My dream tank - Evo 13.5 and the exploits of a fishaholic

[Narideth]

Exciting news, new corals are in! Ignore the white frag plug, it's just to help hold the bright green 3D printed rack down as it floats.

Top left are 7 heads of a really gorgeous green and red blasto. I believe it's a merletti with the skeletal structure.

Bottom left is a single head of a pink hued acan. Not what I thought I was getting, but it could be nice. I'm looking for really poppy bright acans, but it could flesh out into something glorious.

Bottom right was a free extra frag, two tiny heads of a sort of icy blue and purple color blasto, difficult to tell what kind yet. Luckily I really like blastos so it can go right into the growing garden.

 

[Narideth]

Some simple updates. I have hope for the gorgonian I mentioned earlier.

It was covered in dyno, and then the GHA that slowly beat the dyno out, and I'd feared it was lost entirely. Hasn't opened in weeks and I couldn't keep it clean despite blasting it with flow.

Two days ago I gave in and simply... scrubbed it. Since it was either already dead or in dire need, I considered it my only choice. A soft brush, supported the branches against my fingers and just, scrubbed as gently as I could. Snipped off a little of the very top where the branch had gone black.

Now, it's molting, FINALLY and I'm hopeful that it may start opening up again. The polyps are visible where they weren't at all before, just not open yet, and I've crossed my fingers that it will survive to continue beautifying my tank.




In other news, my first Blastomussa merletti arrived, and it's a beautiful little specimen. Fluffy, with green and red/pink/purple hues.

 

[Narideth]

Someone got new lenses to take pictures of their tanks.

 

[Narideth]

Sixline Update!

This guy is finally in his new home. After an initial attempt to get him settled that was nearly the end of him because something in the tank was still unbalanced, he's lived in a separation box in my other tank for three weeks while I sorted everything and got more water changes in.

Now he's delightedly exploring his new home, for however long until he outgrows it.

 

[Narideth]

BIG UPDATES

Ok y'all, I finally did the upgrade I was most interested in - I got a bigger and better light.

I'm still working on a bit of a tight budget, but I had some refund money sitting in my Amazon account and thought... why not. I bought the 30w Nicrew black box, since I have the 50w on my larger tank and have been pretty pleased with its performance. There's a built in ramp up and ramp down timer, and it's just divine.



The tank is all put back together, the ATO is back in place, the sixline wrasse is just loving to zoom around, and I've bought a solid handful of new corals to add. So many that I decided to put the larger frag rack I have into the tank so they're up off the sand.



I think this might be my prize piece out of the bunch, and the biggest reason why I got a new light in the hopes it'll keep this amazing color. This acan is everything I was looking for in a beautiful rainbow variety.



Another acan with gorgeous pink hues and several new zoas were added as well.



The coveted top down shot on the tank with the wave maker turned off. Thank my new colored lenses for the nice pictures.

I have also set up a sort of mini refugium in the second chamber. The InTank media basket is serving as my housing, and the bottom is filled with extra pieces of rock. A stray bit of red gracilaria hayi made its way home from the LFS and after letting it sit isolated for a few weeks in a jar I could watch, I tucked it between a couple of pieces of rubble rock and went super high-tech with tape and a spare LED light I had. I dumped about half of the latest batch of pods in there. We'll see where this goes, as I do have some chaeto chilling on my windowsill that I'm indecisive about using though I've seen no evidence of pests.



No timer on this tiny LED but this is all experimental anyway, and those chambers get indirect UVs from the windows. I'll turn it off and on ideally when it gets dark. I debated putting a light at all, but I'd like the gracilaria to have at least a chance.

 

[Narideth]

Episode 1. My Mandarin Folly

With the tank back in good health and supporting fish, I thought I had made up my mind about what and or where I wanted to go with it insofar as stocking is concerned.

I want/wanted a Mandarin goby.

To this end, I knew several things: I would need to have the refugium I'd considered set up in my Evo, I'd have to culture external copepods to help sustain them, and it wouldn't hurt to also take a crack at culturing phytoplankton because it's just cheaper all around and my corals have loved it.

