My First Saltwater Aquarium - Fluval Evo 13.5G

[TheBombasticReefer]

Hey man, thanks for sharing, really like the thread. I had also picked one of these little aio tanks up a few months ago

Anyway, I think this is your worm:

The Biodiversity of Singapore

There’s all kinds that produce clear tubes. I’ve had tons of them in the sump of one of my previous tanks, under rocks, etc. where they can easily get detritus and such. Nothing to worry about other than possibly bothering your corals.

Good work, looking forward to updates!

 

[HappilyReefing]

Hey man, thanks for sharing, really like the thread. I had also picked one of these little aio tanks up a few months ago

Anyway, I think this is your worm:

The Biodiversity of Singapore

There’s all kinds that produce clear tubes. I’ve had tons of them in the sump of one of my previous tanks, under rocks, etc. where they can easily get detritus and such. Nothing to worry about other than possibly bothering your corals.

Good work, looking forward to updates!

Thanks for the ID! Glad you are enjoying the thread.

I really like my AIO tank and I'm sure you will have fun with yours as well.

 

[HappilyReefing]

I found some Oyster Feast this week and decided to use it to feed the display for more food diversity. I broadcast fed 0.5mL to the tank and then topped it off with some zooplankton today. I did not feed the anemones, walking dendro, or acan their usual fare of shrimp/scallop bits. I also did not give Tux his usual piece of nori.

I think I'm overfeeding my tank and causing the cyanobacteria bloom so I am reducing the meatier foods to twice a week and limiting the amount of seaweed I give to Tux. Especially because I found little pieces of it stuck to the anemone guard on the wave maker yesterday. He can scavenge for food for awhile (he may not like it, but I don't think he'll starve). I'll still keep to my three-per-week feeding of the corals and clam with Reef-Roids, Reef Chili, phytoplankton, zooplankton, Oyster Feast, or a combination.

I read that Porcelain Anemone Crabs can be stressed if there is not an anemone for them to hide under. I don't know whether this is true or not, but my crab has nothing in the QT isolation container with her except for the exoskeleton which she doesn't go near. I'm debating moving her to the display tank this weekend when I do my maintenance just so she has some cover rather than wait for her next molt.

The hammer coral looks the same as yesterday. I'm anxious to see if this is really the coral splitting or if something else is going on with it. I'm contemplating whether I want to do another deep clean of the QT this weekend (not sure yet). There are so many little worms crawling around the glass that I've stopped trying to siphon them out. This is the same picture that was posted before with some of the worms circled in red.

If I do another deep clean on it, I would probably bleach it this time instead of just rinsing it out with tap water and blow drying it. Maybe I'll use vinegar instead because I don't want to have to wait for the bleach to disappear before I can use the tank again. Hmm...

On a lighter note, if you've ever wondered what the walking dendro's buddy is doing in the sand bed, here he is caught in the act. Looks like he is sifting sand looking for food. I never realized he was this long, but he's a fair distance away from his home (dendro) in the picture.

 

[HappilyReefing]

Happy Friday!

I wanted to give a quick update on the little crab. It looks like she has regrown the two legs she lost on the right side although the big claw is still missing. Her right mandible is back as well. It was out and busily working this morning during feeding time.

I hate to admit this, but I always thought that the "fans" these crabs use to filter for food were actually in the big claws (kind of like the Pom Pom Crab). Anyway, it wasn't until I got this crab that I saw where the fans were really located. My bad. Even reading descriptions online, it still didn't click until I saw it in action.

BTW - I broke the exoskeleton apart trying to take it out this morning. She stays away from it as far as I can tell.

 

[HappilyReefing]

Oh, and a hungry urchin is a destructive urchin...this is NOT where my coral is supposed to be!

 

[HappilyReefing]

Saturday, clean day...

