58e970b2-3f88-4897-87ba-5
Active Member
I have been delaying making this thread for a while, but I finally got the encouragement I needed. The fridge was full and the bottle of bubbly that has been in the back for months had to go. After a couple of glasses and a reminder from Daniel@R2R I remember the real reason I should document this is so future reefers can learn from my successes and avoid my mistakes. Also if you happen to like wine (or ice wine) and are in the Niagara region, check out Colaneri. Unfortunately I don't think they export much, but their wines are some of the best I have ever had.
Like most build threads this story starts off with cycling a tank and a trip to the LFS. It probably differs when I mention that this was during a lock down and I was picking up two NPS coral, sign unseen.
When I arrived at the LFS there was a "free coral" included with my order.
They mentioned that the corals had been there for a long time and seemed pretty keen on selling me a Yellow Finger Gorgonian they also had. Since this was my first NPS coral I refused, I really couldn't take the deaths of that many corals on my hands if I failed.... Turns out this was really good. It wouldn't have fit in my tank anyways.
After getting home I did a really long acclimation (I think it was about 6 hours). The coral were packed at a salinity of 30 ppt, so we had a ways to go to get up to my 35 ppt. I poked a hole in the bag, hung it in my tank, and every 15 minutes added some more tank water.
*Note: You will find I do not do any of the normal dipping and quarantine most reefers are doing. Currently I have been lucky and only got really awesome hitchhikers from coral. I may change my mind after having to deal with a serious pest. Also I hope to use this tank in future as a quarantine/long term observation tank. I love some of the things than come on coral, but have found (in another tank) it can take up to 6 months to notice some hitch hikers.
During the acclimation time I was busy looking into Randy Holmes-Farley's DIY calibration solution (link) for my salinity meters.... because how could there be a 5 ppt difference between our tanks. This was my first time encountering hypo salinity.
The free Sun Coral had some serious tissue loss going on and the other one was starting to lose tissue in some spots. The Red Finger Gorgornian was in decent health, but had oddly small polyps. I suspect this was from under feeding. The LFS gave me a sample of the food they were using and said how much they were feeding their 100+ gallon tanks. Shortly after I was feeding 6-8 times this for a pico tank.
That said I will be going back. They were really nice, are close by, and answered the questions I asked quite well. I suspect the issues with these coral may be due to the hardships of Covid (and NSP coral being hard to keep in mixed tank). I will reserve my judgement for more "normal" visits.
After acclimatization I set the Sun Corals on some of the rocks and super glued the Gorgonian to a small rock. In this setup I experimented with feeding, but had little success. It seemed they did not want to open up and the the food was quickly diluted. They stayed in the tank for a few days until I noticed my nitrates and phosphates were trending up quite quickly.
At this point I had the tank setup as a light side / dark side. One end had grow lights and the other was dark. I had spent a couple of weeks ghost feeding brine shrimp to verify that I could handle the feeding for NPS coral.
At this point I was either experiencing the delayed decay of the previous food... or the new LFS food was seriously more potent.
Fortunately I had not glued anyone down (to anything to large), so I pulled the coral and setup a pico tank for them. I setup two 2.5 gallon (10 L) tank with a heater and power head for them. I started doing a tank transfer every 24 hours and then cleaning the other tank. At this point I was feeding huge amounts trying to get a feeding response.
I was mostly target feeding a paste made from the LFS food (dried food with mixed size and ingredients) to the Sun Coral, then after 15-30 minutes turning on the flow again. I hoped the proceeding cloud would feed the Gorgonian.
This seemed to work okay. The Sun Coral could occasionally been seen to have consumed some of the food sitting in the pits of its polyps. The Gorgonian was hopefully doing okay... I didn't see the polyps catching much or any of the food, but at least it was getting a way higher concentration that when it was at the LFS.
In the process of trying to correct the issue with the main tank I added an external skimmer, switched to main tank to being entirely a refugium, upgraded the lights, added a biopellets (Siporax), added filter socks, added more powerheads, and added a 2.5 gallon "display tank". Essentially I turned a pico tank into the display and made my main tank an algae farm.
*Note: this is a newer picture. The pvc pipe on the skimmer was more recently added to fix overflows.