I also realized I'd made a grave error in judgment when I decided I wanted a sixline wrasse (Which I'd decided before I came to this conclusion). Not because it was aggressive or anything, they're just eating machines and I wouldn't be able to grow a healthy copepod abundance with him there.

So I captured the sixline pretty quickly with a very handy tip from Aquarium Co-Op, and then bottled him up for a trip back to the LFS.

it was there that I got to talking with them, as I usually do, and told them I was wanting to eventually get a Mandarin, preferably tank raised, and they mentioned they had a Mandarin just in. What did I do? I made the fatal (not really) mistake of looking at him.

Oh goodness, he was a big boy, beautiful, an empty tummy but not starved, still quite healthy. I gave into my impulses and purchased him as well as a new firefish for my Evo. Knowing I didn't yet have the copepod stock I needed, I picked up a bag of brine shrimp to help me begin the process of ideally training this guy into eating. In my tank, I had him in an isolation box to narrow the area of food, and he scarfed down brine shrimp like mad. I know these aren't an ideal food source, but it was a short term solution only.

Look at how beautiful he is. I filled him up with brine shrimp and knew I'd be going to another LFS the next day in search of a second batch of tigger pods to help boost the batch I had already started brewing.

I also received a second isolation box that had a fine enough mesh to keep all of the live foods inside, however despite being well-stocked with more brine shrimp, he stopped eating them. I dumped in some tigger pods, and the largest were held within the netting, which he scooped up, but the brine shrimp were summarily ignored.

I was faced with a dilemma. This mandarin was nearly fully grown - which would be a bit of a trial in a small tank to begin with - but without the bumper crop of copepods I had so carefully planned for, and him no longer eating brine shrimp, I knew the responsible thing to do would be to return him as well, in the hopes that someone would have a better home for his survival.

Now the firefish is the only inhabitant of my Evo, and I'm ok with that for now. He's a beautiful little guy, and hangs out in the front of the tank so I get to see him.

And that is the story of how I owned a Mandarin for a whole day.

 

[Narideth]

Mini Update; The debate on lights

I'll get something a little more expansive dropped here soon, but for the moment I'm waiting on another round of upgraded lights. See, I was silly and thought the light I'd gotten would be strong enough.

Then I picked up a birds next frag, and a beautiful new goniopora that needs some beefier lighting. I gave them a few weeks under my current lights, and they're doing fine. Not thriving like I want, but not bad, but I see my other tank with the better lights and just think... how much better would this tank look with more punch in the blue spectrum, with more PAR overall.

The added benefit? I can drop this 30w black box over the pico tank I'm building so nothing is going to waste.

TO BE CONTINUED.

 

[Narideth]

The small island separate from the main body of the rockwork has a delightful little colony of mico brittle stars, and they look like a cavern full of tentacle monsters or a giant squid in mini size.

 

[Narideth]

What is this? Could it be?

Someone rented a PAR meter and found out their lights are MORE THAN ADEQUATE.

 

[2020 Worst Year]

What is this? Could it be?



Someone rented a PAR meter and found out their lights are MORE THAN ADEQUATE.

did you ever get GHA

 

[2020 Worst Year]

whenever i set up a new tank i always get GHA and want to avoid it this time what did you do to not get it?

 

[Narideth]

whenever i set up a new tank i always get GHA and want to avoid it this time what did you do to not get it?

Well, I did get a little GHA in the beginning. I'd say it was about four or five months in, but it never got out of hand. I limited my photoperiod prematurely and slowed feeding to keep nutrients down, and the algae slowly disappeared over a period of about a month or two.

A new tank should come into balance with time if you're not giving it too much of something. Too much food, too much light etc. The good bacteria, the film algae, coralline algae and corals will all draw the extra nutrients out of the water, so it just eventually gives the GHA less to feed from.


Bonus picture of my super pretty red goni!