Water Parameters

• Salinity 1.024
• Alkalinity 7.7dKH
• Calcium 370ppm
• Magnesium 1320ppm
• pH 8.15
• Phosphate 0.03ppm --> better...
• Nitrate 0.2ppm --> hmm, going down

PO4 is going up which is great, but NO3 is going down. I hope this means that my tank is slowly balancing itself out because I removed a ton of algae, cyanobacteria, and who knows what else from the glass. Yuck!

Did general maintenance on the tank and moved the porcelain crab to the display. I put her through two separate containers of new saltwater and blew water on her with a little pipette to try to flush any stuff off of her. I also did a thorough visual inspection and then picked her up with a plastic spoon (dumping most of the water) and dropped her in the display tank.

She's an itty-bitty little thing measuring about 0.5" for body width (maybe). I dropped her down near the anemones, but not on them. At first, she just stood there and did nothing. Less than an hour later, she was on top of the big anemone before getting underneath its skirt. I thought the anemone was smothering the crab for a moment, but she's happy there and filtering the water for food. It's quite fascinating to watch her whip out those little fans of hers to catch food...like a little ninja!

I put in two capfuls (10mL) of Dr. Tim's One and Only after the water change to help fortify my good bacteria and dropped in some phytoplankton for the filter feeders (okay, yes...it was mainly for the crab). I also accidentally bumped the alveopora with the turkey baster and knocked it into the sand. I was able to glue it back in its spot (and on the first try) so no harm, no foul.

All-For-Reef dosing reverted back to the first week's dosage. Alkalinity and calcium are holding steady after a week. I'm planning to start dosing for calcium in the coming week and increasing the AFR dose to 1.5mL daily with AFR dosing in the morning and calcium in the evening.

Date​	Alkalinity​	Calcium​	Notes​
03-12-22​	7.7dKH​	375ppm​	Dosed 1.5mL after water change; alkalinity and calcium were measured on water taken out of tank before AFR daily dose
03-13-22​			Dosed 1.0mL
03-14-22​			Dosed 1.0mL
03-15-22​			Dosed 1.0mL
03-16-22​			Dosed 1.0mL
03-17-22​			Dosed 1.0mL
03-18-22​			Dosed 1.0mL
03-19-22​	7.7dKH​	370ppm​	Dosed 1.5mL after water change; alkalinity and calcium were measured on water taken out of tank before AFR daily dose; will start dosing 1.5mL daily in the coming week and start balling part A dosing for calcium as well

 

[reeferpat137]

You can take that tank as far as you want. I started mine back in 2 months ago, upgraded pretty much every thing, and transfered some equipment. Enjoy the hobby

 

[HappilyReefing]

You can take that tank as far as you want. I started mine back in 2 months ago, upgraded pretty much every thing, and transfered some equipment. Enjoy the hobby

Thanks! Your tank looks pretty awesome! Love your maxima(?) clam.

 

[HappilyReefing]

Feeding Day!

The carnivores must be starving since I didn't feed them on Thursday. They got scallops today along with Oyster Feast, zooplankton, and a little bit of Reef-Roids for the rest of the tank. Tux got his nori, but I think he was asleep so I tucked the seaweed next to him. Hopefully, the nassarius snail will come by in a bit to pick at the leftovers.

I also finally figured out how to attach a video! This one is showing the little crab's ninja skills. Enjoy!

 

[HappilyReefing]

I was afraid of getting excessive noise as well when I took the rubber feet off of the pump and there is a low-level hum to it that honestly doesn't bother me. It sounds like a lot of other pieces of electronic equipment in my house, but I am not sensitive to noise either. I also make sure that the pump is completely flat after I service it (no side is slightly higher than another).

I had read that if you do have vibration noise, you could cut out a piece of cushiony rubber that you can place in the bottom of the chamber and then sit the pump on top of it to dampen the noise. Not sure how well the rubber would hold up in saltwater, but the idea sounds logical and you can use whatever material will work for you. I would have tried that method if the pump noise drove me crazy. Hope that's helpful.

PS - If I manage to figure out how to insert a video, I'll post the one I took to show the pump noise.