Shortly after the improvements on the main tank I ran life and missed one of my daily water changes. This caused a serious decline in the Sun Coral. I lost a couple polyps on the one and most on the other. Shortly after this I transferred them to the main tank and prayed I had things more under control in it.
At this point the one Sun Coral was declining and the other was mostly gone, with 2 tiny polyps hanging in on the bottom...I haven't had the heart to check if they are still there. It will be a miracle if they make a comeback.
In the main tank I setup timers to have three feeding periods in the pico/display tank. At this point all flow would stop and I could target feed the sun coral. After about 15-30 minutes the powerheads would turn on and swirl the food around. This seemed to help the Sun Coral catch more and feed the Gorgonian. After about 2 hours the return pump would turn on and flush the pico tank into a filter sock (change about every 48 hours).
Shortly after switching to this setup I added frozen seafood to the mix. I think this was a real turning point. I got a bunch of raw squid, shrimp, little neck clams, and PEI mussels from the grocery store and blended them. After this I packed them fairly flat in ziplock bags and now break off a chunk to feed each day.
I mix a bit of the LFS food, Reef Roids, frozen Seafood, and Red Sea Reef Energy AB+ into a jar each day to target feed. This soaks / defrosts in the fridge and gets fed at the same times each day.
While things aren't looking great, the Sun Coral is bulging and capturing food at meal times and the polyps on the Red Finger Gorgonian seem to be catching a lot of food. Hopefully things continue to keep improving.
My upcoming plans / battles include:
- finding a custom / odd sized tank to replace the pico (after things stabalize)
- battling phosphates (nitrates are dropping quickly, but phosphates are still high)
- automating feeding
I am hoping to eventually replace the plastic 2.5 gallon pico with something larger and glass so that I have room for more coral and a better view.
While nitrates recently have dropped into a good range I still have high phosphates. It seems I am shortly going to have to shortly start dosing nitrates and/or reducing my lighting schedule. I also seem to have finally found the right amount of PhosGuard to slowly drop phosphates.
I also dropped Reef-Roids from my food mix and am thinking to add some Reef Nutrition Oyster Feast in soon.
Eventually I need to setup automated feeding. I am hoping that once the Sun Coral are able to extend their tentacles I can reduce target feeding and do more broadcast feedings to the tank. At this point I am going to proceed with setting up to dose my food mixtures to the tank and hope that will be able to work for most feedings.
Like most build threads this story starts off with cycling a tank and a trip to the LFS. It probably differs when I mention that this was during a lock down and I was picking up two NPS coral, sign unseen.
When I arrived at the LFS there was a "free coral" included with my order.
They mentioned that the corals had been there for a long time and seemed pretty keen on selling me a Yellow Finger Gorgonian they also had. Since this was my first NPS coral I refused, I really couldn't take the deaths of that many corals on my hands if I failed.... Turns out this was really good. It wouldn't have fit in my tank anyways.
After getting home I did a really long acclimation (I think it was about 6 hours). The coral were packed at a salinity of 30 ppt, so we had a ways to go to get up to my 35 ppt. I poked a hole in the bag, hung it in my tank, and every 15 minutes added some more tank water.
*Note: You will find I do not do any of the normal dipping and quarantine most reefers are doing. Currently I have been lucky and only got really awesome hitchhikers from coral. I may change my mind after having to deal with a serious pest. Also I hope to use this tank in future as a quarantine/long term observation tank. I love some of the things than come on coral, but have found (in another tank) it can take up to 6 months to notice some hitch hikers.
During the acclimation time I was busy looking into Randy Holmes-Farley's DIY calibration solution (link) for my salinity meters.... because how could there be a 5 ppt difference between our tanks. This was my first time encountering hypo salinity.
The free Sun Coral had some serious tissue loss going on and the other one was starting to lose tissue in some spots. The Red Finger Gorgornian was in decent health, but had oddly small polyps. I suspect this was from under feeding. The LFS gave me a sample of the food they were using and said how much they were feeding their 100+ gallon tanks. Shortly after I was feeding 6-8 times this for a pico tank.
That said I will be going back. They were really nice, are close by, and answered the questions I asked quite well. I suspect the issues with these coral may be due to the hardships of Covid (and NSP coral being hard to keep in mixed tank). I will reserve my judgement for more "normal" visits.
