, turn on the UV to knock down the free floating dino.

In one week, the dino bloom stopped as fast as it started.

For now, back on track, until the next accident.