Hey @pecan2phat, I finally figured out how to attach a video! Here's the video I took awhile back to show how noisy the Eheim pump was without the rubber feet on it. The phone is about 4" from the pump compartment and I snapped my fingers right next to the phone about halfway through the video to give a frame of reference as regards to the noise level. Hope this helps!

 

[HappilyReefing]

Okay, I'm trying to figure out how to keep track of my clam's growth in this thread so I decided to take a picture every month on the same day from the same angle with the same magnification (yeah, we'll see how well this goes) and post it.

I've had this clam about 9.5 weeks now. Here's the first picture. I'm hoping this will be like the pencil marks on door jambs that parents make to keep track of their kid's height over the years. Although there are no door jambs or pencil marks here...now that I think about it, this may not work, but here goes.

 

[HappilyReefing]

I've thought long and hard about how to handle my current QT situation. I have found multiple different types of hitchhikers (bristle worms, tube worms, flat worms to name a few) in this last batch of corals that I am trying to quarantine and have come to the realization that just dipping the corals is not effective in getting rid of these pests. Neither is manually trying to remove them from the corals as they are too embedded in the skeleton and I am damaging the corals trying to extract them with tools.

How do I know I still have pests? After dipping my corals on three separate occasions (with CoralRx or KoralMD) along with one session involving a 3% H2O2 solution, I continue to see worms crawling around the QT. I used to siphon them out when I see them, but I now have too many little worms walking around on the glass to be manually taking them out one by one. So...I decided to buy another 2.5G tank.

I already had a spare heater and sponge filter so I just needed an extra tank and voila, another QT setup. Since I can't take these pests out one by one, I'll take them all out at once! I spent the day manually removing whatever pests I could find (again!), then put the three scolys through a set of three 10-second dips in freshwater (for a total of 30 seconds for each scoly) with submersion in saltwater between each dip. After that, all the corals were dipped in CoralRx for 12 minutes and rinsed off in saltwater. Then they went into a brand new QT setup.

I'm trying freshwater to see if it is effective in killing the hitchhikers since I suspect most of them are on the scolys. I also bought some DipX, but haven't tried it yet.

The only other things that came over from the old tank were the egg crate shelves to hold the corals and my inverts. The shelves were submerged in tap water twice for multiple minutes (the second time was for 12 minutes) and then left to air dry for at least 12 minutes. Afterwards, they were dried with paper towels and put into the new QT. I also caught the two nassarius snails and did a visual inspection of them, wiped their shells off with paper towels, and put them in the new QT.

I decided to forgo the sand and plastic container this time as I found my nassarius snails like to hang out around the corals (or underneath them as that is where all the food ends up).

I cleaned out the old tank with tap water and then soaked it and the other equipment in a 10% bleach solution for an hour. After rinsing everything down with tap water, I will let them air dry for a few days. Hopefully, this will kill all the little creepy crawlers that were in the old QT setup.

I will probably continue switching between my two QT setups until I can no longer see any pests on the glass. At this time, I don't know if I'll be switching every week or every other week or longer. I guess it will depend on how many pests come crawling out after this last go around.

I'll be keeping my fingers crossed that this helps in managing the number of pests that keep coming out of the woodwork until they are all gone (or die of old age).

EDIT: Forgot to mention that I added 1 capful (5mL) of Dr. Tim's One and Only to the new tank to prep it before adding the corals and inverts.

 

[reeferpat137]

Thanks! Your tank looks pretty awesome! Love your maxima(?) clam.

I believe its a maxima

 

[HappilyReefing]

Wow, just wow. After doing all that work on the QT on Monday, what do I find today? Yes, you guessed it! Another worm on my large scoly!

I had seen a couple of little flatworms crawling on the egg crate legs Tuesday, but I figured they were on the egg crate from before and I had already planned to cut up more egg crate for the next tank transfer so these shelves could be bleached with the rest of the equipment.

I also saw what I believed to be a dead worm (picture on the left) on one of the smaller scolys because it didn't really move (although he is MIA today - may have been eaten by a snail or retracted into his home).

