Perseverance Reef

[Fishy888]

I learned about a product called phosphate-e yesterday. It sounds like a potential solution to bring my disproportionately high phosphates down without toxifying the system. Of course no solution is perfect but as long as I drop the phosphates gradually until it's around .1 or even .05 I would think chaeto along with sensible feeding habits would be enough to keep phosphates in check. My main concern is getting the newly bound phosphates filtered out as per the instructions. I don't have a skimmer or mechanical filtration. If I do employ something like carbon I worry I'll be filtering out trace elements which could starve the chaeto and even the pods. I'll continue to research it and figure out what I want to do.

Speaking of pods I am beginning to see more of them. Everything's still doing well. More algae is growing on the walls of the sump and the chaeto is starting to take off. Once I get phosphates where they need to be and I can keep them stable enough I'll try more LPS.

 

[Fishy888]

Double post.

 

[tbrown]

I learned about a product called phosphate-e yesterday. It sounds like a potential solution to bring my disproportionately high phosphates down without toxifying the system. Of course no solution is perfect but as long as I drop the phosphates gradually until it's around .1 or even .05 I would think chaeto along with sensible feeding habits would be enough to keep phosphates in check. My main concern is getting the newly bound phosphates filtered out as per the instructions. I don't have a skimmer or mechanical filtration. If I do employ something like carbon I worry I'll be filtering out trace elements which could starve the chaeto and even the pods. I'll continue to research it and figure out what I want to do.

Speaking of pods I am beginning to see more of them. Everything's still doing well. More algae is growing on the walls of the sump and the chaeto is starting to take off. Once I get phosphates where they need to be and I can keep them stable enough I'll try more LPS.

I keep finding amphipods in my tank. I'd definitely love to see more copepods though!

 

[Fishy888]

Yeah I have plenty of amphipods but isopods dominate in my system.

 

[Fishy888]

I took all the rocks out and scrubbed them then made a new aquascape. I also did a 50% water change. Soon I'll be getting my phosphate-e so the process of getting phosphates in check has begun. With the rocks cleaned I've exported some nutrients and opened up the pores so that the phosphate-e will work that much more effectively. Any hair algae I missed should die back also.

Stability has been almost impossible to come by with everything this reef has been through in the last year. By doing what I am doing and getting ready to do it will be like resetting the clock on the system but it's better that it gets done now before I end up with more demanding corals.

My chaeto is growing nicely though and although I've probably irritated my GSP which got cleaned today the corals are still doing good. The duncans are already opening in fact. With time I won't have to constantly fidget with everything constantly. I'll still have maintenance to do but not like now.

 

[Fishy888]

I took a few pictures of the DT and the new scape. Things are coming together.

While the GSP were closed I glued the center part of the mat down. I didn't want to get glue on the outer edges and in the center on the same day. That's because I didn't want to risk killing off the whole coral in case something went wrong like pressing on the stolons too much or getting glue on them. Now the center is glued down pretty well.

The fish are all doing well. One shrimp molted today. I didn't see that particular shrimp when I was cleaning the rocks but the smaller one was in a rock that I cleaned and is now in the front right corner of the cube.

As for pods I saw a pretty large amphipod while cleaning the rocks. It jumped from the rock while it was out of the water and into my hand. I immediately released it back into the DT. I didn't see any others but I know they're in there. The isopods I've been seeing probably took to the rocks since I also cleaned the glass. They'll be back though. I suspect there are plenty of them in the chaeto also.

 

[Fishy888]

I got the last ingredients for my diy fish food today. There's a health food store about 40 miles from here that had live oysters. One I think is from Delaware, probably the Delaware or Chesapeake bay. The other oysters are gulf oysters. I made sure to select ones that weren't cracked and had barnacles on them. I would love to have them in the reef. For that matter I am tempted to try to keep one or two of them in the reef. I would think the Gulf oysters would have a better chance than the Delaware oysters would. Still they need tons of nutrients and probably tons of phyto to survive long term. I guess the barnacles will too (assuming they're still alive) but they don't need nearly as much as the oysters would. I will post about whether or not I try keeping an oyster or two and how the the barnacles fare. Even if I don't keep any oysters I'll keep the shells with the barnacles on them in the reef. If I could remove the barnacles from the shells and glue them to some rock that would be cool.

Of course I bought the oysters for the DIY fish food. I bought five of each kind. I got ocean perch at another store near the health food store. They aren't available in this town so I am happy I could get them. As it stands here are the "ingredients" for my DIY frozen fish and coral food:

Delaware Oysters
Gulf Oysters
Ocean Perch
Sockeye Salmon
Whiting
Medium Shrimp,
Bay scallops
Cod
Tuna Steak
Frozen Broccoli
Frozen Peas

I am pretty sure I listed everything. I might add one or two more ingredients to the mix or if I bought something I didn't list I'll add it to the list when I go to combine everything.

I could have gotten some awesome looking crab legs, probably snow crabs. At 55 bucks a pound though they can keep them. The same with the 35 buck a pound lobster arms. As much as I wanted crustaceans in the mix I can't afford the prices I saw today. I am going to try and get normal blue crab legs which go for 18 dollars a pound locally. If they don't have them around the beginning of the month I'll just get them after I make my frozen food mix and give it to them by itself every now and again.