After acclimatization I set the Sun Corals on some of the rocks and super glued the Gorgonian to a small rock. In this setup I experimented with feeding, but had little success. It seemed they did not want to open up and the the food was quickly diluted. They stayed in the tank for a few days until I noticed my nitrates and phosphates were trending up quite quickly.
At this point I had the tank setup as a light side / dark side. One end had grow lights and the other was dark. I had spent a couple of weeks ghost feeding brine shrimp to verify that I could handle the feeding for NPS coral.
At this point I was either experiencing the delayed decay of the previous food... or the new LFS food was seriously more potent.
Fortunately I had not glued anyone down (to anything to large), so I pulled the coral and setup a pico tank for them. I setup two 2.5 gallon (10 L) tank with a heater and power head for them. I started doing a tank transfer every 24 hours and then cleaning the other tank. At this point I was feeding huge amounts trying to get a feeding response.
I was mostly target feeding a paste made from the LFS food (dried food with mixed size and ingredients) to the Sun Coral, then after 15-30 minutes turning on the flow again. I hoped the proceeding cloud would feed the Gorgonian.
This seemed to work okay. The Sun Coral could occasionally been seen to have consumed some of the food sitting in the pits of its polyps. The Gorgonian was hopefully doing okay... I didn't see the polyps catching much or any of the food, but at least it was getting a way higher concentration that when it was at the LFS.
In the process of trying to correct the issue with the main tank I added an external skimmer, switched to main tank to being entirely a refugium, upgraded the lights, added a biopellets (Siporax), added filter socks, added more powerheads, and added a 2.5 gallon "display tank". Essentially I turned a pico tank into the display and made my main tank an algae farm.
*Note: this is a newer picture. The pvc pipe on the skimmer was more recently added to fix overflows.
Shortly after the improvements on the main tank I ran life and missed one of my daily water changes. This caused a serious decline in the Sun Coral. I lost a couple polyps on the one and most on the other. Shortly after this I transferred them to the main tank and prayed I had things more under control in it.
At this point the one Sun Coral was declining and the other was mostly gone, with 2 tiny polyps hanging in on the bottom...I haven't had the heart to check if they are still there. It will be a miracle if they make a comeback.
In the main tank I setup timers to have three feeding periods in the pico/display tank. At this point all flow would stop and I could target feed the sun coral. After about 15-30 minutes the powerheads would turn on and swirl the food around. This seemed to help the Sun Coral catch more and feed the Gorgonian. After about 2 hours the return pump would turn on and flush the pico tank into a filter sock (change about every 48 hours).
Shortly after switching to this setup I added frozen seafood to the mix. I think this was a real turning point. I got a bunch of raw squid, shrimp, little neck clams, and PEI mussels from the grocery store and blended them. After this I packed them fairly flat in ziplock bags and now break off a chunk to feed each day.
I mix a bit of the LFS food, Reef Roids, frozen Seafood, and Red Sea Reef Energy AB+ into a jar each day to target feed. This soaks / defrosts in the fridge and gets fed at the same times each day.
While things aren't looking great, the Sun Coral is bulging and capturing food at meal times and the polyps on the Red Finger Gorgonian seem to be catching a lot of food. Hopefully things continue to keep improving.
My upcoming plans / battles include:
- finding a custom / odd sized tank to replace the pico (after things stabalize)
- battling phosphates (nitrates are dropping quickly, but phosphates are still high)
- automating feeding
I am hoping to eventually replace the plastic 2.5 gallon pico with something larger and glass so that I have room for more coral and a better view.
While nitrates recently have dropped into a good range I still have high phosphates. It seems I am shortly going to have to shortly start dosing nitrates and/or reducing my lighting schedule. I also seem to have finally found the right amount of PhosGuard to slowly drop phosphates.
I also dropped Reef-Roids from my food mix and am thinking to add some Reef Nutrition Oyster Feast in soon.
Eventually I need to setup automated feeding. I am hoping that once the Sun Coral are able to extend their tentacles I can reduce target feeding and do more broadcast feedings to the tank. At this point I am going to proceed with setting up to dose my food mixtures to the tank and hope that will be able to work for most feedings.