The one on the large scoly today though was moving around actively looking for food! He has a clear body and no tentacles that I could see. He is also very long. Much longer than any of the other worms I have found.

And he looks very different than the other ones too. I think most of the other ones were either bristle worms or flat worms because they both had color to them. This one does not and he doesn't seem to have a segmented body either like the bristle worms.

If anyone knows what type of worm this is, please let me know. At this point, because the freshwater dip did NOT kill him off, I am going to have to try manual removal (now that I know where he is located). If it turns out he is harmless and won't move from his location and won't multiply, I may leave him be...maybe. Here he is in all his glory.

 

[HappilyReefing]

I've decided to take up clam farming and just added two more animals to the farm...er aquarium.

I labeled them #1 to #3 and that is also their order from smallest to largest. #1 is around 1" across (measured) while #2 is slightly larger (eyeballing here) and #3 is about 2" (also measured). He is hidden, but I have a video below showing him getting settled in his new surroundings i.e. moving around.

We'll see if they decide to stay where I put them. In their current positions, they are almost directly under the stock light fixture that runs the length of the tank so that is a plus.

I cleaned them up as best as I could and then placed them in the display tank. No QT for these fellows since I learned my lesson from last time. Too stressful for them and for me!

By "cleaned them up", I meant I broke almost all the scutes off so that I could scrub debris and other unwanted stuff away with a toothbrush. I also treated the shells with 3% H2O2 and visually checked multiple times for snails. I crushed one snail (couldn't tell what it was) and picked off a few vermetid(?) snails that had white, spiral tubes encrusted on the clams' shells using toothpicks and my fingernails.

I also visually checked their "foot" and removed a tiny piece of rock from the larger clam's foot. His foot was blackish and I don't know what that means. It looked okay other than that and the tissue that surrounded it was a fleshy color (as I expected). I guess I'll wait and see if he has a hard time attaching to the arch.

I did not break off the scutes of my original clam (#2), but later read an article where someone recommended it in order to get at the debris trapped inside them. The article said it would not hurt the clam and I believe it because I have watched my original clam get his scutes broken off by Tux. I have literally picked up the pieces, so to speak, littering the rock beneath the clam and he was fine with it.

At this point, I am done with crocea clams. I may purchase a maxima clam in the future that will reside on the sand bed in front of the proposed "acan" ledge. That will definitely require a lighting upgrade/modification so I'm not sure I will get a maxima. It will also make my tank look really cramped (at least more cramped than it is now).

In this video, he does a couple of little hops. He had just finished a really big hop (that I didn't catch on video darn it) before this series of smaller hops. Of course, he could have just been flushing stuff out of his body as well...hard to tell with clams.

 

[HappilyReefing]

A quick update on the new clams.

Well, they are all still on the arch this morning so that is a positive (not like the last time where my original clam fell onto the sand bed below the first night), but...

The little one moved overnight and is now in danger of falling off the rock. I don't know if I should leave him be or try to uproot him because he has some byssal threads down already. I'll leave him for now and look again tomorrow when I service the tank.

Picture 1 - He's still trying to figure out where he wants to be this morning. He's turned almost 45 degrees from the original position I placed him in last night.

​

Picture 2 - Seems like he's settled in this afternoon and is currently sitting flat on the rock.

I did move the bigger clam last night to a different location on the arch. He was wriggling around so much that I thought he would fall off. He had started attaching, but it didn't take too much effort to get him off the rock. I moved him to a location that had rock protrusions which will hopefully serve as a "fence" to keep him from plunging down to the sand bed.

He's already fallen once (my fault) when I placed him in a location that was too steep and he took a header. I don't think that even fazed him though because he's acting normal...for a clam that is.

Picture 3 - Larger clam in new position with protective railings.

 

[HappilyReefing]

Okay, I just had to share this with everyone. For all you nonbelievers out there who don't think clams can move...this is why they have a foot!

Video 1 - Wriggling around to warm up.

Video 2 - Moving to a more comfortable position.