 

[TruRacr314x]

Looking great…and as bad as it is to go through, ups and downs are just part of this hobby. Sometimes lessons are learned…other times, unexplainable things are let unexplained. Thanks for sharing…it’s a good bit of experience that will help someone else know they are not the only one struggling at times.

 

[Narideth]

Quick fishy update:

Nitrates were high, phosphate was low, and the dinos made a return.

It's not a really bad outbreak and I have the tools to deal with it. My fresh batch of phyto is just about ready to be harvested to help combat this snotty pestilence.

I've found that I have a bad habit of focusing on one tank over others to deal with a problem and it makes the others the inadvertent recipients of some gentle neglect. Spreading the love and the water changes around will be a good change in the way I approach taking care of my salt tanks, since I made the very wise choice of having three.

Thank goodness they're small, and even during the downs, they're a fun and diverting challenge. Something is always up even when there's a down.

 

[Narideth]

What timing....

What did I say, the downs bringing ups with them.

My rock flowers spawned!!!

2 males and 3 females, I think. Now I get to watch for babies!

 

[Narideth]

Goodness me, an update!

Well the fight with dinos had already been doing alright. I actually got a pocket microscope to confirm what kind of dinos I had, which turned out to be pretty helpful, because I then purchased a much stronger UV on that information.

Three days after the new UV went in, I seem to be dino free. To be fair, it wasn't a huge outbreak, and I've been dosing pods, phyto and microbacter7 since they came up, all of which has been weakening its hold on my system. I had a little tiny UV lamp in one of the rear chambers, but I don't think it was having long enough contact, or wasn't strong enough, so I dropped a little more money on a Green Killing Machine.

Boy howdy from day one I saw a difference. These water-born strains are definitely weak against the UV, much to my delight. I'll keep the UV in the tank for a few more days, bolster the other biological supports and then try taking it out. It's a little clunky in my tank for long-term use. I'll do a water change today to help clear out any toxins released with their deaths.

 

[Narideth]

A hot sneak peak at what 4 hours of dipping new frags looks like after a weekend excursion to Aquashella !

 

[Narideth]

So I've been dealing with dinos in this tank again, and they were the same kind as before. Virulent, deadly. They killed a clown again, so I'm going to leave off on fish for a little while to make sure the threat is gone. A UV sterilizer of a much higher power killed them within a few days, but I left it on for two weeks. I'll keep feeding the corals and CUC to make sure my nutrients don't bottom out.

The corals I got from Aquashella are doing fabulously. There's one acro I got called PC Rainbow that has some tissue loss, but it seems to be stable now with no further loss. I'm not entirely certain if that spot was 100% to begin with as I"m so unfamiliar with acros in general. The other is a Jason Fox firestarter branching montipora, and it's getting along with my tank quite well.

I have to say, other than the clams I got, I think the scolymia I snagged is my mini favorite even though I got sooo many beautiful acans.

 

[Narideth]

So when I was in Daytona, I picked up not one, but two crocea clams. One that's around 3ish inches and the other is about 1.5 inches. They're both doing very well so far, except for getting themselves into a place that they like.

It's been a trial to get them to secure themselves, and I thought they were both secured before the larger one moved himself off of the little clam rack and tipped over.

I've got him nestled in his intended location now and sort of nixing the idea of keeping him on a movable platform. The tiny one can be moved around though, so that's good.

These pictures still don't entirely do them justice, but they're better than anything I've caught so far. The top one is the largest, a 'rainbow' specimen. The brownish areas are actually gold and the rest is patterned with blues and purples.

And this little guy was just too bright a blue to pass up.


They need names...

 

[Narideth]

While I was doing a water change, I noticed that there's a small pop of bright yellow that I hadn't seen before, since that edge is mostly shadowed when it's full and fluffy.

Sneaky scoly coming in with new colors. I'm not complaining! I wonder if it will spread further into the polyp. This scoly is easily becoming one of my favorite pieces in my tank. Beautiful under whites, blues, mixed, anything.