As for vegetable matter I want to add items that are easily digested and won't raise phosphates to the moon and beyond. Of course the most important thing is the nutritional profile of the veggies as well as every other ingredient. There's no way my fish food will have every possible nutritional element known to fishkind but it'll have most of what both fauna and flora in my reef will need . Whatever they're missing will hopefully be made up for with some quality flake food and things like Selcon and the like.

Things are looking good today for all my animals. I fed them some frozen food yesterday and the fish and all my hermits (about 5, possibly 6) made a mad dash for it. The shrimp got in on the action as well. Hopefully the bristle worms got some too.

My corals are hanging in there. The GSP has been gradually opening up more and more each day since I glued the center down. No algae has formed on the GSP since I cleaned it just before gluing the center down. There's a hole in the center of the mat so I glued it down so it could grow back together. My worry right now though is dinos. I see them trying to reform a bit. I've been feeding more frozen food than usual to stave off the dinos until I get my stump remover. At least I'll have phosphate-e soon to help me regain control of the phosphates. Once phosphates are where they should be my chaeto should be able to keep phosphates in check. I'll still have to dose nitrates because this system eats them like nobody's business.

Edit: forgot to add the raw tuna steak. I forget if I remembered to get the cod. If I did I'm going to get it. If they don't have it by next week I'll take it off the list for this go round. I can always make another mix down the road for some variety as well as to provide meats with different nutritional profiles than the meats in the batch I'm about to make.

 

[Fishy888]

It took a while but I got my DIY frozen fish food made. Using distilled water I soaked, stirred, and drained off the meats that were treated with sodium triphosphate. I used distilled water to blend everything. It took about 22 quart sized Ziploc bags to hold it all. I filled each bag with about 1 1/2 cups of the finished product. After flattening the bags out they went into the freezer. Tomorrow the denizens of Perseverance Reef will get to be taste testers.

Cyano's all over the sand right now. It's on the rocks too but not as bad. Even so the corals are open and doing well. The fish and hermits are doing their thing. All my astreas are dead. I won't get them again most likely.

I still have my small feather duster worms. The ball anemones died off about two weeks ago. Hopefully I'll get new ones eventually. The pods are still doing ok but they haven't been growing as fast as I'd like.

Once I get phosphates and algae under control I think a lot of good things will start happening. Stability and not having my hands in the tank constantly will be among the best things to come out of it. Fish and coral health will be the absolute best things that'll happen though.

 

[Fishy888]

Tonight I did a partial rip clean on the sand. In the process many cyanobacteria were exported. That includes most of what's floating in the sump.

Tomorrow I get to go on a small shopping spree. My wife gave me cash for my birthday which was 2 days ago. Yes she is that awesome. I'm going to a store that's a bit of a drive but it's worth it. I have a few things I want from there but we'll see if they have them.

As of tonight while getting the hai algae off my duncans' skeleton I noticed two, possibly 3 new heads developing. All my coral is closed due to my sand cleaning. The cloudy water didn't help although it's clearing quickly.

I got my phosphate-e a couple of hours ago. This is awesome! I still need a 5 micron sock and the reservoir. I need to make the reservoir still but that'll be tomorrow or the next day. Lanthanum chloride is no joke though. Dosing it wrong will most likely crash the whole reef. I'm going to dilute the LaCl and slowly drip it. I'll aim for 0.08ppm to possibly 0.1ppm per day. It's going to take time as my sand and rock are probably holding a ton of phosphates. Once phosphates hit the 0.5ppm mark I'll drop the dose to 0.05 a day. The object is to have no loose lanthanum floating around. ALK also needs to be monitored during all this.

I undid the net holding the chaeto today. It's pretty healthy but it grew densely over and through the net. The very center got little light so the middle of it died back. It wasn't bad but now it's healthy enough that the individual balls of chaeto can hold themselves together.

Edit: Since the DT is less cloudy I took a picture of my duncans. Although it's a bit blurry you can clearly see the new polyps growing. I'm stoked!

 

[tbrown]

It's interesting because without phosphates everything gets attacked by algae and dies, with too much phosphates everything gets attacked by algae and dies. We just played the high phosphate game in our pool and finally won! We dumped 25 gallons of liquid pool chlorine, a gallon of algaecide, and several 32 oz bottles of clarifier with little effect. The pool stores kept telling us to worry about the phosphates after the color goes away. I dumped 16 oz of a phosphate remover into my pool and it was blue and sparkling overnight! Apparently high phosphates can "lock" your water.

 

[Fishy888]

It's interesting because without phosphates everything gets attacked by algae and dies, with too much phosphates everything gets attacked by algae and dies. We just played the high phosphate game in our pool and finally won! We dumped 25 gallons of liquid pool chlorine, a gallon of algaecide, and several 32 oz bottles of clarifier with little effect. The pool stores kept telling us to worry about the phosphates after the color goes away. I dumped 16 oz of a phosphate remover into my pool and it was blue and sparkling overnight! Apparently high phosphates can "lock" your water.

