Nano Sapiens 12g - Ye Olde Mixed Reef

[ramona]

Awsome. Love it! I am sooo jealous!

I have a question regarding your ricordeas: do their skirts move/wiggle with the flow?
I ask because I have 3 ricordea florida for 6 weeks now-not growing; one of them staying quite small; they attached to few crushed coral pieces (my substrate) which I glued to small individual pieces of rock so I can move them around if needed. I wonder if I have too much flow because the skirt of the biggest (which is 1 inch), kinda wiggles; or is not enough light (kessil a160we set at 20% color and 25% intensity). Please forgive my ignorance.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Awsome. Love it! I am sooo jealous!

I have a question regarding your ricordeas: do their skirts move/wiggle with the flow?
I ask because I have 3 ricordea florida for 6 weeks now-not growing; one of them staying quite small; they attached to few crushed coral pieces (my substrate) which I glued to small individual pieces of rock so I can move them around if needed. I wonder if I have too much flow because the skirt of the biggest (which is 1 inch), kinda wiggles; or is not enough light (kessil a160we set at 20% color and 25% intensity). Please forgive my ignorance.

All good that you are ask questions

Ricordia tend to do best in what would today be considered 'low flow'. I hear about Ricordia problems often, typically in high flow SPS dominated systems. These mushrooms should expand to capture as much light as possible, so if the tentacles (aka 'Bumps') are small and tightly packed together that typically means too much flow or too much light. If the skirts of properly expanded Ricordia are just barely moving, then that's about right.

As far as lighting goes, they can take a bit more light than your Discosoma mushrooms, but must be slowly acclimated to it. But, they can do well in 'lower light'. The best way to tell is if the 'shroom is not reaching (aka 'Trumpeting') for light, but stays close to the rock and is expanded properly when the lights are on, that's about right.

BlueZoo has a good writeup:

https://www.bluezooaquatics.com/resources.asp?show=368https://www.bluezooaquatics.com/resources.asp?show=368

 

[ramona]

Thanks a lot for the details. Also the article is very helpful.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Yay, 11th year:

Bit of an up-and-down year for this little tank, but overall doing okay.

Have some persistent sand bed algae (rust colored cyano/diatoms most likely), but nothing too extreme and the corals are unaffected. Tried the higher PO4 route for a month just in case dinos might be involved, but not much change. Typically, I've noticed that the blooms tend to subside in winter.

Changes:

Removed a large (well, relatively speaking) live rock covered in green Ricoridia to allow more access to the sand bed for cleaning.

Added a new 'Saddled Blenny' (Malacoctenus triangulatus) for a total of four fish. Very alert and inquisitive little fella:

Couple of new Acans that I hope will eventually cover this inclined wall:

...and so the tank saga continues.

Thanks for looking!

Ralph.

 

[Tahoe61]

Well done sir.
Please refresh my memory regarding lighting on this tank.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Well done sir.
Please refresh my memory regarding lighting on this tank.

Thank you.

Lighting: Wide coverage DIY LEDs mounted on an oversized heat sink (no fans necessary) packing into the stock Cadlights canopy plus a STORM controller from LEDGroupBuy. Has never missed a beat in something like 6-7 years now.

 

[reef-rc]

Wow...11 years. Kudos sir!

 

[Pbh-reef]

Very cool blenny! I’ve never seen one in person

 

[Nano sapiens]

Wow...11 years. Kudos sir!

Thanks, shooting for 12...

 

[Nano sapiens]

Very cool blenny! I’ve never seen one in person

They come in a reddish and black & white versions. The local LFS had no clue what it was, but I'd seen it before in pics from KP Aquatics. Most personable and intelligent fish I've ever had in a reef tank.

 

[Pbh-reef]

They come in a reddish and black & white versions. The local LFS had no clue what it was, but I'd seen it before in pics from KP Aquatics. Most personable and intelligent fish I've ever had in a reef tank.

You’re Making me want to find one!

 

[flchamp89]

Such a super clean well designed mix of coral. Very impressive

 

[Nano sapiens]

Such a super clean well designed mix of coral. Very impressive

Thank you!

 

[Wiskey]

Very awesome!!! I love seeing long term tanks like this. Thank you for coming back and updating this thread!

Whiskey

 

[jguerin88]

dang that's sick

 

[Nano sapiens]

Very awesome!!! I love seeing long term tanks like this. Thank you for coming back and updating this thread!

Whiskey

Thanks, glad that you enjoyed viewing it.

I started this reef aquarium back in 2008 just for fun to see how far a little system like this could go with just the bare basics (pump, heater, lighting). Kind of an antithesis, if you will, to the prevailing trend of ever more complexity/cost.

I had originally planned on running it for 5 years, but 5 became 10, now 11...

 

[brandon429]

Hey you should list insults given to the tank that its weathered, statistically you should have had four lol by this time. I darn near bleached perma my entire bowl. a cheapo heater had been out, not working, dec-feb the reefbowl did 68 degrees koi pond mode for weeks and I didn't know what happened. figured my reef luck ran low or out

caught just in time, took 70 days to regen luckily all corals back 100% closest loss so far. old nanos get insulted how has yours been insulted occasionally
B

 

[Nano sapiens]

Hey you should list insults given to the tank that its weathered, statistically you should have had four lol by this time. I darn near bleached perma my entire bowl. a cheapo heater had been out, not working, dec-feb the reefbowl did 68 degrees koi pond mode for weeks and I didn't know what happened. figured my reef luck ran low or out

caught just in time, took 70 days to regen luckily all corals back 100% closest loss so far. old nanos get insulted how has yours been insulted occasionally
B

Hi Brandon - Well, I think that this tank has a guardian angel In these 11 years the worst things I ran into was an outbreak of brown jelly near the two year mark, a heater malfunction (caught it in time so no casualties) and an alkalinity spike from 8.5 to 14.5 within a few short hours (again, no damage or casualties). Lucky on pests, too. Red Bugs that died out when the host Acro did, a few Aiptasia and Acoel Flatworms (both easily eradicated if dealt with quickly). And that's about it.

 

[Nano sapiens]

And...referring to my post above about the 'Guardian Angel'...I think he/she was asleep because I found this in one of the three back chambers:

Funny thing is, I have no idea where this small bolt came from. This sized bolt isn't used anywhere in or around the aquarium.

For the last few months I've noticed a decline in the 'little critters' like bristleworms, pods, micro-brittlestars, mysids, etc. Within the last two weeks the only thing I had found were a few small collonista snails and a limpet or two. On the positive side, all my corals are fine and some, like my acans, are doing better than ever before (*may* be some element, like perhaps the extra iron, that they are liking).

I have had this once before in a larger 55g system, but in that case it was a good-sized rusty fish-hook that I trawled out of the sand bed with a net.

 

[Nano sapiens]

Quick cell phone pic:

The corroded bolt had surprisingly little effect on the system overall. 4+ year old ORA Yellow Lined Goby finally passed away yesterday, so now down to two fish (an Eyebrow Barnacle Blenny and a Saddled Blenny) and no immediate plans to add any. Pretty much just humming along for now