I just hope that he doesn't move too much and topple off the arch! Fingers crossed that he's just trying to line up with the lights since they just came on...

 

[HappilyReefing]

It's cleaning day and there is quite a bit to do this week.

Water Parameters

• Salinity 1.024
• Alkalinity 7.7dKH
• Calcium 415ppm --> going up
• Magnesium 1305ppm
• pH 8.15
• Phosphate 0.03ppm
• Nitrate 0.5ppm

I finally scraped the brown algae off of the back wall of the tank. I had been leaving it in the hopes that the snails or urchin would munch on it, but to no avail. It was looking pretty bad so I got rid of it. While I was working in that area, I cleaned off the heater and moved the thermocouple to chamber 3 with the pump.

I also redirected the RFG nozzle away from the old cyanobacteria patch of sand. The water flow was too strong causing a bare spot and sand blowing all over the anemones and their rock. The cyanobacteria just moved to the far side of the islands.

Today marks one week of calcium dosing using Tropic Marin Balling Part A. The recommended dosage is 30mL which will increase calcium by 15ppm in a 10G system (which is what my water volume is). I decided to start dosing at 15mL expecting my calcium levels to go to ~380ppm. Instead, my calcium is at 415ppm. Not what I expected, but I am going to keep dosing 15mL for another week because I just put in two more crocea clams into my tank on Thursday and they should start consuming calcium.

I will increase the All-For-Reef to 2.0mL daily to see if I can increase alkalinity and magnesium a little bit.

Final notes about maintenance today...

I added activated carbon to the bottom of chamber 2, poured in 10mL of Dr. Tim's One and Only, and fed the tank a small amount of phytoplankton. The picture below was taken right after the cleaning showing the nozzle pointing slightly up. If that position bothers the clams, I will redirect it tomorrow.

Date​	Alkalinity​	Calcium​	Notes​
03-19-22​	7.7dKH​	370ppm​	Dosed 1.5mL after water change; alkalinity and calcium were measured on water taken out of tank before AFR daily dose; will start dosing 1.5mL daily in the coming week and start balling part A dosing for calcium as well; Dosed 15mL balling part A
03-20-22​			Dosed 1.5mL AFR in am; 15mL balling part A in pm
03-21-22​			Dosed 1.5mL AFR in am; 15mL balling part A in pm
03-22-22​			Dosed 1.5mL AFR in am; 15mL balling part A in pm
03-23-22​			Dosed 1.5mL AFR in am; 15mL balling part A in pm
03-24-22​			Dosed 1.5mL AFR in am; 15mL balling part A in pm
03-25-22​			Dosed 1.5mL AFR in am; 15mL balling part A in pm
03-26-22​	7.7dKH​	415ppm​	Dosed 1.5mL AFR after water change; alkalinity and calcium were measured on water taken out of tank before AFR daily dose; will increase AFR to 2.0mL in the coming week and keep dosage for balling part A at 15mL

 

[HappilyReefing]

I was watching my tank this morning and saw this...

The first time it happened, I thought my snail was urinating into the water. However, he kept doing it over and over again the whole time I was watching him (at least 10 minutes) so I figured he was releasing sperm instead.

I was worried about this snail because I think I *may* have gotten some H2O2 into his opening when I treated his shell about 1.5 weeks ago.

Since that time, he has been rather lethargic only moving around at night. During the day, he would hide out in one of the thru-holes in the arch.

It's nice to see that he is a-okay walking briskly around this morning doing his thing .

 

[HappilyReefing]

With the recent changes I have been making to the water flow, this was bound to happen...one of the anemones decided to leave the island (he was not voted off).

At first, he moved around the island trying to find that perfect location, but he didn't have any success. His closest neighbor was taking up a lot of space and had a guest that was quite crabby.

My anemone decided high-rise living was not for him and settled for something on the ground floor. I hope he's happy there, but I doubt it since he's very temperamental. This is the same anemone that went walkabout multiple times when he was first introduced into the display tank.

He is one of my problem children. Two guesses who the other one is... At least it will be easier to feed him now.