I've always thought that about phosphates. It's like a love/hate relationship between our corals and phosphates. Enjoy that pool.

 

[Fishy888]

I got my birthday present today. I chose this one. I'll be home in about an hour give or take. I'll post more pictures tonight once they're acclimated. Lots of good stuff on and in the rock. The rock is awesome too. Once I see exactly what is on and in the rock I'll post about that too.

 

[Fishy888]

If I didn't see it I wouldn't have believed it but I got at least 2 baby fry in addition to 6 hermit crabs, most likely 5 brittle stars, and a small astrea snail.

There weren't any bigger fish in the tank my coral rock came from and I have no idea what fish these are. I will find out soon. I'm tempted to put them in the sump. They'd be dinner if I put them in the DT.

I need to see if I have a net like the kind people use to isolate and protect baby guppies. The sump has a 1200 GPH pump so suction is super strong for baby fish.

Once I've acclimated everything I'll take some more pictures and post them.

 

[tbrown]

If I didn't see it I wouldn't have believed it but I got at least 2 baby fry in addition to 6 hermit crabs, most likely 5 brittle stars, and a small astrea snail.

There weren't any bigger fish in the tank my coral rock came from and I have no idea what fish these are. I will find out soon. I'm tempted to put them in the sump. They'd be dinner if I put them in the DT.

I need to see if I have a net like the kind people use to isolate and protect baby guppies. The sump has a 1200 GPH pump so suction is super strong for baby fish.

Once I've acclimated everything I'll take some more pictures and post them.

Freebies are always cool! Hopefully they're good fish.

 

[Fishy888]

Freebies are always cool! Hopefully they're good fish.

Hopefully they are. They have a bunch of damsels but they had a bunch of wrasses too. The fry are the size of newborn guppies so I doubt they're wrasses. Oh they have a bunch of clownfish including picasso clowns.

 

[Fishy888]

I got some pictures of the fry. They love swimming around in the rock. I just hope I can isolate them from the rock. If I can isolate them I'll take a large net I have laying around. I'll bend the handle so the netting sits securely on the lip of this tank. Thinking about it I also have cheesecloth I can use to use as a makeshift safe space for the fry.

Anyway I am still slowly acclimating everything. After what happened to the last candy cane coral and my ultimate chaos zoas; I'm not making the same idiotic mistake again if I can at all help it. There are palys on the mushroom rock as the LFS called it. There is a candy cane coral colony (say THAT ten times fast) as well. There's a potential mystery coral but it could also be coral glue or something as well. Hopefully I can find out soon.

The pictures aren't great but you can see their shadowy looking selves in the cave like hole in the rock.

 

[Fishy888]

Here's a much better picture of the fish. I was wrong about having two or three. I have at least 13.

 

[tbrown]

Here's a much better picture of the fish. I was wrong about having two or three. I have at least 13.

Good news bad news - those probably aren't fish fry. They look like mysids shrimp. A good thing to have! Sump them for sure if you can. The ones that make it to the display become food, the ones in the sump hopefully continue breeding and you get a great source of feed for your fish.

 

[Fishy888]

You know? I wondered about whether they were really baby shrimp of some kind. I thought I saw swimmerets on one of the bigger ones but as small as they are I figured I was probably wrong.

Of course mysids aren't true shrimp any more than pods but that may well be what I have. I'll know soon enough though. Thank you for the suggestion!

 

[Fishy888]

As expected neither the candy cane corals on the new rock or the GSP also on said rock came out yesterday. The mushrooms and green button polyps (that might be the wrong ID though) were out yesterday though. The mushrooms were a bit shrunken in size compared to when they were at the LFS. The LFS had them under mainly blues though. I run whites and blues in my system and I use T5s so I’m not surprised the mushrooms weren’t as expanded as at the LFS.

The animals that came on the rock seem great but time will tell. If the brittle stars and asterinas start splitting and taking over the rock I’ll know they are happy. There are loads of starfish arms sticking out of the rock waving so I’m happy. The hermits are doing well too. I saw a limpet on the new rock Monday night/early yesterday morning. I hope there are many more. I lost all the limpets, all the spaghetti worms and a bunch of bristle worms when the leak happened in the 75. I also got many small to medium sized bristle worms. They are the half pink half gray kind. I also have the solid pink kind but not from the new rock. Hopefully there are spaghetti worms in the new rock and peanut worms too.

What I thought were fish Monday night are most definitely mysis shrimp. Thank you for pointing that out @tbrown2249. I have them still in the bag the rock came in. Today I need to get the mysids into the sump or into my 10 gallon tank. It’ll probably be the 10 gallon tank since I have an air stone and a pump I can use. The sump has no baffles so there’s no protection from the return pump. My ultimate goal is most to get them going in the sump too.

The filter sock is coming today so I’ll be able to start the LaCl drip as soon as I get it. It will help a lot.

I switched to an iPhone yesterday so I took some pictures. The pictures are incredible compared to the old phone. I’ll post the ones I took tonight.